Kosovo: One Last Chance
(Refugees Magazine, Issue 116, 1999)
Going backA sense of déjà vu....
A returning visitor finds a continuing degree of resilience and optimism in Kosovo.
By Fernando del Mundo
In the devastated ruins of Lodja there was a determined sense of renewal in the air. A dozen residents busily repaired a school for use as temporary quarters while they rebuilt their homes in an area which was considered the heart and soul of Kosovo’s second largest town, Pec. UNHCR provided the civilians —artists, professionals and entrepreneurs— with repair kits and other aid agencies fixed the electricity and water facilities. One 70-year-old woman stared at the unblemished facade of her home, which hid the ruin behind, and sighed: “This is my life... everything I had I spent to build this place.” But when her daughter began to cry, the old woman almost angrily hushed her. Reconstruction must continue despite the personal despair.
That was last year, before the NATO air campaign and the worldwide headlines and I visited Lodja several times as a UNHCR field officer. An air and ground assault by Serbian paramilitary units had reduced virtually all of the 100 houses and a mosque in Lodja to rubble. It reminded me a little of my home in Manila, one of the most heavily devastated cities in World War II. Troops had scrawled graffitti on one wall declaring ‘Café Lodja does not exist anymore’, similar to signs other victorious Serbian forces had plastered across the Balkans in the 1990s.
I revisited Lodja recently, after most Albanian refugees had again returned. There was an immediate sense of déjà vu.
To be sure, there was even more destruction than I remember. Downtown Pec, with its cobbled streets of gold shops and boutiques, had also been levelled. But there was that same sense of resilience of a year earlier. A 44-year-old Albanian surveyed the wreckage of his home with his wife and four young sons, still brimming with hope. “We have to start organizing ourselves first, and then things will get better,” he said, explaining he planned to reopen his carpentry shop as soon as possible.
Anyone who knows Kosovo well was not surprised that hundreds of thousands of refugees, even those as far away as the United States and Germany, would ignore the pleas of the international community to be patient before returning home. In 1998, civilians had moved like a whirlwind from one village to another, always within the vicinity of their own homes, as the Serbs and Kosovo Liberation Army played deadly games of hide-and-seek and catch. Whenever there was a lull in the conflict, they returned home as quickly as possible.A small place
Kosovo is a small place. The Albanian I met in the ruins of Lodja knew me. He had seen me in September, 1998 in the village of Krusevac. More than 25,000 ethnic Albanians were fleeing from a Serbian military sweep and as the sound of artillery blasts followed them, they pleaded with me to somehow stop the bombardment. I called UNHCR’s Belgrade office. The matter was raised at the highest levels, but I will never know if the phone call made any difference.
The Albanian, who admitted that he was a KLA soldier, said he saw me again the following day in Istinic, just south of Krusevac, where the civilians were cornered because the Serbs had blocked the road.
At the time UNHCR was helping around 400,000 people and staff members, including local personnel who had everything to lose in such a dangerous environment, roamed the province in vulnerable ‘soft-skin’ vehicles, often visiting areas where international observers would not go, on assessment missions to gauge the needs of the population.
We had run convoys virtually every single day since the spring of 1998. A colleague, Francis Teoh, led the last fleet of trucks before we were ordered out of Kosovo in advance of the NATO attacks.
The trip between the town of Mitrovica and a village called Ade normally takes 30 minutes. That day, as he negotiated 11 checkpoints, it took him several hours. At one roadblock special forces troops beat up a driver and shoved a Kalachnikov rifle in Francis’ stomach as he tried to intervene. ‘Nema problema’ (no problem), he assured the soldiers as his infectious smile and sense of humor rescued him yet again from a tight spot.
We were ordered to leave for Macedonia that same night. Most of us thought we would be back within a few days. The shooting lasted for 2½ months.
When I did go back, the pattern of our aid effort had changed. We continued to help the uprooted Kosovars, of course, but a major protection concern now was the enclaves —particularly the pockets of Serbs and Roma who found themselves surrounded by ethnic Albanian majorities across Kosovo.
This reversal in fortunes reminded me of a remark made earlier this year by Jo Hegenauer, who headed UNHCR operations in Kosovo. Asked if there was any difference in the suffering of people in the midst of conflict in Europe compared with other parts of the world, he replied, “War is war. The pain is the same.”
On one of my last working field trips in Kosovo I encountered a group of 100 terrified villagers huddled into two houses as special forces troops conducted an offensive against their village near Pristina. Masked soldiers angrily took away video films I had shot of the operation, but an officer apologetically handed them back to me. “There is enough space for everyone in Kosovo,” he said. “But this dirt is consuming us all,” he added as he twisted his boot into the mud patch on which he was standing.
As I left Kosovo this time, 14 Serbian farmers had recently been massacred by unknown gunmen. In one of the defining moments in the Kosovo conflict, 45 ethnic Albanians were slaughtered in Racak village in January. That incident drew worldwide condemnation. Now it was the turn of an Albanian acquaintance to show remorse. “Oh my God,” he said on hearing the news. “We have become just like the Serbs.”[ picture http://www.unhcr.ch/pubs/rm116/p25.jpg ]
The massacre at Racak village in January in which 45 persons were executed. (UNHCR / F.Del Mundo)
senden