While the Prime Minister repeats the official narrative that Operation Storm saved Bihać from disaster, the magazine of the Bosniak National Council, led by his coalition partner Armin Hodžić, calls this claim a historical falsification and a myth.
Disagreement within the ruling coalition over the interpretation of the recently marked 31st anniversary of the military-police operation Storm came to the fore after Prime Minister Andrej Plenković stated in Knin that "Storm saved Bihać from an impending humanitarian catastrophe." Three weeks earlier, the magazine Bosna, published by the Bosniak National Council, headed by Plenković's coalition partner and MP Armin Hodžić, had declared this sentence part of a "summer myth."
In his speech at the Storm celebration, the Prime Minister assessed that the operation changed the balance of power in Bosnia and Herzegovina and paved the way for the Dayton Agreement. However, an article published in Hodžić's magazine under the title Summer Myth: Why the Lie That Croatia Saved Bihać from Srebrenica's Fate Is Constantly Insisted Upon sharply rejects such a narrative as "a mere historical falsification."
The saving of Bihać, an enclave surrounded by Serb forces from Krajina and Republika Srpska, has been part of the official Croatian narrative about Storm for years. However, a transcript of a meeting held on July 31, 1995, on Brijuni reveals that President Franjo Tuđman himself had serious doubts about the justification of using Bihać as the main reason for launching the operation.
"As you know, we were determined to proceed with further operations, for which this operation, the Grahovo-Glamoč undertaking, was also supposed to serve in relation to Bihać, but also for the encirclement of Knin. However, the situation is now such that UN representatives, Akashi, Stoltenberg, with the Serbs, have knocked that reason out of our hands," Tuđman was quoted as saying, according to the transcript used in Hague court proceedings. He concluded that "the breakthrough to Bihać can now only be secondary" and that "we must find some pretext for our action."
Interestingly, the meeting was held just ten days after Tuđman received a dramatic letter from Adnan Alagić, the mayor of Bihać. Alagić warned that the fate of 180,000 people hung in the balance and begged the Croatian President: "I ask that you do everything in your power to save this heroic city and its suffering population." Alagić emphasized that their only hope lay "in our brave fighters and the friendly Croatian people."
The magazine Bosna also quotes historian Hrvoje Klasić, who firmly claims that "Operation Storm was not a rescue for Bihać, which survived because the Fifth Corps of the Army of BiH defended it." Klasić's stance, as reported by the magazine, is that "Croatia helped, but did not save Bihać."
The editorial board of Bosna expands on this thesis, emphasizing that "the Bihać enclave, unlike the demilitarized and isolated Srebrenica, was not a helpless victim on the verge of collapse in the summer of 1995, but an active and organized military force." They also warn of the broader political context, claiming that "in the context of contemporary political relations, especially between Zagreb and Sarajevo, such narratives are not just matters of the past, but also part of a broader strategy of positioning Croatia as a factor of stability in the region."
The immediate trigger for the article in Hodžić's magazine was a statement by another coalition partner, DP MP Stipe Mlinarić, who recently said that "after a thousand days of siege, Bihać breathed a sigh of relief because the Croatian Army liberated it."
However, historical sources offer a more nuanced picture. General Atif Dudaković, commander of the Fifth Corps of the Army of BiH, greeted Croatian General Marijan Mareković on August 6, 1995, at the bridge on the Korana River near Tržačka Raštela with the words: "General, welcome. We waited for you for a long time, but finally we met." Although Dudaković later emphasized that his army had its own goals synchronized with Storm, he always stressed that "without Croatia, the deblockade of Bihać would not have been this fast."
The magazine Bosna expresses regret that "there is almost no adequate response from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the revisionist narrative" and concludes that "the lack of a clear response from BiH allows the persistence of an ideological myth that obscures the real role of local defenders and the significance of their sacrifice."
