The Pugnacious Commander

When he came to Pale to take over command of the Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina Army a little over a year ago, General Ratko Mladic already had the reputation of a successful commander of the Knin Corps, and that of a man who was noted for not taking orders from anyone. On arrival he demanded that the Bosnian Serb leadership place itself unconditionally under his command, and not make any political decisions without the approval of the military command. At the time, Radovan Karadzic was the uncontested leader of Bosnian Serbs, and refused to even talk about such a possibility. Those in the know claim that injured pride was not the only reason, there was a practical reason - so that he wouldn't have to beg Mladic's permission ten times a day in order to give interviews to foreign TV crews.

A year later, after one of Ratko Mladic's rare interviews, Karadzic hinted that in future, the Bosnian Serb military leadership could find itself under the control of politicians and that General Mladic and people around him would be stopped from making "idiotic and irresponsible statements" such as the one about "bombing London". Karadzic's tone and the words he used (it should not be forgotten that he is a qualified psychiatrist), at first glance do not leave any dilemmas as to who is in charge in Pale and who controls whom. However, there are many who believe that the relationship between the Bosnian Serb political and military leaderships are not all that unambiguous, nor that the occasional differences are only well acted conflicts. General Mladic is not the kind of person who would stand to attention before Karadzic. A man, who when joking says that he is the Almighty and who told a suspicious Alija Izetbegovic (Bosnian Moslem leader) - "when I guarantee something it's as good as if the Almighty did so". Such a man cannot be expected to follow Karadzic's orders.

General Mladic's statement to Reuters news agency is not the only example illustrating his difficulty in submitting to the control of politicians. Stories of occasional clashes between the two Bosnian Serb leaders were first heard of ahead Karadzic's trip to New York when he said "No" to the Vance-Owen peace plan for the first time. It is claimed that while wishing Karadzic farewell, Mladic said that he should be going to New York, and not Karadzic. Asked "why", he allegedly answered "because I created all this". Karadzic left for New York and Mladic went on to "create" and "defend" some more, tightening the encirclement of Srebrenica. Judging by world public interest, Karadzic's diplomatic efforts remained in the background on that occasion. In New York Karadzic was forced to explain that Srebrenica was not the Bosnian Serbs' military target - unless of course, the whole matter was just a well timed act by the two men.

Leader of the main Serbian paramilitary formation - "Tigers" and MP Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan was among those who last week criticized Mladic's excessive political involvement. Raznjatovic accused him of preventing Bosnian Serb deputies from coming to Belgrade to attend the session of the Pan-Serbian Assembly, and of having earlier ordered the deputies to vote against the Vance-Owen peace plan. Before this, on the basis of "well informed circles", some papers proclaimed General Mladic "the man who brought about the turnabout" at the historic session of the parliament at Pale when the Vance-Owen plan was rejected, as were efforts by Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic at making the Bosnian Serbs change their minds.

That night, Mladic allegedly came up with "crucial arguments" during a 35 minutes long talk, and definitely put an end to all doubts over the peace plan's fate. In this way he probably antagonized Lord Owen who had claimed in an interview to "Der Spiegel" in November last year, that General Mladic "would not be allowed to create a Greater Serbia". Mladic's comment at the time was: "Who is this Lord Owen, and why the sudden 'concern' for the fate of Serbs in the former B-H? General Mladic is not creating a Greater Serbia, but only protecting his country just as Lord Owen would be".

Several months after Lord Owen's unsuccessful attempt at persuading the Bosnian Serb leadership to agree to the map in Belgrade, General Mladic was told by journalists that Owen had left the meeting angry. He replied cynically: "No, he is a nice and gentle man who cannot lose his temper. The sun must have got in his eyes and you thought he was angry."

Those who are well acquainted with Mladic's biography, tend to interpret occasional clashes between Mladic and the political leadership in Pale as ideological differences. All that Karadzic and his political associates have "achieved" so far is based on the thesis of the impossibility of life together in the former "genocidal" and Communist Yugoslavia "in which the Serbs were the greatest victims", so that a parting of ways with the tormenters and Serb haters was the only possible way out.

