Remembering Zaim Imamović, the commander who defended Goražde

On this day in 1995, on the slopes of Treskavica, Zaim Imamović, a commander in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who prevented the Serbian aggressor from capturing Goražde and surrounding areas in its largest offensive, was killed, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria (NAP).

Imamović lost his life just two days before the end of the bloody conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was buried in the courtyard of the Bey's Mosque in Sarajevo, a barracks in Pazarić near Sarajevo was named after him, and in many Bosniak homes in Goražde, Prača, and Ustikolina, a framed picture of Commander Imamović hangs on the wall.

According to Wikipedia and many other internet portals, Imamović was born on April 22, 1961, in the small Podrinje village of Poratak near Ilovača, in the municipality of Goražde. After finishing primary school in his birthplace, he went to a military high school in Belgrade, and then to a military academy, also in Belgrade.

He was stationed at the JNA barracks in the Slovenian town of Vipava at the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Imamović held the rank of captain. With the withdrawal of the JNA from Slovenia, he came to Bihać, spent some time in Travnik and Zenica, and was then transferred to Lukavica.

With the start of the first war conflicts in the territory of Foča, he illegally left the barracks in Lukavica on April 8, 1992, and came to Hrasnica, where he joined the patriotic forces. Two days later, with a group of volunteers via Igman and Grebak, he went to his native region. At that time (mid-April 1992), Foča was already occupied, but in the free part of the municipality, in Ustikolina, Imamović managed to organize the Bosniaks, who began to offer strong resistance to the enemy.

One of Commander Imamović's goals in those days was to prevent the enemy's advance down the Drina River towards the free areas of Goražde.

The resistance that Imamović and his comrades offered in those days was decisive for the defense of Goražde and also diverted the course of the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina in a completely different direction, far from what the Serbian army had originally planned.

Imamović was one of the creators of the operation codenamed „Circle“, carried out in the period from August 15 to September 18, 1992, in which the city of Goražde and the entire territory of this municipality, as well as significant parts of the municipalities of Foča and Rogatica, were liberated.

Commander Zaim Imamović was killed by shrapnel from a grenade on October 9, 1995, two days before the establishment of a permanent ceasefire on the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, holding the rank of major, serving as commander of the 14th Division of the First Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the front line, on the Treskavica battlefield in the area of the Rogoj pass, at the Čelina height (municipality of Trnovo).

Imamović was posthumously awarded the highest war decoration of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Golden Lily, reports NAP.