Siege of Bihać

Siege of Bihać
Part of the Bosnian War and
the Croatian War of Independence

Map of the Bihać enclave (under the control of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian government), surrounded by the Republic of Serbian Krajina (in the northwest), the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia (to the north) and the Republika Srpska (to the southeast)
Date12 June 1992 – 4–5 August 1995[1]
LocationBihać pocket, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Result Siege lifted
Strategic ARBiH and Croatian Army victory
Belligerents
Bosnia and Herzegovina Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(1992–95)
Croatia Croatia (1995)

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Yugoslav People's Army (1992)

Republika Srpska Republika Srpska (1992–95)
Republic of Serbian Krajina Republic of Serbian Krajina (1992–1995)
Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia (1993–1995)
Commanders and leaders
Bosnia and Herzegovina Mirsad Sedić
Bosnia and Herzegovina Hajro Osmanagić
Bosnia and Herzegovina Atif Dudaković
Bosnia and Herzegovina Tomislav Dretar
Bosnia and Herzegovina Izet Nanić  †
Bosnia and HerzegovinaIrfan Ljubijankić  †
Croatia Zvonimir Červenko (1995)

Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić
Republika Srpska Ratko Mladić
Republic of Serbian Krajina Milan Martić

Fikret Abdić
Strength
ARBiH
Bosnia and Herzegovina 10,000[2] - 20,000 soldiers[3]
HV:
Croatia 10,000 soldiers[4]		 VRS:
10,000 soldiers
RSK:
3,000 - 5,000 soldiers[5]
AP Western Bosnia:
4,000 - 5,000 soldiers[6]
Casualties and losses
Total:
4,856 killed or missing combatants and civilians[7]

The Siege of Bihać was a three-year-long siege of the northwestern Bosnian town of Bihać by the Army of the Republika Srpska, the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and Bosniak dissenters led by the Bosniak politician Fikret Abdić during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.[8][9][10] The siege lasted for three years, from June 1992 until 4–5 August 1995, when Operation Storm ended it after the Croatian Army (HV) overran the rebel Serbs in Croatia and northwest of the besieged town.

The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo established that the communities that were under siege – Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša – had 4,856 killed or missing persons from 1991 to 1995.[7]

Timeline

1992

After the secessionist Serb Republic of Serbian Krajina was proclaimed in 1991 on the west, the inhabitants of Bihać were prevented from crossing into that territory. Additionally, after Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the Republika Srpska in 1992 on the east, the communities of Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin and Velika Kladuša found themselves surrounded on both sides. The two Serbian armies cooperated in order to capture the Bosniak pocket in the middle of them. It was blockaded and bombarded by the Serbian forces starting on 12 June 1992. As a consequence, the residents of Bihać were forced to live in shelters, without electricity or a water supply, receiving only limited food-relief. Hunger would occasionally break out.[1] The Bihać county declared a state of emergency and formed its own resistance army, the V Corps.

Although he did not have any military education, Tomislav Dretar, an ethnic Croat, organized the defense of Croats in the Bihać area, became the president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Bihać, established the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) of Bihać and the Bihać area on 28 July 1992 in the village of Šmrekovac in the municipality of Velika Kladuša and become the First President and Military Commander as an officer with the title of Colonel. The Croatian units numbered a total of 1,200 men organized as smaller units within the Fifth Bihać Corps as an autonomous Croatian military component. Under his command the Croatian HVO units were a component of the Army of Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina.

War presidency of the Bihać area during one meeting in Cazin (July 1992)

A shell fired from Serb positions in the hill exploded in the town centre on 11 August 1992, next to a building converted into a shelter for Bosniak women and children. It killed five people, including three children, and wounded 24. Eight people needed amputations. The director of the town's hospital said that "all of the casualties were big operations". The inhabitants of Bihać, armed with little except old rifles, had no means of retaliating. Instead, as on every day since 12 June, when the Army of the Republika Srpska first began to bombard Bihać, people simply did their best to carry away the wounded and clear up the wreckage. A secretary said it "took hours to wash away the blood". Almost every day, the Serbs sent fired more shells, some in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some at night. On one day in August, shelling lasted from 6.40 pm until well after midnight.[11]