General Mladic earned his officer's stars by following a different set of values and ideals. He served in garrisons throughout Yugoslavia (Kumanovo, Stip, Ohrid (Macedonia), Djakovica (Kosovo), Knin). Wherever he served he left the impression of a somewhat rebellious and stubborn, but also exceptionally competent officer.

At the start of the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia, Mladic said that he had "two mothers - the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the mother who bore him" (in the village of Bozinovic in the vicinity of Kalinovik in Bosnia). Mladic is one of the most vociferous advocates of an independent Serbian state in the Balkans without which the Serbs, as he says, feel "like a beast marked to be killed". The fact that in the Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina he found a substitute for his former "SFRY mother", in spite of a capacity to adjust to the newly arisen situation, does not mean that he has suppressed that which initially formed his military and ideological identity.

In a recent interview to the bi-monthly Duga, General Mladic admitted, albeit indirectly, that it was not all that easy "to become a Serb". "They wanted to extinguish and take away our Serbian soul, from us, war orphans" (his father was killed as a Partisan towards the end of the war at Ivan Sedlo). He called this "extinguishing and snatching away of the Serbian soul" the "greatest crime" of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). However, Mladic is proof that the "crime" was not all that perfect. Today's quite painless transformation of many former JNA officers into Serbian and Croatian officers, including the fact that many students of the same generation from the military academies are the fiercest opponents in the wars being waged in the former Yugoslavia, are proof that even then, there had been much that was nationalist, but hidden under Socialist trappings. Many have marked this war with brutality and violence.

Regardless of how this war ends, General Mladic has ensured himself a place in history. There are, however, rather differing views as to what kind of a place - depending from which side of Pale the matter is viewed. Some consider Mladic "a historical monument", the protector of Serbs from a new genocide in Croatia and Bosnia, a great general who through his skill and uncompromising stand has reached the glory of his famous predecessors whose cap he now wears. He was the first man to say that Serbs couldn't lose on the military or economic levels. We cannot suffer a military defeat "because they cannot beat us", nor a economic one because the state we are fighting for has a great future - "we have enough wood for the next 30 years, and we'll have something to live off". Before mentioning London and New York as the possible targets of Serbian attacks, General Mladic expounded his war philosophy by urging for a counter-attack against closer targets on the Trieste-Vienna line. "It would have been better if we had fought in Italy and Austria which are really at war against us, instead of allowing them to use our unfortunate Slovenians, Croats and Moslems as bait and cannon fodder".

Those who think differently, could one day come to look on Mladic as a tragic figure in this war, a conceited military bighead who will be remembered for a new command recorded during the bombing of Sarajevo, which could be described as: "Drive them insane". Those who question his military competency compare him to a chess player who starts the game with the advantage of two rooks and the queen (something Mladic persistently denies). The other side has long since viewed him as a war criminal, to which Mladic reacts by saying confidently: "I didn't go to Vietnam to fight, nor to Okinawa, but am defending my people". In a later explanation Mladic said that the Serbs would finally be on their home ground only in their own state. "No one will be able to expel us out of it, nor condemn us as war criminals. We don't need it in order to save Babic (Milan, former leader of Krajina Serbs), Republic of Serb Krajina President Goran Hadzic, Karadzic and Mladic, but the lives of all the Serb fighters for freedom".

The morning when the final "No" was announced in Pale, and when the dejected guests from Belgrade and Athens departed with the morning mist, at the mention of a military intervention and bombing, someone said briefly and in concerned tones: "It's all in Mladic's hands now".

Bosnian Serbs believe that their fate is in the right hands. Those on the other side of the frontline claim that those hands should be washed more often. Even though he can be found increasingly at the negotiating table, General Mladic does not believe that the end of the war is close. Asked recently by a journalist what was the greatest obstacle to peace, his "philosophical" answer was: "War is the greatest obstacle to peace!"