America's 'junkyard dogs' : Operation Storm, 23 years on

(The original version of this article appeared on RT.com on August 5, 2015)

‘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.

Remembering the Storm

(The original version of this article appeared on Antiwar.com in 2005).

Croatian Nazi salutes, caps and shirts at concerts of "patriotic" singer Marko Perković-Thompson celebrating Croatia's 1995 destruction of Serbs (via tatrenutek.si) 

In the early morning hours of August 4, 1995, on the heels of an incessant artillery and air bombardment, some 200,000 Croatian troops moved in to “liberate” Krajina - a stretch of mountains inhabited by Serbs who had rejected Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia four years prior. Overrunning the token UN observation posts, the US-trained Croatian army quickly overwhelmed localized Serb resistance. President Franjo Tudjman declared August 5, the day Croat troops entered the Serb capital of Knin, a national holiday: “Homeland Thanksgiving Day.” By August 7, the “Republic of Serb Krajina” was no longer in existence.

Frustrated Dreams

The area of Krajina was for several centuries the borderland between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, a buffer zone that protected the inner Hapsburg lands from Turkish raids. It was populated largely by Orthodox Serbs, who had fled Ottoman persecution, and who became frontiersmen for the Hapsburgs in exchange for land and liberty. By the 19th century, the Ottoman Turks were in retreat; the new danger to the Hapsburg Empire was Slavic nationalism. Vienna turned on its frontiersmen, encouraging conflict between the Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats, who became its staunchest supporters. Vienna’s Serbophobia eventually led Austria-Hungary into a fatal conflict that destroyed much of European civilization.

It also nurtured the hatred that would explode in 1941 as the vicious Ustasha genocide. These homegrown Croatian Nazis, led by Ante Pavelić, set out to destroy the “race of slaves” (as the founder of Croatianism Ante Starčević put it) with ruthless abandon, but ran out of time. Still, by 1945 they had killed anywhere between half a million and 750,000 Serbs.

With the end of communism in 1990, Franjo Tuđman and his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) brought a revival of Pavelić’s symbols and vocabulary. Some of the top supporters of the HDZ were Ustasha émigrés. Tuđman himself expressed relief that his wife was “neither Serb nor Jewish.” His constitutional reform redefined the republic as a nation-state of Croats, with Serbs as an ethnic minority. When Tuđman’s government declared independence from the Yugoslav federation in 1991, most Serbs saw 1941 all over again. This, not some imaginary “aggression” from Serbia, was the root of their “rebellion,” and the genesis of the Krajina Republic. After several months of bitter fighting, marked by massacres, ambushes, and the most vitriolic propaganda, the UN brokered an armistice. The so-called Vance Plan envisioned four “protected areas” with a Serb majority, whose eventual status would be resolved through negotiations.

Over the next three years, Tudjman’s government feverishly prepared for war, training its troops on the battlefields of Bosnia and staging quick, limited offensives at the strategic edges of UN-protected areas (most infamous being the Medak Pocket attack in 1993). Although enjoying political, diplomatic, and even military support from Vienna and Berlin since 1991, it was only when it got Washington’s support that Zagreb was ready – and able – to strike. “Retired” American officers, working for government contractor MPRI, claimed to teach Croat officers “democracy” and “human rights.” The events of May and August 1995 would demonstrate MPRI’s definitions of both.

Junkyard Dogs

"Dick: We ‘hired’ these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to ‘control’ them. But it is no time to get squeamish about things."
– To End a War, by Richard Holbrooke, Chapter 6

US envoy to the Balkans Richard Holbrooke thus described the note slipped to him by Ambassador Robert Frasure during a meeting with Croatian officials in 1995. Holbrooke’s own account of how the US officially condemned Croatian attacks even as he was meeting with Tudjman and telling him which cities to take, suggests he was hardly “squeamish” about using Croats to fight what he – and hundreds of advocacy journalists, lobbyists, and policymakers – had termed “Serb aggression.”

On May 1, 1995, Croatian troops tested both their readiness and the UN’s will by staging a lightning strike at an exposed Serb enclave of Western Slavonia. The operation was code-named Bljesak – “flash,” or perhaps more appropriately, “Blitz.” The clear violation of the armistice went unpunished. The stage was set for Oluja.

