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I feel sorry for professor Gibbs's students, who must be subjected to learning non-factual history based on poorly researched materials or some hidden agenda (propaganda?). Operation Storm was a military operation by an internationally recognized democratic country to liberate territories occupied by terrorists. The fact the the Serb population chose to leave was based on their general knowledge of all the atrocities that Serbs committed within those occupied territories.


Reply to Mr. Tom Kuzmanovic, legal counsel to General Mladen Markac

I thank Mr. Kuzmanovic for his long comment, defending the ICTY's decision to reverse his client's earlier conviction.
I have no opinion as to whether his client is guilty or not, in a legal sense, as I am not a legal expert. However, Kuzmanovic's comment implies that the ICTY has gone much further than establishing guilt or innocence of individuals, and is instead writing definitive history. If this in fact is what the ICTY judges claim, then they are obviously overreaching, as they have no qualifications to write history. Kuzmanovic also suggests that the ICTY ruling has fully settled historical issues once and for all, as if court decisions are infallible – a doctrine of Judicial Infallibility, it would seem. Let us just say this is a quaint idea.
The specific evidence Kuzmanovic presents against the idea that ethnic cleansing took place in the Krajina is quite thin. He relies heavily on the testimony of the US ambassador to Croatia at the time, Peter Galbraith, who denied that ethnic cleansing had occurred. I have no idea how credible Galbraith's testimony is in a court of law. As a historian, I would say that Galbraith is clearly not credible, given his longstanding identification with the Franjo Tudjman regime, which orchestrated the attack on Krajina; and the fact that Galbraith had played a key role in assisting the Croatian military buildup, which laid the groundwork for the attack. In addition, he was the official representative of the US government, which served as Croatia's main foreign supporter at the time. In short, Galbraith had some complicity in Operation Storm and, to some extent, in the atrocities that resulted. His claim that ethnic cleansing did not occur is self-interested and therefore non-credible.
And Ambassador Galbraith's specific claims are self-contradictory, which further calls into question his credibility as a source of information on this topic. Galbraith provides an excellent example of someone who simultaneously admits and denies that ethnic cleansing occurred. At the Milosevic trial for example, Galbraith stated: "the [Serb] population had left before the Croatians arrived, probably rightly fearing what the Croatians might do..." (ICTY, June 25, 2003, p. 23113).
In other words, the Serbs left Krajina in a climate of intimidation and fear (since they were "rightly fearing what the Croatians might do"); the intimidation was then followed by what Galbraith called – with some understatement – "human right violations" by the Croatian military (ICTY, p. 23110). One assumes that Galbraith was referring to the mass killing of hundreds of Serb civilians that even Hoare concedes took place.
To put Galbraith's testimony into plain English: The Serbs left Krajina because the feared for their lives, almost certainly due to past acts of intimidation (the Serbs' fear did not, after all, come out of thin air). And this fear was later justified by the vicious way the Croatian troops conducted themselves, once they arrived. These points are all strongly implied in Galbraith's own testimony. Such a state of affairs does not suggest a voluntary exit – it is ethnic cleansing.
Other evidence presented against ethnic cleansing – that a Serb officer asked Croatians to let the civilians leave Krajina, and that the Serb exit had been planned in advance – seems very weak, given the extensive atrocities against the Serbs that actually occurred, and the likelihood that such atrocities had been anticipated long in advance. Kuzmanovic's claim that the Croat artillery bombardment killed no civilians is contradicted by the record of historical evidence, notably the memoirs of Carl Bildt, who was EU mediator for the Balkans.
Overall, there seems to be an assumption in Kuzmanovic's comment that the flight of 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina in a short period of time was a purely voluntary act; and that the exit coincided with mass killings and other outrages was a mere coincidence.
Perhaps this line of reasoning was persuasive to the ICTY judges (or at least those in the appeal phase of the proceedings). But it is not persuasive as historical analysis.

David Gibbs

Professor of Truth in reply to dngibbs

My dear Professor, I'll state two points and a question for you.

