The deaths of convicted war criminals Ratko Mladić and Biljana Plavšić have brought painful memories back for Bosniaks whose families survived the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Qatar, survivors are teaching their children about the Srebrenica genocide, the relatives they lost and the importance of seeking justice, not revenge
“Umrla je ratna zločinka Biljana Plavšić.” Biljana Plavšić, the convicted war criminal, has died.
One notification. Then another. A message in a WhatsApp group. A post on Facebook. A headline on a news platform. The news travelled quickly through the Bosnian community in Qatar, especially among Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims).
Plavšić, a former Bosnian Serb political leader, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2003 after pleading guilty to persecution as a crime against humanity during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Her death on October 1, 2026, came just over a month after Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb army commander, died on August 27 while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mladić was convicted of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed.
For many Bosniaks, the deaths of Plavšić and Mladić brought back memories of lost relatives, destroyed homes and lives permanently shaped by the war.
For those living in Qatar, the consequences of the conflict remain part of family life, passed from parents to children.
“When I heard about the deaths of Ratko Mladić and Biljana Plavšić, I did not feel happiness. What I felt was sadness. Not sadness for them, but sadness for everything they took from us,” Lajla Pjanić, a Bosniak living in Qatar, told Doha News.
Mladić and Plavšić: The legacy of genocide and persecution
Mladić and Plavšić were leading figures in the Bosnian Serb wartime leadership whose forces besieged Bosnian cities, detained Bosniaks in camps, carried out systematic rape and killed prisoners during the war.
Plavšić pleaded guilty to persecution as a crime against humanity against Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbs in 37 municipalities during the 1992–1995 war.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced her to 11 years in prison in 2003 for her role in the campaign of ethnic separation.
Mladić, the so-called “butcher of Bosnia”, was convicted of genocide for orchestrating the 1995 massacre of at least 8,000 Bosniak boys and men in a UN-designated “safe area” of Bosnia, in Europe’s worst atrocity since the Second World War.
Mladić pounded the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, daily with the artillery, tanks, mortars and heavy machine guns of his nationalist Serb army, killing 10,000 people.
When Mladić was convicted in 2017, the tribunal described the crimes as “amongst the most heinous known to humankind”, while former UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein described him as “the epitome of evil” after his conviction.
More than 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian war, around 80% of them Bosniaks, while more than two million people were displaced.
For many Bosniaks, including those who grew up carrying the memories and consequences of that war, their deaths were never simply news about two old war criminals dying.
“When I heard of Mladić’s death, my first thought was of Srebrenica in 1995, when we waited to learn whether our relatives had survived, only to later discover that their remains had been found,” said Ramo Smajić, another Bosniak living in Qatar.
“The last time I said goodbye to my father”
When the war began in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, Ramo Smajić was five years old. His family fled their home in Bratunac, in eastern Bosnia, amid the Bosnian Serb forces’ aggression.
In 1992, as Bosnian Serb forces attacked Bosniak villages across eastern Bosnia, many families fled into the surrounding forests, hoping to reach Tuzla, a city under the control of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) that became a refuge for those who would later survive the fall of Srebrenica.
“While we were hiding in the forest for several nights, my mother carried a bag with our photographs, documents, jewellery and other valuables. When Serbs opened fire on us in a meadow, she had to leave the bag behind,” Ramo remembers.
About two months after reaching Tuzla, his father, Fajko Smajić, and his uncles, Sadik and Sabit Hasanović, and other relatives decided to return toward Srebrenica to help defend the enclave against Bosnian Serb forces.
Ramo remembers his father leaving, and the words he said to his mother at the bus station in Tuzla, before they parted.
“Take care of our children. Don’t separate them. Love them equally. Maybe we’ll see each other, maybe we won’t. But, if God wills it, I hope we will see each other again,” his father told her.
His father never came home.
In 2002, a postman delivered an envelope marked with a red cross. The family knew what it could mean. The authorities had found human remains in a mass grave.
“It was my father’s. I still remember how much we were crying,” Ramo recalls.
Until then, there had always been room for hope. Perhaps his father had escaped Srebrenica. Perhaps he was still alive somewhere. The envelope ended that possibility.
“There was always hope. But after we received the envelope, it was clear he was really gone; Serbs killed him, and he was not coming back,” Ramo shared.
In July 1995, as Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica and began executing Bosniak men and boys, Ramo’s father tried to escape towards Tuzla.
He was killed along the way. His father’s remains were later found in a mass grave in Kamenica, a village in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, known as the “Valley of Mass Graves”.
Thirteen mass graves containing the remains of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide were discovered there.