According to Serb documentation, the three-day offensive in August 1995 resulted in the expulsion of 220,000 people. Some 1,943 people have been listed as missing/presumed dead, including 1199 civilians, 523 women, and 12 children. The death toll would have been greater had the Serbs not fled en masse before the advancing Croat tanks; all who stayed behind were killed. The Croats, and their American sponsors, were definitely not squeamish.

Ten years later, Krajina is still a wasteland, with “scattered ghost villages strewn with shell-scarred houses overgrown with ivy and tall grass” (Reuters). Only a tenth of some 400,000 Serbs who lived in Croatia before it seceded have returned, only to face bureaucratic abuse and frequent physical violence. Tuđman made Pavelić’s dream to rid Croatia of Serbs a reality. It seems everything is in the choice of allies.

Unpleasant Comparisons

After obliterating Krajina, the conquering Croatian army moved into western Bosnia, aiding the Izetbegovic government to crush a dissident faction led by Fikret Abdic and assisting in the major Muslim offensive that “coincided” with NATO’s massive bombing of Bosnian Serbs. But after the Dayton Agreement was signed and peace imposed on Bosnia, Empire’s junkyard dogs discovered the supply of Milk Bones had run out. They had served their purpose.

Croatia and Albania joined NATO in 2009, ten years after the Alliance launched its first illegal war against what was left of Yugoslavia. Zagreb was admitted to the European Union in 2013 - a year after General Ante Gotovina and several others accused by the Hague Inquisition of war crimes during Oluja were acquitted on appeal in yet another show trial.

Some of the truth about atrocities against the Serbs is slowly coming to light, but interestingly enough, only after the prominent personalities accused have fallen out of political grace. The Zagreb leadership snaps back at any hint that Oluja might have been anything but just, right, and noble. In 2005, when Serbian president Boris Tadić called it an “organized crime,” Croatia's President Stipe Mesić replied it could hardly compare to Serb crimes such as Srebrenica.

But by all means, let’s compare! In both cases, a UN “safe area” was targeted by the attack. In Srebrenica, the UN at least tried to protect Muslim civilians; in Krajina, it did no such thing. Serbs evacuated Muslim noncombatants from Srebrenica; Serbs who did not flee Krajina were killed. Yet Srebrenica is somehow “genocide,” while Oluja is a victory worth a national holiday!

Another reason the Empire prefers to keep Oluja out of sight and out of mind is the push to establish an independent, Albanian-dominated Kosovo. If Croatia’s conquest of Krajina was legitimate, because Krajina’s existence violated its sacrosanct administrative borders, then why did Serbia not have the right to uphold its borders when it came to Kosovo? If obliterating the Serb population did not disqualify Croatia from keeping Krajina and Slavonia, how can the exodus of less than half of Kosovo’s Albanians disqualify Serbia from keeping Kosovo? If the Serbs, a constituent Yugoslav nation, did not have the right to ethnic self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, how can the Kosovo Albanians (an ethnic minority) have one?

The “Abramowitz Doctrine”

This apparent paradox was “explained” by Morton Abramowitz, the eminence grise of U.S. foreign policy, in a 2003 interview: “there is no entirely rational answer … you seek perfect reasoning, which does not correspond to reality on the ground.” Logic does not apply to the Empire, because it creates its own reality; where have we heard that before?

The “reality” Abramowitz and his like-minded policymakers have sought to establish by force has been one in which, whatever the circumstances, Serbs are in the wrong. Apologists for the Empire dismiss this observable, verifiable fact as a “conspiracy theory” and claim the Serbs have a “victim complex” – even as their entire Balkans “reality” rests on the claim that everyone else has been victimized by the Serbs.

What “perfect reasoning” is involved in recognizing the simple fact that the centuries-old Serb community in Krajina is practically extinct, and that the Serb community in Kosovo – from which most of their ancestors came – is facing the same prospect?

Where the Nazis failed, the American Empire has succeeded. Is that really something to be thankful for?

(Nota bene, August 2017: Croatia and Albania remain the axis of Empire's dominion over the Balkans today. But the Empire itself is losing its grip on the fake "reality" it created with force and lies, and the East remembers.)