1.) If I have expelled & killed by military means a group of people from a territory I occupied or even supported such action as a civilian, I too would be running when that same group of people parked 50,000 well tarined & armed troops outside my occupation zone. No assistance of artillery fire would be needed.

2.) A lesson for any country out there that may be invaded by US Military, here's what to do....run, pack up all your belongings and run. Make sure you create a convoy of about 200,000 plus people and that's it. What will happen then is ALL the American Generals including the President will be rounded up by a tribunal setup by the UN and they'll throw the book at them for 'ethnic cleansing', that should work.....or will it?

As a matter of interest, how many European countries had their political leaders hauled to trials for the 'ethnic cleansing' of 12 million & death of about 500,000 ethnic Germans from 1944-1950?
How many does your history books state?


The atrocity that accompanied the Croatian government's 1995 Krajina offensive, "Operation Storm," has become a taboo subject among Western intellectuals. But if one reads carefully, it is clear that ethnic cleansing did indeed occur.

Consider the following self-contradictory sentence, from Adrian Hastings of the Bosnian Institute in London, in a widely read polemic published in Bosnia Report (July-October, 2001):

[The Krajina Serbs] were not themselves 'violently expelled'; they fled
en masse, many of them before the Croats even attacked, in probably
justified fear of what would happen to them if they did not...

Hastings comes very close to conceding that the Serbs were in fact violently expelled from the Krajina (they fled "in probably justified fear of what would happen to them if they did not"), but he buries this concession in a subordinate clause, in the middle of his convoluted sentence; while the rest of the sentence contradicts the subordinate clause and argues that the Serbs were not violently expelled.

Marko Attila Hoare, who also worked with the Bosnian Institute, presents an extended celebration of Operation Storm, but buried within his article are key concessions to reality, such as the following:

Operation Storm and its aftermath killed roughly between 700 and 1,200 Serb

This sentence, which was taken from Hoare's blog site (March 14, 2008), strongly suggests systematic criminality by the Croatian forces.

Elsewhere in his article, Hoare also acknowledges that the Croats committed "large scale war crimes" in the Krajina. One might logically conclude that the fleeing Serbs had excellent reasons to fear violence – a situation that defines ethnic cleansing. Yet Hoare refuses to admit that ethnic cleansing took place.

In her Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Problem from Hell (p. 438), Samantha Power comes very close to conceding that the Krajina Serbs were ethnically cleansed:

[In August 1995, Croatia] launched an offensive aimed at reconquering lost
territory and expelling members of its Serb minority.

Power admits that the Serbs were expelled, and did not leave voluntarily – which is once again a situation that defines ethnic cleansing. But her discussion of the entire subject is confined to five words, which are tagged on at the end of a sentence. So far as I can tell, the above extract is the only place in Power's lengthy book that makes any mention of the Krajina expulsions, or the mass atrocities that accompanied the expulsions.

It is thus clear that even defenders of Operation Storm present evidence that this was a very dirty operation indeed. Note that I am not qualified to assess recent decisions by the Hague tribunal to reverse their previous convictions of Croat commanders, as this matter falls outside my area of competency.

As a professional historian, however, I will say that the historical record is clear: The Krajina Serbs were ethnically cleansed. And as the above quotations suggest, everyone knows this is true.

