‘Operation Storm’ in August 1995, when Croatia overran the Serb-inhabited territory of Krajina, was the biggest single instance of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav Wars, Because the attack was backed by the US, however, it was never treated as a crime.
Between August 4 and August 7, up to 2,000 people were killed and over 220,000 driven from their homes by the Croatian army. No “invaders,” these Serbs had lived in the Krajina – their word for borderlands – for centuries. The 1995 onslaught was not just a final phase of the war that began in 1991, but a continuation of the 1940s Nazi atrocities, and a long, sordid history of oppression and betrayal going back to the 1800s.
In the late 1600s, the Hapsburg Empire (later Austria-Hungary) established a buffer zone along the border with the Ottoman Turks in exchange for military service, the Orthodox Serb frontiersmen were granted religious liberties by the Catholic Hapsburgs. By the 1800s, the Ottomans were in retreat and Austria became obsessed with subjugating the Serbs and trying to subsume them into the Catholic Croat population. When Austria-Hungary disintegrated in 1918, the Croats chose to join the Serbs in a new South Slav kingdom – Yugoslavia – rather than be partitioned between Hungary, Austria and Italy. In April 1941, as Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers, Croatian Nazis known as “Ustasha” declared an independent state with the backing of Hitler and Mussolini.
This Ustasha Croatia conducted a campaign of mass murder, expulsion and forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism, which outright disgusted the Italians and made even some Germans recoil in horror. A Croatian legion was sent to the Eastern Front, where it perished under Stalingrad. When the Communist regime of Marshal Tito took over Yugoslavia in 1945, however, Croatian atrocities were hushed up for the sake of “brotherhood and unity.”
The end of Communism in 1990 saw a revival of Nazi symbols and vocabulary in Croatia. President Franjo Tudjman denied Ustasha atrocities and expressed joy his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” Serbs were stripped of equal citizenship and declared a minority. When Tudjman declared independence in June 1991, the Serbs saw 1941 all over again. They took up arms and declared the Krajina Republic – not denying the Croats their right to independence, but disputing Zagreb’s claim to lands Croatia acquired under the same Yugoslavia it now sought to leave.
When the disintegrating Yugoslav Army backed the Krajina Serbs, Zagreb cried “Serbian aggression.” International pressure and UN sanctions sought to cut off Belgrade’s support for the rebels. When Tudjman failed to crush the Serb resistance, an armistice was arranged in January 1992. Krajina was placed under the protection of UN peacekeepers, dubbed UNPROFOR.
Meanwhile, the Clinton administration began backing Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims in their war against the local Serbs. In 1994, MPRI – a private company staffed with retired US military officers – was paid to train and equip the Croatian military. Officially, of course, they were teaching them democracy and human rights.
In May 1995, Croatia launched a strike on the Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The UN did nothing, while the Western media was firmly focused on Bosnia. Everything was ready for the main event, dubbed “Operation Storm.” It began on August 4, with a predawn artillery barrage and the assault by 200,000 Croatian troops, trained by MPRI and armed with surplus Warsaw Pact weapons procured from eager Eastern European aspirants to NATO membership.
Today, #Croats
celebrate killing of 2.6K Serbs, cleansing of 250K, destruction of 25K
houses, 181 graves, 78 churches, 52 hospitals. #Oluja
— Boris Malagurski (@malagurski) August
5, 2015
Three days later, most of Krajina’s Serbs had been expelled from their homes, while around 2,000 were dead. Churches, cemeteries and entire villages were razed to the ground, while refugee columns were strafed by fighter jets. Serbia did not react at all, prompting speculation to this day that Slobodan Milosevic was somehow “in on it” with Zagreb and Washington. A simpler explanation may lie in the fact that his Army Chief of Staff and spymaster were both working for the CIA at the time, as General Momcilo Perisic and Jovica Stanisic admitted years later.
