Operation Storm: Childhood Memories of a Refugee Exodus

Milos Ivanisevic. Photo: BIRN.

It was dawn on August 4, 1995, in a small apartment in the Plitvice National Park in what was then the Republic of Serbian Krajina- a short-lived Serb rebel statelet in Croatia – when four-year-old Milos Ivanisevic heard the news that would change his life forever.

A colleague of his father’s arrived bringing word that the Croatian army was advancing and told the family that they would have to flee immediately. “It was around seven in the morning. He came and said we should quickly pack because they are coming and we have to leave,” Milos told BIRN.

The family hurriedly packed what they could in their old Volkswagen Golf and set off on what would be a four-day journey to the Bosnian town of Banja Luka and then on to Belgrade. But there was no time to pack everything – and certainly not children’s toys.

“I had with me a Formula 1 toy [car] that I got from my dad, it’s the one with the remote control, you know. That is the only toy I managed to take with me,”Milos recalled in a sad, quiet voice.

Milos still keeps the toy he took with him when he fled in 1995. Photo courtesy of Milos Ivanisevic.

Soon afterwards, they found themselves in a long column of fleeing Serb refugees. It was the first of four days of Operation Storm -the military operation that saw Croatian forces defeat Serb rebels and regain 18 per cent of the country’s territory which had been held by the Serbs since 1991. In the coming days, some 200,000 Serbs would flee Croatia.

“I remember one house literally exploded as we were passing it… I remember seeing many destroyed cars, flames all around,” Milos said.

In Banja Luka they stayed with friends while waiting four days for his father, Boro, who worked at the military airport in the nearby town of Udbina.“I got a bag full of toys from them. I still have some 90 per cent of them,” he said with a smile.

But then the smile disappeared. “In that situation, the present was a nice thing. Even though I was only four I knew something was wrong, Dad was gone and you know people are dying, you saw so many things…”

By mid-August, his family had reached safety in Belgrade, where they took shelter with his mother’s cousins. Thanks to strong family connections, they escaped the fate of many other refugees from Croatia who were sent to Kosovo and were not allowed to stay in the Serbian capital. “Everything we had apart from the car was about 200 Deutschmarks. But we were fine,” he recalled.

Life after Storm

Milos (right) with his cousins during abirthday party in 1994. Photo courtesy of Milos Ivanisevic.

In the years that followed, the Ivanisevic family settled in the village of Novi Banovci, some 30 kilometres from Belgrade. Milos’s father continued his military career in the Serbian Army and his mother found a job as a bookkeeper. Milos later went to university – he still has some exams to take before he graduates in political sciences.

But Belgrade and Serbia are not really home. Croatia is.

After several years of courthearings, the Ivanisevic family managed to regain their houses in Plitvice – only because they had all the necessary property documentation. Five years ago, they opened apartments in the restored house and focused on the tourism business, which is why they spend several months each year in Croatia.

The first time Milos went back to Plitvice after Storm was in 2001.

“When we returned, the walls of the houses were covered with graffiti – Srbe na vrbe [hang Serbs on willow trees], Srbe na dno Drine [Drown Serbs in the River Drina], they were everywhere,” he recalled.

But apart from that, there was no unpleasantness, he admitted. The Ivanisevic family was well received by their old Croat neighbours, as his father got on well with them before the war.

“In the end it all comes down to the fact that we [Serbs and Croats] have the same lives. Ordinary people are not to blame. I don’t hate anyone,” says Milos.

The 24-year-old saysthat it is Plitvice that he calls home, the place he fled in 1995. Novi Banovci is just a temporary stopover. As soon as he finishes university, he will devote more time to the family business and plans to spend longer periods in Croatia.

There is only one downside to his summer visits to Plitvice, he said – celebratory commemorations of Operation Storm in a nearby sports field.

“On those days I feel rather cynical,” he said bitterly. “I can’t say I’m mad; they [Croats] have their own vision of it – that they liberated something.”