During the wars of the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Goražde was under siege by the Army of Republika Srpska.
They shelled this small town on the Drina River, where, in February 1993, a baby boy was born. He was delivered by a Muslim woman named Ajka, who had been repeatedly raped in 1992 by a Serb named Radmilo. Ajka never looked at her baby, never breastfed him, and left the hospital forever after two days.
The nameless child was cared for in a hospital that had no milk. The staff fed him crushed biscuit crumbs they managed to save for him. Rabija, the midwife on the morning shift, called him Edin; Slavka, the midwife on the afternoon shift, called him Pero.
After a few months, the hospital caretaker, Muharem Muhić, who could not take his eyes off the baby, decided to bring him home from time to time. There, his wife Avdija and daughters Almira and Jasmila cared for him. When rumours spread that the unnamed child might end up in the Red Cross system, Muharem decided the boy would be theirs. Forever.
They named him Alen – a universal name – and gave him the surname Muhić so that everyone would know: he was their son and brother. And they raised him as the most beloved being in the world.
His mother and father wanted to tell him one day how he had come into their lives, but beloved Alen learned early from schoolchildren that he was not their biological son: “You’re adopted. A Chetnik bastard. They found you in a rubbish bin.”
Alen stopped, frozen in place. Something inside him broke, though he did not know what.
“You’re adopted” – those three words hit him like three bullets, as he would later write in his book. He did not know what “adopted” meant, nor who the “Chetniks” were, let alone how someone could be “found in a rubbish bin”.
That is, roughly, where Alen Muhić’s testimony begins, under the title „I Am Alen“. It also serves as the starting point for this conversation with the healthcare worker who still lives in his native Goražde, works in the same hospital where he was born, has a wife named Dženana and three sons, and carries immeasurable love for his father Muharem and mother Avdija. Long ago, he met Radmilo, who denies the DNA evidence proving he is Alen’s biological father, as well as his biological mother, who now lives in America with her family.
Alen is a unique advocate and a powerful source of support for all those who share his fate through the association Forgotten Children of War. He is also a tireless campaigner who has done much to improve the lives of children born as a result of wartime rape through better legislation – legislation that exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, though not in Republika Srpska.
You have spoken publicly about your life many times before, but this is your most personal testimony yet – “a book about my origins”, as you describe it – condensed into 180 pages often read through tears. Do you feel any lighter now?
Whenever you tell your story, part of the burden leaves you. But this book was not written to make things easier for me. It was written so that the truth could finally find its place.
Those 180 pages do not contain only my life. They contain pain, struggle, identity – but also the love that saved me. Do I feel lighter? Perhaps not lighter, but calmer, because I have finally turned what lived inside me for years into a voice that no one can silence any longer.
In the book, you say your life is neither a fairy tale nor a tragedy, but your stripped-down, unembellished truth.
I was born out of the darkness of war, out of crime, out of pain that chooses neither time nor place. But I did not remain in that darkness. I carried that inheritance on my back, but I transformed it into a path – a path towards the light.
I was shaped not only by genes, but by the people who loved me and believed in me when I did not know who I was. My father Muharem, a quiet rock who carried me without words. My mother Avdija, with her warm “beautiful boy”. My sisters, as different as day and night, yet both part of my world. My friends, my patients, my moments by the River Drina, the silences that say more than words ever could.
I get the impression that every public appearance, every appeal you make on behalf of those who share your fate, serves as a kind of therapy for you?
Every time I speak publicly, I do not speak only in my own name. I speak on behalf of children who still remain silent, on behalf of mothers who still carry the burden of war, on behalf of people to whom the system said for years that they did not exist.
If that is therapy, then it is therapy through truth. Speaking is not my escape from the past. Speaking is my fight for a different future.
Who helped you most not to hate – neither the man who fathered you nor the woman who abandoned you?
Without question, my father Muharem and my mother Avdija. They did not teach me how I came into being, but who I could become. They never fed me hatred, only love, hard work, and dignity. Thanks to them, I learned that a person’s origins do not determine their character.
I could have gone down the path of anger, but they taught me to follow the path of humanity.
Did you always want to become a doctor?
Perhaps because I spent the first days of my life among white coats, among people who saved me when no one else did. Perhaps because I grew up in a home where helping others was measured not in money, but in the warmth of a word, a smile, or a bowl of soup on the table.
But reality often suppresses dreams. My family did not have the money to send me to university, and that truth stood before me like a wall. I could not jump over it, but I found a way around it. I completed medical school and became a medical technician.
