Koliko god je to nama izgledalo kilavo, mlako, zakašnjelo, Intervencija u BiH i kao posljedica ove prve, intervencija na Kosovu kao i neuspjela intervencija u Somaliji, su jedini slučajevi da strane sile intervenišu u trećoj zemlji u kojoj nemaju direktnog interesa.
Nije bilo nikakve "prijetnje" NATO-a, već je radila samo američka diplomatija, vidi za detalje Holbrookeovu knjigu "To End a War"
Evaluation—The Cease-Fire Agreement and the Final Offensives
Operation "Oluja" and die final offensives in western Bosnia were the most important of the several military actions that brought an end to the Bosnian war. "Oluja" was the key to the chain of military and diplomatic events that led to the final cease-fire in October. It was "Oluja" that suddenly forced on Mladic and the VRS die realization that the military balance had decisively shifted against the Serbs; a cease-fire and a peace agreement were all they had left to protect the existence of Republika Srpska. First Mladic and Milosevic had to force this same realization on Karadzic and the SDS leaders and then, on 29 August, persuade them to sign over their negotiating authority to Milosevic as the head of a unified Serb negotiating team over which he would exert a final veto as necessary. To the US Special Representative, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, this signed inter-Serb agreement provided the jolt necessary to jump-start the US diplomatic initiative for ending the Bosnian war, even while the armies continued to battle for chunks and scraps of disputed territory.
On 1 September, Holbrooke announced that the three primary parties—the Croatian, Bosnian Government, and joint FRY/Republika Srpska delegations—would meet in Geneva on 18 September to discuss constitutional arrangements for the new Bosnian state. At the meeting the three sides reached a preliminary "basic principles" agreement on a proposed constitution, which would be die basis for further negotiations. Croatia also clearly indicated, however, that any deal on Bosnia would have to include aimultaneous settlement with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the Serb holdouts in eastern Slavonia.819 As negotiators sought to expose Serb positions to the light of reason, the launching of the key "Maestral" and "Sana" operations focused the heat of battle on the Bosnian Serbs. This timely development provided dramatic confirmation of Mladic's fears that the military balance was shifting dangerously and that Serb ambitions must be compromised. The VRS counterattacks that threw their opponents off balance kept the Serbs in the diplomatic game during Holbrooke's shuttle diplomacy that September. Nevertheless, it was now the Serbs who wanted to gel a cease-fire as soon as possible while the Bosnian Government wanted to continue fighting to gain as much territory as possible to lexer its position in future bargaining over a territorial division. When Bosnian President Izetbegovic Finally bowed to US pressure to halt the fighting, he set additional conditions for the Serbs to argue over so that the ARBiH would have increased time to gain more ground.
This final jockeying over the cease-fire, tentatively agreed to on 5 October, kept all three sides moving military forces up to the last minute. Croatia had craftily retired to the military sidelines after the completion of "Maestral," apparently in hopes of putting a brake on the Bosnian Government's military gains lest the Muslims gain too much weight in the Balkan balance of power. President Tudjman was also under US pressure to refrain from shattering the military and diplomatic balancing act by capturing Banja Luka. Zagreb nevertheless went ahead with its final 8 October offensive—"Juzni Potez"—that made it a little plainer to the Serbs that they must deal now or face the loss of the city. Zagreb also had achieved a tentative deal with the Serbs—initialed on 4 October—on the full return of eastern Slavonia to Croatia, and the offensive helped underscore that essential requirement.
The Bosnian cease-fire finally went into effect on the morning of 12 October. Although the fighting in western Bosnia rumbled on for another week, the war in Bosnia was over. After the country-wide ceasefire—a successful and lasting one this time—took hold in mid-October, representatives of the Croats, the Muslims, and the Serbs met for a long and arduous round of negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, in November, co-chaired by the United States, the European Union, and Russia. The talks seemed perpetually to be on the verge of collapse, yet at the last minute enough compromises were devised so that an agreement could be signed on 21 November 1995. This was followed by a "London Conference" on 8 December, where ministers and officials from no fewer than 42 countries and 10 international organizations attempted to work out how best to deal with the daunting challenges of implementing the peace and reconstructing the country. The results of their negotiating efforts were soon to be manifested in Bosnia in the multinational "implementation force" whose responsibilities and powers had been specified and agreed upon in the Dayton Agreement—IFOR.