The region had a mainly Bosniak population and, since the outbreak of armed conflict, had received some 35,000 displaced persons, most of them coming from Serb controlled areas around Banja Luka and Sanski Most in the summer of 1992. In return, most of the Serbs, some 12,000 before the war, left Bihać for Banja Luka at the same time.[12][13]

1993

The designation of Srebrenica as a safe area was extended on 6 May 1993 to include five other Bosnian towns: Sarajevo, Tuzla, Žepa, Goražde and Bihać. The Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegović, dismissed the concept. He said the havens would become death traps, where refugees, thinking they were safe, would instead become easy targets for Bosnian Serb forces.[14]

Bihać had few food convoys throughout the three years, with only the occasional airlift reaching the town's inhabitants. The wreckage of the bombing lay all around. Sandbags were piled high against houses and bunkers were dotted on street corners. Almost half of the population was drafted into the Army to defend the area. Cars almost disappeared from the streets of what was once a relatively prosperous community. There was nowhere to go and little fuel. The post office was piled high with sandbags. Almost every telephone line had been cut since 1991.[8] The deployment of UN troops in the area did not help: Serbian forces inside the UN-protected zone in Croatia hijacked an aid convoy heading for Bihać in April 1993. UN refugee officials stood by helplessly as the Serbs made off with 19 tons of food, mainly ready-to-eat meals, and distributed the food to Croatian Serbs civilians.[15] Marcus Tanner cynically commented how the Serbs from the 'UN protected' Krajina were shelling Bihać, a 'UN safe area'.[15]

The Bihać area, which contained 170,000 people, had been denied support from UN aid convoys since May 1993.[16] By 1993, the enclave hosted 61,000 displaced or refugees from other parts of Bosnia, amounting to 27 percent of its entire population.[17] The entire Bihać area had only one hospital that had exhausted the last of its food and medical reserves by December 1994, so that the feeding of the sick and wounded, more than 900 patients, was limited to one meal per day. Treatment was given only to the most desperate cases whereas operations were being performed under local anesthesia. In this situation, without the necessary food and medicines, infectious diseases were spreading- tuberculosis, intestinal diseases, hepatitis, vitamin A deficiency. The hospital was no longer in a position to help the inhabitants of the area.[18]

The enclave was additionally weakened when rebel Bosniak forces led by Fikret Abdić joined the Serbs in the fighting and created the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia in the north.

1994

Main article: Operation Spider
Bosanska Krupa after the war

The territory of Western Bosnia was seized by the Bosnian government troops in 1994, but they were expelled later that year with the significant help of the Serbs, and the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia was re-established.

By 27 November 1994, advancing Serb forces took around a third of the zone. Fighting raged less than 500 yards from the Bihać hospital and moved closer to the headquarters of the Bosnian Fifth Corps. However, the UN Security Council had failed to reach agreement on a draft statement that would condemn the Serbs' shelling of and entry into Bihać and call for their withdrawal.[19] The US plan to relieve the city was rejected by France and Britain. Bosnian-Serb forces first set a deadline of 19.00 GMT on 26 November for the town's defenders to surrender. They later amended this with a new offer for Bosnian-Muslim troops to surrender to Fikret Abdić's forces. But the mayor of Bihać, Hamdija Kabiljagić, rejected the surrender, saying "it would be the signal for mass slaughter by the Serbs". Bihać's citizens then proceeded to blockade the streets with trees and burned out cars.[19]

Michael Williams, a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force, said that the village of Vedro Polje west of Bihać had fallen to a Croatian Serb unit in late November 1994. Williams added that heavy tank and artillery fire against the town of Velika Kladuša in the north of the Bihać enclave was coming from the Croatian Serbs. Moreover, Western military analysts said that among the impressive array of Bosnian-Serb surface-to-air missile systems that surrounded the Bihać pocket on Croatian territory, there was a modernized SAM-2 system whose degree of sophistication suggested that it was probably brought there recently from Belgrade.[20]

