The horrific civil war in Yugoslavia and the especially bloody battles in Bosnia fought just two decades ago in the 1990s feel like ancient history. The world revisited the reality and immediacy of that conflict in recent weeks as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia delivered verdicts on some of the perpetrators of the worst atrocities during that fighting. Those rulings are vital to remind us that such injustices can and do occur, and to warn the guilty, along with those who contemplate similar acts, that they will be held accountable for their misdeeds.
On Nov. 22, Ratko Mladic, former leader of the Bosnian Serb army, was sentenced to life in prison on charges of genocide for acts committed during the Bosnian war, which raged from April 1992 to December 1995. This was an especially gruesome theater in the contest over the former Yugoslavia, one in which all the ethnic groups who had once lived together peacefully — Serbs, Croats and Muslims — fought for control or their own independence. It was a savage struggle that turned one of the most promising examples of the socialist experiment into a blood-soaked battlefield. That civil war resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians, often women and children, 2.2 million people displaced, an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 women raped, and the dismembering of the country formerly known as Yugoslavia.
Mladic was charged with two counts of genocide and nine crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in efforts to carve out a Serbian mini-state, a project that required the eviction of all non-Serbs from that territory. His methods ranged from besieging the city of Sarajevo with blockades and random acts of terror (artillery attacks and sniper fire) against its inhabitants, the establishment of concentration camps and mass executions — as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb forces took over the city of Srebrenica. It is estimated that 10,000 people died during the siege of Sarajevo.
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