Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
Despite shortfalls, KLA shows
muscle (CS Monitor)
Rebels push corridor into Kosova. Among problems: few heavy weapons,
inexperienced fighters. Photo by John Santoro.
Jonathan S. Landay
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
KOSHARE, KOSOVA
To Kosova's ethnic Albanian rebels, "free" Kosova is a murderous place where
Serbian shells explode almost incessantly and snipers dispatch death from hiding places in
forested ravines and cloud-wreathed ridge lines.
For more than a week, about 1,000 Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) fighters have been punching
a corridor down plunging slopes and twisted gullies into the province from bases 3,500
feet high on Albania's side of the Northern Albanian Alps.
The corridor is now said to be about five miles long. The KLA would have to advance
another mile or so to break through to a rebel-held enclave near the village of Junik,
where thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians uprooted by Serbian "ethnic
cleansing" are believed trapped. Should they succeed, the rebels then hope to move on
Decani, one of Kosova's key towns and the site of a major Yugoslav military base.
The offensive appears to show that the KLA remains a viable force despite the hammering it
has taken since Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic unleashed his troops and police
across Kosova. In addition to the corridor, KLA units are said to be in control of
enclaves like that around Junik, although other units are having to lie low or stay on the
move.
Indeed, the rebels assert that backed by Western air power and supplied with modern
weapons, they could spearhead a NATO ground invasion. President Clinton and his Western
counterparts, however, remain adamantly opposed to arming them.
The KLA's lack of heavy weapons is apparent in the offensive for the corridor. While they
have steadily won ground, seizing a Yugoslav barracks at Koshare, equipment including a
bulldozer and truck, and large stocks of arms and food, the rebels' advance has been slow
and bloody. They are outgunned by the Serbs, which forces them to do most of their hardest
fighting at night; they must endure the snows and rains of the peaks, as well as thick
clouds that in a firefight make it difficult telling friend from foe. Their casualty toll
could not be learned.
Guerrillas claim that twice the Serbs have fired shells that released noxious gas and
burned their eyes, cracked their lips, and made breathing hard. "Fortunately for us,
there was a lot of wind and unfortunately for them, the wind blew toward their side,"
says Agron from Pristina. A doctor before joining the rebels, he says it was a
"neuroparalytic" gas.
During a four-hour visit to the top of the corridor and nearby base camps, there was no
sign of any NATO support for the offensive, even though American and British military
officials were said to have visited the area last week. Yugoslav tanks, troops, and
artillery opposing the rebels are untouched by NATO's bombs, as are watchtowers along the
border from which Serbian artillery spotters direct fire.
Rebels wounded while fighting in the corridor agree on the need for immediate support from
the 26 Apache helicopters the United States has begun deploying in Albania for use against
Serbian police, troops, and armor.
Ilir, an 8 year old son of a KLA soldier. Photo by John Santoro.
"Our great hope is that the Apaches can change things," says Guri, of Suva Reka,
who was recuperating from shrapnel wounds in the Albanian border town of Bajram Curri.
"We can hold out until then. With the Apaches our problems will be solved."
As for the 35 days of NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia, he laments: "They have basically
done nothing against the [Serbian] ground troops. At least we have not seen anything in
the vicinity of the fighting."
The rebels appear to be suffering from other problems. There are no other points on the
border from where they are mounting offensives despite the presence of large numbers of
KLA fighters in northern Albania. Some KLA sources complain of a lack of coordination and
competent leadership, saying attacks elsewhere would force the Serbs to divert forces away
from the corridor.
The KLA is also hampered by a dearth of experienced fighters. Guri and other wounded
rebels say they received only 15 days of training before being sent into the corridor.
"Of course, it's not enough, two or three weeks to train, but in this situation, we
really have no other choice," explains Dzafer, of Ferizaj. "Ten experienced guys
go over with 20 with little experience."
Yet the visit to the front revealed a mood of optimistic determination among the fighters,
many of whom returned from Western Europe and the US, where they had emigrated.
Fighters awaiting rotation into the corridor say radio monitoring of Yugoslav units shows
troops with low morale, bewildered by the unknown territory, and beset by bad weather and
shortages of food and ammunition. Serbian desertions, the rebels say, are constant. Some
proudly display captured AK-47 assault rifles made at Zastava, Yugoslavia's main
armsmaker.