David Gibbs
Tucson, USA

guest-laeaeoi in reply to dngibbs

Mr. Gibbs, your "history" doesn't equate to the facts. The "historical record" you cite is flimsy indeed. I dealt with the facts as one of the trial lawyers defending General Markac in this case. The facts are that the Serbian leadership, on the first night after Operation Storm, demanded of General Forand, the UN commander in Knin, give them fuel and vehicles to transport 32,000 troops/people out of the Krajina before the Croatian military was even in Knin. Forand told them it was out of the question. They had in place a planned and practiced evacuation plan. They issued an evacuation order. The wire intercepts were evidence of Milosevic's plan to move the population of Krajina into Kosovo. The premise of the case from the beginning was that there was a plan hatched by the Croatian government to "ethnically cleanse" the Serbian population from this part of Croatia by using indiscriminate artillery to scare them away. The theory was a factual and evidentiary failure. Not only was there zero evidence of a civilian (or military) casualty caused by artillery, there was overwhelming evidence of a pre-planned, organized evacuation, including orders for such in the trial record. The Serbian leadership of their parastate in Croatia did not want to live in Croatia. That's why they expelled thousands of Croats from 1991-1995 in this area of Croatia to begin with in an attempt to link up Serbia proper with the Croatian coast, and creating a corridor through northern Bosnia, which lead to such atrocities as Prijedor, Manjaca, and genocide in Srebrenica as judicially decided by the ICTY. You can talk about "history" all you want, but it has to be based on facts, not hearsay. It's interesting to me that as a historian you ignore the Serbian Helsinki Committee's own report in 2006 (p.379)which states, when talking about Kosovo that "it is still uncertain how the Government in Belgrade will react to the international recognition of Kosovo and whether it will apply the Krajina model on Kosovo Serbs, organizing or inciting them to leave their homes." There are so many other evidentiary facts established at trial to controvert your claims that it would take a book to list them. You can talk about blogs and Samantha Power all you want, but the facts and the evidence at the trial show a much different picture. Not one person that testified at trial who fled claimed at trial that they left due to artillery fire. There was testimony UNDER OATH by former US Ambassador Peter Galbraith, a prosecution witness, that Operation Storm was NOT ethnic cleansing. Serbian Gen. Cedo Bulat in the northern part of Operation Storm's area of operation surrendered to Croatian Gen. Stipetic and asked that his forces and any civilian population that wanted to leave BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE CROATIA. I find your revisionism is disturbing and your "proof" flimsy at best. Objection sustained. Tom Kuzmanovic, Milwaukee, WI USA, co-trial and appellate counsel for General Mladen Markac before the ICTY.

Concerned399 in reply to dngibbs

Yes, David Gibbs, the Serbs cleansed themselves from Krajina, no doubt about it. Just because you work as a historian does not mean that you do not place your subjective views into it. What makes Operation Storm a "very dirty" operation as you put it? The fact that there were no civilian casualties or the fact that it liberated occupied territory? It would seem you have forgotten that Krajina was ethnically cleansed of Croats and non-Serb prior to Operation Storm and I don't see you talking about that fact at all. It would seem that you do not think it right that those people should have been allowed to return to their homes.


"In the larger picture of the Balkan wars there is no doubt that the Serbs were more often perpetrators of ethnic cleansing, rather than victims. But in Krajina at least, the record is clear that the Serb population was ethnically cleansed. Let us not whitewash this fact.

David Gibbs
Professor of history"
It would seem that both the Economist and David Gibbs are stuck in history prior to 16 November 2012 - when ICTY Appeal Chamber acquitted the two Croatian Generals, which decision also confirmed that THERE WAS NO FORCIBLE DEPORTATION (ETHNIC CLEANSING) of Serbs in Croatian Operation Storm, to which time Gibbs' letter refers. No wonder the history has always been on shaky grounds when we have such historians who omit findings of international court on the matter they speak of.


Nobody denies cleansing of Germans in Vojvodina nor non-Serbs in Bosnia, nor killing of Japanese civillians. Nor bombing of German civillians in Dresden, for that matter. The original article was specifically about 250,000 Serbs who used to live in Croatia and the letter clearly stated that ' ...Serbs were more often perpetrators...'.

The point is that no ethnic cleansing is justified and everyone should be judged by the same standard.

P.S. Let's not forget the cleansing of Serbs in Croatia during WWII


xrocker in reply to NenoM

I believe that putting the members of other ethnic group onto buses and demanding they pay their way out constitutes ethnic cleansing, while following the orders of your own leaders does not quite qualify..........obviously the problem remains the selective memory...

