The High Representative, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, appointed Raffi Gregorian as new Brčko Supervisor and Deputy High Representative.
Mr Gregorian will take up his new position and become the fifth Brčko Supervisor on 1 October in succession to Susan R. Johnson, who has been Brčko Supervisor since January 2004.
Mr Gregorian has extensive experience of both Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider Balkan region. He is currently working as the senior civilian in NATO Headquarters Sarajevo responsible for defence reform and as political advisor to the NATO Commander.
In 2005, he served as the NATO co-chairman of the Defence Reform Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina , a position to which he was appointed by former High Representative Lord Paddy Ashdown in December 2004.
Prior to his service at NATO Headquarters, Mr Gregorian directed the BiH section in the US Department of State from November 2001 to December 2004. He spent three years as senior adviser and chief of staff in the Office of the Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for Kosovo and Dayton Implementation and as acting director of the Kosovo Implementation office in 2001.
Prior to joining the State Department in 1999, he was a Department of Defense senior adviser on the Interagency Task Force for Military Stabilization in the Balkans, where he worked on the Federation Army Train & Equip programme.
Between 1990 and 1998, Mr Gregorian worked for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as a senior analyst on peace-support operations and counter-insurgency training, doctrine, policy, strategy and resources, as well as arms control counter-intelligence issues.
From 1986 to 1988 he was a historian at the US Army Center for Military History in Washington, DC , where he worked on the Army’s official history of the Vietnam War.
Mr Gregorian has a Ph.D in International Relations and Strategic Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1998, an MA in War Studies from King’s College, University of London in 1989, and a BA with Honours from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986.
He is a commissioned officer in the US Naval Reserve and has served on active duty in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and government publications, has contributed chapters to various books, and is the author of The British Army, the Gurkhas, and Cold War Strategy in the Far East 1947-54 ( London : Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002).
Mr Gregorian has received two individual and two group Superior Honor Awards from the State Department, Joint Service Commendation Medals for his military service in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina , and a Joint Service Achievement Medal for service on the Joint Staff.