Talk:Operation Storm

False claims by the author Adam Jones

I've removed the false claim "The Croatian Serb population who fled were the largest refugee population in Europe prior to the 2022 Ukraine war.". In a prior sentence it's stated that 170,000-250,000 Croats were expelled from "Krajina" and mmentioned that there were 240,000 registered Bosnian refugees just in Croatia. As is reported by UNHCR, by 1995 900,000 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina were refugees and additional 1,3 million more were displaced. Source: https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/3ae6a0c58.pdf

Reverted by editor Peacemaker67 on March 9, 2025:

"The Croatian Serb population who fled were the largest refugee population in Europe prior to the 2022 Ukraine war."

Cited author made several false claims in the number of Serbs (250,000) and that they were expelled. Editor who posted this propaganda for some reason excluded parts of the sentence that Serbs started the war and commited genocide in Bosnia.

Original text from the book (4th edition, published in 2023):

"The quarter of a million Serbs expelled from the Krajina and Eastern Slavonia regions of Croatia in 1995 (Chapter 8) constituted the largest refugee population in Europe, until the Ukraine war of 2022, but their plight evokes no great outrage, because of an assignation of collective guilt to Serbs for the Bosnian genocide. (The trend was evident again after the 1999 Kosovo war, when Serb civilians in the province were targeted for murder by ethnic Albanian extremists.) 234" 46.188.175.17 (talk) 23:21, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Ok. Let's get something straight here. On Wikipedia, we represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. We compare and contrast the reliable sources where they vary. If a reliable source hasn't been correctly reflected in the article, we correct the article so that it does, we don't just delete the bit we don't like and say its "false". It is not up to you whether it is "false". Your opinion is completely immaterial unless you are a published academic working in the relevant field, in which case I suggest you create an account and identify yourself so people can look at your publications and their peer reviews. What we care about is what the reliable sources say. If there are reliable sources which vary from Jones' work, we add them to the article then compare and contrast what they say with what Jones says. If you would like to better understand this fundamental policy of WP, please read WP:NPOV. Thanks. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:57, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

By your reply I can presume that you petsonaly inserted that propaganda. Your contributions will be monitored.

As I've posted before official data from UNHCR; authors claim of 250.000 Serb refugees is less than 900.000 Bosnian refugees in the same year (1995).

"By December 1995, out of a pre-war population of some 4.3 million, and estimated 900,000 had became refugees in neighbouring countries and western Europe, while a further 1.3 million had become internally displaced."

https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/legacy-pdf/3ae6a0c58.pdf 46.188.175.17 (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Anyone can check the history of the article and find out who added that material. The tool is here. Newsflash: it wasn't me, and please go ahead and "monitor my contributions". I've been on here for over a decade, I'm an administrator, and have dozens of Featured Articles providing NPOV coverage of contentious events and people in the Balkans subject area. As I said above, if you have reliable info from UNHCR that contradicts Jones, add it and contrast it with what he says. I would add that the UNHCR paper you linked is a working paper with preliminary results of research undertaken by a member of their policy research unit, a fellow called Mark Cutts. I have no idea who Cutts is beyond that. Is he published in peer reviewed journals, has he written a book, did he publish the full results of his research, and were the figures the same then? On the other hand, Jones is an associate professor at a respected university and specialises in genocide studies, and his book is published by Taylor & Francis, so you, random IP, cannot just delete what he says because you think your source means he is incorrect. If you have no interest in following WP policy, that's easy, don't edit WP. There is nothing compelling you to spend your time here. If you delete the material again, I will protect the article to stop the disruptive behaviour. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:26, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

"If you delete the material again, I will protect the article to stop the disruptive behaviour."

I sugest you do that. It's harder to remove, than to insert fringe theories and false claims by 'neutral authors'.

