The Independent (London) September 4, 1995, Monday Croats burn and kill with a vengeance; Robert Fisk in Kistanje finds 'ethnic cleansing' of the Krajina Serbs in full swing, with bodies piling up and buildings gutted Robert Fisk in Kistanje Every house in Kistanje has been destroyed by the Croat army; little bungalows, two-storey villas, Austro-Hungarian buildings of cut stone, the burnt ruins still blessed by the trees whose leaves have been autumned brown by the fires. No Serb will ever return here. In the next village, Derveske, I found one house still burning, the flames creeping slowly along the roof. The Croats have plenty of time to complete their "ethnic cleansing" of the Krajina region now that the world's attention has been recaptured by the Bosnian inferno. Villages without houses, a land without people. It is strange how natural it all seems, the overturned cars, the clothes lying on the street, the empty beer cans left by Croatia's supposedly elite troops, Budweiser and Karlovac lager and the occasional Heineken tins scattered over the gardens and roads. In the centre of Kistanje, a Croat drove a truck into the war memorial, smashing the Cyrillic names of Serb martyrs who could never guess - as they faced the Germans or their Croat allies in the Second World War - that their identity would finally be liquidated half a century after the civilised world conquered Nazism. On the other side of Knin, on the road to Strmica, Edward Flynn, of the UN's Human Rights Action Team, and I came across a funnel of smoke on the other side of the abandoned railway line to Bihac. "We'll walk slowly because you have to be careful of what's on the road," he said as we padded beneath a low railway bridge to find a brand-new, two-storey villa being consumed by fire. A mile further on, the stink of rotting flesh drifted past a wrecked bar. Only a few days before had the Croats bothered to remove the putrefying body of a Serb soldier, killed with a bullet to the back of the neck hours after Croatia's successful "liberation" of Krajina a month ago. The UN soldiers around Knin are finding the bodies of newly-murdered Serb civilians at the rate of six a day. It goes unreported, of course, because the world is watching Sarajevo. In Grubori last week, the Croatian army's "special forces" carried out what it calls a "cleaning sic campaign" through the Plavno valley. Later, the UN found two elderly men dead, one with a bullet in the back of the head, the other with his throat horribly slashed. A certain General Cermac of the Croatian army announced that Grubori was a "Chetnik stronghold". Next day, the UN found three more Serb corpses, one of them a woman of 90. Every time we stopped our car - on the Strmice road, in Kistanje or Derveske - civilian or Croatian police cars would arrive, their uniformed occupants watching us sullenly or asking the reason for our presence. No one, after all, wants to advertise their war crimes - even though the American ambassador back in Zagreb has announced that no "ethnic cleansing" has taken place here. In Orlic on 26 August, two European Union monitors came across three Croatian soldiers setting fire to a farm. The flavour of the event is best gleaned from their official report. "We tried to discuss with them, but one of them loaded his weapon, saying that the fire was already put on sic yesterday. That was a perfect lie, since the fire had just started, but we preferred to escape." Everyone in Krajina prefers to escape save for the few remaining Serbs - perhaps only 5 per cent of the original Serb population. But last week's European Union assessment from Krajina - a confidential document that I have read in full - speaks for itself. "Evidence of atrocities; an average of six corpses p/day, continues to emerge . . . the corpses; some fresh, some decomposed, are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated. Isolated pockets of elderly civilians report people recently gone missing or detained . . . Endless Croat invitations for Serbs to return, guarantees of citizens' rights and property rights etc, have gushed forth from all levels . . . However, Serbian homes and lands . . . continue to be torched and looted. "Contrary to official statements blaming it on fleeing Serbs and uncontrollable elements, the crimes have been perpetrated by the HV Croatian Army , the CR Croatian police and CR civilians. There have been no observed attempts to stop it and the indications point to a scorched-earth policy." History demands that the world should be reminded how the Serbs torched the homes of their Croat neighbours when they declared their independence from Croatia in 1991, and drove out the Croat residents of Krajina with identical intent: to prevent them from returning. But of course, Croatia - unlike the so-called and now defunct Serb Krajina Republic - wants to join the EU, wants its troops to receive European training (having already received help from the Americans) and wishes