A storm is any disturbed state of an astronomical body's atmosphere, especially affecting its surface, and strongly implying severe weather. It may be marked by strong wind, thunder and lightning (a thunderstorm), heavy precipitation, such as ice (ice storm), or wind transporting some substance through the atmosphere (as in a dust storm, snowstorm, hailstorm, etc).
Operation Storm (Croatian and Serbian Latin: Operacija Oluja, Serbian Cyrillic: Oпeрaциja Oлуja) was a large-scale military operation carried out by Croatia, in conjunction with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to recapture areas of central Croatia's enclaves designated as United Nations Protected Areas (UNPAs). The enclaves were under protection of UNPROFOR. During the first day of the attack, that was launched by the Croatian army, UN forces withdrew and after only four days of fighting with the Krajina Army, with light military casualties on both sides, it ended in a decisive victory for the Croatian army.
The act was called ethnic cleansing of the defeated Serbs since the operation led to the displacement of approximately 200,000-250,000 Croatian Serbs, . The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia prosecution alleges that "the ethnic cleansing operation" was a part of the joint criminal enterprise of the Croatian state and military core to expel the Serb populace from Croatia, with Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markač and Ivan Čermak facing trial . Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia at the time said: "The fact is, the [Serb] population left before the Croatian army got there. You can't deport people who have already left." Several videos supporting this appeared later. In 2004, one video showed the Serbian politician and paramilitary leader Vojislav Šešelj saying: "If they (the Croatians) come, we must tell our people to leave Croatia, rather than letting them live under Croatian rule". In 2007, Croatian OTV television aired regular daily TV programs recovered after capture of Knin. Among others, these videos showed the Krajina Serb military instructing the local population how to evacuate, one month before the Storm.
The Croatian government's officially stated cause for the operation was Croatia's right to liberate its own territory, i.e. bring the rebel held territories back under its control. One of the reasons given for the operation was that the area had previously been ethnically cleansed of Croats - according to the ICTY, up to 78,000 ethnic Croatians were expelled from Krajina. Notably, the ICTY equally indicted the Croatian military commanders for the ethnical cleansing of the Serbs during the Operation Storm.
In Croatia August 5 is celebrated as a national holiday, Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day, while in Serbia it is marked by commemorations to the killed and exiled.
Storm was a Norwegian folk metal band that originally included Fenriz of Darkthrone and Satyr of Satyricon. Later on Kari Rueslåtten also joined them on vocals. After the recording of the one and only album she stated in the Norwegian music newspaper Puls that she was fooled into singing the lyrics which could be interpreted as nationalistic. The idea behind Storm was to release what was pure Norwegian music. Historical songs brought to life by instruments of our time. It was a message of what the country once believed.