Professor of Truth

When the 'Yugolsavs' of German (Donau Schwaben) origin chose to back the invading German army, they decided to make a stance against the country they called home for hundreds of years. When that gamble failed then the Partisans forcefully expelled and even executed without trial vast numbers of these people of German origin.
Everybody believed this was the right thing to do, especially in Serbia where they just about ethincally cleansed their region totally of these 'traitors'.
70 years on and even though what happened in Operation Storm wasn't the same as the acts of expelling the Germans carried out in WWII, Serbs would like to think that they should be immune to a similar type of fate. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander".


It does not fail to surprise me when a 'professor of history' makes a statement such as the one made by David Gibbs. Is the title added to give weight to his statement? If so, how come he did not bother to check various sources including the official calls to serbian population by their own leaders for leaving Krajina before the advancing croatian army? It may give him a more balanced view of the tragic chain of events.


Let's not forget what Serbs were doing for 4 years prior to, especially in and around the areas they occupied in Croatia that was free. There's not such entity or ever was named "Krajina", either, but "Vojna Krajina" that existed for a time in Austr-Hungarian times. Those same Serbs that left with orders from their Serb superirors there, and from Serboslavia were celebrating, parades, blessed by ethnic cleansing supporting Serb church leaders for cleansing Croats and other Non-Serbs from their homes, destroying their homes, shelling other cities. Like a Taliban base right in Europe, like in Afghanistan. Ask the "professor" where all the Germans are that lived in Vojvodina, where are the Croats and other Non-Serbs that lived there too, or in republika srpska, the ethnically cleansed half of Bosnia? http://croatian-history101.blogspot.ca/

Professor of Truth

In response to the letter from David Gibbs "Professor of history".
Americans killed 246,000+ Japanese civilians with two bombs in order to bring an end to the 2nd World War. No American stood trial for this attrocity....Let's not whitewash this fact.

ResMar in reply to Professor of Truth

I've never truly understood arguments against the atomic bombs, just as I never truly understood arguments against nuclear energy.

Yes, 246,000 people died. But you're ignoring the fact that the losses in life would have been much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much (have I emphasized how much yet?), much worse on both sides had we invaded in a conventional manner.

Professor of Truth in reply to ResMar

That was my point, the "The Professor" points out how in the Croatian action of 'liberation' made 200,000 Croat Serbs as refugees & sadly about 1000-1500 civilians killed. It would've been better that no civilian had to die but in any case it did happen.
Why is it that Croats can't say "the fact that the losses in life would have been much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse on both sides had Croatian troops taken months to clean out occupied territory rather than the 4 days that it did?
It's OK for Americans to justify civilian deaths, no matter what the number but not for anybody else....double standards don't you think?

Professor of Truth in reply to ResMar

That's my point, I agree with your point regarding what the bomb prevented. What I'm highlighting is when the Croatian Army cleared its own territory of combatants and in result had collatoral domage & sadly some war crimes committed against civilans (1000 or so) then the Internation community wanted to persecute the President & all the Military hierarchy for it, rather than concertating on the individuals that commited the crime.
When the US does it, it's accepted that individual soldiers are court martialed. How many US Generals were on trial for any wars they commnded in the last 70 years?
Double standards is what I'm highlighting here.

BTW Your history lesson is inacurate. Germany has already surrended when the bombs were dropped on Japan. By this stage the Russian & British war effort had stopped. It was only the Americans that were fighting on Japanese soil at this stage.
So no Russian or British lives were needed to be saved.

ResMar in reply to Professor of Truth

When you debate someone else's facts at least check to make sure what you're saying is correct.

An assault on mainland Japan would have been a combined effort. Churchill himself once said: "I am surprised that very worthy people—but people who in most cases had no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves—should adopt a position that rather than throw this bomb we should have sacrificed a million American and a quarter of a million British lives…".

As for the Russians, Stalin was already in the process of invading Manchuria and had all but reconstituted it by the time the bombs were dropped. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria


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