Mladic in the dock

Ratko Mladic has finally been arrested. He has been accused of crimes against humanity and genocide. The siege of Belgrade to the massacre in Srebrenica. It is about time he faces justice. But when it comes to the Balkans War there has been plenty of revisionism especially around the numbers massacred at Srebrenica, worst massacre post-ww2. Revisionism and capitulation to Serbian nationalism existed on the Left, at the time, including Living Marxism and Socialist Worker. Events leading up to the genocide in Srebrenica and the overall assault on Bosnia:

On March 1 (1992) the assault on Bosnia started when Serb paramilitaries erected barricades in Sarajevo, dividing the city. Bosnia was torn apart by Serbian and Croatian forces for three years. Bosnian cities were bombed into rubble and their inhabitants starved out. Europe saw its first genocide, since world war two. Bosnian Muslims faced massacre, rape, and terror. In Srebrenica 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the course of a few days. Three quarters of Bosnia¹s territory was occupied by either Serbian or Croatian forces. 30,000 Bosnian women were raped as part of a policy of terror. The war left a quarter of a million dead and three million Bosnian refugees.

There is plenty for which the Bosnian regime could be criticised. But the idea that it was no different to those of Milosevic or Tudjman is preposterous. Bosnia was by far the most multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Yugoslav Republic. For Bosnia it was a war of survival and a war in defence of a multi-ethnic society. That multi-ethnicity mostly survived throughout the war. There were Serbs and Croats at every level of the Bosnian state and military. 10% of the army were Serb or Croat, and there were 50,000 Serbs and 30,000 Croats in Bosnian Sarajevo throughout the siege.

On the numbers game and how many people were murdered at Srebenica, David Osler rightly argues: Even on the most patently sympathetic Serbian nationalist counterestimate, they hold direct responsibility for thousands of illegal executions, and are very rightly in the dock. Let’s hope that that point is lost on nobody”.

The Milosevic lead thugs of the 1990’s were not opposing imperialism or defending the downtrodden and oppressed. They were trying to build a political enclave for their own power and privilege based on racist nationalism. They were happy to use murder and war rape to further their cause. The Bosnians were right to resist them. For three years imperialism did not know what to do. Massacres  were permitted. The Bosnians were not allowed to get weapons to defend themselves. As it was the West allowed people to suffer the most appalling brutality of the forces, second to none against unarmed civilians that Mladic commanded.

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