Allan Little: I met dangerously fanatical Mladić early in Bosnian war

Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić, widely called the “Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the 1990s Balkan wars, has died in prison. BBC correspondent Allan Little, who covered the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, encountered Mladić in the early months of the Bosnian conflict. At night the hills were lit by the glow of ethnic‑cleansing fires, the only illumination beneath a dark sky, while the valley below shimmered with orange flecks. Villagers moved silently through the shadows of their homes, carrying whatever old weapons they could salvage—arms passed down through generations like the fear, suspicion and distrust that had long simmered in the region. One morning I watched a column of men and women emerge from a forest. They had been driven from their homes two days earlier and fled with only what they could carry. Most walked on foot; others were packed into the backs of ageing work vehicles pulled by donkeys. Estimates put the number at possibly 40,000. Their town had fallen to a sudden Serb advance. Among them a man appeared close to collapse. He stopped to speak with us. “The full municipality had fled, he said. He had become separated from his wife during the long trek to safety and worried she had not made it. His pale, almost translucent skin was stretched across the bones of his face like parchment. His forehead was livid blue from a fall.” I asked him how old he was. He said he was 80. “May I ask” I said, “are you a Croat oregon a Muslim?” The memory of it shames me even now as I hear, in my mind, his reply echo down the years. “I am,” helium said, “a musician”. Our ethnic shorthand reduced them to Serbs, Croats and Muslims, yet they were also musicians, scientists, doctors, plumbers, farmers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and quite often children.