The US-backed war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia made a show of demanding the arrest and extradition of several Croatian generals involved in “Storm.” In April 2011, the tribunal convicted Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, while acquitting Ivan Cermak. However, the basis for their convictions was an arbitrary standard for artillery strikes never previously used – indeed, one that would have acquitted all the Serb officers charged with shelling civilians. The purpose of this became apparent when the tribunal cited this arbitrary standard as grounds for reversing Gotovina and Markac’s convictions on appeal, in November 2012.
By that time, Croatia had already been admitted to NATO (2009), and cleared for membership in the European Union, which it joined in 2013.
Washington claims to be engaged in Croatia to foster “a democratic, secure, and market-oriented society that will be a strong partner in Euro-Atlantic institutions.” Yet in his 1998 memoir ‘To End A War,’ US diplomat Richard Holbrooke paints a different picture, quoting a note from his colleague Robert Frasure written during a meeting with Croatian officials on August 17, 1995:
“Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But this is no time to get squeamish about things.”
This was just ten days after the mass expulsion and murder of Serbs, as US diplomats directed the Croatian troops’ incursion into Bosnia. Meanwhile, Tudjman’s government gloated over achieving what their Nazi predecessors only dreamed of, thanks to its choice of sponsors. A 2001 census showed 380,000 fewer Serbs in Croatia than a decade prior, a change from citizens with equal rights to a statistical error. The US government was most certainly not “squeamish” – not then, and not now.
If all of this bears an uncanny resemblance to the crisis in Ukraine, that’s because it does. The US is using the same arsenal of accusations employed against Serbia in the 1990s to blame Russia for “aggression” in Ukraine. Those Ukrainians who refused to live under a pro-US coup regime in Kiev are demonized as “terrorists.” Meanwhile, the pro-Nazi elements in Ukraine are being given the same whitewash into “democratic reformers” as their colleagues in Croatia. They even have US troops training and equipping them, quite openly.
Last September, after Kiev’s forces suffered a crushing defeat in attempting to subdue the rebels, one Ukrainian lawmaker suggested following Croatia’s example. While tolerating the existence of Krajina for three years, wrote Yuriy Lutsenko, the Croats strengthened their military and the economy. “And then in a couple hours, a tank attack wiped the separatists off the face of the earth,” he said.
Lest there be any confusion, Lutsenko was the head of the majority Poroshenko Bloc in Ukraine’s parliament. Washington routinely describes the regime of President Petro Poroshenko as democratic reformers bent on bringing Western values to Ukraine – at gunpoint, apparently.
Some 25,000 Serb homes were destroyed in ‘Operation Storm’; a panel at the August 2015 photo exhibit in Novi Sad, Serbia / Jaroslav Pap
Croatia marked the 20th anniversary of its victorious crime with a military parade and a statue of President Tudjman in the formerly Serb city of Knin. The lands “liberated” in 1995 remain “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass,” to quote a Reuters description from 2005.
Washington was not content with crushing Krajina. In 1999, NATO attacked what was left of Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, declaring it an independent state in 2008. In October 2000, the US organized a “color revolution” in Belgrade, the first of its kind, bringing into power a puppet government. Serbia has been ruled by client regimes ever since.
By rewarding Tudjman’s atrocities, the West has effectively endorsed the Croatian Nazi atrocities from the 1940s, of which the 1990s policy was a continuation. Two decades after “Operation Storm,” Krajina stands as a symbol of the conviction that the US and its “junkyard dogs” – whether in Zagreb, Kiev, or elsewhere – can act with absolute impunity. Likewise, the fate of Krajina and the Serbs in general is meant to be a message to the world that resistance to US goals is futile.
But the East remembers.
This originally appeared on Russia Today.
