A Bad Year for Bad Men - Bin Laden, Mladic...who's next?

After Osama Bin Laden's capture and death at the hand of US forces, Bosnian Serb Military Commander Ratko Mladic has been arrested by his own Serbian authorities and awaits a probable extradition to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

With Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi under extreme siege from NATO forces in Tripoli and with long-standing leaders in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria either out of office or struggling under severe local unrest to go that way, it has been an extraordinary 2011 for those who have been seen to use their powers for wrong.

Milosevic, Karadzic & Mladic

The arrest of the former Bosnian Serb Military Commander Ratko Mladic is a watershed moment in the history of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.



Ratko Mladic then



General Mladic, was arrested yesterday after 16 years on the run and faces genocide charges over the 1992-95 Bosnian war. His extradition to the UN war crimes court at The Hague could take a week and is being questioned by his legal representatives due to his ill health.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 for genocide over the killings of about 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys that July at Srebrenica - the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II - and other crimes. It is to be hoped that he will be extradited to the Hague and legal proceedings against him can begin.

Ratko Mladic now

It is believed that he lived freely in the Serbian capital, Belgrade until he disappeared after the arrest of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2001. Following the arrest of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic in 2008, Mladic became the most prominent Bosnian war crimes suspect at large.

His gaunt figure was a world away from the towering figure that was a regular sight on TV screens throughout the 1990s.

Some Questions...
The news has been hailed internationally as a big step forward in the process of reconciliation between the former Yugoslav states but many in Serbia are not so happy with the news - seeing him as a Serbian hero.

But how has it taken so long for the Serbian authorities to find him and arrest him? Did they know where he was beforehand or, like with Pakistan's insistence over Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts previously, did they honestly not know of his location?

Because for as long as Mladic and formerly Karadzic were at large, there were two great blots on the Serbian copy-book for entry into the European Union.



Source: BBC Website



Those road-blocks have now been removed and time will tell whether Serbia will join their neighbours Slovenia in he EU.



In the meantime, with this good news, it is right to remember the 100,000+ lives killed in the Bosnian Wars and the thousands massacred in Srebrenica in particular.

For the sakes of their collective memory and for those families still living today in the shadows of these awful recollections, let's hope that yesterday's arrest marks another milestone in the road to a happier, more peacful and more prosperous Balkans.

Osama Bin Laden's Death - Obama's Victory & Pakistan's Shame

Almost 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, America got its man.

There is unsurprising rejoicing around the western world and particularly in America on the news that US Special Forces successfully targeted and killed Public Enemy No.1 in Pakistan.

Whilst it can not be said that Osama Bin Laden headed the central operations of Al-Qaeda now, his death as a figurehead of this terrorist cell is still a significant and symbolic victory for the west in their war which began in Afghanistan in 2001.

It all began under President Bush but under his watch, Bin Laden slipped through his fingers. The folly of an illegal war in Iraq also took the eye off the ball and gave Bin Laden a free-er hand to continue his reign of terror than he should've had.

Obama's Victory
But it's under Obama's Presidency that he has finally been killed. Obama will benefit significantly from this and he needs it.

The loss of the House of Representatives at the mid-terms to a resurgent Republican Party has dented Obama's ability to govern domestic policy and in the midst of a tentative economic recovery, this is a perilous position in which to find himself.

But in foreign policy, he is still very much the man with his hands on the levers of power. This successful execution of a long-planned operation will give Obama's administration much needed kudos just as the build-up to the Presidential primaries begin to gather momentum.

Pakistan's Shame
But whilst Obama will take credit for what has been achieved, it must be remembered that this isn't the end of the matter when it comes to Al-Qaeda. The terror cells still exist and whilst they may not be as strong as they have been in previous years, they still pose a threat.

But where does this threat emanate from? Afghanistan's President Karzai will feel vindicated this morning at the fact that his protestations to the west that Bin Laden was not in the Afghani hills turned out to be true.

For it is now clear that it was indeed neighbouring Pakistan that harboured the west's most wanted criminal. He was found in a fortified compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in north-west Pakistan - just 62 miles from the capital Islamabad.

The compound was barely some 200-800 yards away from the Pakistan Military Academy, an elite military training centre, which is Pakistan's equivalent to Britain's Sandhurst.

So what does this say about the Pakistani authorities' military intelligence? It is inconceivable that they were unaware that Bin Laden was on their door-step. The fact that the US went in and undertook the operation without pre-warning the Pakistani Government says it all - they clearly had no faith in them to tell them for fear that they may warn those in the compund about the impending strike.

It does seriously question Pakistan's words of comfort when it purports to support the west's campaign against the fundamentalist extremism that has been central to the past decade's war in this part of the world.

This is a day to be thankful but at the same time, it raises more questions about Pakistan's relationship with the west and with the USA in particular.

Bin Laden may be dead, but this story is not yet concluded...