Settembre 1993: l'esercito della Croazia secessionista
"sfonda" vincendo la resistenza serba presso Medak, nella
Repubblica Serba di Krajna - allora definita "autoproclamata"
dal coro ipocrita della stampa internazionale.
A quel tempo l'area era presidiata da armati ONU, impegnati
nella "interposizione" tra le due parti in conflitto. I soldati
canadesi svolsero correttamente il ruolo loro affidato, e
furono costretti a sostenere una sparatoria lunga 16 ore
con le milizie croate che, impegnate nel massacro
della popolazione locale, impedivano l'accesso alla zona
appena occupata. Solo dopo che furono uccisi 27 miliziani
croati, i canadesi poterono entrare a Medak e verificare
i loro peggiori sospetti.
Tenuta nascosta per circa tre anni alla stessa opinione
pubblica canadese, questa vicenda e' tuttora sostanzialmente
sconosciuta al pubblico, che puo' sentirne parlare oggi
grazie alla decisione del governo di Ottawa di dare dei
riconoscimenti ai soldati canadesi che si trovarono ad
affrontare quella situazione drammatica e politicamente
imbarazzante per un paese della NATO, quindi alleato e
complice della Croazia, quale e' il Canada.


===*===


http://www.macleans.ca

World
September 2, 2002

FIREFIGHT AT THE MEDAK POCKET

Ottawa will honour Canadians who took
part in a little-known battle

MICHAEL SNIDER with SEAN M. MALONEY


In September, 1993, Canadian troops
stationed in an area of Croatia known
as Vojna Krajina engaged in a fierce battle
with Croatian forces attacking a
predominantly Serb enclave. The engagement,
little known outside of military
circles, was not publicized by the Canadian
government, which was hesitant to
draw attention to the increasing dangers
the country's troops were facing
abroad. But this December, Ottawa will
finally honour the soldiers who took part
in that firefight by presenting them with a
unit commendation. Maclean's tells
the story of the battle:

