Operation Storm:
NATO Against the United Nations
[NATO; United Nations; Yugoslavia]

What was never revealed to public opinion was that Canadians, Americans, and Germans were fighting on opposite sides.

While senior U.S. officers advised the Croatian High Command through a private mercenary outfit based in Arlington, Virginia, German mercenaries were in theater alongside Croatian military and paramilitary units during the onslaught of Operation Storm and the 1995 massacres of Krajina Serbs. The Royal Canadian regiment was "on the other side of the fence" with the mandate of protecting civilians and "keeping the peace."

In response to the advancing Croatian troops, the Canadian peacekeepers had radioed back to their commanding officer, Major Rochette, informing him "that these ‘Croatians' were, in fact, well- armed German mercenaries.... Additional ‘Croats' [German mercenaries] had quietly surrounded the citadels and then forced their way inside..." (Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan, The Sunday Sun, Toronto, Nov. 2, 1998). In later developments, the U.N. observation posts in the Canadian sector were overrun by Croatian troops (integrated by their German counterparts), and two- thirds of the Canadian command were taken into captivity. (Ibid.)

According to the Canadians, the Croatian paramilitary were  immediately behind the front- line Croatian combat troops and German mercenaries: "A large number of hard- line extremists had pushed into Krajina.... Many of these atrocities were carried out within the Canadian Sector, but as the peacekeepers were soon informed by the Croat authorities, the U.N. no longer had any formal authority in the region." (Ibid.)

How the German mercenaries—who participated in the massacres—had been recruited was never officially revealed. An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) published a year before Operation Storm confirmed that foreign mercenaries in Croatia had in some cases "been paid [and presumably recruited] outside Croatia and by third parties" (United Nations Human Rights Commission, Fifty- first session, Item 9 of the provisional agenda, Geneva, Dec. 21, 1994).

—Michel Chossudovsky