to share in European "democracy". And Croatia may well demand EU aid to help rebuild the schools and houses which its "elite" troops are burning in the fury of their "ethnic cleansing". ============= The Independent (London) August 8, 1995, Tuesday FLIGHT FROM CROATIA: How the Croats armed and trained for victory; WEAPONS BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER BELLAMY Defence Correspondent Croatia's swift victory over the Krajina Serbs was not due so much to new weapons as to the acquisition of carefully selected equipment which enhanced their tactics and the performance of existing weaponry inherited from the former Yugoslav army. American radios enabled the Croats to manoeuvre more effectively, while improved shells extended the range of old Soviet-made guns without loss of accuracy. Apart from foreign equipment and training, the Croats turned out to have more heavy weapons than was estimated by Nato and the United Nations, according to research by Jane's, the military analysis and publishing group. Because Croatia, like Bosnia and Serbia, has been subject to the UN arms embargo, it has apparently targeted its acquisitions of foreign equipment very carefully, acquiring hi-tech items which are relatively easy to import undetected, but not heavy weapons, of which it already had plenty. Jane's said original assessments fell 50 per cent short of actual totals in some areas. Paul Beaver said this was because intelligence sources had relied on declarations made as part of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which had concealed much. Croatia had declared six MiG-21 jets when it had 36. Instead of 230 tanks, Jane's yesterday estimated Croatia's total at 420. There were more than 2,000 artillery pieces and mortars, not 900. Rather than needing to import new heavy weapons, Croatia concentrated on improving performance and on command, control, communications and organisation. The range of its artillery was extended by new "base-bleed" ammunition, in which a burning charge removes the drag normally caused by a vacuum at the base of the shell, making it go further. Mr Beaver said this ammunition for Soviet guns was available on the black market in Ukraine, and had been used to bombard Krajina Serb towns. Reports from the front during the three-day Croatian operation indicated that crates of new Kalashnikov assault rifles had been issued. Machine- guns had been imported from France, Singapore, Germany, Israel, South Africa and Argentina. The Croats' forces have also acquired hand-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, including the latest Russian RPG-22 anti-tank missile and the Igla (Needle) anti-aircraft missile. There have also been claims in the South American media that Croatia has acquired US Stingers and British Blowpipes via Chile in defiance of the arms embargo. Last night the Ministry of Defence said it had no knowledge of Blowpipe missiles reaching Croatia. The key to the Croatian victory, however, has not been weaponry but command, control and communications, logistics and a level of training significantly better than in the war in neighbouring Bosnia. The Croatian army has been observed wearing US uniforms, carrying US radios and eating German rations. Combat rations and communications are vital to enable any army to advance quickly and in an organised fashion. In Bosnia, the operations of all three sides have been constrained by the need to stop and feed themselves. The Croats have also been wearing locally made body armour, from a factory which also has a contract to make flak jackets for the UN. There is a significant Croatian expatriate population in the US and Australia, and these contacts have reinforced US assistance to Croatia. Since 1991 there have been a number of contacts between Croatia and US generals, who have given advice on the chain of command. Military Professional Resources Incorporated of Alexandria, Virginia is reported to have signed a contract with Croatia to provide training in how armed forces operate in a democracy. A spokesman last year denied training Croats in combat skills. However, it appears that the Croatian forces operated in a more Western fashion than before, with well-rehearsed drills for section and platoon attacks using fire and movement. © 1999, LEXIS®-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. =========== Daily News (New York) August 05, 1995, Saturday TWO NAVY PLANES FIRE ON SERB MISSILE SITES By RICHARD SISK Daily News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON As Croatia launched the biggest European land offensive since World War II, two U.S. Navy planes patrolling over the Krajina region each fired on a Serb surface-to-air missile site after Serb radar locked on the planes, the Pentagon said. A Pentagon spokesman said the Serb SAM missile site did not actually launch weapons and that the two Navy planes assigned to the Roosevelt returned to their NATO base. It was not immediately known