Mladic died a happy man. He won

The death of war criminal Ratko Mladic made headlines across the world. “The Butcher of Bosnia dies in The Hague”, the international media announced, seemingly suggesting that justice has been served at least in his case.Nothing changed on November 22, 2017 when he was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Bosnia more than 10 years earlier. Nothing will change now after his death.Contrary to what some may think, the world will not become a better place now.I hate writing this sentence, but here it is: Mladic won. He and his ideas won. He must have died happy, watching the world be overtaken by fascism—a world in which genocide has become normalised. It is what he fought for, after all.In 2017, after Mladic’s verdict was pronounced, I expressed my fear in an op-ed published by Al Jazeera that his ideas had not been defeated, but would instead spread like a drug-resistant bug, adjusting to different circumstances and times.It is painful to see today that my prediction has come true. It is clearly visible in the Balkans.In Serbia—a country the European Union ...