Senior Colonel Bo Pellnäs (born 22 October 1939) is a retired officer in the

Swedish Army The Swedish Army ( sv, svenska armén) is the land force of the Swedish Armed Forces. History Svea Life Guards dates back to the year 1521, when the men of Dalarna chose 16 young able men as body guards for the insurgent nobleman Gustav Vas ...

Career

Pellnäs was born on 22 October 1939 in Högalid Parish,

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

, Sweden. Pellnäs started his studies in

Karlstad Karlstad (, ) is the 20th-largest city in Sweden, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city proper had 65,856 inhabitants in 2020 with 95,167 inhabitants ...

in 1958 and then went on to serve as an officer in the

. He served as commander of the Norrbotten Regiment with Norrbotten Armoured Battalion (I 19/P 5), Swedish battalion commander in Cyprus from 1983 to 1984, head of the United Nations Military Observer's (UNMO) in Afghanistan from 1988 to 1989, head of the United Nations Military Observer's in

Balkan The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

during the Yugoslav wars from 1992 to 1993, military advisor to

David Owen David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party (UK), Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 t ...

and Thorvald Stoltenberg from 1993 to 1994, and head of the head of an international mission to monitor the Yugoslav-Bosnian border from 1994 to 1995 when he retired from the military. He later served as head of the OSCE mission office in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

from 1998 to 1999. Today, Pellnäs is an active commentator on defense policy and security issues in Sweden. He also served as a member of the Swedish Tsunami Commission that was appointed in 2005 to evaluate the Swedish government's response to the

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

Bibliography

* * * * * Living people 1939 births Military personnel from Stockholm Swedish Army colonels United Nations personnel in the Bosnian War {{Sweden-mil-bio-stub