Evaluations of the Forces at the End of the War
How had the armies performed during the last battles in Bosnia's Wild West? All three forces (considering the HV/HVO as a single military force) had amply demonstrated their strengths and weaknesses during a full month of some of the most intense combat of the war. The Croatian Army had again established its position as the premier military organization in the Balkans. The HV's strengths included excellent staff planning, its employment of professional shock brigades, and the ability to support its elite infantry with strong artillery fire and air support. The HV had developed a true combined arms capability in which picked infantry units backed by armor and artillery could fight their way through tough defenses and then rapidly exploit their breakthrough to the final objective. These traits made the HV almost impossible to stop. The weak spots in any HV campaign remained the Home Defense and reserve formations, most of which had little offensive punch and were no match for the majority of VRS units.
As for the ARBiH, it is true that the HV provided the main impeuis in defeating the VRS, but the Bosnian Army played a key role in these operations as well. ARBiH operations throughout the country kept VRS units tied down and made it difficult to shift reserves to halt the HV's attacks. General Dudakovic was not wholly reliant on Croatian attacks to ease the way for ARBiH advances, even though analysts have argued that the 5th Corps was able to break out from the Gra-bez plateau on 13 September only because of a coordinated VRS withdrawal made necessary by the success of „Maestral." On the contrary, it is clear that the 5th Corps defeated the 2nd Krajina Corps at Grabez on its own and that the VRS had no intention of pulling out of the area and was still holding out in Drvar against the HV the day of the ARBiH's successful attack. It was the arrival ot the 5th Corps at Petrovac that aided the HV attack rather than the other way around. The 5th Corps won its unique victory because of the moral and tactical ascendancy that its elite infantry units had established over the VRS forces during three years of hard fighting on die Grabez plateau. Time and again Dudakovic's forces had demoralized the Serb defenders with sophisticated diversion and infiltration tactics, and they were no longer able to resist them. What kept the ARBiH from triumphing over the VRS in other situations was its persistent weaknesses in heavy weaponry, which made it vulnerable to the VRS's strengths in armor, artillery, and solid staff work. The effects of this mismatch in capabilities were fully demonstrated during the late September-early October VRS counterstrikes and exacerbated in the open warfare of the last campaign. In those battles, ARBiH troops had to fight offensively, unprotected by fortifications, against VRS units that did not have the same fear of the ARBiH infantry that had been impressed upon the 2nd Krajina Corps troops. The 5th Corps' final capture of Sanski Most was, in fact, something of a fluke because the VRS had placed its luckless Grabez units opposite their most feared opponents.
The ARBiH commanders—particularly Generals Delic and Dudakovic—firmly believed that they could have quickly gained substantially more ground from the VRS around Prijedor and Banja Luka after the victory of Sanski Most. In this belief they are probably overrating their capabilities against VRS forces that had regrouped and regained their footing between Sanski Most and Prijedor. In most of the VRS-ARBiH combat following the 15 September 5th Corps breakout from Bihac, the VRS had held the upper hand. Even after the ARBiH captured Sanski Most, the VRS was able to halt the 5th Corps drive on Prijedor. It therefore seems unlikely that the 5th Corps, even reinforced by units from 7th Corps and other formations, could have beaten the 1 st Krajina Corps without the help of a new HV operation directed at Banja Luka.
