It has been a month of anniversaries in the former Yugoslavia. Three weeks ago world dignitaries gathered in Srebrenica to commemorate the killing of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Serb forces. The next anniversary will receive much less attention. Yet Operation Storm, the Croatian military assault on Krajina, the would-be secessionist Serbian state in Croatia, with its capital at Knin, has left deep scars. The attack, which began on August 4th 1995, triggered the flight of as many as 200,000 Croatian Serbs. Within hours vast convoys of Serb refugees were choking the roads of northern Bosnia. Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's then president, exulted that Croatia's Serbs had "disappeared ignomini-ously, as if they had never populated this land. We urged them to stay, but they did not listen to us. Well then, bon voyage!" Before the war some 600,000 Serbs lived in Croatia, making up 12% of the total population. According to the census of 2001, onlyjust over 200,000, or 4.5% of the population, live there today. Reliable and up-to-date figures are hard to find. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe reckons the number may be higher, pointing out that many Serbs do not want to identify themselves as such. The Croatian government claims that some 95,000 Serbs have returned from other countries in the past ten years. But as many as 40% have come back on paper only. They have reclaimed their Croatian citizenship and their property-and promptly left again.
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