PTE. SCOTT LeBLANC'S machine gun
jackhammered against his shoulder as he
fired at the Croatian troops dug in 150
metres away. Grenades exploded around
him; bullets and orange tracer-fire
screamed through the smoky air. The
Croatians hammered the Canadians for 15
hours straight -- thinking the 30
soldiers from the Princess Patricia's
Canadian Light Infantry would buckle and
run like other UN peacekeepers had often
done. But the Canadians, members of one
of three platoons making up the Patricia's
Charlie Company, held their ground.
"They're trying to flank us," LeBlanc's
section leader barked, sending a jolt of
adrenalin through LeBlanc's exhausted body.
Standing halfway out of his trench,
the 19-year-old reservist swung his gun
around and opened fire on the Croatians.
"We could see muzzle flashes and threw
everything we had at them," recalls
LeBlanc, now a 28-year-old lieutenant who
has just returned from Afghanistan.
"After that, everything got real quiet."
The fierce battle took place in
September, 1993, about a year and a half
after Canadian peacekeepers had first
arrived in the former Yugoslavia. Vicious
fighting and appalling acts of ethnic
cleansing made their task of disarming and
separating the various combatants nearly
impossible. Especially volatile was one
mountainous region of Croatia called Vojna
Krajina, or Military Frontier, home
to an isolated pocket of some 500,000
Serbs. Fiercely nationalistic, the Krajina
Serbs began to drive out Croats. But on
Sept. 9, Croatian Commander Rahim Ademi
launched an attack to capture an area of
Serb-controlled territory in Krajina
called the Medak Pocket. The UN, fearing
that 400 Serbs living in four
unprotected villages in the area were at
risk of being slaughtered by Croatian
troops, ordered the Patricia's into the
area -- and into the biggest firefight
Canadian forces had been involved in since
Korea.
Five months into a six-month tour of
duty, the Canadians were led by
Lt.-Col. James Calvin, 41. The 875-man
battle group was a patchwork of regular
and reserve soldiers. In fact, 70 per cent
of the front line soldiers were
reservists -- a makeup that, Calvin says,
could prove dangerous in a war zone.
"Reservists are just as long on valour and
courage," the now-retired Calvin told
Maclean's from his home on Wolfe Island,
Ont., near Kingston. "But you can't
expect one to do the same things you expect
from a regular soldier."
Still, after four months in the
region, Calvin considered his force
seasoned, especially with his hand-picked
group of platoon leaders, including
reservist Lt. Tyrone Green. The morning of
Sept. 9 started nicely enough for the
Vancouver native in charge of 9 Platoon,
Charlie Company, with sunshine poking
through the cracks in the boarded windows
of the platoon's quarters, a
two-storey concrete building on the
outskirts of the Serb-held town of Medak.
But as Green dragged a razor across
his chin, his morning shave was
interrupted by incoming artillery shells.
With soap still clinging to his face,
Green, who is now a captain in charge of a
Canadian Forces recruiting office in
Vancouver, grabbed his helmet and raced to
his M-113 armoured personnel carrier.
At one point he was knocked down when a
shell landed in a nearby ditch. He
wasn't hurt, but four Canadians were
injured in the shelling. "We counted 500 or
more shells by the end of the first day,"
says Green. "About a dozen fell in our
compound and one landed about 10 metres
from the front door."
Not knowing where the shells were
coming from, Green sent Sgt. Rudy Bajema
to establish an observation post. For the
next five days, Bajema watched as the
Medak Pocket was attacked by more than
2,500 Croat troops, backed by tanks,
rocket launchers and artillery. The Serbs
finally slowed the Croatian advance on
Sept. 12, but it was not until they
launched rockets into a suburb of Zagreb,
Croatia's capital, that the Croats relented
and accepted a UN ceasefire.
Calvin, who didn't really expect the
Croatians to live up to the
agreement, ordered his troops to occupy the
Croat positions. "We started taking
fire almost immediately from the Croats,"
recalls LeBlanc. The battle raged for
the next 15 hours. It was so intense that
at night the light from burning
buildings reflected off the soldiers' blue
UN helmets, prompting them to wrap
them in khaki-coloured T-shirts. Finally
realizing the Canadians would not back
down, the Croats sent word to Calvin that
they wanted to talk. They had good
reason to call a truce: the Canadians had
killed 27 Croats while not taking a
single casualty.
Joined by Col. Michel Maisonneuve, a
