storm - Hrvatski memorijalno-dokumentacijski centar Domovinskog ...

impressive magnitude and complexity, and the capacity of executing rapid breakthroughs
deep behind the enemy’s defences. Of course, comments the analysis, doctrine in itself
did not produce victory but had to be faithfully executed on the battlefi eld. However,
since the Croatian Army was not immediately or everywhere successful in its planned
attacks, its success, according to the analysis, lay in achieving breakthroughs in key
sectors, enhanced by the disruption of the SVK command and control system, and
all that undermined the SVK’s defensive system as a whole and caused its collapse. As
a precondition for the successful completion of Storm, and its “fi rst and most visible
critical individual action”, the analysis mentions the HV’s long-term advance up the
Dinara Mountains and the Livno Valley, that gave it excellent jump-off positions for a
quick and direct strike at Knin, bypassing the main SVK defences south of the town. Th e
taking of Bosansko Grahovo, continues the analysis, eff ectively sealed Knin’s fate even
before Storm got off the ground (Balkan Battlegrounds, Chapter 89, pp. 374-375). Th e
loss of Bosansko Grahovo and the HV attack on Knin from that direction was a major
surprise for the SVK leadership, as shown by their “Evaluation of threat, and protection
and rescue options” prepared in Knin in April 1995. Th at is, in listing the possible lines
of HV action towards Knin it mentions Zadar, Split (Muć), Šibenik and Sinj as jumpoff
points, while the leaders of the rebel Serbs did not even think of a possible attack by
Croatian forces from Mount Dinara (see Appendix 3, document 10).
Similarly, according to the CIA analysis, the battlefi eld successes of the HV and the
ARBiH were facilitated by the SVK structural weaknesses - which, of course, the HV
staff had calculated on exploiting. Th e SVK’s biggest problem was not that its troops were
unwilling or unprepared to fi ght but that there were not enough of them - a problem
recognized when General Mrkšić was brought in to reallocate defensive formations and
establish a bigger and better mobile reserve force. Th e “Krajina Serbs had fought well”,
notes the analysis, “in the attack in another country, during the Bihać battles, and during
Storm many SVK formations were able to hold their ground against frontal attacks by
stronger HV forces. However, the SVK General Staff and its corps commanders did not
have enough combat formations to maintain the depth and mobility needed to contain
an HV penetration. Th us, when the HV struck through SVK static defences at Knin, the
SVK 7 th Corps had no units in reserve to resist and prevent its capture. Th e only unit left
uncommitted had been cobbled together from bits and pieces stripped out of the corps’
line brigades. Lack of reserves to cushion a fl ank attack forced the evacuation of the welldefended
area south of Karlovac, and Petrinja’s stout defences yielded when the reserves
it counted on were committed elsewhere (Balkan Battlegrounds, Chapter 89, p. 375).
Of course, the reasons underlying the military collapse of the so-called RSK were also
discussed in the Serbian press. In one of the analyses of the causes leading to SVK’s defeat,
two unnamed Yugoslav Army generals agreed that there were many shortcomings, since
the very beginning, in the organization of the defence of the so-called RSK and in the
structure of its army. Th us, they pointed out the following:
- lack of “discipline, courage and brains”, and the fact that the morale of the army “was
destroyed by the awareness that some people were always getting rich while others
languish in the trenches... and only the poor are fi ghting”;
18