Peace In Our Time

Some may say the Dayton Agreement was made to be broken; that it was a temporary patch on the gaping wound that was Bosnia, scheduled to hold it together past a US election cycle and then - back to the way it was. Others say it was meant to "evolve" into something else, some sort of postmodern, omnipotent managerial state the likes of which we're seeing implode all across the West today.

Yet somehow, it held. The Guns of April fell silent, the armies were disbanded, and even the "peacekeepers" that still drive around are a bare handful, there just for show and a hefty per diem. The "High Representatives" proved to be a joke, tin-pot viceroys attempting to play God - and failing. Forces that tore Bosnia apart before it even came into existence have continued to seethe, and the underlying problem shows no sign of being solved anytime soon. But the armistice has held for twenty years now. That's something.

Five years ago, I wrote a personal account of those days. This time, I made it a history lesson. Lest we forget.

The Dayton miracle: Bosnia armistice, still alive at 20 (Op-Edge) https://t.co/nlH7ykhriz pic.twitter.com/ZVEHSOaCkQ

— RT (@RT_com) November 21, 2015

I meant to post this earlier this week, but the War In Our Time got in the way. Sometimes I think it's the extension of the same one I went through, 20 years ago. We'll see what happens. I figured I'd post it today, though, on the day Americans celebrate as Thanksgiving, in honor of something I am thankful for.

Here's to us, the living.

Criminal Thanksgiving Day

It has been nineteen years since the Empire's "junkyard dogs" committed the biggest act of ethnic cleansing to date: Operation Storm.

What the Catholic Nazis of the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia could not achieve with Hitler's help, their heirs of 1991-95 did with the funding, training, propaganda and material support of the Atlantic Empire. Of the Orthodox Serbs that have lived in Dalmatia and along the old Hapsburg Military Frontier for centuries, only traces remain - and even they are being destroyed on a daily basis.

Shameless in their bigotry and projection, the Croatian authorities celebrate "Homeland Thanksgiving Day" every August. But it is no victory, only a crime.

And the East remembers.

Remembering the "Blitz"

At 0530 hours on May 1, 1995, some 16,000 Croatian troops attacked the Serb-inhabited portion of Western Slavonia known as Sector West (a UN Protected Area, UNPA).

Following the failure of Croatian militias to conquer this and other Serb-inhabited areas (later united in the Republic of Serbian Krajina - RSK) that rejected Croatia's anti-Serb, neo-Nazi regime in Zagreb. In January 1992, an armistice was signed ("Vance Plan") and a UN force deployed to safeguard the Serb-inhabited areas following the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).

Operation "Blitz", May 1-2, 1995 (source: CIA, via Wikipedia)

Backed by the United States government, Zagreb launched the May 1 operation as a trial balloon. Within 36 hours, the Croats had expelled the area's 15,000 Serbs, and killed 283 (including 57 women and 9 children). The UN troops charged with protecting the zone did nothing. The so-called "international community" (the Atlantic Empire and its vassals, in practice) did nothing.

Three months later, Croatia launched an all-out assault against the Serb-inhabited areas, with full diplomatic and political support of the United States government, killing 930 (with another 922 missing and presumed dead), while expelling almost all the remaining Serbs from the territories claimed by the Croatian state. By 2001, there were 380,032 fewer Serbs living in Croatia than in 1991, when Zagreb declared independence.

Both "police actions" were named in the true tradition of WW2 Croatia: "Flash" (Blitz, in German) and "Storm" (Sturm).

Croatian map of the "liberation" of Western Slavonia;
Serb-inhabited territories in blue were "liberated" in 1991,
in operation "Hurricane" (Orkan)  

Because Croatia was a proxy of the Atlantic Empire, it got away with this murder. Now the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power in the illegal coup of February 22, is expecting to do the same, launching a military attack against the Ukrainians refusing to submit to them. But while they expect May 2014 will be like May 1995, they should remember what happened when someone else tried to replicate August 1995 in August 2008.

God is just, and His justice does not sleep forever.

The East remembers.

