Operation "Storm" began on August 4, early in the morning. Ahead of the army Croatian radio broadcasted every fifteen minutes president Tudman's message to the Croatian Serbs in which he urged the Serbs to stay in their homes and accept Croatian sovereignty and his guarantees for all human, minority and other rights.
After a little more than 24 hours, Croatian army entered Knin and miles long columns of tens of thousands of soldiers, elderly, women and children set out on their way, leaving Martic's collapsed parastate through two deliberately unblocked corridors. Run over by the tanks of their own army, bombarded from Croatian and Bosniak guns and seen off by stones, curses and excrement of angry Sisak inhabitants, headless refugee column with more than 100,000 people scattered along the road to the Serbian border via Banja Luka. "As if they have never lived here," as the same man, who with so much persistence had asked them to remain in their homeland, vividly said several days later at the stop of the "freedom train" Zagreb-Split in Karlovac.
The "Storm" was followed with what is here usually referred here as "maybe unjustified, but certainly understandable anger." Reserve army units, following in the "tracks of the Seventh, Fourth" and many other brigades, burned and looted everything that survived the "Storm". This encouraged looting expeditions of ordinary citizens which started only a few days later; they stuffed trunks of their cars with everything they could lay their hands on: Ceca Velickovic's[Serbian folk singer, wife of alleged war criminal Arkan] cassette tapes, "Red Star" flags [Serbian soccer team], plaques from the buildings of various "county governments", roof tiles, video recorders and tractor trailers. Those who were more resourceful brought along only new locks and paint, locked up empty apartments and wrote on the walls clearly visible passwords: "Taken. A Croat!".
Chaos in which the whole villages (Kistanje) and towns (Gornji Lapac) were destroyed reached such proportions that finally even the commander of Knin, general Ivan Cermak, had to publicly admit that it was outrageous that "the looting and burning of Serb houses still go on, almost a month after the liberation," and that that had to be stopped.
In order to avoid confusion in connection with this systematic madness, it was very picturesquely justified by some high officials in the Croatian government. The one on the top, to whom the Constitution euphemistically refers as the Maximus [Vrhovnik], explained first in one of his speeches on the Freedom train tour that "those from abroad who object because of several cases of arson and looting in Croatia should recall the ancient Old Testament saying: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Then, in an interview to Slobodna Dalmacija, he expressed regret that the Serb exodus occured in this manner, recalling his negotiations with Cosic and Milosevic in 1992 in Geneva, where they had nicely agreed to organize "voluntary exchange of population." Nevertheless, explained the Great Mover, " regardless of the personal tragedy of these people, the results will be positive because the Serbs will cease to have the role which they have had in Croatia since the Ottoman times [16th century] until today." Finally, in an interview for the high circulation German weekly Fokus, he concluded that "the return of Serbs is almost unimaginable," among other because "that would hamper the normalization of the Croat-Serb relations". (!)
Vicepresident of the Croatian government Bosiljko Misetic publicly summarized at a press conference the thoughts behind the statements of the Great Transporter: "Croatia doesn't want people of non-Croatian ethnicity living in her."
On September 4, exactly a month after the "Storm" and a reasonable Tudman's message to the Croatian Serbs, that same Bosiljko Misetic proclaimed in a solemn voice the decision of the Croatian government to conduct, from April 1 to April 15, 1996 " the first census of the Croatian population after the international recognition and independence." While explaining this decision Misetic stated that "after military-police action Storm, a number of citizens left the territories in which they had lived before the liberation," and that the census was necessary in order to obtain "more accurate picture of the demographic structure of the population."
The census will, besides its store-room-inventory nature, have a very practical significance: changes of certain constitutional laws, such as the one about ethnic and national minorities, will depend on the purity of "the demographic picture" obtained in the census. We believe that it is only a matter of a busy government schedule and that very soon Bosiljko or some other misetic will announce the changes in the citizenship law according to which all persons, besides pure-blooded Croats, living in Croatia at the time of the 1996 census will have a right to become Croatian citizens.
Population census was envisaged as a monthly inventory of the glorious August of our history and a declaration about the ethnic purity of Croatia. "As if the Serbs have never lived here," as Dr. Franjo Tudman already announced positive results of the census, his face distorted in convulsions caused by uncontrollable happiness.
In accordance with the government law, the population census will be conducted by midnight, March 31. Then, the Croatian darkness will be officially documented.