storm - Hrvatski memorijalno-dokumentacijski centar Domovinskog ...

According to Vasiljković, the pessimistic position of one of the commanders and the
fact that he could not set off on his own with only 60 trained men and lead them into
sure death led him to leave Knin. 4 In the interview it was also mentioned that Captain
Dragan had spent more than four years - from 4 April 1991 to 31 July 1995 - in the socalled-RSK,
that he had, aft er arriving in Knin in 1991 - in spite of antagonism of Milan
Babić, who wanted to turn the Krajina “into his own empire” - put in order the exercise
range at Golubić near Knin, and trained 1200 troops in the fi rst three months; in setting
up the training centre he was assisted by a fellow soldier from a British paratrooper
regiment called Marko (Dijana Dimitrovska, “Politika oborila Krajinu”/Politics Brought
Down Krajina/; Večernje novosti; 29 August 1995).
Th e reasons underlying the fall of the so-called RSK, but also the role of the Yugoslav
Army and Yugoslavia in the Serbian rebellion in Croatia, and the relation of the Krajina
leadership with Belgrade, are also discussed in Miroslav Lazanski’s article “Strategija
‘lako ćemo’” (No Problem Strategy). In Lazanski’s estimate, “Eastern Slavonija and Baranja
cannot be defended without the protection of Yugoslavia, just as it was clear, already
back in 1991, that Krajina could not hold its ground without Yugoslavia”. Th e reporter
stressed that the “Croatian Army of 1995 was not the army of 1991” and that “Zagreb
had taken advantage of the four years of RSK’s existence in order to create a professional
army 75,000 strong organized in eight brigades and several self-contained battalions, and
an additional component of 140,000 Home Guardsmen”. Moreover, continued Lazanski,
“Zagreb has a military budget of 5.6 billion US dollars as compared to the total military
budget of the RSK, Republika Srpska and the SRJ which does not exceed 1.3 billion
dollars” (Strategija ‘lako ćemo’”/ No Problem Strategy; Nin; 2328, 11 August 1995, 16-
17).
In consideration of the foregoing, the following sentence from the magazine Nin can
serve as a general conclusion of the analyses regarding SVK’s defeat in Operation Storm
published in the Serbian press: War is won by fi rst-class organization, discipline and
governance, and the Croats have achieved all that during these four years (“Hrvatska neće
napustiti Baranju i Istočnu Slavoniju/Croatia Will Not Abandon Baranja and Eastern
Slavonija/; Nin; 2329, 18 August 1995).
Th e absence of powerful support by the Army of Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav
Army, that is, of their attack on the Republic of Croatia aft er the start of Storm, has
also been debated at length. Although some people see in that fact the confi rmation
of the alleged Tuđman-Milošević agreement on the resettlement of the population, the
conclusion that the military forces of Republika Srpska and SR of Yugoslavia were not at
the moment capable of a major commitment in terms of an attack against the Republic
of Croatia seems to be more likely. Th us, according to the CIA analysis of Storm, the SVK
4 As opposed to his statement, the daily report of the «Security department of the GŠ SVK» of 3 August 1995
states that «Captain Dragan demonstratively left the Krajina because the SVK commander did not agree
with his request to be appointed commander of the 92nd motorized brigade of the SVK 7th Corps». (See
Appendix 3, document 21).
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