The East Remembers

In the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 1995, on the heels of an incessant artillery and air bombardment, some 200,000 Croatian troops moved in to “liberate” Krajina, a stretch of mountains inhabited by Serbs who had rejected Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia four years prior.

This is how I began "Remembering the Storm", published on the 10th anniversary of that atrocity. Croatia has since joined NATO and the EU. General Ante Gotovina was captured, extradited, convicted - and released. Yet that essay remains as true today as it was eight years ago.

"United Europe fights in the East"-
Nazi Croatian poster from 1942

Documentary evidence publicized during the trial of Gotovina et. al clearly confirms that Franjo Tuđman and his government wanted the Serbs gone. They wanted to finish the job begun in 1941, by their political progenitors, who aimed to "kill a third, expel a third, and convert a third." Of the two million Serbs in the "Independent State of Croatia," German sources estimated anywhere between 500,000 and 750,000 perished.

When Germany lost the war, the Ustasha - Croatian Nazis - had to flee. However, the cause of Croatian statehood was rescued by the Communists, who spun a myth of moral equivalence between the genocidal Ustasha and the Serb royalists. Croat nationalists could thus say they had "won WW2 twice". And in 1991, when Yugoslavia was weak and Germany strong once again, they came back for a rematch.

Just like in 1941, the Serbs fought back. Just like in 1941, Croatia had outside backers. Not ready to intervene in 1991, they arranged an armistice, deploying UN peacekeepers to disarm the Serbs. Meanwhile, American "advisors" trained Tuđman's troops in "human rights and democracy," while American diplomats exchanged notes calling Croatians their "junkyard dogs", cultivated for the purpose of fighting "Serb aggression".

The all-out attack on the Republic of Serb Krajina was launched on August 4, 1995. The following day, Croatian troops entered the Krajina capital of Knin. Tuđman declared it "Homeland thanksgiving day," cribbing from Americans the same way he cribbed from the Soviets in dubbing his extermination campaign the "Homeland war."

Krajina's defenders were surrounded and outnumbered. The Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were dealing with a series of offensives by NATO-armed Muslim and Croat troops. Belgrade had refused to help, hoping to avoid a war with NATO (it didn't work; appeasement never does). Krajina's population chose exile over death. The 2001 census showed 380,000 fewer Serbs in Croatia than in 1991. Tuđman succeeded where the Ustasha had not. But then, he had better sponsors.

Croatia is American Empire's "junkyard dog" even today, though the Croats in Bosnia got the worst of that bargain. Empire's favor extends to other Nazi allies - be they militant Muslims in Bosnia, or Albanians occupying Kosovo and claiming more territories besides. A real 1940s reunion, today's Balkans.

To add insult to injury, the "war crimes" kangaroo court is now claiming the Ustasha plans for extermination of Serbs are really Serb plans for genocide of Muslims!

Tuđman died in 1999, and his party is no longer in power, but Croatia continues to celebrate August 5 as a national holiday. Montenegro's corrupt government separated from Serbia in 2006 and is trying to impose a rabidly anti-Serb (and pro-Croatian) national identity on its populace. Albanian-occupied Kosovo was declared an independent state in 2008, the same year an openly quisling regime was installed in Serbia.

Not everything has gone Empire's way, though. There are Serbs who still resist. The insane plan to woo jihadists "of all color and hue" isn't working out so well. And when another client tried to replicate the Krajina scenario, in August 2008, all the Imperial training and tech didn't last a day against a Russian frontier army.

The West may think it has won. But the East remembers.

Purported Proof

Regular reader jack brought to my attention this bit of news:

NATO tied to Muslim Slaughter at Srebrenica

BELGRADE – A French major, serving with their intelligence services, fled to Belarus with the evidence that war crimes committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

The documents he presented shows that the "genocide" blamed on Serbians was organized by the American, British and French secret intelligence service, and carried out by a paramilitary group known as the "Scorpions" in order for the alleged genocide to be blamed on the military and civilian officials of the Republic of Serbian (RS) – learned Pravda.

According to our source, the major French military intelligence DRM has evidence that the wartime commander of the VRS Main [sic] Staff, Ratko Mladic was not aware of these activities. From these documents, which are in the possession of Belarus, the French officer requested and received political asylum on the June 29, 2012 in Minsk.

