Operation Storm

Operation Storm
	Part of the Croatian War of Independence
Date	August 4 - August 7, 1995
Location	Croatia
Result	Croatian victory
Belligerents
Croatia	"Republic of Serbian Krajina"
Commanders and leaders
general Zvonimir Červenko	general Mile Mrkšić
Strength
150,000 soldiers, 350 tanks, 800 artillery pieces, 50 rocket launchers, 30 aircraft and helicopters	40,000 soldiers, 200 tanks, 350 artillery pieces, 25 rocket launchers, 20 aircraft and helicopters
Casualties and losses
174 soldiers killed, 1,430 wounded	560 soldiers killed, at least 350 civilians killed; some 200,000 refugees (estimate)

This article is about a 1995 Croatian army operation. For a Polish Second World War partisan operation, see Operation Tempest.

Operation Storm (Croatian: Operacija Oluja) was a large-scale military offensive carried out by Croatia to recapture areas of central Croatia held by rebel Croatian Serb forces. After only four days of fighting with relatively modest casualties on both sides, it ended in a decisive victory by the Croatians. Although the offensive successfully met the Croatian war aims of eliminating the separatist Republic of Serbian Krajina, it resulted in the displacement of virtually the entire Croatian Serb population. Senior Croatian commanders were later indicted for war crimes allegedly committed during and immediately after the operation.

Background

In January 1992, a ceasefire agreement was signed by Presidents Franjo Tuđman of Croatia and Slobodan Milošević of Serbia to suspend fighting between the Croatian Army (HV) and rebel Croatian Serbs, supported by the Yugoslav People's Army, in the predominantly Serb-populated Krajina region and eastern Croatia. The ceasefire gave the Croatian army time to regroup, retrain and re-equip.

During the next three years, Croatian military operations in the Krajina were mostly limited to probing Serb defences. The notable exception was Operation Medak pocket of September 1993, during which Croatian forces overran a small area in the mountainous region of Lika but caused an international incident in the process.

The HV played a more active role in western Bosnia, acting in concert with the Bosnian Croat HVO to combat Bosnian Serb forces. This had several advantages for the Croatians: it helped to prop up the Bosnian Croat statelet, it gave Croatian army commanders valuable combat experience and it put the Croatians in a good strategic position to threaten the Croatian Serbs' supply lines in Bosnia.

Timeline

Build-up to Operation Storm

By 1995, the military effectiveness of the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs had eroded considerably. Both had effectively been disowned by Belgrade, having refused Milošević's attempts to push them into settling the conflict. They had been unable to maintain or resupply their forces. Morale and efficiency were low, and many of the Serb troops were poorly trained. They were also seriously undermined by internal political conflicts and poor military leadership.

The Croatian Serb army, the VSK, was also significantly undermanned. It had only about 55,000 soldiers available to cover a front of some 600 km in Croatia plus a rear defence of 100 km along the border of the Bihać pocket in Bosnia. 16,000 of the VSK's troops were stationed in eastern Slavonia, leaving only some 39,000 to defend the main part of the RSK. In reality, only 30,000 of the theoretical 55,000 were capable of being fully mobilised.

By contrast, the Croatian and Bosnian armies had greatly strengthened their forces. They had re-equipped with modern weaponry - despite the arms embargoes in force - and had obtained Western military training and technology with the covert support of the United States. They also had strategic advantages, with much shorter lines of communications than their enemies. These advantages were demonstrated in Western Slavonia in May 1995, when the Croatian Army rapidly overran a Serb-held area in Operation Flash.

In July 1995, the Croatian and Bosnian armies collaborated to capture the crucial western Bosnian towns of Glamoč and Bosansko Grahovo. This cut vital Croatian Serb supply lines and effectively meant that the Croatian Serb capital of Knin was surrounded on three sides. The Krajina Serbs attempted to break the encirclement with an attack into the Bihać pocket, but this was repulsed by the pocket's defenders.

During the last week of July and the first few days of August 1995, the Croatian Army undertook a massive military build-up along the front lines in the Krajina and western Slavonia. The Croatian Serbs recognised the weakness of their position and appealed to Belgrade for military support, but were rebuffed, with the Serbian state-run media condemning the Croatian Serb leadership for its "militarism".

