LIUBOTEN

LIUBOTEN

After “Karpalak”, the road Poroi - Iazhintse and “Radusha”, which received attention for only a very short time, i.e. from August 8 to August 11, 2001, culmination on the terrain went out of general control. Government members from the wide coalition openly came into direct conflict with each other because each was looking for reasons to start a confrontation with the others and accuse them for the situation we were in. I remember attending a meeting in Ohrid where they demanded that Vlado Buchkovski resign and Branko Tsrvenkovski take his place. At the same meeting I also remember Prime Minister Georgievski saying: “All this that has happened is too naïve - it is a tragedy for the Macedonian people - it will be a shameful decision to sign this agreement. The Republic of Macedonia has entered a dead end; the state agencies have no authority over the people.” I wrote this down on August 8, 2001. But, even after what was said and done, the Agreement was still signed and it was signed with the same coalition partner who was in government when the military crisis in Macedonia began. These words of wisdom needed to have been said, this problem was in need of correction and acted upon when it began, instead of on August 8, 2001 when it was too late and after the international institutions became fully involved in resolving the crisis. If this resolution, at this late period of time, was not accepted, I believe we would have been faced with a civil war, it was inevitable. Obviously someone did not want that, and despite all of the provocations that took place at the time, i.e. at the beginning and during the Ohrid negotiations, nothing major took place but a culmination was indeed reached the day before the signing of the Agreement and manifested itself as an incident in Liuboten.

On August 12, 2001, a Sunday, as I always did, this time too I was asleep in the office of General Headquarters. At 06:00 hours I was awakened by sounds of explosions coming from the “Ilinden” Barracks. I thought something had happened in the barracks and immediately called Colonel Blazho Kopachev, Commander of the barracks and asked: “Blazho, what is happening in the barracks?” He quickly replied: “Nothing!” I then asked: “Do you not hear artillery fire?!” He again gave me a short answer: “I hear it but it’s only an echo coming from Radishani.” So I said: “Go right now and

check it out then call me back immediately!” I contacted General Stamboliski and asked: “Do you know who is firing artillery? These are strong explosions; I do not believe these are terrorist attacks…” In the meantime Colonel Blazho Kopachev called me back and said: “The explosions are coming from Liuboten, the police have attacked the village, but we don’t know anything about that!” I snapped back at him and said: “How could you not know, this is your artillery firing, the police have no artillery! Go and immediately find out what’s going on and let me know!” I then again contacted General Stamboliski and asked: “What is happening? Who ordered the attack without informing me or the Brigade Commander?!” He said: “I don’t know, I will check!” “Inform the Minister of Defense!”

The artillery fire ended around 07:00 hours. Commander Colonel Blazho Kopachev called me back again and told me that our 120 mm mortar battery was sent to support the police attack as ordered by the Supreme Commander.” I snapped at him again and said: “Stop talking! How did the Supreme Commander know where you have 120 mm batteries in those positions? And with what did he issue this order and to which commander? I don’t even know who the battery commander is, how did he know that? Go directly to the site, check the situation, take a statement from the battery commander and come back here to General Headquarters with that statement!”

I informed Minister Vlado Buchkovski about all this, about which he was not familiar.

When Colonel Blazho Kopachev returned to General Headquarters he gave me the battery commander’s statement. I read it but I could not believe it. Among other things, the statement read: “At 06:00 the President called me on my mobile telephone and ordered me to provide support to the police attack on the village Liuboten - but not to act inside the village, only from the outside...”

I looked at the Colonel and said: “This cannot be disputed, the Supreme Commander has the right to directly issue orders. This is spelled out in the rules of service; that in an emergency situation he can issue orders to any rank, the system of command can issue direct orders to subordinates if an order is to be immediately carried out,

but there is also a rule that a subordinate must immediately notify his immediate superior of the order received and from whom!” Colonel Blazo Kopachev looked at me and said: “I am aware of that Sir, but sometimes things do happen…” which in fact was right.

It was unusual for the President not to have consulted with us and not to have asked us for our opinions, especially when a combat task was jointly carried out between ARM and the police.

Again however, I thought to myself that this must be another one of those games Liube Boskovski, the Minister of the Interior Ministry, was playing. I contacted Boskovski and he said: “I don’t know when the attack started. The President called me around 08:00 hours but at that time I was at the “Erodrom” neighbourhood getting a haircut.” I no longer knew who to believe… The battery commander was very clear in his written statement; only 12 rounds of mortars were fired from the battery and ARM was not involved in the actual attack. Later we received information that “allegedly the police also did not directly participate in the attack and that a security agency called “Comet” was responsible. The information was not verified and neither was the reason why the Army was not in charge.

I just want to emphasize here that this was another “attempt” by someone to drag ARM into “chaos”.

Thanks to the sound minds of “some” of the people in our government and for the assistance provided by the international community, “chaos” in the Republic of Macedonia was prevented and so was a civil war in which, I am sure, in such a situation, NATO would have unleashed its units and “separated” our country into two pieces. And I wouldn’t rule out that our neighbouring countries would have become involved. If it came to this, then I wouldn’t even rule out an inevitable regional war, whose consequences would have been difficult to predict, especially for the Macedonian people.

The “architect” of the military crisis in Macedonia achieved his objectives without a total war (civil war) because he had already developed tools to control the military crisis on both sides. All other “things said and done” were only part of the end game and forgotten

as time passed on. The dilemma as to whether there were winners or losers in this military crisis: there were winners and those winners were the politicians, the rest of us were just tools with which they achieved the planned objectives in this war.

In all that time the biggest losers were the Macedonian people and the Macedonian army which was humiliated in this historical period, humiliated by its own “patriots”. How long will our people have to endure this inside our own country, I don’t know. But I am always hoping that the end of this humiliation is near!?

The Macedonian people participated in many wars, but never with their own army and with their own goals - they always fought for foreign interests. The 2001 war will no doubt be recorded by history, if for nothing else then for the fact that the Republic of Macedonia, as an independent sovereign state, with its own army, defended its own territorial integrity and wholeness.