"I'm an administrator" / "so you, random IP"

Unregistered editors with IP adress can edit Wikipedia freely as registered ones. There are thousands of administrators on WP with no credentials as experts for any subject and they are all easily replecable. You're are irrelevant and mortal as the rest if us. You're not paid to fo this so take it easy. 46.188.175.17 (talk) 00:45, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, of course you edit WP as an IP. In most cases, with a different IP address each time if you have a dynamic IP, and therefore no-one can see your editing history over time and draw conclusions from it. Yes, my opinions about the numbers of refugees are irrelevant, just like yours. However, I don't go around deleting information I think is incorrect. I've have explained WP policy, which you have completely refused to engage with, and you have also refused to engage with the sources, so clearly this conversation is over. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:09, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Additional sources, since UNHCR official reports aren't good enough for some but one, purposely misquoted Canadian professor with false claims is the only authority:

1. Franz, B., “Returnees, Remittances, and Reconstruction: International Politics and Local Consequences in Bosnia” Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy & International Relations, New Jersey, XI:2010, p. 49

"By the end of the war, 1 million people had been internally displaced, and another 1.3 million people had fled abroad."

2. Valenta M., Strabac Z., “The Dynamics of Bosnian Refugee Migrations in the 1990s, Current Migration Trends and Future Prospects”, Oxford, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 32: Issue 3, 2013, p. 1

"More than two million people have had to leave their original homes, and more than one million people have left Bosnia-Herzegovina altogether, as a result of the war in that country."

3. Hageboutros J., “The Bosnian Refugee Crisis A Comparative Study of German and Austrian Reactions and Responses”, Swarthmore, Swarthmore International Relations Journal, Issue 1, 2016, p. 50

"During the conflict in which Bosnian Serbs waged an aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Muslim (Bosniak) and Croat populations, many of the estimated 1.4 million Bosnian refugees fled to other former Yugoslav republics, where they were subsequently subjected to more ethnic conflict and violence.(Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Slovenia, 2007). An estimated 650,000 refugees were able to reach European countries beyond the former Yugoslavia and became the first group to acquire “temporary protection” in EU states as well as in states preparing to join the EU, such as Austria which acceded in 1995." 46.188.175.17 (talk) 12:59, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I think Jones could be referring to the single largest refugee group that fled/were expelled at one time. In this case, over a couple of days. The data you are talking about is the total numbers of refugees during the Bosnian war who not only fled, or were expelled, but also internally displaced, and besides mainly Muslims and Croats also includes some Serbs as Bosnian could be anyone from Bosnia. They came in different stages throughout the war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.70.91 (talk) 21:01, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Possibly he meant that this was the largest refugee population at the time when the Russo-Ukrainian war started. Presumably many Bosnian refugees were able to return to Bosnia after the war was over. Perhaps we need to find the definition that Jones was using and then we may be able to reword the current text to avoid confusion.

Having said that I do agree with @Peacemaker67 that it's entirely inappropriate to remove sourced information from the article. Alaexis_¿question? 22:00, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I have never said that Jones is the "only authority" IP, I asked for more reliable sources. Thanks for your observations, Alaexis. I agree Jones' intent with what he has said is a little unclear, but the appropriate approach is to compare and contrast what he says with other reliable sources. I have to say that even though the above sources appear on face value (although I've never heard of a couple of them) to be of better quality than a preliminary working paper from an UNHCR staffer, they also vary significantly in their numbers. If we just take the figure of total displaced, Franz says 2.3 M, Valenta and Strabac say 2 M, and Hageboutros says 1.4 M. That's a variation of 900,000 across three sources. I quickly found a 2001 ICRC paper that states that 2.6 M in total were displaced in less than three months at the start of the war (300,000 more than Franz), and that at the end of the war 1.3 M of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was internally displaced (300,000 more than Franz), 500,000 were in neighbouring countries, and 700,000 were in Western Europe (combined, these figures are closer to Franz, and the Western Europe figure is close to Hageboutros). But they all appear to be focussed on different things, one is looking at returnees etc, one is looking at migrations (so not internal displacement), and the other is focussed in German/Austrian responses to the refugee crisis (presumably also focussed on migrant refugees, not internally displaced people). Surely there are more definitive figures from sources focussed on all internal and external refugees from Bosnia? I'm a bit reluctant to use the ICRC paper, as it is nearly 25 years old, and things may not have been all that clear only six years after the war ended. If not, we just formulate a para which compares and contrasts what they all say (assuming all the sources are reliable when examined). Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:11, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