"These guys are good fighters, have good equipment, but low morale," says one
commander, who declined to be named. "We have taken a lot of prisoners." That
statement could not be independently confirmed, and the whereabouts of any prisoners are
unknown.
Shqipton, a 5 year old boy with a photo of his KLA father. Photo by John
Santoro.
The KLA appears to be receiving help from the Albanian Army. Albanian soldiers bunkered
along the border keep watch for Serbian counterattacks, shouting alerts when they detect
one and then clearing positions that are filled by the rebels. The Albanian military also
maintains liaison officers with the rebels and may also be providing them some trucks.
"This is all free Kosova now," exclaims Florin Krasniqi, a key New York-based
KLA operative, using the Albanian word for the province as he points down a steep valley
into the corridor. Behind him stands a crumbling, four-foot concrete obelisk marking the
border of Albania and Yugoslavia, beside which grinning KLA fighters pose for snapshots.
On a ridge less than a mile below stands the barracks at Koshare that once housed Yugoslav
border guards. Now it is the base of "Delta Force," a unit of some 200 KLA
veterans who have been at the forefront of the offensive. But between the rebels and the
village of Junik is said to be a strong force of Serbian troops and tanks dug in at the
village of Batusa, protecting the strategic highway linking all of the main towns of
western Kosova, including Djakovica and Decani.
The top of the corridor is reached by a 10-minute hike from KLA base camps along muddy
paths that skirt alpine pastures. Streams of crystal water course through ravines in which
are set KLA camps of tents and plastic sheeting protecting piles of ammunition crates.
Huge divots in the pastures testify to frequent Serbian shelling; KLA fighters say Serbian
gunners below fire randomly when the clouds blanket the hilltops.
Supplies are driven up from Bajram Curri in tractor-pulled wagons and then hauled to
combat units on mules and horses. Fighters at rest occupy stone-walled homes of villagers
who abandoned their farms when Serbian forces began shelling the area two weeks ago.
Outside one house, several guerrillas sit chatting atop one of 12 snowmobiles sent to them
by supporters in the US.
First group of Kosovars depart for
Canada to reunite with family
ROME (AP) -- Two families of Kosova refugees boarded a flight for Toronto Tuesday, the
first of about 700 displaced ethnic Albanians to be reunited with relatives in Canada. The
Canadian embassy here said the two families, who had been staying at a refugee camp in
Skopje, Macedonia, boarded a Canadian airlines flight from Rome. One family was expected
to remain in the Toronto area while the other was travelling to Montreal. The embassy said
121 Kosova natives currently residing in Canada have put in requests for 708 of their
relatives who were forced out of their homes in Kosova and were believed to be living in
refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia. Canadian immigration officers in Albania and
Macedonia are trying to locate the Kosovars -- many of whom have been separated from
family members -- and are screening them for medical and security reasons. Canada has
offered to temporarily shelter 5,000 refugees but the United Nation's refugee agency has
said it prefers to keep the refugees closer to their homeland in case they are allowed to
return.
GIRL LIVING MONOCHROME NIGHTMARE
(CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
8-YEAR-OLD VJOLLCA ADDS HAUNTING WORDS TO HORRIFIC IMAGES CREATED BY HER AND OTHER YOUNG
REFUGEES.
By Uli Schmetzer Tribune Foreign Correspondent April 27, 1999
STANKOVIC REFUGEE CAMP I, Macedonia
Given a choice, the artist would paint the scene in red.
Red, she explains, is the color of blood and burning homes. But red ran out. Everyone else
took red for the corpses, the flames and the tiny NATO planes dropping large bombs on
tanks. Even the sun glows red.
So now Vjollca Ademi must paint in green, the only color left. Though, really, the
8-year-old's favorite color is yellow. Yellow is warmth, security, sun rays, spring
flowers and the syrup on grandmother's breakfast table.
No, she doesn't know what happened to grandmother or the syrup or what happened to Balki,
her dog, or to her favorite teacher, Miss Venera.
"Probably the police killed them," she pouts.
In green, the burning house is not so dramatic. So she begins to write below her drawing,
with uncanny speed, words tumbling out of her green pencil onto the white sheet of paper.
"In my heart I have many sorrows," she begins. "I must speak out words of
anger for my Kosova. I would give my life for Kosova because it is my country. It is a
country full of beauty and many young boys and girls have given their lives for Kosova. A
bloody hand was laid upon us like a sword . . ."
