Jovan Divjak, a general who was branded a traitor by his fellow Serbs for joining the mainly Muslim Bosnian army, still refuses to accept the concept of ethnic divisions in the Balkan country.
Divjak became a symbol of the bitter siege of Sarajevo, but never managed to shake the suspicions of hardline Muslims because of his Serb ethnicity.
Fifteen years since the peace deal that ended the 1992 to 1995 civil war, the 73-year-old continues to bridge ethnic divides and proudly labels himself a Bosnian, rather than a Bosnian Serb.
“I can be a Serb, a Croat or whatever you want, but first of all, one has to be a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Divjak said in his small offices on a hill overlooking Sarajevo.
The war between Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed about 100,000 lives and left the country economically shattered.
The peace accord signed in Dayton, Ohio, split the country into two highly autonomous entities, the Serbs’ Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federation, which are linked by weak central institutions, while each has its own government.
Divjak now runs a foundation called Education Builds Bosnia-Herzegovina, aimed at helping the country’s 20,000 war orphans. The foundation has awarded 35,000 scholarships to 3,000 orphans, as well as children from the Roma gypsy community. The foundation has a discreet political agenda: Fostering the idea that Bosnia’s peoples live together, rather than merely coexist, he said.
“We were divided into three parts, but where are the others?” he said, referring to those who do not fit into a particular ethnic group.
Encapsulating this post-ethnic mentality is Ivona Letic, a 23-year-old design student, who lives in a Sarajevo suburb.
Letic, whose Serb father died in the early days of the civil war and is studying thanks to a scholarship from Divjak’s foundation, proudly said that her best friend is a Muslim.
“For me it is absurd to hate a whole [ethnic] community because one individual who belongs to it killed my father,” Letic said.
“I believe in change. I trust people and I believe in this country and in the idea that one day, it will be better,” she said.
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