Jovan Divjak, in Serbian Cyrillic Јован Дивјак (11 March 1937-8 April 2021) was a Bosnian army general who served as the Deputy Commander of the Bosnian army's main staff until 1994, during the Bosnian War.
Divjak was born in Belgrade to parents originally from the Bosanska Krajina region of Bosnia. His father was stationed in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in Serbia. His family, like himself when he was alive, currently reside in Sarajevo, where Divjak moved in 1966. From 1956 to 1959, he attended the Military Academy in Belgrade. In 1964 and 1965, he attended the École d'État Major in Paris. Although Divjak was an ethnic Serb born in Serbia, he identified as a Bosnian.
From 1969 to 1971, Divjak was in the Cadet Academy in Belgrade, and from 1979 to 1981, he served in the War and Defence Planning School there. After several posts in the JNA, he was appointed Territorial Defence Chief in command of the Mostar sector from 1984 to 1989 and the Sarajevo sector from 1989 to 1991.
Between 1991 and 1993, Divjak was court-martialled by the JNA for issuing 120 pieces of light armour and 20,000 bullets to the Kiseljak Territorial Defence and was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. He avoided the sentence by leaving the JNA and joining the Territorial Defence of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the first days of the war, he was arrested under the charge of collaborating with the Serb forces and was imprisoned for 27 days. In prison, Divjak was on a hunger strike for four days.
More information: Sarajevo Times
Divjak later became the Deputy Commander of the Territorial Defense forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a month later he oversaw the defence of Sarajevo from a major JNA attack.
Between 1993 and 1997, Divjak served as the Deputy Commander of the Headquarters of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, charged with co-operating with civilian institutions and organizations (administration, economy, health, and education).
Divjak, as an ethnic Serb, was made a general in order to present a multiethnic character of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He himself commented on the issue by saying that he felt like a flower arrangement and said that of course, someone has to be a flower arrangement too.
He expressed that it was shameful if his service to the army were only temporary. Indeed, he and Stjepan Šiber (as a Croat) were the only non-Bosniaks in the Chief of Staff. Both of them were offered retirement in March 1996 by the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović.
At the beginning of the war, out of 18 percent of Croats and 12 percent of Serbs, only one percent of both remained in the ranks of the Bosnian army. Divjak complained about that to Rasim Delić, then a Chief of Staff, as well as Izetbegović, but it was explained that it was because Bosniak soldiers didn't trust the Serb commanders.
Divjak was later excluded by Delić from the decision making process in the Army. The Bosniaks in the Army allegedly had no confidence in Serb commanders according to Oslobođenje.
Divjak was the executive director of OGBH, Obrazovanje Gradi BiH: Education builds Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he co-founded in 1994. The association's goals are to help children whose families are victims of the war, by providing grants of money, but also to help education in Bosnia, even in the poorest parts of the country, by providing financial and material support.
Divjak has won many international and national awards, including the French Legion of Honour, Order of Lafayette, Sixth of April Award of Sarajevo, the International League of Humanists Plaque, and the Plaque of the Sarajevo Canton.
From 2004 until his death, he was a member of the Steering Board of the NGO Reference Group, Sarajevo. From 1998 until his death, Divjak was a member of the Association of Independent Intellectuals Krug 99, Sarajevo.
Before 1998, he was an active member of other associations, including sports associations, and the faculty of physical education in Sarajevo, and he has been a member of various NGOs in Bosnia.
Divjak was married to his wife Vera from 1960 until her death in 2017. The two had two sons, one of whom served in the Bosnian army. He also had a godson who is a Bosniak whose brothers were killed in the Bosnian War.
He appeared in the BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia in 1995 and is the subject of a 2013 Al-Jazeera World documentary, Sarajevo My Love.
In 2006, he was awarded the title of Universal Peace Ambassador by the Worldwide Council of the Universal Ambassador Peace Circle in Geneva.
On 8 April 2021, Divjak died in Sarajevo at the age of 84.
More information: Reuters
during the terrible siege to which
the Bosnian capital was subjected.
He defended a criminally attacked population
because he had decided to live free.
Carles Puigdemont
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