if the planes hit their target. All over mountainous Krajina, Croat forces attacked Serb strongholds, shelling United Nations peacekeeping troops in their way and trapping allied soldiers in the crossfire with entrenched rebel Serbs. Knin, capital of the self-styled Krajina Serb Republic, was under attack from three directions as Croat gunners poured more than 1,500 rounds of artillery fire into the medieval fortress town. At least 16 UN observation posts were abandoned or captured. Dozens have been surrounded or mined by Croat troops. "We quite frankly do not know where all our soldiers are. I believe the Croats are trying to intimidate us into abandoning our posts," said Col. Andrew Leslie, the UN military spokesman in Knin. President Clinton yesterday urged the Croats to be cautious and avoid spreading the conflict. Clinton said he had asked the Croats to "exercise real restraint because we are very concerned about a wider war" resulting from the thrust aimed at taking back the breakaway Krajina region from rebel Croatian Serbs. Clinton said the Croat attacks had "apparently relieved a lot of pressure" on the nearby Bihac enclave in Bosnia. An end to the Serb threat against the Bosnian Muslims in Bihac would mean the U.S. would not have to fulfill its promise to join NATO allies in air attacks to protect the enclave. Defense Secretary William Perry said the U.S. would not waver from its bedrock policy of keeping U.S. ground forces out of the former Yugoslavia. "Nothing happening there is going to cause us to go into this war," Perry said. Perry said the Croat offensive could "open a window of opportunity" for an overall settlement by putting pressure on the Serbs. © 1999, LEXIS®-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. ====== The Guardian (London) August 5, 1995 WE KNEW IT WAS COMING CROATIA's ferocious attack on Krajina is a desperately dangerous act, but hardly an unexpected one. For the past two years and more, President Tudjman has been building up Croatia's armed forces to a strength far beyond anything the country had when it broke away from the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. It now has a standing army larger than Britain's. It also possesses fighter planes, tanks and heavy weapons bought mostly from the former Warsaw Pact's stock. Most of the money for these arms has been raised from Croatia's well-heeled diaspora. But some of the weapons are "tribute" from Iran and other Middle East countries, which Croatia siphons off in return for allowing arms to be smuggled through to Bosnia. These arms have all been acquired in bare-faced violation of the UN arms embargo against all former Yugoslav republics, and with the UN Security Council turning a blind eye. Now Russia, Britain and France are loudly calling "foul" over Croatia's attack on Krajina. They believe that military intervention in Krajina carries the risk of drawing in the Serbian national forces and widening the conflict in former Yugoslavia. They also fear a new, unmanageable avalanche of refugees - with nowhere to go except Serb-Bosnian-held Bosnia. These things will undoubtedly have to be faced if the worst eventualities occur, but it is cynical and far too late to voice such fears. There had already been a dress-rehearsal in May, when Croatia swiftly took Western Slavonia, one of the smaller Serb enclaves. The UN peacekeeping force - almost 15,000 strong in Croatia - had stood by passively then, and will certainly not attempt to stop the Croatian army now. Mr Tudjman blames Unprofor for failing to keep its bargain to demilitarise the Serb enclaves, and considers himself free to re-establish Croatian sovereignty. The US and Germany have been far more muted in their response to President Tudjman's actions than the other three members of the "contact group". In view of their respective records throughout the Yugoslav crisis, this is hardly surprising. If they have not given public encouragement, they have certainly given their tacit agreement to the events which led to yesterday's offensive. They calculate that Mr Tudjman is taking some of the pressure off Bosnia, certainly where Bihac is concerned. And they do not discount the possibility that, far from widening the war, the battle for Krajina could trigger a decisive shake-up of the military and political constellation in former Yugoslavia, open the way to a redrawing of the map, and bring about the settlement that has so far eluded the endless diplomatic efforts. In a situation where the outside powers lack common purpose, and none of the parties directly involved in the conflict really say what they mean, or mean what they say, there is no way of predicting the outcome of the latest twists of the Balkan conflict - except that the outside powers are more divided, and more powerless than ever to negotiate a settlement; and that the human tragedy is becoming ever more deep. © 1999, LEXIS®-NEXIS®, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