The documents clearly show that Naser Oric and all the commanders of the Army of Bosnia/Herzegovina (Muslim) in this part of eastern Bosnia were under constant control of the western intelligence services.

Oric was the Bosnian Muslim commander in Srebrenica and was convicted by the ICC of war crimes against Serbs but found "not guilty" of broader crimes of ethnic cleansing.

What do I make of this? I take it with a chunk of salt. For one thing, there seems to be a bit of confusion about the militia that is supposed to have been operating on foreign orders: this report has it as the “Scorpions”, but where does the 10th Sabotage Detachment (which includes "star witness" Erdemovic) fit in, then? The Milosevic assassination plot that men from the 10th were previously associated with ("Operation Spider") has somehow morphed into a plot to kill Mladic. In other words, I'd like to see some of the purported evidence before I come to any sort of conclusion.

I understand why some Serbs might jump on to this as proof of Serb innocence in the Srebrenica case. But it's worth remembering what they say about things too good to be true. For all I know, this could be a "Hitler diaries" type plot, aiming to discredit the legitimate criticism of the official Srebrenica narrative - based on cold, hard facts and forensic criticism of "evidence" produced by the ICTY - through association with crackpot theories.

That said, there is still a mystery of why Oric was put through a show trial - first convicted and sentenced to two years for the laughable charge of "knowing that prisoners were mistreated", then acquitted altogether. Unlike other warlords who served Izetbegovic, only to learn that one of his few principles was that "dead men tell no tales", Oric is still alive - and a prosperous "businessman" at that. I'm honestly curious as to how. But I can't riddle whether him being an Imperial asset, and not just Izetbegovic's, would have made his survival more or less likely. After all, Empire's Serbian assets have been given lengthy sentences (Perisic, Plavsic) or may die before their verdict (Stanisic).

We'll have to wait and see.

Storm, Kosovo and Empire

I really don't have much to add to my 2005 essay about "Operation Storm," the Empire-sponsored ethnic cleansing operation by which Franjo Tudjman's government effected a final solution of its "Serb problem."

Though the Hague Inquisition has declared it part of a "joint criminal enterprise" when convicting two Croatian generals in April, it is unlikely this verdict will be allowed to stand for long. Zagreb maintains that this was a great and noble victory, celebrates the holiday as "Homeland Thanksgiving Day" and - most importantly - the sponsors of the operation still look upon Croatia with favor, even as it is no longer their "junkyard dog."

There is no doubt that "Storm" was cooked up in the Pentagon kitchen; the Empire doesn't deny its mercenary outfit MPRI was instrumental in turning Tudjman's army from rabble into something resembling a military. A decade later, the pattern was repeated in Georgia (which eventually attempted a similar-style operation, albeit with a very different outcome).

Of course, the conquest of Krajina was greatly helped by the fact that Croatians had the Serbs outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, blinded (NATO airstrikes took out their communications) and - last, but not least - abandoned. Perhaps the calculation in Belgrade was that the sacrifice of Krajina might save Serbia from Imperial invasion; if so, they soon realized their mistake. But that's a topic I'll save for later.

Croatians and their Western advocates erroneously label the war a struggle for independence; no one - not Belgrade, nor the Krajina Serbs - actually sought to stop Croats from having their own state, as much as that would have been a perfectly legal course of action under the extant Yugoslav constitution. The only thing in dispute was whether a Croat government - moreover, one that has deliberately sought continuity with the WW2 Ustasha - had any right to rule over territories inhabited mostly by ethnic Serbs.

There is one aspect of that conflict that remains largely ignored: the involvement of Kosovo Albanians in the Croatian military. I am not aware of any research into the actual number of Albanians who joined Tudjman's forces. There is anecdotal evidence of Albanians fighting in both that war, and the subsequent/parallel war in Bosnia, where they supported the Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. But the plural of anecdote is not data. More research is needed.

Two names do come to mind, however. Rahim Ademi was a brigadier-general during the Medak Pocket operation, and was even put on trial for war crimes there, but was acquitted by a Croatian court - surprise! - along with General Norac, in 2008.

