Justice Denied

Whatever the precise cause of his death at 64, Milosevic will be remembered for being at the heart of a bloody chapter in the history of modern Europe. Trained as a lawyer, he rose to prominence after the death of Yugoslavia's leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, and became President of Serbia in 1989. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe precipitated the break-up of Yugoslavia, Milosevic saw an opportunity to refashion the state as a Greater Serbia. Slovenia was allowed to slip out of the federation after a short war in the summer of 1991, but attempts by Croatia and Bosnia — both territories with substantial Serb minorities — to declare independence were met by force. The Bosnian war, which alone cost more than 100,000 lives, was ended when nato bombers finally intervened against the Serbs in the summer of 1995. But unrest soon quickly spread to the Serb province of Kosovo, overwhelmingly inhabited by ethnic Albanians. In the short Kosovo war of 1999, nato air power again hammered Milosevic's forces. When the war ended after 11 weeks, Serbia was compelled to grant Kosovo substantial autonomy — though it remains, formally, a part of the rump state of Serbia and Montenegro, all that is now left of Yugoslavia. Milosevic hung on in Belgrade, but was finally ousted from power in 2000. In 2001, the Yugoslav authorities surrendered him to the court at the Hague.

The Balkans are a long way from recovering from Milosevic. Talks on the possible independence of Kosovo started recently, but the province remains deeply scarred and impoverished by the war. Bosnia is a quasi-state, fractured into a Serb republic and a Bosnian-Croat federation, dependent on foreign aid. Serbia and Montenegro is riddled with corruption. The tensions between different ethnic groups that Milosevic aggravated persist; he burned bridges between peoples that had taken centuries to build. A successful conviction at the Hague would not have healed all the wounds of the Balkans, but it would have offered some recompense to those scarred by the misery of the 1990s. "It's an act of closure," remarked Paddy Ashdown, the former United Nations High Representative to Bosnia. "It just isn't the act of closure most people wanted to see."

Still, the tribunal has done some good. Grisly video footage shown last year of Serb soldiers shooting Bosnian Muslim prisoners outside Srebrenica — an atrocity in which 8,000 died — was a ghastly memorial of the cruelty of the times. Proceedings have finished against more than half of the 161 persons indicted; 40 have been convicted. "The court system has worked well," says former prosecutor Goldstone. And there are other reasons, too, to be hopeful that the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s need not be the Balkan region's enduring legacy. The prospect of E.U. membership has spurred significant reforms in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, and could even lead to the handover of Mladic or Karadzic within the month — despite the weekend's news. "Provided the E.U. maintains the magnetic pull, the region is now so clearly on the way to reform that no one can stop it," Ashdown told Time.

Milosevic's supporters may be hoping that his sudden demise in the Hague will revive his reputation, but the truth is that while his death is attracting attention, his ability to influence events is long past. Edging into the light after their dark decade of the 1990s, the people of the Balkans now know that there is little hope for them or their children in the brutal politics of ethnic identity with which Milosevic will always be associated. If only so many had not died so needlessly for that lesson to be learned.