Every time we utter the names My Lai, Oradour-sur-Glane, Sabra and Shatila, Lipa, Škabrnja or Ahmići, we shudder and stop short in horror. These places belong to an all-too-long list of villages that would probably have remained unknown had almost unimaginable crimes not been committed there against their inhabitants. Sadly, three small villages in the Lika region—Počitelj, Lički Čitluk and Divoselo—must also be added to that list. Thirty-three years ago, they became the targets of an operation by the Croatian Army and Special Police known as Pocket 93.
Official state commemorations and admirers of Croatia’s wartime campaigns will not remember these villages or their inhabitants in the coming days. Instead, they will remember only the devastating force of the Croatian units, describe the outcome of their actions as a military success, and portray the civilian victims as aggressors and criminals. This practice persistently overlooks and denies the criminal dimension of Operation Pocket 93.
Today, the areas where these villages around Gospić once stood are completely depopulated. They are among the rare places where, after the wartime destruction, no reconstruction was ever undertaken and no one subsequently settled. This is the result of an aggressive, long-term policy of erasure pursued by the Croatian state under the leadership of the political party that remains in power today.
If you don’t know what happened, let Lika tell you
The facts and circumstances surrounding Operation Pocket 93, carried out from 9 to 17 September 1993, are now fairly well known. The military objectives of the operation included taking control of the strategically important Medak Pocket area, from which Gospić was exposed to artillery fire, securing the southeastern approaches to the town, and preventing the forces of the Republic of Serbian Krajina from cutting the Gospić–Karlobag road. The villages of Lički Čitluk, Počitelj, Divoselo and Medak are located in this area. Serbs made up the vast majority of the local population.
The operation also had another objective, one that remained unspoken both during its execution and in subsequent public discourse. That objective was ethnic cleansing carried out through the commission of war crimes. The entire area was subjected to the systematic and ruthless destruction of property and infrastructure by Croatian Army and Special Police forces, accompanied by loosely controlled killings and looting. The pursuit of personal gain through plunder, coupled with revenge driven by hatred, provided the motive for this aspect of the operation.
It is estimated that almost 100 people were killed during the operation, with particular attention drawn to the brutality of the killings and the abuse inflicted on the victims. Among other things, civilians were burned alive and attacked with bladed weapons. Every building in the three villages was destroyed. Not a single one survived the scorched-earth campaign. The final report on operations in the Medak Pocket, prepared by the Canadian Battalion serving with the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the area, stated that “a total of 164 homes and 148 outbuildings on private properties were destroyed in the area. This included every single building in the Medak Pocket. Nothing was spared.”
This operation marked the first brutal step in a policy of erasure pursued over a long period of destruction and neglect in Lika and the Gospić area, the consequences of which remain clearly visible today. Gospić, which had a population of almost 30,000 in 1991, had fallen to 11,500 inhabitants according to the latest census, conducted in 2021. A population that was once 64 percent Croat and 30 percent Serb is now 94.3 percent Croat and 3.5 percent Serb. Divoselo, Čitluk and Počitelj, which together had between 800 and nearly 1,000 inhabitants before Operation Pocket 93, officially have just eight residents today, although the actual number is probably even lower.
Quiet violence
The policy of erasure continued through slower, more prolonged and less visible methods: denial and silence in official approaches to history and remembrance, the silencing of victims, and attempts to prevent public discussion and research into human rights violations committed during Operation Pocket 93.
Although several final court judgments have established responsibility for war crimes, imposed prison sentences and determined the relevant facts and circumstances, all those taking part in official commemorations of the operation over the past fifteen years have completely ignored the findings of those proceedings. The victims are never mentioned, and there has been no attempt to compensate for their suffering through either symbolic or material reparations. Moreover, when victims’ families have sought compensation or attempted to report those responsible, their claims have been rejected, further silencing them. One example is the family of Boja Pjevač, who was killed during the operation. Her family filed a criminal complaint with the Croatian State Attorney’s Office against Mladen Markač and Željko Sačić, who commanded Special Police units during Operation Pocket 93. The complaint was dismissed, while the investigation into the crimes is reportedly still ongoing. In 2014 and 2017, the family also filed constitutional complaints alleging the absence of an effective investigation into her killing; these too were dismissed.
Given the scale of the destruction and depopulation of Divoselo, Čitluk and Počitelj, there is now almost no one left to commemorate those who were killed. The few members of Croatia’s Serb community who do attempt to do so have been discouraged and intimidated by the increase in hate speech directed at them over the past two years, while in the public sphere they are branded as aggressors. It was for precisely these reasons that last year’s commemoration of the civilian victims of the Medak Pocket was cancelled.
Any public discussion or research into human rights violations committed during Operation Pocket 93 is discouraged by state institutions and is particularly threatened by the Act on the Legal Consequences of Conviction, Criminal Records and Rehabilitation. The Act provides that “an offender who has been finally convicted or exempted from punishment has the right, after the expiry of the period prescribed by law and subject to the conditions laid down by this Act, to be regarded as a person who has not committed a criminal offence, and their rights and freedoms may not differ from those of persons who have not committed a criminal offence.” Mirko Norac, who commanded Croatian Army units in the Medak Pocket, becomes eligible for judicial rehabilitation this year. This may enable him to seek protection of his dignity through defamation proceedings if he is spoken about or associated with the crimes for which he was convicted. These provisions pose a serious risk to researchers, historians and media professionals who may in future wish to examine human rights violations committed during the war in Croatia, as they could face legal action for identifying perpetrators by name.
Depopulated areas as a testing ground for further destruction
During the 1993 operation in the Medak Pocket, soldiers not only killed people and destroyed property, but also poisoned wells in each of the three devastated villages. They did so by pouring oil into them or throwing animal carcasses into the wells in order to contaminate the drinking water. The purpose of these acts was to prevent any return or restoration of life in the area.
In 2026, an illegal dump site was discovered on a cadastral plot in Divoselo, within the territory of Gospić, where tens of thousands of tons of hazardous waste had been unlawfully buried. As the waste seeped into the soil, the latest tests conducted near the site found extremely high concentrations of microplastics in the water, endangering the lives of people across the wider Lika region. As a result, one of Croatia’s largest protests of the past ten years was held in Zagreb on 5 September. More than 50,000 people gathered in the city center to protest against the poisoning of the water and to demand accountability from those in power.
After the villages of the Medak Pocket around Gospić had been ethnically cleansed and their infrastructure devastated during the war, the region was subjected to long-term neglect. This created a physical, social and political vacuum that the ruling elite could exploit for its own profit, while causing further environmental destruction and putting both the present and the future of life in the already sparsely populated Lika region at risk. This reveals the ultimate purpose served by such emptied spaces.
Yet the poisoning of the water is not the only thing linking 1993 and 2026. What connects the principal organizers of Operation Pocket 93 at the highest levels of the state with those in the Croatian Government, the county authorities and the State Inspectorate who allowed illegally transported waste to be buried and to poison the residents of Gospić is their membership in the same political party.
The final act in this policy of erasure shows that history is repeating itself.
The author was born in 1990 and graduated from the Faculty of Political Science and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. He works as an adviser in the Culture Department of the Serb National Council in Zagreb.
DwP, 16.09.2026.
Peščanik.net, 17.09.2026.