With the benefit of hindsight: Croatian operations in Bosnia in 1995

Croatian Army (HVO) and Bosnian Croat Army (HVO) operations in Bosnia in 1995 helped pave the way for the much-celebrated defeat of the Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK), the part of Croatia that had been occupied by Serbs since 1991. Other benefits of these operations, which continued until well after the RSK collapse, are less easy to discern.

The first major success of the HV and HVO in Bosnia in 1995 was the capture of Bosansko Grahovo,a town in Western Bosnia, in July. This put the Croats in a position to advance towards Knin, the capital of the RSK, from two directions, which they did the following month during “Operation Storm”, the action that led to the collapse of the RSK. The operation in July also saw the Croats capture Glamoc, a town to the West of Bosansko Grahovo. Though part of an operation that was directed at Knin, the capture of Glamoc also put the Croats in a strong position to advance towards Jajce, from which they had been expelled following the Serb takeover in 1992. Bosansko Grahovo and Glamoc were prior to the war majority Serb towns with negligible Croat populations, so were of no interest from an ethnic point of view, but Jajce had been 35% Croat and was an attractive target.

The Serbs were on the ropes after Operation Storm and the HV/HVO and the Bosnian Army (ARBiH) began advancing in September, the HV/HVO towards Jajce and the ARBIH south and east out of the Bihac pocket, which had been besieged by the Serbs before Operation Storm, and in parallel with the northward Croat advance towards Jajce.

The Croats captured Drvar, Sipovo and Jajce, while the ARBiH’s Bihac-based 5^th Corps captured Sanski Most, Bosanski Petrovac, Kljuc and Bosanska Krupa and its 7^th Corps took Donji Vakuf. The ultimate prize for both the HV/HVO and the ARBiH was Banja Luka, the biggest city in Serb-controlled Bosnia. Capturing Jajce put the Croats in a position of strength vis-a-vis the ARBiH and prevented a link up between the 5^th and 7^th Corps. Nevertheless, the 5^th Corps was still in a possible position to advance on Banja Luka and, following its successes earlier in September, advanced towards Mrkonjic Grad. Further north it was advancing on Bosanski Novi and Prijedor.

Keen to advance towards Banja Luka before the ARBiH, the HV on 18 September opened up a new front, attacking the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) across the river Una at three points along the Bosnia-Croatia border between Bosanski Novi (described Novi Grad on the above map) and Bosanska Dubica. The attack was a total failure, resulting in many HV deaths and a retreat back across the river.

The Croats made a final push towards Banja Luka in October, capturing Mrkonjic Grad, but under strong American pressure failed to advance any further.

The Croats captured six Bosnian towns during 1995. They also pushed the Serbs away from the Western Bosnian border with Croatia, which must have seemed like an advantage at the time, and gained control of Bosnian territory separating the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) heartland around the cities of Sarajevo, Zenica and Tuzla and the Bosniak-dominated Bihac pocket, which could be an advantage in any future negotiations with the Bosniaks. Eastern Slavonia, the part of Croatia bordering Serbia, was still under Serb control at this time, so capturing Serb territory in Bosnia may have helped to persuade the Serbs that they would have to give it up.

But Croat gains seem meagre with the benefit of hindsight. Five of the six towns they captured, Bosansko Grahovo, Glamoc, Drvar, Sipovo and Mrkonjic Grad, were sparsely populated and had previously had large Serb majorities. The latter two were returned to Serb control by the Dayton agreements.

And the other town they captured, Jajce, had actually been slightly more Muslim (39%) than Croat (35%) before the war. The Washington Agreement that ended the conflict between the Croats and the Muslims in 1994, establishing a Muslim-Croat Federation made up of cantons,  placed Jajce in a “mixed” canton in which Bosniaks were more numerous than the Croats rather than in a Croat-majority canton. Though the HVO capture of Jajce ensured that it was in reality under Croat control in the years after the war, facilitating the return of its Croat population, Bosniaks have also been returning and are now more numerous. The contours of a division between Croat and Bosniak spheres based on cantonal borders within the Muslim-Croat Federation may gradually be taking shape. The Bosnian newspaper Dnevni List earlier this year reported that the Federation’s Prime Minister Nermin Niksic highlighted the financial benefits of merging some of the cantons. Such a reorganisation would merge the “mixed” central Bosnian canton, which includes Jajce, with other Muslim-majority cantons, while the other “mixed” canton (centred on the city of Mostar and in which Croats are more numerous than Bosniaks) would merge with two Croat-majority cantons. So even the symbolically important capture of Jajce may not turn out to be a lasting victory from a Croat point of view.

Aside from the questionable territorial gains the Croats made in Bosnia in 1995, they also seem to have been motivated by the desire to curry favour with the West, which wanted to bring the Serbs to the negotiating table and to confine them to 49% of Bosnia’s territory, and to gain the status of a regional power. Both objectives were met to an extent, although the claim to have achieved the latter looks rather empty in retrospect, particularly in light of the demise of the planned confederation between Croatia and the Federation, which was still on the agenda before the Dayton agreement. To actually gain enough power to redraw the Bosnian map in their favour, the Croats would have had to capture Banja Luka, giving them strong leverage over both Serbs and Bosniaks. But they failed to do this and now see themselves as an oppressed minority in a Muslim-dominated Federation. Many must wonder whether it was worth engaging in military operations after Operation Storm at all.