Read more by Nebojsa Malic
- How Srebrenica Tragedy Became Excuse for Atrocities Around the World – July 14th, 2015
- Not Quite Goodbye – March 4th, 2015
- MSM Spins Theory That Putin Hijacked MH370 and Landed It in Kazakhstan – February 27th, 2015
- Maybe A Ceasefire, But Not Peace – February 13th, 2015
- Is the New Greek Government a Trojan? – January 30th, 2015
[antiwar] America’s ‘Junkyard Dogs': Operation Storm, 20 Years On
August 7th, 2015 at 9:46 pm
[…] http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2015/08/07/americas-junkyard-dogs-operation-storm-20-years-on/ […]
America’s ‘Junkyard Dogs': Operation Storm, 20 Years On - Perot Report
August 7th, 2015 at 11:01 pm
[…] America’s ‘Junkyard Dogs': Operation Storm, 20 Years On […]
America’s ‘Junkyard Dogs': Operation Storm, 20 Years On - 2 Real News
August 7th, 2015 at 11:53 pm
[…] ‘Operation Storm’ in August 1995, when Croatia overran the Serb-inhabited territory of Krajina, was the biggest single instance of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav Wars, Because the attack was backed by the US, however, it was never treated as a crime. Between August 4 and August 7, up to 2,000 people were killed and over […] Antiwar.com Original […]
Michael Kenny
August 8th, 2015 at 4:50 am
An indication of just how desperate Putin's position is. His apologists are thrashing about wildly trying to find "parables" with which to save him. Real life is about what happens today and tomorrow, not what people in another time and another place might ot might not have done. What happened in Croatia or Ukraine in WWII is irrelevant. The people concerned are all dead. What happened in Croatia during the break-up of ex-Yugoslavia is irelevant to what is happening in Ukraine today, 25 years later. Neither Ukraine nor Russia took any part in the conflict. The fact that A violated B's rights doesn't give C the right to violate D's rights. That a Putin mouthpiece like RT is advancing such a manifestly silly argument shows just how desperate Putin is.
antiwar7
August 8th, 2015 at 2:15 pm
Are you kidding? Of course there's a pattern.
In both Ukraine now and Krajina 20 years ago, the US government strongly backed and advised one or more factions in those uncivil civil wars. Both times, the US helped set off, prolong, and intensify the conflicts. Both times, the conflicts had "ethnic" (really cultural) overtones. Both times, the US is pressing for a maximalist outcome that ultimately involves ethnically cleansing the "bad" side.
Also, both times the US is favoring the same communities, the same cultural groups, that favored the Nazis and hated the Russians. Maybe we should recognize this pattern, to help prevent the US from repeating it.
There's also the interesting similarity between the names, Ukraine and Krajina, which mean the same thing (frontier, borderland). Both involve outside powers taking advantage of divided populations.
Bianca
August 9th, 2015 at 5:41 pm
Manifestly silly!
That really describes you, and your years-long campaign of lies on this and so many other sites. So, let us just all forget everything — let's just be merry. Neocon cannot help being a neocon. Even when pretending to be something else!
Bianca
August 9th, 2015 at 6:23 pm
Just an addition. The number of dead and swept by a pogrom that looked more like a blitzkrieg then expulsion of civilians — is far from accurate. All the numbers are grossly understated. Belgrade colonial administrators never had the inclination to collect information. It is also sad that the victims of Croatia's national purification in the period between 1989-1995 are forgotten. In the run up to the recognition of Croatia by Western powers, Serbs were already victims of heinous crimes. People were pushed from balconies, hunted in the middle of busy city streets without anyone coming to their rescue. People disappeared, and many had just sold what they possessed and left the country. Those were mostly city folks, but farmers do not easily give up on the soil they tilled for hundreds of years.
I am aware of five people that are not on the list: three killed as they worked to patch a road that Croatian forces shelled a day before, one killed during the exodus, and one disabled man killed at his home, by the "clean-up" Croatian units that followed special forces in order to comb the abandoned villages. Those people I knew, but I also have heard of other people that were pushed into septic tanks, wells, and killed and burned in their houses. Very few people that did not flee survived. Many such units taped their exploits, and even though they took pains to cut the scenes of murders, there are many tapes that show burning of villages, vandalizing Serb property, churches, and showing dead bodies that are left to be eaten by dogs that were left on chains. It is absolutely pointless trying to bring this to anyone's attention. But it is important to document and keep the documentation, witness testimonies, as well as strive to get information on all that perished.
