EXECUTING OPERATION “MH - 2”

EXECUTING OPERATION “MH - 2”

Artillery preparation began at 08:00 hours with aims at de-mining the area.

The units went on the attack. One mechanized company was attacking from the side and providing faster penetration for the main forces, which were to aggressively attack in the direction of the village Liubodrag towards the villages Lopate and Orazire during the artillery preparation. And one tank and one mechanized company attacked the village Vaksintse and blocked the village Loiane with a mechanized company reinforced with a tank platoon.

Besides the ARM units being involved in the operation, there were also 480 police officers involved throughout the entire area ready to clean up the villages and secure the roads. The dam at Lipkovo Lake was secured by 27 SVR Kumanovo police officers. And the regular police station from the village Mateiche took control of the road from Skopje connecting the villages Arachinovo with Mateiche and Lipkovo with Mateiche.

The operation began with an all out attack in all directions against the designated villages, especially in the direction of the villages Opae, Orizare and Slupchane.

Throughout this entire time I expected my commanders to report to me that they had run into minefields and anti-tank obstacles. But there were no such reports. The operation went as planned. Unfortunately, due to bad weather conditions, landing was not possible. So we used the combat helicopters to go after the terrorists fleeing north from the villages Vaksintse and Slupchane, i.e. Kodra Mala and Slupchane River.

At 10:00 hours, I, together with Colonel Blagoia Markovski, Stoiche Zengovski and our security team, went to the front line, i.e. to within 1 km of the village Slupchane - k. 376. That morning at dawn, what I witnessed and experienced left me traumatized. I heard terrible screaming, crying and wailing coming from the villages Orizare and Slupchane. It was still raining and soon afterwards we returned to our command post.

At 12:00 hours our units had already reached the entrance of the villages Slupchane, Orizare and Vaksintse and secured the roads to Vaksintse, Slupchane and Orizare, thus cutting off the villages from one another. The villages were separated from one another by ARM units. The tanks proceeded in the direction towards Blagun from the east side of the village Slupchane. The units from the village Alashevtse, at the start of the Alashevtse - Slupchane road, launched an attack north of Slupchane near the pine forest. Any attempt to flee in this direction, on the part of the terrorists, would be in vain. The villages Opae, Lopate and Loiane were taken and the villages Orizare and Slupchane were surrounded. Traffic was cut off in the entire area between these villages.

About 13:00 hours, Prime Minister Georgievski arrived at our command post in Kumanovo.

After he joined us in the operations room I informed him of our progress with implementing the operation and the current situation. He was pleased with our progress, success, the actions of the units at the front line and the total military action in general. In addition he personally oversaw the military actions in the villages Slupchane and Vaksintse. He sat in the operations room and examined the entire campaign theater. He was particularly interested in the front of the villages Vaksintse and Slupchane and the space between them.

According to the reports coming from the commanders, personal observations and reports from the Interior Ministry, there was general panic among the terrorists and they were on the run. I remember Zvonko Kashirski shouting: “Hey, they are fleeing to the forests and some are running for Kumanovo!”

At one point, one of Prime Minister Georgievski’s aides gave the Prime Minister his cellular telephone. After he spoke for a while the Prime Minister turned towards me and said: “General Pande, we must stop the operation!” I looked at him and said: “What, stop the operation?!” He looked at me and said: “Stop the action!” I looked back at him and said: “Hang up your telephone; we need to finish the operation, not stop it. I don’t even know what that means!?”

The Prime Minister left the operations room where we were and about 5 to 10 minutes later he came back and said: “Dosta Dimovska called me. She received a call from Arben Xhaferi who told her: ‘You are causing many casualties with what you are doing. There are many casualties including civilians - women, children, etc.’…” I looked at him and immediately realized what had gone on at the front after the attack began - but I replied to him anyway. I said: “I can only terminate the operation by orders from my Supreme Commander!” The Prime Minister and his group left for Skopje, and we continued with our actions. About 10 minutes later I received a call from President Boris Trajkovski. He said: “General, what are you doing there?” Expecting that he had already been informed, I said: “Well Mr. President we are playing ball!!” He then said: “Do you know that several citizens called me and told me that you are causing many civilian casualties in this region? Stop the operation immediately and return the units to their initial positions!” I said to him: “I understand Mr. President, but I have no such data, I only know that the terrorist gangs are in panic.”

Standing in front of all the officers and staff in the middle of the operations room, I made an announcement informing everyone of the Supreme Commander’s latest orders, given to me by telephone, to stop all military actions and withdraw our units to their initial positions.

We need to plan the withdrawal and not to the initial positions. The units will hold the positions they are now in as follows: the villages Loia - Vaksintse - Slupchani Bunar - Orizare. The villages Opae, Lopate and Rzhanovtse are to fall under police control and clean up any remaining terrorists. After these positions are secured, security measures must be taken to defend and protect our units.