If you really want to nitpick, contrary to Jones claim the "largest refugee population in Europe, until the Ukraine war of 2022" were actually refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. 800.000 of the passed thru Croatia in 2015.

Source: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/09/04/number-of-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-in-europe-keeps-rising-data-shows

Additional sources for Bosnian war refugees and their ethnicity (predominately Bosniak):

"By September 1992, Croatia had accepted 335,985 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly Bosniak civilians (excluding men of military age)."

Source: Meznaric, Silva; Zlatkovic Winter, Jelena (February 1993). "Forced Migration and Refugee Flows in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Early Warning, Beginning and Current State of Flows". Refuge. 12 (7): 3–4. doi:10.25071/1920-7336.21183

More from UNHCR with ethnic composition of refugees and repatriation statistics:

"Between the December 1995 signing of the Dayton agreement and the end of 2001, more than 388,000 refugees returned to Bosnia, about half from Germany. More than two-thirds of the repatriating refugees were Muslims (260,672), about one-fifth ethnic Croats (75,525), and about one-tenth ethnic Serbs (47,741).

Since 1997 and 1998 – during which 120,000 and 110,000 refugees repatriated, respectively – the number of Bosnian refugees returning home from abroad has fallen substantially.

At the end of 2001, roughly 650,000 Bosnians remained uprooted as a result of the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. These included about 210,000 Bosnian refugees outside the country in need of durable solutions and about 438,500 internally displaced persons inside Bosnia."

Source: https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/uscri/2002/en/93067

And more on the number of repatriated Serbs to Croatia:

"Of the estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Croatian Serbs who left their homes during the 1991-95 war, mainly for Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, over 120,000 had registered their return to Croatia by August 2006."

Source: https://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k7/pdfs/croatia.pdf 46.188.236.113 (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I changed it to "one of the largest". The ranking depends on the exact definition and I think ultimately it's not that important if it was *the* largest or the second largest.

@Peacemaker67, let me know what you think. Alaexis_¿question? 21:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alaexis: Is the latter part of Adam Jones' commentary due for the lead? I see the IP added it and reverted me when I removed it. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the key points in the article, not add undue weight to particular opinions. This also seems to stray to almost a different topic. --Griboski (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

References

Claims of ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Croatian force in article

There are numerous claims of ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Croatian force in this article quoting dubious individuals from Serbia and abroad, but there are no sentences by ICJ and ICTY for that types of war crimes. On the other hand complete Serbian leadership in Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Croatia and Bosnia was tried and convicted by ICJ and ICTY for ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia and for Bosnian genocide of Bosniaks and Croats.

"Former RSK president Milan Martić was indicted for war crimes by the ICTY in 2005 was convicted of war crimes on 12 June 2007 and sentenced to 35 years in prison where he was transferred to in 2009. He is serving his sentence in Estonia. According to the ICTY, in the amended indictment, he "helped organize an ethnic cleansing campaign of Croats and other non-Serbs from Krajina and virtually the entire non-Serb population was forcibly removed, deported or killed"."

Source: https://www.icty.org/x/cases/martic/tjug/en/070612_summary_en.pdf 46.188.236.113 (talk) 16:56, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The claims of ethnic cleansing come from reliably published secondary sources, not Serbia. The only thing it mentions about genocide is that Serbia sued Croatia for it in the ICJ and lost. I've removed your personal attack. --Griboski (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I've also removed your personal attack. Please don't edit other people posts in the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.188.236.113 (talk) 18:25, 16 March 2025 (UTC)