Milosevic

Just to report that Slobodan Milosevic died in prison in Holland this morning. He was found dead in his cell. His death is thought to be of natural causes, but an autopsy is to be carried out to confirm this.

Slobodan Milosevic had a very disturbed background, with his parents committing suicide when he was but a child. After Marshall Tito died in 1980, he took over as president of Yugoslavia. He was a protagonist of a Greater Serbia, wishing to avenge a Serb defeat at the hands of the Turks in the year 1389. He stoked up resentment and anger between various factions within Yugoslavia, which came to flashpoint in the early 1990s, when the constituent republics of Yugoslavia started to declare independence. Milosevic would not hear of it, and when Germany's Chancellor Kohl recognised Slovenia and Croatia, he responded with force. A bloody conflict ensued which raged between 1992 and 1995. At first it was between Serbia and Croatia, but the republic of Bosnia-Hercegowina quickly became involved as well. The nightmare of Sarajevo is not easily forgotten, as snipers picked off residents from surrounding hills and buildings. The worst atrocity of the conflict happened in Srebrenica in July 1995, when Serb forces violated the so-called UN safe haven. They rounded up 7,000 men and boys, and forced the UN peacekeepers to cooperate with their job. All captives were taken into the woods and shot dead.

After the Dayton agreement ended hostilities in 1995, Milosevic did not stop his nationalistic cruisades. The district of Kosovo wished to secede from Serbia, and again he used deadly force. A NATO intervention, including bombing raids on Serb cities, put paid to that. Milosevic was taken into detention for trial by the International War Crimes tribunal in The Hague, Holland in 2002. He conducted his own defence, and vociferously argued his case.

Like Adolf Hitler, Milosevic was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. The damage has been done, and the seeds for more bloodletting are sown.