Ian Traynor covered the Bosnian war for the Guardian. Here he describes his encounters with Ratko Mladic
Springtime in Bosnia, the best and the worst of times. General Ratko Mladic was having the time of his life – besieging the city of Sarajevo, burning hundreds of thousands out of their homes, humiliating British lords and generals.
It was May 1993, and we were always bumping into the stocky lieutenant-general in the funny peaked cap. Drive out of Sarajevo through the checkpoints and the Serbian siege lines brandishing endless slips of paper, through the forests and up the hills to Pale or Jahorina or Mount Igman where Mladic would hold court among the crumbling lodges and hotels of the former ski resort.
The term Bonapartist seemed to have been made for him – short stature, manic grin, tactical brilliance, total ruthlessness, terrifying cruelty. The kind of man who would hand out sweets to children before rounding up their fathers for summary massacre (Srebrenica, July 1995).
Mladic did not talk so much as bark. He always had a ready answer. He was leading the campaign to sink yet another peace plan devised by Lord Owen.
In the breaks between brandishing historical maps at Serbian warlords and politicians, proving that this territory or that land was Serbian, the general would surface to smoke, drink coffee or plum brandy, and banter with we reporters.
What about the reports that his men were guilty of mass rape in Bosnia, using sexual violence as a weapon of war?
"The Serbs would need to be maximal sex maniacs" to be guilty as charged, he quipped. The Muslims of Bosnia were routinely described as "Turks."
At that time he was 50 years old, and had all the swagger of a born winner – he had helped the Serbs to a quarter of Croatia and controlled two-thirds of Bosnia.
"I'm a super-general," he bragged. "If I'd been a surgeon, I'd have been a super-surgeon. If I'd been a lawyer, I'd have been a super-lawyer. But I'd never make a Frank Sinatra because I don't have a super voice.''