Operation Storm was not planned to expel or displace the Serbs from Croatia. It is true that a large number of Serbs did leave Croatia during the Operation, however it was actually the Serb leadership that was responsible for at least 90% of the Serbian exodus. In the days prior to the Operation, the rebel Serb leaders had drawn up plans to evacuate the civilian Serb population in the event of an eventual Croatian offensive into the RSK.
The displacement/evacuation of Serb civilians was something the Serb leadership had PLANNED. Accordingly, the very hour the Croat offensive began, the Serb leadership initiated the evacuation of civilians from the main RSK towns:
Here is the actual transcript issued by RSK leaders on the 4th August 1995, to begin the evacuation. It states:
“Zbog novonastale situacije izazvane otvorenom opštom agresijom Republike Hrvatske na Republiku Srpska Krajina i nakon prvih početnih uspeha u odbrani došlo je ugrozavanja velikog dela teritorije sjeverne Dalmacije, i dela Like, zbog toga
ODLUČJEMO:
Da se pristupi planskoj evakuaciji sveg za borbu nesposobnog stanovništva iz opština: Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac i Gračac.
Evakuacija sprovoditi planski prema pripremljenim planovima koji izvode prema Kninu, i dalje preko Otrića prema Srbu i Lapcu.
Za evakuaciju zatražiti pomoć od komande UNPROFOR sektor “Jug” sa sjedištem u Kninu.
“Due to the new situation caused by the open general aggression of the Republic of Croatia on the Republic of Srpska Krajina and after the first initial successes of our defense, a large part of the territory of northern Dalmatia, and part of Lika, is now threatened, because of this
IT HAS BEEN DECIDED:
1. To proceed with the planned evacuation of all combatants and the non-combatant population from the municipalities of Knin, Benkovac, Obrovac and Gračac.
To carry out the evacuations as planned according to the prepared plans to be carried out in the direction of Knin and further through Otrić towards Srb and Lapac.
To seek assistance from the UNPROFOR sector “South” command, based in Knin, with the evacuation.
Have we caught on to what happened yet? The Serb population was evacuated by its own criminal government, often by force. There were reports of Serb soldiers beating and even murdering those who refused to evacuate. Serb refugee columns were even ploughed by their own army’s tanks because they were that desperate to escape.
If there was an ethnic cleansing, then the Serbs themselves are the guilty party. Others fled because they feared Croat retaliation for the crimes committed against Croat civilians in 1991, while others (in their delusion) manifested that they simply never wanted to live in an independent Croatia, alongside Croats, ever again, and left of their own volition. Again, none of these factors indicate a Croat-lead ethnic cleansing effort.
As I said in my previous answer (linked above) individual war crimes were committed by Croat forces after the Operation (the killing of hundreds of elderly and infirm civilians, burning and looting of property etc), however this not consistent with ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing follows a planned, Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) dictated by the political and military elite of a nation/faction. This link can not be established on the Croat side during Operation Storm, as Croatia (its political and military elite) had no desire before, during or after the offensive to ethnically cleanse Serbs.
Matter of fact, the Croats set aside and created many provisions for the Serbs to stay in their homes, even before the Operation, Croatia (and the UN) offered the Krajina Serbs many opportunities for a peaceful solution to ending the conflict, even backing the very generous Z-4 Plan.
Since 1998, Croatia has stood by the Serbs’ right of return to Croatia and approximately half of those that left Croatia in 1995 have returned to Croatia. How many ethnic cleansing campaigns are known to:
a) Have encouraged and set aside provisions for the civilian population to stay, not leave?
b) Had offered a peaceful compromise to ending the conflict ahead of time to prevent incidents like Operation Storm and its aftermath happening in the first place?
c) Allowed those it apparently “ethnically cleansed” to return just three years later?
We can easily contrast this with Serb ambitions and planning that were clear acts of ethnic cleansing. Unlike Croatia, the Serbs necessitated the use of ethnic cleansing (and eventually genocide, in the case of Bosnia) to create their “ethnically pure” Serb republics.
The Serbs made no guarantees for the non-Serb populations to stay, nor did they offer any peaceful compromise to stop further violence and they certainly did not guarantee the literally millions of displaced/expelled non-Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo any right to return to their homes.
Indeed, the ICTY concluded in the trial of the main RSK leader, Milan Martić that:
Milan Martić intended to forcibly displace the Croat and other non-Serb population from the SAO Krajina and the RSK, and he actively participated in the furtherance of the common purpose of the joint criminal enterprise (JCE). He actively worked together with the other JCE participants to fulfil the objective of a united Serb state, something which he expressed publicly on several occasions between 1991 and 1995.
He was aware that the non-Serb population was being driven out as a result of the coercive atmosphere in the SAO Krajina and the RSK but he deliberately refrained from intervening against perpetrators who committed crimes against the non-Serb population.[1]
In contrast, both the ICTY 2012 Appeals Chamber retrial of Gotovina et al and the 2014 ruling of the ICJ in the Croatia v. Serbia Genocide trial, concluded that there was no ethnic cleansing, no JCE and no genocide planned or committed against the Serb population during and after Operation Storm.
References
[1] http://www.icty.org/x/cases/martic/cis/en/cis_martic_en.pdf