Somewhat more (in)famous is Agim Ceku, who also joined Tudjman's army in 1991, and took part in the Medak operation (where he was wounded). Ceku commanded Croatian army units during "Storm." After the war, Tudjman gave him command of the 5th Military District - but in 1998, he "retired" to join the KLA, which was being rebuilt in Albania (the Serbian law enforcement having successfully quashed the Jashari rebellion).

Neither Ceku nor his political superior, KLA supreme leader Hashim Thaci, have ever been charged with any atrocities, even though under the Inquisition's own doctrine of command responsibility they were ultimately responsible for every single act of terrorism their underlings (such as Fatmir Limaj or Ramush Haradinaj) had committed. Thaci is now "Prime Minister" of the self-proclaimed Kosovaristan, while Ceku simply changed insignia and continued to command the KLA under the name of "Kosovo Protection Corps" (which now passes for Thaci's military).

The Official Truth in Croatia (and Kosovia) is that their separatist rebellions were legitimate self-defense from "Serbian oppression" embodied in the evil Slobodan Milosevic. The problem with this theory is that it completely fails to explain the prior history of Albanian and Croat belligerence towards the Serbs, which predates Milosevic by a great deal.

What is one to make of Albanian separatism in Tito's Yugoslavia, which created Kosovo as a political entity in the first place, invested vast amounts of money into its modernization, and provided a welfare system that enabled Albanian families to have a dozen children or more? What is one to make of the 1973 "Maspok" (mass movement) events in Croatia, long before Milosevic was even on the political radar?

And for that matter, what about the Croat and Albanian alliance with Hitler in WW2, exemplified by the "Independent State of Croatia" and its Devil Division at Stalingrad, or the 21st Waffen-SS division "Skanderbeg", composed primarily of Albanians from Kosovo?

When one connects the dots, the pattern is there: Croats and Albanians, joined in pursuit of the same cause. Where Hitler failed to deliver, the Atlantic Empire succeeded (so far, anyway). It seems everything is in the choice of allies.

Some Call It Peace

I remember it vividly, as if was just yesterday. It was a Tuesday, November 21. Just a day prior, we got word that the talks had collapsed - yet again - and that the war would go on. And then it was over.

It didn't seem over at the time. By the time I left Bosnia, two months later, the armies were still in position, the roads were still passable only to NATO peacekeepers, conscription was still in effect, and utilities were not yet restored. But the longer the ceasefire held, the less likely it seemed the shooting would restart. By the time the treaty was officially signed, in mid-December, it dawned upon us that it was peace at last.

Thus ended the Bosnian War.

There is still some contention as to when precisely it began. For me, it was April 5, 1992, when roadblocks appeared in Sarajevo. From that Sunday morning, until that Tuesday when the word came from Ohio, I had counted 1,376 days. Not the longest war in history, or the bloodiest, or the cruelest - but when it happens to you, that's hardly a consolation.

The day after the peace treaty was announced, my first ever article in English appeared, published by The Independent. The way I wrote it, it was a schmaltzy celebration of peace. The way it was headlined, it sounded like a one-cheer of a disappointed war victim. Unlike some folk, who were perhaps hoping for a "final victory" and a Bosnia remade according to their fantasies, I was not the least bit disappointed by the Dayton peace treaty. I didn't feel much like a victim, either. I just hoped it would last.

I was entirely too young to realize that the war would merely move back to the realm of politics. So, the headline - "At least there will be no more killing" - proved strangely prophetic.

Earlier this year, while visiting Bosnia, I wrote:

"In Bosnia, ethnic warfare was the direct result of the complete destruction of trust between the communities as the regime of Alija Izetbegovic pushed for independence at the expense of everything and everyone else. The Dayton settlement did not restore that trust, but offered a framework in which it could be re-forged if Bosnia’s peoples so chose. When the U.S. and the EU made Bosnia into a de facto protectorate shortly after the war, and began to impose their often conflicting but always confused visions of what Bosnia should be, they created a powerful disincentive for internal dialogue.

When Bosnian Serb PM Milorad Dodik said recently that it might be time to talk about a consensual separation, president Silajdzic angrily replied that this was impossible. "Those who dislike this country are free to leave, but they can’t take an inch of the land with them," Silajdzic said.

