The trial of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, known as the “butcher of the Balkans”, may serve justice by exposing the truth about the war in Bosnia, but reconciliation of its divided people is still far off. Last week's arrest of the genocide fugitive after 16 years at large in Serbia came as a long-awaited relief for Bosnian Muslims, who suffered the greatest losses in the 1992-95 conflict. But it angered Serbs who see Mladic as a hero. “This is a divided country where there is not a single common topic, where any dialogue is impossible, a country in which each side has its own truth about the war,” said Gojko Beric, a columnist for the Sarajevo-based daily Oslobodjenje. The US-sponsored Dayton peace accords of 1995 ended the war, dividing Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic. It did nothing to repair ethnic divisions which have widened over the years, with Bosnian Serb separatism on the rise. “Mladic's trial will establish the facts of many very horrible incidents that took place during the war,” said Patrick Moon, the US ambassador to Bosnia. “It's important for the victims, it's important for the governments here, it's important for the people - so I think this will contribute to reconciliation and the healing process.” Mladic on Friday appeared before the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims men and boys and for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo in which 12,000 were killed. He called the charges a “monstrous” lie, saying he only defended his people and his country. This is the view widely held by his supporters, who protested across the Serb Republic since Mladic's arrest last Thursday in a Serbian village. “The Serb Republic hasn't gone back to the 1990s since Mladic was arrested. It never moved on...” said Srdjan Puhalo, analyst at the Prime Communications agency in Banja Luka. “The problem is in the absence of readiness to face the wartime past,” Puhalo said. Most Bosnian Serbs are convinced that Mladic is innocent and even if he committed crimes, it was only to defend the Serb people. If he is found guilty, it would only prove that the Hague-based tribunal is biased against Serbs, they say. Serbs are not the only people of former Yugoslavia who may be still in denial. When Croatian General Ante Gotovina was jailed in April for 24 years for war crimes against the Serbs by the Hague court, thousands of Croats protested, saying he was a Croat hero and a defender against Serbian aggression. Survivors and families of the victims expect justice. But they are skeptical that the truth will be the same for everyone. “To us, who have been tortured in Serb detention camps and lost family members, Mladic's trial does not mean a lot,” said Mirsad Duratovic, head of the association of wartime detainees in the northwestern town of Prijedor. “Nothing will change in Serb minds nor will they be ready to face the truth about the war here,” he said. Bosnian Serb leaders, while reserved in their public reaction to Mladic's arrest, have fueled nationalist feelings through many separatist moves in past years. A call for a referendum challenging the Bosnian state's war crimes court is the most recent example. Mladic's wartime comrades have warned the trial of their general will be the trial of the Bosnian Serb Republic he helped create by force. “All Republika Srpska officials who are in power now must know they have their jobs thanks to Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic,” war veterans leader Drazen Perendija has said. Karadzic, Bosnian Serb president during the war, and the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic are seen as masterminds of the crimes committed in Bosnia under Mladic's command in a war in which over 100,000 were killed, most of them Muslims, known as Bosniaks. The Serb Republic government on Thursday allocated 100,000 Bosnian marka ($74,000) to help fund legal assistance for war crimes suspects tried by the UN court. “The verdict on Mladic will do the deed: it will lay down indisputable facts which will make it impossible for anyone to claim different,” columnist Beric said. “Justice will be served, we'll have the Hague history and then this epoch will be closed.” But he is not optimistic that reconciliation among the Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats will come about any time soon. “It's very unlikely that Mladic's trial can bring about the reconciliation in Bosnia. Our generations won't live long enough to see that,” said Beric, himself a Bosnian Serb who lived in Sarajevo throughout the siege and witnessed it all.
