My guest today is Dejan Mujkanovic. He is an Australian Army officer with 19 years of military experience. He has completed several tours of Afghanistan and also deployed to East Timor. He was born in Bosnia in 1980 and experienced the full brunt of the civil war in the 90’s. His hometown of Prijedor made global news due to the campaign of ethnic cleansing committed by the Bosnian Serb forces seeking to forcefully remove the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations from the area. As a result of these crimes, many of Dejan’s extended family members were lost in concentration camps, which, sadly, includes his father Senad Mujkanovic who was killed in the Omarska concentration camp in 1992. In the ensuing chaos, Dejan was separated from his mother and his siblings, and they have lived apart ever since. During his journey, he was forced to spend over two years in various refugee camps in Croatia and Austria and in late 1995, he was fortunate to settle in Australia with his grandmother. Now, 25 years later, Dejan is married and a proud father to his son. Some of the topics we covered are:
- His reason for joining the Army
- How the war in Bosnia started for him
- The loss of his father and other members of his family
- Fleeing the war and time as a child refugee
- Issues of identity
- Genocide and collective guilt
- The idea of forgiveness
- What good soldiering looks like
- Settling in Australia
- How his experience influenced his military service
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49. Dmytro Gurin - The view from Ukraine
48. MAJGEN Mick Ryan: On the Russian invasion and his recent book ’War Transformed’
47. Arne Dalhaug and Wolfgang Sporrer - On the War in Ukraine
46. Marc Garlasco - War through the eyes of a Pentagon Chief of High Value Targeting
45. Introducing 2022
44. Special Release: Wolfgang Sporrer - Providing Nuance To The Crisis In Ukraine
43. Special Release: Lieutenant General (Ret.) Arne Bård Dalhaug: On the current Russia/Ukraine crisis
42. Special Release: Mark Willacy - On ‘Killing Field‘ and ‘Rogue Forces‘
41. My reflections on the first year of The Voices Of War
40. Samuel Moyn - On ‘Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War‘
39. Toby Harnden - A deep dive into ‘First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11‘
38. Michael Vatikiotis - Southeast Asia and its peculiar role in global politics
37. Dr Douglas Fields - On ‘Why We Snap‘ and our neural wiring for Violence
36. Arjan Verdooren - ‘Cultures don‘t meet, people do‘
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34. Tom and Jen Satterly - The All Secure Foundation
33. Gregg D. Caruso - On the Illusion of Free Will, Myth of Meritocracy and the need to rethink our Justice Systems
32. Steve Dennis - On getting shot, kidnapped and the court case that sent tremors through the humanitarian aid industry
31. Stephanie Speck - Strategic Communication: A Tool For Change
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