On this date, I left my home...

[Srbo]

Croat cleansing of Krajina Serbs
By Carl Savich


August 4 marks the anniversary of the Croat attack on the Serbian majority region of Krajina in 1995 that resulted in the expulsion of 200,000 to 300,000 Krajina Serbs. This was the largest population displacement during the Yugoslav breakup in the 1990s. It was the largest expulsion in Europe since World War II.
Was it the largest act of "ethnic cleansing" since the Holocaust?

In 1997, the names of 1,542 Krajina Serbs killed in the assault were recorded. Over 73% of the houses of Krajina Serbs were destroyed.
Was the Krajina expulsion an act of genocide not seen in Europe since World War II?

The US and Western media referred to it as an "exodus" and an assault to "oust" Serbian rebels, "Croatian Serbs", the oxymoron propaganda term coined by the US State Department. It has been covered-up and deleted from the mainstream history of the Balkan conflicts because the victims were Serbs and because a majority population was destroyed and denied self-determination.

The Bill Clinton Administration, along with the Pentagon, the US State Department, the CIA, DIA, NATO, Germany, and Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), were all involved in the planning and organization of the attack.

It is important to remember this largest act of population displacement and "ethnic cleansing" in Europe since the Holocaust because it shows that there were victims on all sides.

It also shows the hypocrisy and duplicity of the US policy in dealing with the Serb plight in the Balkans.

In Kosovo, the US policy was to support the local majority and grant self-determination to a minority. In Krajina, conversely, the US policy was to deny democracy and prevent self-determination.

Indeed, in Krajina, the US policy resulted in the total elimination and displacement of the local majority population, which under the Genocide Convention, was an act of genocide. Krajina demonstrates that all sides to the Balkans conflicts were victims.

Fleeing Croatian Terror, Serbs driven out of Krajina in August, 1995:



Children fleeing Croat assault:



Serbian refugees with children among them.:




******

Sorry about this, but I just have to share my pain somewhere, and where else than here, with my closest friends ?

I`ve said it before, I`ll say it again : There is no winners in any war...

[JohnDalglish]

Hi,

Thankee, Srbo, and YOU certainly don't have to apologise about anything.

I'm glad you brought it to everyone's attention - been far too much of 'sweeping under the carpet' about it IMO.

Long days and pleasant nights

[Spideyman]

Srbo, thank you for posting and sharing this reminder for us all. I consider it an honor to call you a friend. Know you will kept in prayers tonight. As will all those who fled and died on that day.

[sknut70]

Its so important for you to remember, pass your memories on to others, and remind those who were there.

[Lily Sawyer]

Srbo, this opened up floodgates for me.

I have a friend who is originally from Sarajevo.
She and I became close when we were both living in D.C. the year that the sh*t hit the fan in Yugoslavia. I watched helplessly as she sank lower and lower into an emotional eddy of concern, and later terror, for her family as the republics decided to secede from the union. When Bosnisa declared its independence, she made the decision to go back so that she could help her family...and our lives changed forever.

I spent hundreds of dollars I didn't have trying to help her get her family out. I was on a first-name basis with visa officers at the Dutch, French, Belgian, Australian, and British embassies in Belgrade, and couldn't do a damned thing for her. She was the one who taught me how to say "may I please speak to Jelena?" in Serbo-Croatian, so that that someone could put her on the phone...and I won't ever forget hearing air raid sirens and gunfire in the background one time when she and I were speaking while she was still in Sarajevo - and the phone line went dead.

She's now in Toronto, and has tried to put her life back together...but she will never be the same, and I hear it in her voice. I still listen for the old feistiness I once knew, but I think that may have died when her relatives did.

[Mr Nobody]

The whole situation was, I think, a lesson in being careful what you wish for. The West wanted the downfall of Communism. Some places changed pretty quietly. Others, less so - i.e. Romania, though I recently heard someone say it had been a 'peaceful' revolution. All those bullet-holes could have fooled me, I have to say.
Then there was the foreshadowing of ME 'regime change' in the Balkans. Whatever tensions had been fizzing under the surface there sure came out.
I was told, but don't know for sure, that initially the Serbs wanted a bit of payback against the Croats (and others) for siding with the Nazis, several acts of betrayal, stealing land...you know, the sort of stuff that gets remembered for generations.
Of course, two wrongs don't make a right and all most people remember about the whole mess runs along the lines of 'Milosevic was a Serb, so Serbs = Bad'. There were way more shades of grey than that, as there usually is, but from an outside view it was chaos. Everyone thought they should be doing something, but no one had a clue as to what, because no one really knew what the hell was going on.
In the end, people needed help and got bureaucracy and seven shades of BS instead. Not the UN's finest hour - or NATOs.

Zip forward a few years and what do we see in Iraq? Outwardly, the West gets what it thought it wanted. On closer inspection, it's a mess we can't sort out, with the end result that we might end up with a situation ten times worse than we (and they) had before.

[Sundrop]

Srbo, Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
My friend, you don't ever need to apologize for haring the events of your life with me.
I believe it's important to keep telling everyone in hopes that the same mistakes might not be repeated.
I wish I could just give you a huge hug.

[CorbinKale]

I was stationed in the 501st ABN in Alaska during this. All of the Battalion's NCOs got called into a meeting to get a pre-deployment briefing for Yugoslavia. I will not say who the briefer was, or what his nationality was, but the briefing he gave was seriously biased. I was sick to my stomach that we were getting thrust into such a 1000 year old grudge-match nightmare. I still thank God that we didn't deploy. Not just because we had no clear mission, either. I had serious reservations about being ordered to war by a draft dodger.

[michal]

Thanks for sharing this Srbo, and you're right - among friends you can say anything you want, and you really never need to apologize.

What I appreciate most about your post, as I do in many other occasions we've crossed each others' paths on this cyberspace realm, is the fact that you come out with such a true and non-bitter conclusion. You are of course, completely right. War has no winners, only survivors.

Best wishes.

[Luli]

Thank you for posting this, I'm sure we can all learn something from your experience! It seems humanity has a very short memory when it comes to war.