Turning the page she ends: "I will never fear the witch of Serbia and I will keep on
fighting for freedom."
Vjollca is a thin, serious little girl with an elfin face and nightmares she tries to
exorcise on paper. Her little brother, Hamdi, 4, clings to her as if she is his lifeline
and his shelter.
The two live in this vast tent city of human misery, 30,000 refugees who each have a
horror story to tell and nowhere to go.
Someone had the idea to give the children colored pencils and paper. In no time the
bulletin boards outside the tent clinic of the international agency Doctors without
Borders were plastered with the drawings. Children drew while the adults waited to consult
the doctors about bronchitis, diarrhea, rheumatism or congested lungs.
The children's drawing fervor has spread to the clinic run by the Israelis at the northern
end of the camp, where a young soldier, Tome Shadmy, mixes paint and hands out brushes and
paper.
Children's drawings, a long row of them, also have been taped to the Macedonian police
station at the camp.
The majority of the drawings reflect the horror of past weeks: homes in flames, tanks and
dead soldiers, NATO planes and people with hands above their heads.
But there are also the sun, trees, cows, pastoral scenes from the days when there was no
war, no fear and everyone went to school.
"These kids are still optimistic. It's amazing considering what they've been through
in recent weeks," said pediatrician Moshe Efrant at the Israeli clinic.
The young artists stand against the bulletin boards or kneel on the ground, working with
an intense concentration as they record impressions, their fears and their hopes.
Their stories are similar, yet the corpses and burning homes they draw, the falling bombs
and tank cannons spewing shells, often stem from their imaginations rather than anything
they may have witnessed.
Vjollca admits she did not see bodies and she saw no houses burning. But she knew all this
was happening because she listened to the adults talk about it for weeks. She heard the
grown-ups whisper about mayhem and massacres and saw her grandmother cry, her mother chew
her fingernails.
Their fear crept through her like the cold on the road to Macedonia.
"One day Mum put us in the car, and Balki came running after us, barking," she
said. "He wanted to come too. There was no space in the car. So I went back and tied
him to the gate. He was barking and barking. I dream every night about him. He is always
barking. He doesn't understand why we had to leave him behind, does he?"
The mother loaded the small car with her three children, some neighbors and a few
belongings. They drove from the outskirts of Pristina as far as Urosevac, where Serbian
police ordered them out of the car. The car and the bags had to be left behind. The police
wanted money. The mother gave them what she had.
"We walked to the border," said Vjollca. "It was a long walk. Sometimes I
had to sit down. Mum also had to sit down. Sometimes other people carried Hamdi. We walked
from morning until night and then the next day. There were many people and we had only one
loaf of bread and a piece of cheese."
But Vjollca had something else in her rucksack, treasures salvaged from home and extracted
from the confiscated car: Six school textbooks.
"They're my favorite books. The best one is about nature, the other one is a book
about how to draw, and there is my book on arithmetic and one on physical training because
I did gymnastics, and there is one about how to protect the environment.
"I would have never left those books behind. When I was tired and people said, `Leave
the books, they're too heavy and you can get others,' I didn't leave them.
"Now I read my books every day. I want to be a teacher like Miss Venera and have a
dog like Balki. Some day."
Right now she wants to be with her father, who is in France.
"But he doesn't have any papers yet so I don't think we can join him in France,"
she added, with a wisdom beyond her 8 years.
Then she walked away, Hamdi still clinging to her jacket, a little girl quickly lost in
the milling throng of refugees, a little girl with dreams of a future, still trying to
exorcise the past.
French NATO Troops Attacked In
Macedonia (Reuters)
SKOPJE, Apr. 27, 1999 -- (Reuters) NATO said on Tuesday that French NATO troops had come
under grenade attack in a Serb-populated area of Macedonia but there had been no injuries.
In the most serious incident to date against alliance troops based in the country,
unidentified assailants drove slowly past a logistics base in Kumanovo late on Monday
evening and threw two hand grenades at a sandbagged sentry post.
Lieutenant-Colonel Charles de Kersabiec, spokesman for the French NATO contingent, said
the sentry recognized the sound of a grenade being thrown and took defensive action.
