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The end of several months of conflict in southern Serbia was already in sight when the biggest fight took place, which determined the outcome of this conflict. It is about the fight for the town of Oraovica, a town near Presevo, which may not have been a battle according to military parameters, but because of its importance it could be called that.
At the beginning of May 2001, under the cover of night, groups of the so-called Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army (OVPMB), in which there were many with war experience from Kosovo and Metohija. All the lights in the town were turned off, vehicles were heard and occasional shots were fired. Until then, a local terrorist group lived in the village and now they have started recruiting locals for the needs of the paramilitaries.
They blocked the roads leading to the village, thus blocking a unit of the then Yugoslav Army (VJ). Members of the 63rd Parachute Brigade tried to facilitate the supply of water and food to these soldiers by passing through the enemy ranks. The first attempt failed, but the second, carried out behind the back of the Albanian paramilitaries, on the other side of Lake Oraovic, was successful.
The OVPMB launched an attack on the VJ and MUP forces in Serbia on the afternoon of May 12, 2001. The exchange of fire lasted a couple of days, and the response of the Joint Security Forces (ZSB), VJ and MUP, followed on May 14, with the consent of KFOR, that is, NATO, since everything was developed on the edge of the Ground Safety Zone. According to the Kumanovo Agreement, this five-kilometer-wide belt along Kosovo’s administrative line is under the authority of the commander of international forces in the southern province.
In addition, KFOR followed the action in Oraovica from “Apache” helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. The precise actions destroyed the firing points of the OVPMB, but the fire support was not carried out with heavy artillery, but with mortars and grenade launchers. Tanks were used to destroy the bunkers, with the approval of KFOR.
Yugoslav Army M-36 self-propelled howitzer
ZSB units merged at the Oraovica factory on May 15, around 8 p.m., and that was the end of the separatists’ plans to prevent the VJ and MUP from entering this part of the Security Zone. Land. Some of them surrendered and many fled in the direction of Kosovo and Macedonia. They took their guns, buried part of the arsenal, and pushed a jeep with guns into Lake Oraovic.
These dramatic events are described in more detail in the book “Counterterrorism Operation in Southern Serbia” by Milosav Simović and Nikola Karanović. Security problems in the Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja area began shortly after the end of the NATO aggression, the aforementioned book states. Hundreds of Albanians from these municipalities fought in 1998 and 1999 as part of the so-called KLA.
After the end of the war, in June 1999, some of them remained in Kosovo and Albania, some emigrated, and most returned home. They will become the nucleus of the OVPMB, which appeared in public in 2000. This paramilitary was organized in six brigades and had more than a thousand people armed with infantry weapons, mortars and also had two howitzers.
The idea was to repeat the events of Kosovo in southern Serbia, carry out terror against the civilian population and carry out terrorist attacks against the police, provoke a reaction from the State, which will present it as repression against Albanians, which it should lead to the involvement of NATO and the West in solving the problem, and the ultimate goal was the annexation of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, the so-called Republic of Kosovo.
In the period from June 21 to November 20, 2000, when the conflict escalated, 296 terrorist attacks were carried out in the area of the three aforementioned municipalities of central Serbia, killing five policemen and six citizens. Thus, on October 13 of that year, while Serbia was in crisis after the changes of October 5, not far from Veliki Trnovac, two policemen died and eleven were injured.
Ridvan Ćazimi, also known as Captain Leši, one of the OVPMB commanders
The crisis escalated on November 21, 2000, when the OVPMB attacked MUP positions near the villages of Dobrosin, Lucane, Konculj and Mali Trnovac. Three died and four were injured. The Albanian separatists then managed to occupy part of the territory in the Land Security Zone in that area.
However, the political situation was not the same as before the war in Kosovo and Metohija. By invading the KZB, the terrorists undermined NATO’s authority, and official Belgrade cooperated with the international community to resolve this crisis, taking action carefully but also decisively. The VJ was on the edge of the KZB, and in order to enter, it needed the decision of the KFOR commander, and that was being worked on.
Already at the end of November 2000, the Serbian Interior Ministry units managed to occupy half the town of Lucane, and at the end of December they took control of the strategically important peak of Sveti Ilija on the Pljačkovica mountain, near Vranje.
Cooperation between the VJ and the MUP was formally institutionalized on March 7, 2001, when the Joint Security Forces were formed. Through cooperation with the international community, the conditions have been created for NATO to approve the VJ’s entry into the KZB. This zone, which runs from the Macedonian border, along the administrative line from Kosovo to Montenegro, is divided into sectors A, B, C and D.
Sector B was the most delicate, because it is a conflict zone in southern Serbia, and in the end it was entered, after the fight for Oraovica, but also after the death of Ridvan Cazimi, aka Captain Leshi, one of the commanders by OVPMB.
The Serbian army is still in the ground security zone, where it provides an administrative line to Kosovo. There are no serious incidents, but the soldiers, taking into account the experience of Kosovo and south central Serbia, must be vigilant day and night.
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