Bosnia Mourns General Divjak, Defender of Sarajevo

Retired general Jovan Divjak has died after a prolonged illness at the age of 84, Education Builds Bosnia, the NGO he established, announced in a statement.Born on March 11, 1937, in Belgrade, he graduated from the Military Academy, the Command and Staff Academy and the War School. He later graduated also from the French Army Staff School.

The outbreak of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia found him on duty as an officer at the Territorial Defence Headquarters of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He became a brigadier general of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and an assistant chief of the General Staff.

As an ethnic Serb, born in Serbia, he became a symbol during the war of the defence of Sarajevo and of Bosnia's determination to uphold its multi-ethnic character.

In the early 1990s, seeing that the then Yugoslav People's Army, JNA, was arming Bosnian Serb paramilitary formations and civilians, he decided to hand over the weapons of the barracks in the town of Kiseljak to the Territorial Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The JNA military court sentenced him to nine months in prison in 1991, but he escaped punishment by leaving the JNA, after which he joined the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Unlike most ethnic Serbs in the JNA, who left Sarajevo after the war broke out and joined the Bosnian Serb army, Divjak remained in the city.

As deputy chief of the General Staff of the almost unarmed Bosnian Army, which was just being formed, Divjak coordinated the defence of the city.

However, Divjak did not capitalize on his wartime merits to gain political power, like many others. He retired in 1996, after which, in protest, he returned to the rank of general, dissatisfied with the overall political...