"There is no damage," he said De Kersabiec said the grenades were
"defensive" which means they were designed to be thrown from a position of cover
and had more power than those used by the military in the open. "It is very
serious," he said. "Defensive grenades are very strong, very dangerous."
NATO has more than 12,000 troops stationed in Macedonia with plans to raise the number to
more than 16,000, The force was sent to Macedonia to move into neighboring Kosova as
peacekeepers if and when an agreement is reached.
The troops are officially welcome and their presence is seen by some as deterring Serbia
from taking any action against the country. But some Macedonians sympathize with the Serbs
and dislike ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as third of the population.
The French, who have had some of their vehicles stoned and one burnt, are particularly
vulnerable because they are based in Kumanovo, 20 miles (35 kilometers) northeast of
Skopje, where many of Macedonia's ethnic Serbs live. "In the Kumanovo area we have
many pro-Serb people," de Kersabiec said. "We knew that (there could be)
terrorism...against us, so we were prepared."
Photos of Kosova Killings Unveiled
(AP)
BONN, Germany (AP) -- Germany's defense minister Tuesday presented graphic photos of a
mass killing in Kosova that he said were proof that Serb atrocities began before NATO
started its air war.
Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said the pictures were taken Jan. 29 by a German member
of an international observer mission in Kosova, which has since been withdrawn.
The photos showed about 15 bodies, including one beheaded torso, in what appeared to be a
farmyard. The victims appeared to be civilians.
Several blue-uniformed men, who Scharping said were Serb special police, were standing in
one corner of the yard holding automatic weapons.
The German observer arrived at the site in the ethnic Albanian village of Rogova shortly
after the killing, Scharping said.
"This makes clear the degree of brutality that was used when all this began and which
is continuing," he told a news conference. "These are shocking pictures."
Scharping said the observer, whom he refused to identify, told him about the photos in
early April and needed some persuading to turn them over. He said the man was in
counseling to deal with the shock of what he had seen.
Many serbian terrorists are being
killed and wounded (KP)
Ferizaj, April 27 (Kosovapress) In the fierce combations which were developed yesterday
from early in the morning till the evening in the entrance of the village Dremjak, KLA
soldiers of the first company of the I Battalion of the 161 Brigade"Ahmet
Kaçiku", have liquidated 7 members of serbian terrorist bands and wounded 13 other
serbian militaries, who indented to loot in t5he village of Dremjak. There were no losses
from our side. Yesterday in the place were two rivers join with each-other in the
direction of the village Jezerc, in the fierce combations held there, Tahir Neziri felt
heroically and another KLA soldier has been wounded. Whereas from terrorist serbian side,
3 serbian terrorists were killed and many others are being wounded. Also the martyr Faton
Gashi (21), from Sferkë of Klinës who was badly wounded in confrontations with serbian
fascist forces before ten days, died today in spite of all medical struggles to save his
life in military hospital. He is buried today.
Numerous serbian placements in commune of Deçan
Deçan, April 27 (Kosovapress) Yesterday in the village Shaptej commune of Deçan large
number of serbian forces is positioned there. In this occasion, serbian fascist forces
have forced to leave the albanian civil population placed there. All the expelled people
are sent in the direction of Gramaçel.
One serbian soldier is killed in Terpezë of Malisheve
Malishevë, April 27 (Kosovapress) Today during a military confrontation in Terpezë of
Malisheve about 15°°o`clock, fighters of the KLA company "Liman Gega", have
killed a serbian soldier. After this, serbian fascist forces from their positions in
Tërpezë have shooted and bombarded in the direction of the village.
Persistence Gets a Job for a
Doctor, in the Balkans (NY Times)
By NEIL MACFARQUHAR
NEW YORK -- Freed briefly from the rigors of the emergency room at Jacobi Medical Center
in the Bronx, Dr. Jennifer Walser was anticipating fishing around Lake Tahoe a couple of
weekends ago, passing part of her flight there with a detached read through a magazine
cover story about Kosova.
Suddenly the words from an essay about NATO's intervention leapt off the page. "It
was a Biblical injunction: 'Thou shalt not stand idly by,"' said Dr. Walser, 30, a
fourth-year resident in emergency medicine.
"It suddenly occurred to me that there was something I could do," she said.
"I'm a doctor. I'm young. I don't have a husband. I don't have children. I don't have
a fish tank. I don't even have plants in my apartment at the moment."