Canadian officer from the UN
headquarters in Zagreb, Calvin met with
Ademi at his headquarters in a town near
the fighting. Ademi sat on one side of the
table, blustering and yelling at the
Canadians. "He looked like he was enjoying
the role he was playing," says
Calvin. "Emotions were very high and I was
irate my men were getting shot at."
But after an hour and a half, Ademi finally
relented and promised to pull his
troops out at noon the next day.
The Croatian commander, however, was
determined to terrorize the Serb
civilians living in the area before he
left. By 10 a.m. the next morning, a
thick umbrella of smoke covered all four
towns in the Medak Pocket as the Croats
tried to kill or destroy everything in
their wake. The Canadians witnessed
scenes that still haunt many of them. "They
could see what was happening from
their foxholes," says Calvin. "My soldiers
knew their role was to protect the
weak and the innocent and they were
absolutely incensed." But fearing the
ceasefire agreement with Ademi would
collapse if they advanced, the Canadians
could do nothing but hold their ground.
Finally, when the noon deadline
passed, the Canadians raced ahead, but
immediately encountered a company of Croat
troops behind a barricade -- and
supported by missiles launchers and an
ominous Soviet-era T-72 tank. Calvin
approached the senior Croat brigadier;
their conversation quickly became heated.
The large, bearded Croat ordered his men to
cock their weapons and point them at
the Canadians. "We knew they were stalling
so they could clean up evidence of
their ethnic cleansing," Calvin recalls.
Calvin did not order his troops to
fight, and instead tried another
gambit. With the Medak attack almost a week
old, the international media had
converged on the area. As negotiations with
his bearded counterpart
deteriorated, Calvin held a news conference
in front of the barricade and
bluntly described the atrocities he
believed were being committed by the
Croatians. Realizing his country's
reputation was in jeopardy, the Croat
commander suddenly stepped aside. "The
transformation was instantaneous," says
Calvin. "He made a big show of removing the
barriers."
The Patricia's then pushed on. Every
building in their path had been
demolished and many were still smouldering.
Corpses lay by the side of the road,
some badly mutilated and others burned
beyond recognition. "We knew it was going
to be bad," says Green, "but the things we
found there were worse than anything
we expected."
The Canadians documented everything
they saw. Calvin's subsequent report
helped convince the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to
issue an indictment in 2001 against Ademi,
charging him with crimes against
humanity. Made public one year ago, the
report is a brutal list of murder and
torture. Among the victims: Sara Krickovic,
female, 71, throat cut; Pera
Krajnovic, female, 86, burned to death;
Andja Jovic, female, 74, beaten and
shot. In all, the Patricia's found 16
mutilated corpses -- some with their eyes
cut out.
The soldiers rotated home four weeks
later, but there was no hero's
welcome. At the time, Canadians were
focused on the disturbing revelations that
a teenager named Shidane Arone had been
tortured and killed by Canadian
peacekeepers in Somalia. Kim Campbell's
Conservative government was also facing
a federal election and didn't want the
increasing dangers Canadian troops were
facing in the Balkans raised as an issue.
"When we got back to Canada a couple
of weeks later, the first thing I did was
call home," says LeBlanc. "My folks
hadn't heard anything about the battle."
The force did receive high honours
from the United Nations in 1994, when
its members were given the United Nations
Force Commanders' Commendation -- the
first of its kind and only one of three
ever awarded. And, this December, the
Canadian government finally plans to honour
the troops by presenting them with a
unit commendation. But the honours only go
so far. With vivid memories of the
battle, many of the soldiers still suffer
from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
As for Ademi, his case rests in legal
limbo. After the indictment, he
voluntarily turned himself over to the war
crimes tribunal, proclaiming he had a
clear conscience because "I did not order
any atrocities." Last February, the UN
granted him a provisional release on
condition he return to The Hague when the
trial proceeds, likely next year. Calvin
may be called to testify. "Ademi should
be called to account," he says. "No soldier
should be able to get away with
that."