The Bosnian Serb Army, denigrated throughout the war as armed thugs good only at slaughtering civilians, proved in the last months of its existence that it could still light hard against a Croatian Army that clearly overmatched its military capabilities. Analysis of the latter-day war operations refutes many claims and rumors that the VRS voluntarily withdrew from its positions in western Bosnia rather than being forced from the region by the HV/HVO and ARBiH. In the first place, the VRS had firmly maintained no withdrawals would be made, even from territory not required by the Serbs, until after a cease-was signed; then, if territory had to be given up, the population could depart in an orderly way. In keeping with this position, the VRS everywhere stood up to the initial attacks made on it but proved unable to stem the flood of the Croat-Muslim tide. Against the HV, its fatal flaw almost predictably proved to be the lack of adequate corps-level reserves to seal breaches in VRS lines. Generally the VRS appears to have been able to hold the HV for about a day in its forward defenses before the HV was able to chew through its positions. Because it had virtually no reserve brigades in western Bosnia and because its positions there generally consisted only of a single defensive zone no more than 5 to 10 kilometers deep, the VRS was unable to mount the counterattacks by which it had maintained these positions against the ARBiH. In fighting the HV/ HVO, VRS units were faced for the first time with an opponent that not only matched but also exceeded their own firepower in armor and artillery while also outnumbering them in manpower. Finally, what tipped the balance, even when the offense/defense ratio favored the VRS, was the HV/HVO's elite shock infantry brigades. The VRS could defeat Croatian reserve units. The well-trained, doggedly persistent Guards were another matter.
The VRS generals, Mladic and Milovanovic, and the VRS Main Staff displayed to the end their prowess at engineering strategic shifts of their limited formations. The move of seven major formations from halfway across the country despite heavy damage to its command and control structure during the NATO air campaign was a triumph of the VRS Main Staff's professionalism and skill. The Serbs' rapid execution of major counterattacks also showed how powerful the VRS remained at the end of the war, particularly against the ARBiH. In his last campaign, however, the western Bosnia theater commander, General Milo-vanovic, appears to have made some initial errors in his force dispositions that cost the VRS dearly. His forces were split too evenly among the Donji Vakuf, Glamoc-Drvar, and Grabez sectors, rather than concentrated in what the VRS considered a vital sector. Given that the HV was the main threat, he should have either concentrated more troops opposite the Glamoc-Drvar area sooner or sent in his reserves before the enemy breakthrough. The VRS Main Staff, too, either did not recognize how brittle the 2nd Krajina Corps had become or was unable to do anything about it; Genera] Tomanic's command appears to have been through the wringer one too many times and collapsed fatally on the Grabez under yet another 5th Corps attack. In all, the VRS simply faced too many competing priorities throughout Bosnia so that the Main Staff could no longer focus its forces on one theater.
One of the most discussed hypothetical questions of the final campaign is whether the HV (and/or the ARBiH) could have taken Banja Luka. The answer is a heavily qualified "probably," the main qualifier being timing. An HV dash for Banja Luka soon after the completion of "Maestral" probably would have got to the city quickly or forced the VRS to divert all of the reserves it was sending to Prijedor instead to Banja Luka, in which case the 5th Corps could have taken Prijedor. The same holds true for "Juzni Potez" in that, the more quickly the HV moved, the less time the VRS would have had to prepare. On the other hand, if the VRS had been given time to transfer more units after "Juzni Potez," Banja Luka most likely would have proved a difficult nut for even the HV to crack. In the immediate aftermath of Mrkonjic Grad's fall, the VRS had already shifted the veteran 16th Krajina Motorized Brigade—probably the best brigade in the VRS—to Manjaca. If the VRS believed an HV operation against Banja Luka was imminent, the Main Staff would most likely have transferred all available reserves to the Manjaca area, building up a force that could have numbered at least nine and maybe 11 brigades including a full-armored brigade, with upward of 15,000 to 20,000 troops. The VRS troops would very likely have fought even harder for Banja Luka than the SVK did at Knin, for they would not lhave been encircled. Such a large-scale movement of reserves, however, would have left the VRS vulnerable to attacks elsewhere, particularly around Doboj and-depending on whether the HV/HVO wanted it-in the Posavina area opposite Orasje.
Iz knjige "Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995", Vol. I, CIA, Washington 2002
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