August 4, 1995

At 0500 on August 4, around 150,000 Croatian Army troops attacked at about 30 separate points along a 300 km front. The Croatian 4th and 7th Guards Brigades broke through the lines of the already demoralized Serb forces and rapidly advanced deep into Krajina Serb territory. Knin was subjected to an intensive artillery bombardment, but much of the Krajina Serb leadership had already left for Serbia and Bosnia.

On the same day, aircraft from the United States Air Force bombed two Croatian Serb surface-to-air missile radar sites near Knin and Udbina. The attack was described by NATO as being a self-defence action undertaken after the radars had locked onto the USAF aircraft, which were patrolling Croatian and Bosnian airspace as part of Operation Deny Flight to enforce no-fly zones. [1]

August 5, 1995

Knin and most of the Dalmatian hinterland fell to Croatian forces, with only sporadic resistance encountered from the VSK. The towns of Gračac, Ljubovo, Žitnić, Vrlika, Kijevo, Dubica, Drniš and Benkovac were also captured. Serb forces launched artillery attacks on Dubrovnik in the far south and Vinkovci in the far east of Croatia, apparently in retaliation, rather than for any significant military purpose. Large refugee columns formed in many parts of Croatian Serb territory, as virtually the entire Serb population fled along corridors into Bosnia established by the Croatian military.

August 6, 1995

By August 6, the 1st Guards Brigade continued to advance into Krajina Serb territory near Slunj (north of Plitvice) and reached the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they met with Bosniak forces from the Bihać enclave in western Bosnia. President Tuđman staged a triumphal entry into Knin, where the Croatian flag was raised above the fortress that dominates the old town.

The towns of Petrinja, Kostajnica, Obrovac, Korenica, Slunj, Bruvno, Vrhovine, Plaski, Cetingrad, Plitvice and Glina all fell during the course of the day. The only strong resistance was encountered in the town of Glina (south of Sisak). The Croatian-held town of Karlovac was subjected to retaliatory shelling by the VSK, and Bosnian Serb aircraft attacked a chemical plant in the town of Kutina.

August 7, 1995

Fighting continued on August 7 but at a much lower intensity than on the previous days. Two Serb aircraft were shot down near Daruvar and Pakrac, and the towns of Turanj and Dvor na Uni were captured. In the evening, Croatian Defence Minister Gojko Šušak declared the end to major combat operations, as most of the border with Bosnia was controlled by the Croatian Army and only mopping-up actions remained to be completed.

August 8, 1995 onwards

The last mopping-up actions took place on August 8 with the unopposed capture of Gornji Lapac, Donji Lapac and Vojnić. On August 9, the VSK's 21st Corps surrendered en masse to the Croatian Army.

By this time, virtually the entire Serb population of the Krajina was on the move, crossing into Serb-controlled territory in Bosnia. The exodus was complicated by the presence of armed Krajina Serb soldiers among the civilian refugees. A large refugee column that was moving on the Glina-Dvor road during August 1995 suffered casualties on two occasions: one report mentions Croatian army shelling of the column, and another mentions the Serbian military making way through the road without regard to civilians. The Croatian government claimed that around 90,000 Serb civilians had fled [2], while Serbian sources claimed that there were as many as 250,000 refugees. The United Nations put the figure at 150,000-200,000. The BBC puts the number to be 200,000 ([3] and [4])

On August 11, the Croatian government announced that 174 Croatian soldiers had been killed in the offensive and 1,430 wounded.

Although the VSK was known to be less capable than the Croatian Army, its lack of serious resistance proved a surprise to many observers. The Croatian Army had reportedly expected at least a week's fighting. However, other than the fighting around Glina, the Krajina Serb military response proved little more than symbolic in most places. The VSK largely collapsed, many of its soldiers deserting and joining the civilian exodus and others carrying their weapons into Bosnia. Around 5,000 were said to have surrendered and handed in their weapons to Croatian and UN forces.

Operation Storm did not target the Serb-inhabited area of Eastern Slavonia, along the border with Serbia, which was the easternmost end of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Although there were fears of a direct military confrontation between Croatia and Serbia in Eastern Slavonia, large-scale armed conflict was not resumed in that region.

