Operation Winter '94 - Prelude

Prelude

In November 1994, the Siege of Bihać entered a critical stage, as the VRS and the ARSK came close to capturing the town from the Bosniak-dominated ARBiH. Bihać was seen as a strategic area by the international community. It was thought that its capture by Serb forces would intensify the war, widening the division between the United States on one side and France and the United Kingdom on the other (advocating different approaches to the area's preservation), and feared that Bihać would become the worst humanitarian disaster of the war. Furthermore, denying Bihać to the Serbs was strategically important to Croatia. Brigadier General Krešimir Ćosić expected the VRS and the ARSK would threaten Karlovac and Sisak once they captured Bihać, while General Janko Bobetko, Chief of Croatia's General Staff, believed the fall of Bihać would represent an end to Croatia's war effort.

Following a U.S. military strategy endorsed by President Bill Clinton in February 1993, the Washington Agreement was signed in March 1994. This ended the Croat–Bosniak War, abolished Herzeg-Bosnia, established the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and forged the ARBiH–HVO alliance against the VRS. In addition, a series of meetings between U.S. and Croatian officials were held in Zagreb and Washington, D.C. In November 1994, the United States unilaterally ended the arms embargo against Bosnia and Herzegovina—in effect, allowing the HV to supply itself as arms shipments flowed through Croatia. In a meeting held on 29 November 1994, Croatian representatives proposed to attack Serb-held territory from Livno in Bosnia and Herzegovina to draw off part of the force besieging Bihać and prevent its capture by the Serbs. U.S. officials made no response to the proposal. Operation Winter '94 was ordered the same day, to be carried out by the HV and the HVO: the main military force of the Bosnian Croats.

Operation Winter '94 had become feasible after the HVO captured Kupres (north of the Livanjsko field) in Operation Cincar on 3 November 1994, securing the right flank of the planned advance northwest of Livno. The HVO and the ARBiH advanced towards Kupres, in the first military effort coordinated between them since the Washington Agreement.