The West has always stood on the side of colonizers, and never on the side of natives. Serbs are the natives of Balkans that have to be, in a words of an 18th century Catholic bishop "… pushed into smaller spaces, and periodically uprooted.". Cannot be clearer. It is clear that the very existence of these natives is offensive to those that came to over time appropriate their land, and treat them like non-entity. And the collective West — understands this. Never condemned this practice. Never protected victims.
It is because they really do not belong to the West. There, I agree with Malagurski.
THE EAST REMEMBERS.
eric siverson
August 10th, 2015 at 1:34 pm
I recall reading about one Croatian town that had a few thousand Serbs living in it , over a period of less than 5 yrs every known Serb was gone . Their homes would mysteriously burn , or no longer pass inspection and be declared illegal . The Croats did to their Serbs , in the 90s ,what The Germans did to their Jews . Only they did this with the with the blessing of NATO and the United States . And if you think the Russian people do not know this , like the American people do not know this , your badly mistaken . Its highly unlikely Russia will let this happened in Ukraine too .
Kilo 4/11
August 15th, 2015 at 5:02 pm
Malic writes: “The U.S. is using the same arsenal of accusations employed against Serbia in the 1990s to blame Russia for “aggression” in Ukraine.” The “same” in the minds of pro-Russia groupies, yes. For those who have been following the story instead of getting pre-formed pabulum from the likes of the graveyard of the vulture, fortrust, Srdja Trifkovic/Russia Today (same thing) etc., we see that there is no similarity between yugo in the 90s and Ukraine today. The accurate and actually quite restrained accusations being made today regarding Russia’s illegal and immoral actions against Ukraine are in response to a clear attempt, by a group of thugs and traitors in the Donbas, to bite off a strip of Ukraine and attach it to a foreign power, a categorically different and massively greater threat to Ukraine than anything Krajina Serbs posed (or did not pose) to Croatia.
Ukraine today bears resemblance to the situation obtaining between the Croats and Krajina Serbs in 1991 only in that, in both cases, a people who strongly identify and side with Russia are involved. But in Ukraine’s case, there was nothing remotely corresponding to Tudjman’s edict stripping Krajina Serbs of their citizenship, the fleeting consideration of the idea of “banning Russian”- actually only to make Ukrainian the official language – being obviously the product of momentary exuberance from people who had just ousted a dictator and nothing close to an existential threat.
Malic writes: “Last September, after Kiev’s forces suffered a crushing defeat in attempting to subdue the rebels, one Ukrainian lawmaker suggested following Croatia’s example. While tolerating the existence of Krajina for three years, wrote Yuriy Lutsenko, the Croats strengthened their military and the economy. “And then in a couple hours, a tank attack wiped the separatists off the face of the earth,” he said.”
Let’s set the record straight: Last September, after Ukrainian forces were blindsided by Russian operatives’ intervention on behalf of their proxies, one Ukrainian lawmaker suggested following Croatia’s example. While tolerating the existence of Krajina for three years, wrote Yuriy Lutsenko, the Croats strengthened their military and the economy. “And then in a couple hours, a tank attack wiped the separatists off the face of the earth,” he said.”
Horrible! Truly inhuman! That a patriot should want to rid his country of invaders and traitors! While in contrast, note the gentle understanding and forbearance in a certain Mr. Sekulski’s comment on Sputnik a few days ago, regarding those who won’t give Mother Russia all she wants:
Zbigniew Sekulski
They have to get ready for the…best. I wrote in numerous places that capitulant Putinizm has squeezed Russia into a corner and a cornered boxer has less and less space, power and opportunity to reverse situation.I want to be persuaded that Russian spring pressed tight is getting ready for..the best. If it is time to react it has to be thunderous strike with a full power with no half measures and gradual sinking in protracted pushing forward and back. They have to be erased from earth within first hours with no mercy and a new red line has to be drawn in Berlin. Only such a victory is worth patience and humiliation.
