Dečan operation

The Dečan operation was an operation when Serbian Special Police Units and the Special Operations Unit were against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in early June 1998. The plan of the operation was to eliminate the Albanian militants to gain wider space for the Dečan municipality in the southwestern part of Kosovo, which had been held by the KLA between April and May 1998. The KLA attacked the police and civilians affecting the local population. Due to the complete blockade of this area and the impossibility of the normal functioning of daily life activities, the security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia carried out an unblocking operation during which the KLA units were overwhelmed and forced to retreat.

Background
During the spring of 1998, the Kosovo Liberation Army grew into a large militant organization. The entire Albanian population of Metohija and Drenica took up arms. The KLA concentrated significant forces in the southwest of Kosovo, in the border area between Serbia and Albania (in the areas of Dečan and Đakovica) in order to receive the weapons that were transported daily over the difficult-to-pass the Junik and Paštrik mountains.

The town of Dečan and the surrounding villages were the target of terrorist attacks on civilians and police patrols in 1996 and 1997. The Jablanica KLA formation under the command of Ramuš Haradinaj occupied a certain number of villages around the road Đakovica - Dečan - Peć, keeping this road under a complete blockade.

At the beginning of the spring of 1998, all Serbian villages from Peć to Dečan remained almost deserted. The Serb fugitives moved mostly towards Dečan, where it was particularly dramatic. This place was completely surrounded by KLA forces for several months, cut off from the territory under the control of the security forces of the Republic of Serbia, crowded with Serbian refugees, without electricity and telephone connections. In the spring of 1998, the KLA carried out several military operations around Dečan, which further worsened the security situation. The period from April 19 to 22 was particularly critical when there were heavy clashes between the police and the KLA in the village of Babaloć, and as many as 123 Serbian refugee families from Babaloć had to temporarily move to Dečan.

The situation in the Dečan and Peć regions worsened the most at the end of May 1998. It all started on May 24, when the police surrounded and destroyed a KLA unit in the village of Prilep, when one militant was killed and several others were wounded. In the following days, the militants carried out several revenge attacks.

On May 25, police officers Rade Popadić and Nikola Jovanović were kidnapped near the village of Babaloć, and police officer Gojko Gojković was attacked near the village of Istinić. On the same day, KLA terrorists ambushed three civilians near the village of Ljubenić.

On May 26, Julka Đuričković was killed with a firearm in Dečan. Her body was found by her husband Veljko, who then committed suicide. On the following day, attacks with firearms on vehicles on the roads continue around Dečan. On May 29, KLA militants attacked a police unit that tried to break through the ring around Dečan and supply the town.

On the same day, police officer Dragan Djelanović was killed in an attack on the police station in Čelopek, Peć, and Radojica Janković was seriously wounded. In the evening of May 30, two policemen were slightly wounded in the area of Dečan. In the village of Loćane, near Dečan, on May 31, an old woman, Vidosava Simović, was killed in an attack. On May 31, police officer Dušan Urošević was killed in the vicinity of Dečan in a conflict with terrorists.

The Operation
The Dečan operation began on June 1 of 1998 and it was one of the first battles in the heart of Kosovo against the KLA. Already on June 3, the Reuters agency reported that the Serbian security forces unblocked and cleared the town of Dečan and the surrounding area from KLA forces. The fighting for the unblocking of Dečan lasted for 2 days and in them one policeman was killed and five were wounded. The policeman who died was a member of the JSO, Željko Šijan (1960), who was killed in a conflict with terrorists in the village of Gornji Crnobreg near Dečan, when the Serbian police destroyed a larger unit. Fighting also took place in the area of the areas of Peć Istinić and Beleg, which are located along the Albanian border. During the operation, one member of the police said:"Ужасно је. Пуца се са свих страна. Никада нисам могао да замислим борбе тог интензитета"

Representatives of the Kosovo Albanians claimed that dozens of their compatriots died in the fighting, while the police announced that there were no civilian casualties, only militant ones. According to the police, around 40 Albanian militants were killed in this operation. Some parts of the town of Dečan itself were almost destroyed and deserted after the end of this operation by Serbian forces, the largest since the Attack of Donji Prekaz.

During the unblocking of Dečan, the combined forces of the army and the police dealt a heavy blow to the KLA, cutting off their supply and withdrawal routes. Members of the KLA offered fierce resistance because they were well entrenched in their positions. Every house on the stretch from Dečan to Đakovica was turned into a fortress. There were hours of fighting for the liberation of certain houses and villages and the militants would retreat only under strong pressure. This explains the relatively small number of victims for such an operation, but also so many destroyed and damaged houses. The entire area of southwestern Kosovo was cleared of militants, with the exception of the village of Junik, which was left out of this operation due to the large concentration of civilians in that area.

Aftermath
Along with the fierce fighting that took place in this region, the emigration of Albanians also began. During the fighting around Dečan, according to United Nations estimates, at least 65,000 Albanians were temporarily displaced. Representatives of the Kosovo Albanians claimed that tens of thousands of their countrymen had fled. The authorities in Tirana mentioned that 20,000 Albanians from Kosovo fled to Albania, and that 8,500 Albanians fled to Montenegro. The police claimed that KLA members drove Albanian civilians from the villages along the Djakovica-Dečani-Peć road in order to make fortifications out of their houses. The commander of the KLA for the Dukagjin operational zone, which included Dečan. Ramuš Haradinaj himself admitted that the militants evacuated the Albanian population.

The military authorities of the FRY also rejected allegations of tens of thousands of refugees in Albania because the border guards of the Yugoslav Army completely controlled the border and there were no large refugee columns in those days.