Aftermath

In the days immediately following Operation Storm, the Croatian Army rounded up all the male inhabitants of fighting age in Knin and interned them at large buildings. In the town of Obrovac, on the other hand, the entire population had already left during the first day of "Storm". When Croatian Radiotelevision reporters entered the town soon after the invasion, they found a single old man. The men in Knin were interned for about a week before they were released to their homes. After that, many of those people packed whatever they could and went on the road together with their families.

The majority of the Croatian Army forces withdrew from the area in August 1995, but military operations continued until November 1995. During this period, serious violations of human rights were reported to have taken place against the remaining Serb inhabitants of the Krajina.

According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, hundreds of Krajina Serbs were murdered or disappeared in the wake of Operation Storm. A few notable cases included the murder of five (possibly six) Serb civilians in the hamlet of Grubori in the Plavno valley north of Knin on August 25, and the murder of 18 Serb civilians in the villages of Varivode, Gosici and two other hamlets in the former Sector South in the September of 1995. There were also numerous individual murders or murders of several people from the same household. By November 1995 the UN personnel (UNPROFOR) had documented the deaths of more than 200 people in the area.

During the same period, Croatian forces undertook an extensive campaign of looting and destroying Krajina Serb property. The ICTY found that the Croatian forces operated in "'arson squads' using inflammable fuels, incendiary bullets and explosives ... [leaving] some towns and numerous villages completely destroyed." The intention of this campaign, according to the ICTY, was to make it impossible for the Krajina Serb population to return.

One of the outcomes of Operation Storm was the Dayton Agreement and the subsequent General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GFAP) or the Paris Protocol.

Following the death of President Tuđman in 1999, the Croatian authorities began to undertake investigations of the activities of Croatian forces in the wake of Operation Storm. According to Croatia's Ministry of Justice, state prosecutors filed around 3,000 lawsuits against a total of 811 people for crimes allegedly committed during and after the operation. Several dozen people were convicted to jail sentences (up to 20 years according to Croatian law), although actual murder convictions were scarce. Amnesty International has criticized the Croatian courts for inadequately investigating the war crimes allegations and failing to protect evidence as well as encouraging impunity for human rights violations.

The ICTY issued indictments against three senior Croatian commanders, Colonel General Ivan Čermak, Colonel General Mladen Markač and Brigadier (later General) Ante Gotovina. It was later disclosed that had he not died when he did, Croatia's President Tuđman would probably also have been indicted by the ICTY. The three indictees were said to have had personal and command responsibility for war crimes carried out against Krajina Serb civilians.

Čermak and Markač were handed over to the ICTY, but Gotovina fled. He was widely believed to be at liberty in Croatia or Bosnia, where many still view him as a hero, and his continued freedom was attributed to covert from — or at least a "blind eye" turned by — the Croatian authorities. The US Government offered a $5m reward for the capture of Ante Gotovina and he became one of the ICTY's most wanted men. The issue has proved a major stumbling block for Croatia's international relations. Its application to join the European Union was rebuffed in March 2005 due to the Croatian government's perceived complicity in Gotovina's continued evasion of the ICTY.

On December 8, 2005, Gotovina was captured by Spanish police in a hotel on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. He was transferred to Madrid for court proceedings before extradition to the ICTY at The Hague.

Battle figures

According to a Croatian source[5]:

Croatian forces and allies

Croatian Army (HV):

150,000 strong
- 80,000 soldiers in brigades, 70,000 in home guard regiments (domobranske pukovnije)
- 2nd echelon, 50,000
- 3rd echelon, 25 brigades
350 tanks
800 heavy artillery pieces
45-50 rocket launchers
18 MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighter jets
5 Mi-8 "Hip" transport helicopters
12 Mi-24D "Hind" attack helicopters

Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH):

5th Corps

USA/France

Limited semi-covert support; a year and a half before "Storm," Croat forces had received valuable assistance in attending workshops on military budgets, real-time processing information and non-commissioned officers training, organized by US defense contracting firm, Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI.) and a specialist team from the French Foreign Legion.

Serbian forces and allies

Army of the "Republic of Serbian Krajina" (VSK)

40,000 strong
- 20,000 1st echelon
- 10,000 2nd echelon
- 10,000 3rd echelon
200 tanks
350 heavy artillery pieces
20-25 rocket launchers

Army of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia

10,000 strong (?)

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