BTW There are some of us in the West who remember, too.
oswaldwasaleftist
August 20th, 2015 at 10:34 am
I'll never forget seeing a wire distributed photo of a Croatian soldier jumping in celebration after lobbing a shell in the direction of what I assume were Serb civilians. It was on the front page of the local newspaper. This was an ethnic cleansing that was openly celebrated. Yet the opinion pages in the media and the talking heads on television have never stopped pedaling the myth that the war was all the fault of the Serbs. Try to find anybody among a random sample of Americans who knows that the most displaced group among the people of the former Yugoslavia during the '90's was the Serbs.
Looking
August 20th, 2015 at 2:28 pm
"If it is time to react it has to be thunderous strike with a full power with no half measures and gradual sinking in protracted pushing forward and back. They have to be erased from earth within first hours with no mercy and a new red line has to be drawn in Berlin. "
More morons like that Sekulski are anouncing "cornered Russia", more strong Russia grows. I think that Western Europe fascists have no idea that Russia cardinally changed, and from failed state recovered into strong, rich and united country. I have been in Russia 2000 and again 2015. Difference is abismal. Who doesn´t see it, means that he doesn´t want to see . "Capitulant putinism" -where you see that capitulation, cretin? As to "thunderous strike" , if Western fascists think about new drang nach osten – well, maybe everybody will suffer, but W.Europe will be obliterated completely. Especially Poland. BTW, do Poles think that w.Europeans consider them equal to them?
Looking
August 20th, 2015 at 2:41 pm
As to Serbs and Croats… It is our Balkan history : sometimes ones are on the top, sometimes others. Ivo Andric wrote : na Balkanu mozes biti ili tlacitelj ili tlaceni, sredine nema. (on Balkans, one can be or opressor, or opressed, there is nothing between them). Croatians are celebrating "Oluja" ? Good. Be sure to prepare for anti "Oluja" when time comes -I think in max.25-30 years. This is reality, our Balkan history, that drives reality. Amerika influence, like any empire influence, will pass. So what Croats then will do, against 10 million angry Serbs , that were raised by the stories of revenge? Doesn´t look very good perspective for Croatia.
Looking
August 20th, 2015 at 3:11 pm
I am following for at least 10 years antiwar, and everytime (but really everytime) Nebojsa Malic writes article, there is "Michael Kenny". That kind of dedication is salutary. Have to say that usually Kenny don´t comment other topics, he is like some specific troll, with only one program : Denigrate Nebojsa Malic, . It is uncanny how Kenny is always one of the first to comment Nebojsa articles. It is like he immediately knows when new NM article appears. Soldier on , Kenny! I hope you get some emolument for your work, some "testimony" for your dedication. You deserve it fair and square!
robert dante
August 22nd, 2015 at 9:52 pm
Jeez, thought NM had died and gone to Orthodox heaven in Putin-grad.
eric siverson
August 27th, 2015 at 10:48 am
First of all you have to understand the Orthodox Serbs were the largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia . Milosevic the President of Serbia struggled for peace at all costs . So he agreed to let those that wanted out , to leave . Croatia and Bosnia had a large Serbian population that wanted to live in Yugoslavia on the same land they had lived in for 500 yrs .Milosevic plan was to allow area's in Croatia and Bosnia that had a majority Orthodox population and wished to stay in Yugoslavia to stay . I believe this would have happened if Germany , the Vatican and the United States would have minded their own business . Croatia and Bosnia have the same borders Hitler established and they wanted to keep these borders and expel the Serbs . Germany has always wanted to destroy Yugoslavia and started 3 wars in the last century to destroy Yugoslavia . Putin warned Germany what was likely to happened to them again . So the easiest place to light the fuse of war was lite
eric siverson
August 27th, 2015 at 11:35 am
Yugoslavia was the Balkan country that confined Roman Catholic Slavs , Muslim Slavs and Orthodox Slavs . These people have a history of going to war very easily against each other . Bosnia was often called a baby Yugoslavia because it had a large populations of each religious group . These people have intermarried and lived successfully together off and on . I think destroying Yugoslavia was a foolish thing to do .Bill Clinton and Tony Blair should be charged with their part in this crime after Germany is seperated again . You must understand Germany was divided for good reasons . The Balkan , Ukraine and even the Baltic countries are some of those reasons