Obituary - Donald Forbes, a news agency veteran who led Reuters coverage of the Balkan wars

Donald Forbes, a veteran news agency correspondent who led Reuters file during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, died on February 8. He was 82 and had suffered for many years with heart problems. 

Forbes, a Scot with a gruff manner and a raucous laugh, worked for AFP in Paris, where he covered the often-violent 1968 student protests, and AP,  in Brussels in the 1970s.  He joined Reuters towards the end of that decade and worked on the desk, in London Bureau, and on several assignments in Eastern Europe at a time of dramatic change.  He was also sent to Kuwait to cover the 1990-91 Gulf War. 

Colleagues and rivals admired him as a tough competitor and elegant writer who was loyal to his staff. But he had no time for small talk, did not suffer fools gladly and could be impatient with those he did not respect.

The last, and highest-profile part of his career was spent in in Belgrade as he presided over coverage of the breakup of the Yugoslav Rebublic in a series of bloody conflicts fuelled by nationalism and ethnic hatred.

He had previously been bureau chief in Poland, as the country emerged from the trauma of the Solidarity revolution, the subsequent imposition of Martial Law and the gradual move towards democracy. In Warsaw he met, and married, fellow-correspondent Irena Czekierska, and the couple had two children.

After a spell in London, during which he was a roving reporter for events in Eastern Europe as communism collapsed, they moved briefly to Budapest, and then to Belgrade, where from 1992 to 1998 he was in charge of Serbia and five other countries – Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro – seeking independence as Yugoslavia broke up.

For Reuters the biggest story was Bosnia, particularly its capital Sarajevo, a beacon of ethnic harmony with a Moslem majority until Serbia launched a siege that lasted more than three years, the longest involving a single city in history. Forbes’s work, apart from supervising and writing a complex file that was often on the front pages, was organising armoured Land-Rovers, bullet-proof vests and helmets for visiting Reuters staffers lodged in the city’s Holiday Inn hotel, within range of Serbian snipers in the surrounding hills.

In the Belgrade bureau the mood during the Yugoslav conflicts was often tense. Though the majority of the local staff were not ultra-nationalist, some of the younger camera crew could not hide their cheers as U.N. peacekeepers were chained to the gates of Serb installations and munitions stores to deter attacks by NATO forces. One of the main translators was half Bosnian and half Croatian, another staffer was Croatian but was protected by her partner, a giant Serb cameraman.

In this difficult environment, Forbes was respected as a strong and fair bureau chief who wrote well and backed his staff. 

In 1998 he took an early retirement package and moved to a house in southwest France he had bought with Irena 10 years previously. Within a few weeks of arriving, he suffered three heart attacks, but after numerous operations he lived an active life for a further 25 years. He continued writing about Eastern Europe and other subjects as a freelance and pursued a number of hobbies, including woodworking, where he achieved a high level of expertise, and horse riding, which he learned with stubborn determination in his 60s. He had two horses and persisted despite several falls, one of which broke his collar bone.

 He leaves Irena, three children - one from a liaison with another Reuters correspondent, Lesley Chamberlain - and three grandchildren.  A Scottish piper will play at his funeral in the French village where he lived.

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