The dead from Srebrenica were bulldozed into mass graves over four days after Srebrenica fell, in July 1995. Some of them were dug up and relocated to remote mountains in order to hide evidence of the killings.
Ramo also found the remains of his grandfather, two uncles and many other relatives.
Today, Ramo lives in Qatar with his wife and three children. Every summer holiday, Ramo takes his own children to their grandfather’s grave at the Potočari Memorial Centre, where thousands of victims of the Srebrenica genocide are buried.
There, he raises his hands in prayer, speaking in Bosnian as his children repeat the words after him.
His children are growing up learning about the grandfather they never met through their father’s memories.
“My older daughter, Asya, is 10, and she knows what happened to our people in the war — that we were driven from our home and that our loved ones were killed,” he says.
“When she sees his pictures, sometimes I see the tears in her eyes.”
Ramo wants his children to understand what happened, not to inherit the hatred of the past, but to make sure it is never forgotten why many Bosniaks never returned home.
“The names Biljana Plavšić and Ratko Mladić remind me of monsters responsible for rape, murder and executions. You cannot believe that human beings could order so many people to be killed and so much suffering to be inflicted,“ Ramo concluded.
“Searching for my mother in strangers’ faces”
Lajla Pjanić spent the early years of the war as a refugee in Croatia with her grandmother Adila.
She left Sarajevo in 1992, aged three, in the last Red Cross convoy before the borders closed.
Her brother was sent to Austria, while her parents stayed behind in Bosnia to defend their country.
Her grandfather soon joined them in Croatia, arriving from war-ravaged Mostar.
Life in Croatia was not easy, Lajla recalls.
“Grandma and Grandpa, may they rest in peace, made sure we had everything we needed. My grandma cleaned and ironed, doing everything she could just to feed us, and we also received a little humanitarian aid,” Lajla told Doha News.
Among children who had their mothers beside them, Lajla was painfully aware of her own mother’s absence.
Every woman who bore even the slightest resemblance to her mother offered Lajla a fleeting hope that, somehow, her mother had arrived.
Too young to understand the war raging in her homeland, she could not know that her parents had no way of leaving Bosnia to reach her.
“I remember my grandmother holding my hand in Croatia, and I remember how much I missed my parents and my brother. Many women reminded me of my mother. I would approach them and ask them to be my mother,” Lajla says.
As a Bosniak child growing up in a foreign country, she often faced ethnic slurs and fought back against them, as best she could.
Years spent as a refugee, separated from her parents, shaped her childhood and her relationship with her family long after the war ended.
More than three decades later, Lajla still finds herself asking questions that have no answers.
“What would my relationship with my mother be like if the war had never happened? Who would we all have become if our lives had not been interrupted by violence? What would Bosnia look like today if people like Mladić and Plavšić had never spread the ideas that caused so much suffering?” she says.
The deaths of Plavšić and Mladić brought Lajla no closure. It could not change what happened or give her family back the years they lost to war.
It would be another five long years before Lajla saw her mother again. Today, as a mother herself, she often thinks of those who were separated by the war and never found their way back to one another.
Learning about genocide in Qatar: Why did they kill us?
Every Saturday, Bosniak children in Doha attend classes at the Bosnian School, where they learn the Bosnian language, culture, traditions and history.
The 1992–1995 war and the genocide in Srebrenica are among the topics taught, helping children born far from Bosnia understand their heritage and how loss and destruction shaped their families.
Amel, Ahmed, Hamza, Lejla and Amila carry the names of family members who were killed, as their parents wanted to carry on their legacy and keep their memories alive.
Many of the children never had the chance to meet grandparents or other relatives.
“Wherever in the world they may live, our children need to know their roots and understand their past, because for centuries, Bosniaks have had to defend their right to exist, their homeland, and their own language,” said Anida Višća, a teacher at the Bosnian School in Doha.
They often ask difficult questions: Why did they hate us? Did we do something wrong? Why did they kill our people?
“Our children need to understand that although these individuals are gone, the ideology rooted in hatred toward our people still lives on,” Anida explained.
“Regardless of how difficult it is to explain these things to children, it must be done.“
Bosniak children are learning some of the most important lessons of their lives. Those killed in the genocide in Bosnia were part of their community, part of them. They looked like them, prayed like them, celebrated Eid like them, and loved and cherished the same identity: Bosniak heritage.
And because of that, they were hunted down and killed.
For Bosniaks in Qatar, Bosnia and elsewhere, the consequences of the war remain part of family life, passed from parents to children.
“Above all, our children must understand that revenge has no place in our vocabulary. We seek justice, not revenge,” Anida concludes.