Even though I am not a doctor, people see me that way. “Alen, thank you, may God grant you health, you are our guardian angel”… Those words are worth more than any degree. Patients recognise me in the corridors, in waiting rooms, in the street. They look at me with respect, not because of my profession, but because of me as a humane person.
And every time I offer someone my hand, set up an IV drip, help an elderly woman stand up, or make a child smile, I know I am defying those whispers once spoken behind my back: “He’ll turn out like his father.”
No, I am not like him. He took; I give. He wounded; I heal. Two worlds, two paths. And I chose mine – the one that heals, the one that carries love… the one that has meaning.
Can you describe your feelings today towards your biological father and biological mother? Has anything fundamentally changed since you met them?
It is a relationship filled with emotions, questions, and silence. Towards my biological mother, I feel understanding, because today, as a father myself, I understand much more deeply the circumstances in which she lived.
Towards my biological father, I feel neither love nor hatred. Hatred ties a person to the past, and I decided to live for the future. What has changed is that I stopped searching for answers that may never come.
What is the closest estimate of the number of forgotten children of war?
When we speak about children born because of war, we must be honest. We will probably never know the exact number, because many children were never officially recorded, many grew up in silence, and many mothers, because of stigma, never spoke out.
But various studies suggest there were around 4,000 children born from wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And honestly, the number itself is not the most important thing. Even one child with such a life story should be enough to make a society question itself. But the fact that we are talking about thousands – that is the tragedy of an entire society.
Your speech at the United Nations is particularly remembered, where these words of yours were heard for the first time: “We exist. We are not mistakes of war. We are lives, hearts, stories. And we are no longer forgotten.”
In the silence that followed my speech, I heard my entire past. And I felt the future. It was not the end of a journey. It was a new beginning.
It was not an uncomfortable silence, but a sacred one – heavy, filled with respect. The looks in the audience told me more than words. I saw tears in the eyes of some delegates, nods of understanding, and that rare feeling – genuine empathy.
And then came the applause. Long, powerful, sincere. People from many countries approached me afterwards. One woman from South America, a UNICEF representative, took my hand and said:
“Your voice will change lives, not only here, but everywhere children have been swallowed by silence.”
During the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, rapists included Serbs, Muslims, Croats, and members of foreign missions operating in the country. What has the association “Forgotten Children of War” achieved in legal terms?
Children born as a result of wartime rape were completely invisible for decades. They had no place in legislation, no recognition, no clearly defined status. What we fought for through the association Forgotten Children of War was for these children finally to be recognised as a special category of civilian victims of war.
Today, I can say that struggle has produced concrete results. The law has been adopted in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the Brčko District. It is a historic step, not only for Bosnia and Herzegovina but far beyond it as well.
But the struggle is not over, because in Republika Srpska these children are still not legally recognised.
Why is it so difficult to pass such legislation in Republika Srpska?
Because this is not merely a legal issue. It is a question of confronting the past, a question of responsibility, and a question of whether a society is prepared to acknowledge the truth.
When you speak about children born because of war, you are not only speaking about laws. You are speaking about human destinies, crimes, and a silence that has lasted more than three decades. And facing the truth is often the hardest step of all.
You were fortunate not only to find your own family, but also to be warmly accepted by the family of your wife Dženana.
Before me, Dženana had never brought anyone to her family home. I was the first. I arrived alone, without her knowledge, without questions, without warning. I did not want anyone speaking on my behalf, introducing me, or preparing the ground for me. If they were going to accept me, then let them accept me exactly as I was, with everything that I was.
I appeared at their door alone. Perhaps I was not the guest they expected, but I was a man with the courage to come and say: “I am the one.”
I will never forget that first meeting. Because I did not merely step onto the threshold of their house – I stepped into an entirely new kind of family.
Dženana’s parents are not ordinary people. For them, honour is sacred. In today’s world, where moral values are often swept under the carpet and shame no longer has a name, they are among the few who preserve that old, genuine dignity. They do not speak about honesty – they live it. And they raised Dženana in that spirit.
In the epilogue of your book, you say this is your legacy.
Yes. I say it is a legacy for all those who come after me, so they know this: the past does not have to define us. We can understand it, carry it with us, but we do not have to become its prisoners.
Our future is what we choose to be. I chose to be free, to love, to forgive, and to leave a mark behind me.
And today, when I look back, I do not see only pain. I see struggle. I see a child who survived. A man who forgave, not in order to forget, but in order to live. A father who kisses his sons with the same strength with which someone once saved him.
(Radar, 11.05.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/drustvo/alen-muhic-ispovest-radar-112/