They had staged several dry runs in the weeks prior to Storm.
As one of the Serbian generals said, "Knin fell in Belgrade". The Serbs of Croatia were sold out by their brothers in Belgrade.....we told them that would happen. They didn't listen.
The Croatian Army prevented the Bihac pocket from turning into another horrific massacre like Srebrenica and Gorazde.
Slovenia and Croatia placed captured Serbs on buses and sent them packing back to Belgrade. The refugee exodus followed mainly Highway 1 that ran through most of eastern Croatia and Slavenski Brod to Belgrade. Some rocks may have been thrown, but the journey of Serb refugees was largely peaceful.
The Serb offensive was reversed by the Croatian Army's gain on the ground in Bosnia, not our 72 hours of bombing Serb infrastructure at 15,000 feet. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright realized what was happening, she ordered the Croatian advance halted.
The Croatians withdrew from the Bosnian Anvil area so that Bosnia would be left roughly evenly divided with the remaining Serb population. The State Department has cleansed this history.
Much Serb resentment grew out of the obstacles to Serbs wanting to reclaim their homes. Passport requirements were tightened, unemployment hovered at 20%, and housing was in short supply as displaced Croatians moved into former homes of Serbs.
The EU, pushed by Jacques Chirac, put heavy pressure on the new Croatian government to turn over its military leaders for trial in The Hague since Croatia wanted to join the economic union.
Apart from Serb President Slobodan Milosevic, the major war criminals and instigators of many of the massacres, Prime Minister Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, have never been apprehended or tried.
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