This very argument, that Bosnia belonged "100 percent" to Silajdzic and the Muslims, while everyone else is welcome to get out, is precisely what ignited the 1992-95 war and claimed 100,000 lives. After fifteen years of peace and "nation-building," Bosnia seems to be back at square one. And this is what the State Department describes as a great "success."

One shudders to think what failure would look like."

Whatever the Empire - or the Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders who signed it - intended to accomplish with the Dayton agreement, it did silence the guns. And it still offers hope, however fleeting, that the people who live in Bosnia may eventually sit down and figure out how to live together - or part ways - peacefully.

As for me, I will always remember that moment of unadulterated joy I felt when I heard the news that the war was over, when I realized that my family and I had made it through alive.

So many people take life for granted. I'm not one of them. And now you know why.

Ah Yes, Peacekeepers

I haven't said a whole lot in this blog about my experience in Sarajevo during the 1992-95 Bosnian War. I intend to, eventually - at a time and in a manner of my choosing. Today, however, I was looking for some maps showing the boundaries of Albania in 1941, after the Nazi invasion resulted in what Albanian sympathizers term the "first liberation of Kosova" (sic); while searching, I stumbled upon this:



Source:
Bosnian Army Offensive Operations in Sarajevo Region, June 1995 (238K)
Map N from Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Russian and European Analysis. Washington, D.C. 2001.

What is this? It is the map of the infamous 1995 "summer offensive" by the Muslim-dominated ARBiH that was supposed to break the siege of Sarajevo. Even those most casually acquainted in military arts can see that the direction of Muslim attacks makes little sense: only the 16th Division, attacking from the north, is actually moving towards the city, yet it eventually gets rolled back. Instead of attacking northwards from the city to help the 16th, the 12th Division is striking out eastwards, to... nowhere. And the 14th Division is attacking eastwards as well, to Mt. Treskavica (a barren piece of rock that claimed hundreds of Muslim lives without the Serbs so much as firing a shot). The whole operation was a strategic fiasco, with massive casualties.

Now for the reason I'm posting this. Notice the starting positions for the 14th Division's attack, down south. Two of the arrows start out not from green-shaded ARBIH-controlled area, but from the "UN patrolled" blue area. This was territory captured by the VRS (Bosnian Serb army) in a 1993 counterattack, which threatened to cut Sarajevo off completely from the rest of Muslim-held Bosnia. The Izetbegovic regime howled for help from the West; NATO and the U.S. threatened to bomb the Serbs; Serb leadership offered to cede the territory to the UN peacekeepers and keep it demilitarized. Of course, the moment the Serb troops withdrew, ARBiH forces poured in.

Oh, and did I mention that at this point Sarajevo was supposed to be a UN-designated "Safe area"? Yes, alongside Tuzla, Srebrenica, Zepa, Gorazde and Bihac, Sarajevo was supposed to be a demilitarized "safe haven" for civilians. There's even a 20-kilometer "exclusion zone" for heavy weapons, clearly seen on the CIA map. But see, "safe havens" were only sacrosanct when Serbs violated them; if Muslims deployed tens of thousands of troops, artillery and tanks within those areas, that was just fine.

The hypocrisy is just sickening.

Storm, Remembered

August 5 is a national holiday in Croatia, "Homeland Thanksgiving Day." Once again this year, Croatia's leaders gathered in Knin (formerly the capital of the rebel Serb Krajina region) to declare that Serbs are to blame for the war, and that their suffering was their own fault.

Right; when Croats, Muslims or Albanians leave their homes, it's always "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" but when Serbs do the same thing, it's their own fault. Anyone see a bit of problematic reasoning here?

Croatia is currently governed by the same party that declared independence in 1991, wrote the Serbs out of the Constitution and accepted Ustasha (WW2 Nazi) symbolism in mainstream political discourse. Tens of thousands - including diplomats with families, no less - recently saluted Ustasha songs at a big rock concert in Zagreb.

Facts speak for themselves, gentlemen; where once were hundreds of thousands of Serbs, now there are almost none. They've been killed, expelled, or forced to deny their identity so that within a generation they will be more ardent Croats than Franjo "Founder of the Nation" Tudjman. What happened in August 1995 was the largest single act of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans to date. Nobody cared, because it was "just those Serbs."