http://www.macleans.ca/xta-asp/storyview.asp?
viewtype=browse&tpl=browse_frame&vpath=/2002/09/02/
World/71190.shtml


===*===


PUBLICATION WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
DATE : TUE JUL.16,2002
PAGE : A13
CLASS : Focus
EDITION :

'Canada's Secret Battle' validated

Citation awarded to outgunned peacekeepers
who held their ground in 1993 firefight
with Croatia forces

by Scott Taylor

GOV. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson has created
two new military decorations in
recognition of Canadian peacekeeping
exploits in the Balkans. These
Commander-in-Chief unit citations were
awarded to the First Battalion, Royal
22nd Regiment (Vandoos) and the
Second Battalion, Princess Patricia's
Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) for
the "outstanding service of Canadian
Forces in times of conflict under
direct enemy fire." The Vandoos are
being credited for their 1992 role of
allowing then UN sector commander
Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie to reopen
the Sarajevo airport at the height of the
Bosnian civil war. Thanks in part
to the tremendous international
attention garnered by MacKenzie at
that time, the Vandoos' dangerous exploits
were relatively well publicized.
One cannot say the same about the
2PPCLI action in the Medak Pocket,
which has subsequently been dubbed
"Canada's Secret Battle." This
unheralded action began with a devastating
bombardment on the morning of Sept. 9,
1993, and lasted a total of nine days
before a ceasefire was reinstated.
When the Croatian shells first began
to explode in the Serbian village of
Medak, Lieut. Tyrone Green and his
platoon found themselves caught in the
centre of the maelstrom. They, along
with the rest of 2PPCLI, had only
recently been deployed to this region
known as Sector South.
Although it was included within the
administrative boundaries of newly
independent Croatia, this area was
historically populated by ethnic
Serbs. Having no desire to submit to
Croatian authorities, the Serbs, in turn,
declared their own independent region
called Krajina. Croatian military
threats to eliminate this pocket of
resistance prompted the United Nations
to declare this a protected area.
From the outset, Lieut.-Col. Jim
Calvin, Commanding Officer of 2PPCLI,
made it clear that he and his battalion
would not back away from their
mandate to protect the Krajina Serbs.
Despite the danger, Green's platoon
remained in Medak to provide the UN
Security Council with an
up-to-the-minute account of the heavy
fighting.
On the night of Sept. 10, Green
reported a distinct shift in the
bombardment. Croatian special forces
troops had begun rolling through the
Medak valley. Brave but futile Serb
resistance resulted in a steady stream
of wounded soldiers and frightened
refugees flowing past Green's position.
Serbian reinforcements were rushed
from all over the Krajina to halt the
Croatian advance. After desperate
fighting on the morning of Sept. 14,
the Serbs had succeeded in stabilizing
their line, barely 1,200 metres from
the village of Medak itself.
Under intense political pressure from
the UN, the Croatians reluctantly
agreed to withdraw to their pre-Sept.
9 lines. However, when Calvin
attempted to push his troops forward,
the Croatians opened fire at the
advancing peacekeepers. Invoking
their right to self-defence, the men
of Charlie Company, 2PPCLI, started
shooting back. Over the next 16 hours
a vicious firefight took place at
ranges often less than 200 metres. Despite
being outgunned, the PPCLI held their
ground.
The following morning, Calvin resumed
his attempt to push forward into
the contested pocket. When a Croatian
general refused passage to Delta
Company, Calvin ordered his men to
"lock and load" their weapons. A tense
standoff ensued, with the heavily
outnumbered Canadians looking through
their gunsights at Croatian gun
barrels. To break the impasse, Calvin
gambled on the threat of negative
international press coverage by calling
forward a handful of journalists to
the roadblocks. Based on violence
witnessed by his troops the previous
evening, Calvin accused the Croatians
of committing "crimes against
humanity." The tactic worked, and the
general backed down.
As the Croatian soldiers removed the
roadblocks and the Canadian armoured
column rolled forward, it soon became
evident that Calvin had been correct
in his allegations of atrocities.
What could not be looted by the
retreating Croats was burned, and of
the 171 Serb civilians reportedly
trapped in the pocket, the PPCLI
found only 16 badly mutilated bodies.
Discarded surgical gloves next to
bloodied soil left little doubt as to
the fate of the other missing Serbs.
Given the heavy fighting they had
endured and the carnage they had
uncovered, the men of 2PPCLI
expressed little remorse for having
inflicted heavy casualties upon the
Croatian forces -- officially listed
as 21 dead and dozens wounded.
With hundreds of our soldiers
enduring more than a week of artillery
fire and several close quarter firefights,
the Medak remains the largest
combat engagement experienced by Canadian
troops since the Korean War. In
contrast to the almost constant media
attention being directed towards the
activities of our troops currently on
operational duty in Afghanistan,
incredibly the first news reports of
the Medak battle were not publicized
in Canada until the Ottawa Citizen
broke the story in November 1996 --
38 months after it occurred.
Despite the exemplary performance of
2PPCLI and the relatively light
casualties they suffered during the
operation (four wounded and one
accidental death), the senior
bureaucrats at the Department of
National Defence deliberately chose
not tomake public the Medak incident.
Domestically, the senior brass was
already embroiled in the Somalia
scandal, and the Progressive
Conservative government was in the
midst of disastrous federal election.
No one wanted to put a spotlight on
the military, particularly when this
incident had the potential to embarrass
the U.S. over their pro-Croatian
foreign policy in the Balkans. U.S.
military advisers had assisted the
Croatians in planning the overall
Medak operation.
At the time, some Defence officials
argued internally that 2PPCLI had
"failed" to protect the Serbs in
Medak. However, the fact remains that
Calvin's troops demonstrated, for the
first time, that the UN was prepared
to use deadly force to back up its
stated mandate in Croatia. Official
recognition of this brave effort with
a decoration is a step in the right
direction. However, nine years later,
the perpetrators of the Medak
atrocities have still not been
indicted by The Hague War Crimes
Tribunal, despite the overwhelming
evidence supplied by the Canadian
soldiers who witnessed the horrors.
Only when this international court
alters its anti-Serbian bias and begins
applying an even hand of justice can
our Medak veterans' efforts be
considered truly validated.


Scott Taylor is editor and publisher
of Esprit de Corps, an Ottawa-based
monthly magazine, and co-author of the
book Tested Mettle.