Between October 1991 and March 1992, through the Cazin region, between 12.000 and 15.000 expelled civilians arrived from the Croatian municipalities of Cetingrad, Krnjak, Rakovica, Vojnic, Topusko, and Gvozd. These civilians were taken care of and saved from certain destruction in the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

The major anniversary of the military-police operation “Storm” in Croatia brings up the August topic of who saved whom in the summer of 1995 – who preserved the population, biological survival, and created the conditions for the General Framework Agreement for Peace. On this issue, historians are still wisely and methodologically refraining from giving a final judgment. Croatian diplomacy is engaging international actors to advocate for Zagreb’s positions, while BiH generals are under pressure from indictments.

These are the days in which everything Croatia did for the then Republic of BiH is being used against official Sarajevo, and that on the basis of current political issues in Croat-Bosniak relations.

Figures are being thrown around, such as over a million refugees who passed through Croatia during the war, used as a number that cancels out the entire war effort of the Army of the Republic of BiH (ARBiH), which preserved strategic depth through its survival and bought time for all of the Croatian Army’s liberating operations.

In doing so, much that preceded “Storm” and the end of the war is being forgotten. Forgotten is the fact that the people of the Cazin region in 1991 saved nearly 15.000 Croats from Croatia and certain death, even though Zagreb was only about a hundred kilometers from the events.

Refugees in Krajina

After the Bloody Easter at Plitvice in March 1991, the initial war positions in Croatia began to form, with the opposing sides being, on one side, the Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs, later the Croatian National Guard (ZNG), and on the other, rebel Serbs supported by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA).

As part of the model for creating Serbian parastates in the occupied territories of Croatia, expulsions and killings began, putting the Croatian population of Kordun in an extremely difficult position in the fall of 1991, when routes to Zagreb were cut off.

During the attack on the village of Batnoga, in the municipality of Cetingrad in November 1991, seven civilians were killed, and in the following days, Serbian forces killed at least 11 more civilians in that village alone. A total of 2.431 houses and remaining property in the surrounding area were destroyed, damaged, or burned.

The six present-day municipalities of Cetingrad, Krnjak, Rakovica, Vojnic, Topusko, and Gvozd, along with the town of Slunj, fell one by one under attacks from the JNA and rebel Serbs. For many, the options were to stay and be killed or retreat toward the border with BiH to the municipalities of Cazin and Velika Kladusa. With the fall of Cetingrad in October 1991, one of the first and largest refugee waves from Croatia to BiH began.

Thus, in October, between 12.000 and 15.000 Croats arrived on trucks, tractors, and passenger cars in the areas of Velika Kladusa, Cazin, Bosanska Krupa, and Bihac, fleeing the rebel Serbs.

Considering that preparations for the upcoming aggression on BiH were in full swing in the Cazin region at that time, it was necessary to accommodate such a large number of people without compromising the defense preparations. Initially placed in collective reception centers, Croatian families were quickly taken in by Bosniak families in private homes.

Civil Protection organized the distribution of food, blankets, and basic necessities, with municipal Secretariats of Internal Affairs in Bihac, Cazin, and Velika Kladusa playing a key role. Since the Croatian population had no intention of staying in BiH, where war was becoming increasingly likely, it was necessary to enable their transfer to Croatia and third countries.

The role of the Secretariats of Internal Affairs was crucial in this process, as military-age Croatian men among the refugees were issued documents with Muslim names and surnames to ease their passage through areas predominantly inhabited by Bosnian Serbs.

The entire process was conducted in parallel and illegally, as at that time, the State Security Service had intensified activities in the region aimed at identifying “Muslim extremists” in the Cazin region. According to available, though incomplete, data, due to the large number of short-term refugee transits, at least 5.000 refugees found safety in Velika Kladusa, 7.000 in Cazin, and 1.200 in Bihac.

Between January and March, the evacuation of Croatian refugees from the Cazin region began in two directions: south toward Livno – Split and east toward Gradiska – Srbac. The then Prime Minister of SR BiH, Jure Pelivan, managed to send buses for evacuating women and children via Livno, which greatly facilitated the extraction of Croatian refugees.

Leaving their rescuers behind, the expelled Croats left their vehicles for safekeeping before heading toward Croatia, and many, in gratitude, gifted their cars to Bosniak families. When many returned in 1996 to retrieve their vehicles and thank the Bosniaks, almost everything that had been left was still preserved.