Since Operation Deny Flight did not allow fighter jets to be used in Bosnia, the Army of the Republika Srpska took advantage of the ban by outsourcing air strikes to the Army of Srpska Krajina: they launched air strikes with aircraft based at a former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) military airport in Udbina, south of Bihać, located in Croatian territory that was at the time controlled by the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The Serb aircraft dropped napalm and cluster bombs. Although most of the ordnance came from old, unreliable stocks and failed to explode, the attacks were a clear violation of the no-fly zone. NATO immediately looked for ways to respond, but its forces were not permitted to carry out operations in Croatian airspace, and due to Bihać's proximity to the border, Serb aircraft could attack into Bosnia, then cross back into Croatia before being intercepted.[21] As such, NATO was powerless to stop the incursions. In recognition of the situation, the Security Council passed Resolution 958, which allowed NATO aircraft to operate in Croatia. Under the cool leadership of the UNHCR Director of Logistics Operations, Peter Walsh, the refugee agency managed to breach the blockade in December 1994 and get 100 tonnes of valuable food aid into the pocket. This was a difficult task hampered by persistent small arms and artillery fire as well as unnecessary freedom of movement violations. The aid was delivered to Cazin for distribution throughout the region.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 959 "expressed concern about the escalation in recent fighting in the Bihać pocket and the flow of refugees and displaced persons resulting from it" and condemned the "violation of the international border between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and demands that all parties and others concerned, and in particular the so-called Krajina Serb forces, fully respect the border and refrain from hostile acts across it".[22]

1995

The enclave came under heavy tank and mortar fire again on 23 July 1995 in what UN officials described as “the most serious fighting in Bosnia in months”. Thousands of rebel troops, backed by 100 tanks, attacked the Bosnian-Muslim forces there.[9]

The United Nations General Assembly also addressed the issue:

Military exercise activities intensified after the Bosnian Army 5th Corps

engaged Serbian troops in western Bosnia (Bihać region). At the same time,

"SVK" started with large-scale preparations for offensive actions in the western Bosnia theatre of operations.... In September 1994, 700 to 800 volunteers from Serbia were trained in the Slunj area for combat action in western Bosnia.[23]

— United Nations General Assembly on the situation in the occupied territories of Croatia

End of siege

After the fall of the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves in eastern Bosnia in July 1995, Croatia started massing soldiers near Serb positions outside the enclave as Serb forces with tanks and artillery bombarded the Bosnian government's lines. The goal was to prevent the fall of the Bihać enclave. Likewise, the Croatian and Bosnian leaderships signed a mutual defence treaty—the Split Agreement.[24] The siege ended with Operation Storm on 4–5 August 1995 conjoined with Bosnian forces under General Atif Dudaković.[1] Dudaković said: "We needed Operation Storm as much as Croatia did".[25] After the end of siege, food supplies and medical aid started arriving in the area from Bosnia and Croatia, which normalized the lives of the people living there.

Legal proceedings

International Tribunal

The ICTY indicted Slobodan Milošević for participating in a joint criminal enterprise, on the grounds that he "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of persecutions of non-Serbs, principally Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats" and "aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the extermination, murder and wilful killings of non-Serbs, principally Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats", among them within the territories of Bihać.[26]

General Ratko Mladić was also indicted on the grounds that he "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the persecution of the Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat or other non-Serb populations", among them in Bihać-Ripač.[27]

Domestic trials

The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina charged Fikret Abdić with the deaths of 121 civilians, three POWs and the wounding of 400 civilians in the Bihać region.[28] Croatian authorities arrested him and put him on trial. In 2002, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for war crimes committed in the area of the "Bihać pocket”.[29] In 2005, the Croatian Supreme Court reduced his sentence to 15 years.[30] After having served ten years of his fifteen-year sentence, Abdić was released on 9 March 2012 and upon leaving prison he was greeted by 3,000 of his supporters.[31]

