01MAY1995 06:00 – Driving on the highway from Zagreb to Belgrade, suddenly we were right on the middle of a Croatian attack to Sector West of the Krajina. “Operation Flash” had just started and we were on the wrong place, at the wrong time!
The Krajina were Serb populated territories inside Croatia. There were Several Sectors of Krajina (Sector South, Sector North, Sector West and Sector East) being Sector West the smallest one, were nothing “major” really happened during the Serb/Croatian conflict. There was an UNPROFOR saying: “Sector West is rest”. Although Sector West was a small territory of about 558 square kilometers, without any industrial or agricultural value to Croatia, it had a great importance because it was right in the middle of Croatian’s northern most important highway; it has a railway connecting Zagreb to the far East of the Croatian territory; it is on the oil and gas extraction basin, with a pipeline across it; and, politically speaking, it’s a rogue region within Croatia’s territory – with its own laws, taxes, government, etc. The Government of Croatia had no control or saying about the governance of an up most important region of its territory, central to Croatia’s northern lines of communications. That’s was the strategic value and the reason for Operation Flash – to restore the Croatian sovereignty and gain full control of the lines of communication.
The Serbians inside the pocket tried to fightback but they were outnumbered and under equipped for that fight. They immediately took hostage about 100 UN CIVPOL police officers, and other UN staff members that were operating inside Sector West as peacekeepers, and used them as Human Shields.
Driving like maniacs in an empty highway, we were completely helpless while the Serb mortars started to retaliate the Croatian attack, hitting positions dangerously close to the highway tarmac. We barely managed to make a “U” turn, and head back to Zagreb standing on the vehicle’s accelerator.
The Croat’s first advance failed to overtake the Sector “in one single flash movement” and the other Krajina Sectors reacted strongly to the Croatian audacious operation. The Serbs in Sector North fired seven missiles (Orkan) towards Zagreb, hitting the Croatian Capital in the Airport (Pleso) and the central of Town. There were “Air Raid” sirens alarming the population to take cover and it looked like a scene from the Second World War. The Orkan missile attach to Zagreb had caused seven deaths and 205 wounded.
In Bosnia the situation escalated from “tense but calm”, to “very dangerous”, due to the outbreak of combats between Bosniaks and Serbs in several locations of the separation line.
On the 3rd of May 1995, it was all over. The Serbs had lost their possession of Sector West and
Operation Flash was the first one of a series of military operations, planned to finish definitively the “Croatian War of Independence”. There was no more Serbian authority in Sector West. In fact, that reference completely disappeared from all maps; there was no more Krajina in that zone, only Croatia.
During the three days of combat, the Croatian forces suffered 42 fatal casualties and 162 wounded. The Serbs suffered 283 fatal casualties, 1.200 wounded and over 14.000 displaced people, which became refugees in the Serbian territories of Bosnia, giving a humanitarian dimension to the problem.
One month after Operation Flash was finished, there were only 1.500 Serbs living in that region. A ridiculous number when compared with the several dozens of thousands that lived there before. The UN was now concerned with indications of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Croats over the Serbian families.
Regardless who did what to whom, ethnic cleansing in that conflict reached levels of unsinkable brutality. The farm animals were shot down or burned alive in the corrals; people were tortured and killed merciless, in spite of their age, sex or social status. The cadavers were thrown into fresh water wells in order to contaminate the populations’ drink water. In urban zones the water tanks were poisoned with rat poison, diesel fuel and oil. The houses were destroyed and the cemeteries vandalized. The population of entire villages was forced out of their houses and the accesses were mined and booby trapped for them not to return … ever.
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