CHAPTER 19
KOMANDANTE GIŠKA
O
n September 18, 1991, just as the war in Croatia was beginning to
heat up, thousands of Serb nationalists in Belgrade gave an emotional
farewell to fallen Serb war “hero” Đorđe Božović, aka Komandante Giška.
During my last TDY to Belgrade, I stood on the sidewalk on busy Kneza
Miloša Street and watched the memorial parade as it passed by in front of
me. This is the brief but unusual story of whom Božović really was, how I
came to know him, and the legacy he left behind.
Born in Yugoslavia in the mid-1950s, young Božović led a troubled
life. He quickly turned to the same life of crime that killed his father. In the
late 1980s, Božović joined forces with fellow career mobster, future Serb
warlord and indicted war criminal Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović. (Arkan,
assassinated in 2001 in the lobby of Belgrade’s Intercontinental Hotel, is
best known as the leader of the notorious Arkan’s Tigers, a bloodthirsty
group of Serbian paramilitaries who wreaked havoc in Croatia, Bosnia,
and Kosovo.) In addition to his life of crime, Božović was also allegedly
a paid assassin for the old Yugoslav secret service (UDBA). At some point
in his young adult life, Božović immigrated illegally to the United States,
where, I was told, he became a car thief and small-time hood.
I came to know Božović personally in late 1991 when he returned to
Yugoslavia to kill Croats.Big Đorđe Božović strode confidently into the floating Ušće restaurant, a
quiet and traditional Serbian dining spot on the banks of the Sava River
with excellent views of Belgrade. We shook hands, and he sat down at my
table. A mutual friend had arranged the meeting so that we could discuss181