In 2012, the Bihać Cantonal court sentenced five former soldiers of the VRS to a total of 56,5 years in prison for murdering 25 Bosniak civilians in the villages of Duljci and Orašac in September 1992.[32]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "After Long Siege, Bosnians Relish 'First Day of Freedom'". The New York Times. 9 August 1995. Retrieved 25 January 2010.
  2. ↑ Tom Hundley (30 July 1995). "Croatia, Serbia Face Off At Bihac". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  3. ↑ Gow 2003, p. 131
  4. ↑ "Escalation Feared As Croats Advance". Orlando Sentinel. 29 July 1995. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  5. ↑ Michael R. Gordon (30 November 1994). "Conflict in the Balkans: Croats Warn Of Wider War if Bihać Falls". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  6. ↑ Ramet 2006, p. 451
  7. 1 2 "IDC: Pounje victim statistics". Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  8. 1 2 "Weary Bihac cries with joy as siege ends". The Independent. 9 August 1995. Retrieved 25 January 2010.
  9. 1 2 Tracy Wilkinson (25 July 1995). "Bosnia Enclave of Bihac Faces 3-Way Siege". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  10. ↑ Roger Cohen (2 December 1994). "CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: IN CROATIA; Balkan War May Spread Into Croatia". New York Times. Retrieved 13 October 2010.
  11. ↑ Tony Barber (12 August 1992). "Defenceless Muslims face the final agony: Tony Barber witnesses the relentless demolition of Bihac by Serbian guns". The Independent. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  12. ↑ Mike O'Connor (19 October 1995). "Besieged Now by Cold and Hunger". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  13. ↑ "Central and southwest Bosnia- Herzegovina: civilian population trapped in a cycle of violence". Amnesty International. January 1994. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  14. ↑ "1993: UN makes Srebrenica 'safe haven'". BBC News. 16 April 2005. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  15. 1 2 Marcus Tanner (29 April 1993). "Bosnia: Bihac shelling destroys UN peace-keeping role: Serbs from 'protected' Krajina step up attacks on Bosnia". The Independent. Retrieved 25 January 2010.
  16. ↑ Art Pine (24 November 1994). "NATO Hits Serb Missiles; Siege of Bihac Grows". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  17. ↑ Mann, Jonathan; Drucker, Ernest; Tarantola, Daniel; McCabe, Mary Pat (1994). "Bosnia: The War Against Public Health" (PDF). Medicine & Global Survival. p. 4.
  18. ↑ Bekir Tatlic (26 December 1994). "In Bihac, a Hospital Under Siege: Medicine and food are almost gone for 900 patients trapped in a Serb chokehold". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  19. 1 2 Emma Daly (27 November 1994). "Bihac fears massacre". The Independent. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  20. ↑ Roger Cohen (28 October 1994). "Hard-Fought Ground". New York Times. Retrieved 13 October 2010.
  21. ↑ Sudetic, Chuck (19 November 1994). "Napalm and Cluster Bombs Dropped on Bosnian Town". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2009.
  22. ↑ "UN Security Council, 3462nd Meeting, Resolution S/RES/959". United Nations Security Council. 19 November 1994. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
  23. ↑ "United Nations General Assembly on the situation in the occupied territories of Croatia, A/50/72, S/1995/82" (PDF). United Nations General Assembly. 26 January 1995. Retrieved January 21, 2011.
  24. ↑ Tony Barber (28 October 1995). "Croats ready to hurl troops into battle of Bihac". The Independent. Retrieved 13 October 2010.
  25. ↑ interview with General Atif Dudakovic (15 September 2006). "We needed Operation Storm as much as Croatia did". Bosnia Report i. Retrieved 30 September 2007.
  26. ↑ "The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Slobodan Milosevic – Indictment (p. 33, 36)". ICTY. 22 November 2001. Retrieved 4 November 2010.
  27. ↑ "The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Ratko Mladic- Indictment (p. 36)" (PDF). ICTY. October 2002. Retrieved 4 November 2010.
  28. ↑ "Bosnia candidate jailed for war crimes". BBC News. 31 July 2002. Retrieved 28 October 2011.
  29. ↑ "Concerns Pertaining to the Judiciary". Human Rights Watch. October 2004.
  30. ↑ "Background Report: Domestic War Crime Trials 2005 (page 23)" (PDF). Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe mission in Croatia. 13 September 2006.
  31. ↑ "Abdić pušten iz zatvora". B92. 9 March 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  32. ↑ "Five Men Sentenced for Orasac Murders". Balkan Insight. 5 February 2012.

Books

External links

Coordinates: 44°49′N 15°52′E / 44.817°N 15.867°E / 44.817; 15.867 (Bihać)

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