Unfortunately, some mistakes were made during the withdrawal, but they were quickly corrected. The line Vaksintse - Slupchanski Bunar - Orizare TT - 349 was secured. I ordered our units to take control of the area north of this line, i.e. in the direction of the villages Slupchane - Rugintse and Vaksince - Strazha. My officers were looking at me but did not question my motives. I had no idea what they were thinking, but in any case they felt bad because we had

stopped the operation. At the end I told them: “We are soldiers and we must obey our Supreme Commander’s orders - comments are not necessary!”

My views, opinions and whatever, in moments such as these were not important - if indeed there were or weren’t any casualties on the part of the other side, I did not know for sure, but in any case it was important that the operation was terminated, even though our aims had not been completed in full. Only part of the operations plan was achieved. But still I could not get out of my mind what had just happened and what I had experienced at the front line; the whining, the crying and the screaming; the very strange screams and voices, which were probably due to fear.

Why the Kumanovo operation was interrupted was revealed later. Namely, some foreign intelligence services had tried, before the operation had started, to frighten and intimidate us into not taking military action. When that method failed, they found another way to stop the operation. In all the actions that we took that day, as we later found out, there was not even a single civilian casualty.

Six hours after we started the Kumanovo operation, it was terminated at 14:00 hours and during those six hours our units, by road, penetrated the villages Slupchane, Otlia and Mateiche and managed to cut off the thoroughfare Slupchane - Vaksintse. Our units unfortunately did not manage to completely surround Vaksintse except from the north side.

In Karadak Region, after the Operation was terminated, we were left “hot and cold”. International humanitarian organizations intervened with aims at extracting the civilians and the sick and wounded. Each day the International Red Cross found some excuse to prevent us from conducting further actions and stopped us from entering the surrounding villages.

In all the villages, except for Loiane, there were about 2,500 to 3,000 people held hostage by the terrorists, held as human shields for their own protection. ARM could not continue with its military actions in these villages. It was not allowed for fear of massive “civilian casualties”.

I became concerned by the fact that, after May 25, 2001, a large number of terrorists from Preshevska Dolina would spill over into the Republic of Macedonia and the situation would become even more complex and we would still be powerless to act.

We received information that the terrorists were holding hostages, mostly women and children, in the abandoned mine shafts in the old Chrome mine, northeast of the village Vaksintse. We were also told that some civilians were held in various cellars in the village Vaksintse. A group of about 150 to 200 women and children were looking for a way to skip to our side. They were in the mine colony located between the villages Vaksintse and Loia.

We also received frightening information from Lipkovo: “There were about 5,000 to 6,000 civilians gathered around the mosque in Lipkovo who demanded to be taken to Kosovo, but not by us, by KFOR”. This meant that “the terrorists would be armed, dressed in civilian clothes and hiding among a crowd of civilians. And should our forces touch them, they would open fire on us and if we responded, we would inflict heavy casualties on the civilian population.”

Through the Red Cross, they called for a 3 to 4 day ceasefire to organize and start taking the civilian population through Skopje Tsrna Gora to Kosovo. KFOR was to take them by buses along the road: Mateiche - Skopje - General Jankovich to Pristina. They demanded that no one except for KFOR get near them. They said they had no confidence in our security forces.

This request, and the manner by which the civilians were to be extracted, was discussed at a state leadership level. It was proposed to allow the extraction and the transfer to Kosovo to be carried out by KFOR. Our security forces were to examine the buses and, with escorts, follow them to the General Jankovich border crossing. That proposal however was rejected by the terrorists. They instead asked to be transferred to Kosovo on foot through Skopje Tsrna Gora. All this however was only a tactic to stall for time so that they could stay in this region until May 25, 2001.

The humanitarian organizations (we had information that the humanitarian organization “El Hilal”, which was especially strong in Arachinovo, supplied the terrorists with all their needs and in that respect it acted in both Kosovo and Macedonia, cooperating with International Community forces on the ground.) were entering the surrounding villages and no one had the right to examine what they were bringing in. The only control they encountered was that from the police but only after they came out of the villages. With each entry into the villages they brought with them about 15 to 20 civilians, mostly women and children.

Our security forces had their hands “bound” and no serious action could be taken in the encircled villages. It was allowed to take “action only for legitimate purposes” - but there were no “legitimate purposes” outside of the villages. The terrorists were in the villages together with the civilians. For days we provoked them to show themselves but they refused to come out and fight, they simply did not come out of the villages.

The new tactic the terrorists employed was to “hold the civilians in the villages as hostages”. Their success, in terms of getting the time they needed, of course was bolstered by the help they were receiving from the humanitarian organizations, which worked hard in the entire region like some “massive disaster” or epidemic had hit the area and it lacked food, shelter, medicines and other necessities.