Friendship between the expelled families and the local hosts in the Krajina is still maintained today through various gatherings, and during the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance and Gratitude for the expelled residents of Cetingrad and other settlements in the Slunj area, a delegation from the Una-Sana Canton (USC) is regularly invited.

Zagreb’s Double Game

With the outbreak of the rebellion and betrayal by war criminal Fikret Abdic in the fall of 1993, the situation in the Cazin region, which had already become the Bihac pocket in 1992, significantly deteriorated. Bosniak-Croat relations in the Bihac pocket were preserved exceptionally during the aggression on the RBiH, although certain moves by Zagreb partially disrupted these relations.

Namely, during the Bosniak-Croat conflict in the Bihac pocket area, the Bihac Croatian Defence Council (HVO) did not follow the orders of Mate Boban, which is why a conflict with the forces of the Fifth Corps was not initiated.

On the other hand, an air bridge was established between Coralici and Zagreb, providing modest but significant military assistance from the international community for the defense of the RBiH, with the airlift having a variable frequency of arrivals.

Between 8.000 and 10.000 Croats who lived in the area that today forms the administrative USC accepted all the challenges of aggression and the encirclement of the Fifth Corps forces. However, with the replacement of Tomislav Deretar as the leading HVO officer in the Bihac region and the later arrival of General Vlado Santic, a different approach to the conflict began.

Official Zagreb saw an excellent opportunity in Fikret Abdic’s betrayal to profit in the process of dividing BiH, using unions as a model under which Abdic’s fiefdom would become a confederal part of Croatia.

In this regard, on October 21st, 1993, a joint declaration was signed between Mate Boban and Fikret Abdic, mediated by Radovan Karadzic.

As for Velika Kladusa, several villages on the municipal border with the Republic of Croatia were inhabited by Croats who, in 1993, formed the Fifth HVO Company, which had excellent cooperation with the Territorial Defense forces and later with the Fifth Corps forces until the betrayal in the winter of 1994.

During Operation “Spider” in the winter of 1994, HVO forces betrayed the Fifth Corps forces defending Velika Kladusa. In this operation, combined forces from the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina (SAO Krajina), the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), and Fikret Abdic’s paramilitaries, all under the supervision of the Serbian State Security Service and the Yugoslav Army, attempted to defeat the Fifth Corps of the ARBiH and reinstall Fikret Abdic in Velika Kladusa.

During the decisive battles, the HVO forces guarding the flanks of the Fifth Corps allowed the so-called People’s Defense of Western Bosnia forces and Serbian forces to pass through the Old Town into Velika Kladusa.

The coordination of this action between Belgrade and Zagreb is evidenced by the fact that after the fall of Velika Kladusa, a convoy of buses arrived from Croatia via the occupied territory of SAO Krajina, evacuating Croatian residents from villages around Velika Kladusa to Karlovac.

It must be emphasized that apart from this betrayal of the Fifth Corps forces, the HVO forces from the Bihac region were fully engaged in the defense of Bihac, and this is something that must be recognized. Bosniaks and Croats together endured 1.201 days of siege and encirclement by two VRS corps and three Serbian Krajina Army corps, and no one can deny that historical fact.

But it is also a fact that today, Zagreb deals only in numbers about refugees from BiH, with the wartime Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mate Granic citing a total number of one million people in transit.

However, the fact remains that Croatia bought part of the Arab world’s support for Bosniak refugees by allowing the arming of the ARBiH, which also armed the Croatian Army – meaning that, in the event of the fall of the Fifth Corps, the liberation of the occupied territory of the Republic of Croatia could not have been considered in the same way.

Taking all of the above into account, it is still not the right time for final judgments about “Operation Storm,” and that process should be left to historical methodology, with at least a 20-year pause. But it is certainly time for political representatives from BiH to take a position that also acknowledges the sacrifice made by Bosniaks from the Cazin region, who saved between 12.000 and 15.000 Croats from Croatia.

This is something that should be known by Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Tomo Medved, who was born in Velika Kladusa and who, as a general of the Croatian Army, should perhaps be the best person to convey the message of how the Bosniaks from the Cazin region faced the war together with their Croat neighbors, and Operation Storm, Klix.ba writes.