Just so we're perfectly clear: when the Empire engages in aggressive warfare (the greatest international crime) for the sake of "human rights," it is only the "rights" of its allies, satellites, quislings and clients. Serbs, being none of that, are not considered human. And if they dare offer resistance, then obviously whatever happens to them is their fault.

I won't bother pointing out whose "logic" this resembles.

Remembering the Storm

I got a blast from the past this afternoon, when someone re-posted a column I wrote last year, on the eve of "Homeland Thanksgiving Day" in Croatia.

The original piece, Remembering the Storm, is available on Antiwar.com. One year later, there's nothing to add, or subtract.

I've just got word that B92, a media house known for its promotion of the globalist, Serbophobic agenda, has actually shown a video clip of Croat and Muslim troops killing Serb soldiers and civilians. (Links: RealVideo, or Avi) It's a surprise, to be sure.

Still, I doubt much will come of it. As a result of over a decade of Serbophobic hysteria, murder of Serbs has just about been absolved as a crime - and in case of people like Ramush Haradinaj or Agim Ceku is actually considered a virtue.

A Missed Anniversary

Sunday was the 64th aniversary of the date when the "Indepedent state of Croatia" (NDH) was declared on the heels of the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia. Its leaders, the Ustashe, matched their Nazi sponsors in hatred and often exceeded them in brutality; and while they have killed tens of thousands of Jews and helped the Nazis kill even more, their preferred targets were Orthodox Serbs.

While allegations of Vatican's complicity in Nazi crimes have been raised but remain controversial and heavily disputed, there is no disputing the role of the Catholic Church in Ustasha crimes. The NDH was militantly Catholic, and the focus of its genocidal policy were the "Eastern Schismatics," as Catholics saw all Orthodox believers.

With the full knowledge and blessing of the Church, the Ustashe launched a policy of murder, expulsion and forced conversion of Serbs almost immediately after establishing the NDH - and long before Hitler's endloesung. The methods used by the Ustasha and the joy with which they murdered horrified even some German observers. In addition to massacring Serb civilians and hunting royalist and communist partisans, NDH units also fought for the Reich, mainly in the East.

After the war was lost, Croat clergy used its Vatican connections to smuggle notable Ustashe and Nazis out of Europe; the Allies did not interfere, as the same organization smuggled valuable Nazis into the West, where they would be enlisted for the looming standoff with the Soviets.

Alojzije Stepinac, the Archbishop of Zagreb and the vicar to Ustasha poglavnik Ante Pavelić, was arrested and imprisoned by the Communists for his complicity in Ustasha crimes. He died under house arrest in 1960. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1998, setting off a storm of protests from Serbs and Jews.

After the war, thousands of NDH troops were captured and executed by the Yugoslav Communist forces, along with other non-Communist militias (many of which collaborated with the Germans). Their deaths are now referred to as the "Path of the Cross" (križni put).

In 1990, Franjo Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union - funded in part by Ustasha emigres - won the general elections in Croatia, and proceeded to rehabilitate the NDH, sometimes in name but more often in fact. Most criticism has focused on Tudjman's reintroduction of the checkerboard flag, but a far worse offender has been the resurrection of NDH-era vocabulary. Tudjman even introduced the "new" currency, named after the NDH currency of 1941-45. Furthermore, Tudjman resurrected the anti-Serb rhetoric of Pavelić, setting off a civil war after Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia. The war resulted in almost-complete expulsion of Serbs who lived in territories claimed by Croatia, something even Pavelić failed to accomplish. The day Croatian armies entered the capital of the rebel Serb republic is now a national holiday, "Homeland Gratitude Day."

Tudjman died in 2000, and the successive governments visibly moderated their position on Serbs under the pressure of international public opinion. But Tudjman's NDH-inspired imagery, language and holidays remain. The Catholic Church is refusing to admit wrongdoing in the NDH, and is proud of its support for Tudjman. So one should not be surprised that small groups of open NDH sympathizers celebrated Sunday's anniversary, but that there weren't more of them.