Deciding to try to do something was the easy part. Finding an organization that would send
her took a little more persistence.
When she got back from the fishing weekend, she started calling relief agencies. Doctors
without Borders said it only wanted people with previous refugee experience and a minimum
commitment of six months. Doctors of the World did not return numerous calls. The
International Medical Corps said it might add her to a team at the end of May.
Whenever an international crisis involving refugees unfolds on the scale of Kosova , every
major relief agency fields hundreds of calls from would-be volunteers hoping to work in
the camps. Most callers, relief agency officials say, harbor the illusion that they can
pop over for a weekend and hand out bread.
Instead, the agencies prefer that concerned people stick to sending donations and leave to
them the challenge of finding the technically savvy professionals who meet specific needs.
Doctors of the World said it had a backlog of 400 doctors offering to go to Kosova, many
more than were needed, while the International Medical Corps said that it had a database
of about 5,000 doctors willing to do refugee work, and that is usually picks volunteers
off that list.
Raised in Baltimore, Dr. Walser had never done volunteer work before, and her longest
exposure to poor people in another country was a few months she spent in Peru during her
childhood, when her father, a kidney specialist, worked at a hospital there.
Still, her decision to go to Kosova did not entirely surprise her parents -- her mother is
a nurse -- or her siblings. They said she had always had a certain drive and intensity
that would push her to seek out an experience like working in refugee camps.
Her older sister, Karin, 32, said that Dr. Walser, after graduating medical school at
Johns Hopkins, had seemed restless working in internal medicine at a Boston hospital. So a
few years ago she switched to the Bronx emergency room.
In her emergency room triage work at Jacobi Medical Center, Dr. Walser said, she has
treated everything from a 50-year-old man beaten to death with a baseball bat to strokes
and countless respiratory problems.
She was not quite sure what to expect in the refugee camps. But she will have to learn
quickly. Monday, she started a 24-hour journey to Macedonia. .
On April 19, less than a week after she made her first call looking for an opportunity to
volunteer, Dr. Walser heard from the recruitment officer from the International Medical
Corps, who called back and asked how soon she could join one of six new mobile clinics
traversing Macedonia to serve clusters of 200 refugees.
Right away, she told them.
Almost every hour that followed was a frenetic seminar on how to become a volunteer. She
was constantly yanking out the pile of papers out of her pocket that constituted her
"to do" list. One packet contained an extremely condensed course in Balkan
politics. "Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia," it said, "and Kosova is 90
percent Albanian."
"It was," groaned Gjek Gjonlekaj, an activist in the Bronx Albanian community,
just back from the Kosova region, as he met with Dr. Walser for lunch at an Albanian-owned
Italian restaurant in the borough.
"You are going to hell," Gjonlekaj said. "Nothing bad is going to happen to
you. But you will see hell."
Amid all of Dr. Walser's frantic errands last week, she found time for a haircut. The
concern was not entirely aesthetic.
"I really need to get my hair cut, so I don't get lice, or at least so I get less
lice," she said, sitting in her chair in an East Side salon.'
While the stylist snipped her hair, Dr. Walser was busy trying to remember key sentences
from her new Albanian phrase book, like how to ask a patient where it hurts. "Ku shoo
thiem?" she ventured after struggling with each word for about a minute.
"Hopefully it won't take me this long once I get there, or the refugee will probably
be dead," she said.
The administration at her hospital agreed to treat the trip as an elective course in her
residency and will keep paying her salary. Other residents will cover her shifts.
"I'm just covering one of her shifts for now, but I know she is about to milk me for
one more," a fellow resident, said Dr. Shideh I. Parsa, grinning as he jabbed Dr.
Walser with a hepatitis B booster shot. "I wish I could go with her."
Dr. Walser ricocheted between unnerving discoveries of how little she knew about what to
expect -- a nurse told her to bring her own lamp because hospital tents often don't have
them -- to a fairly sober view of what she could accomplish.
"I don't think any of us can fathom what it's like to have a future as uncertain as
the refugees," she said. "I probably won't have a huge impact over there. Maybe
three refugee kids will remember playing with me."
In Macedonia, Lost Children Wait
Helplessly for Reunions (NY Times)
By DAVID ROHDE
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Each time a busload of refugees rumbles into the dusty refugee camp
here, Murat Beqiri, 14, scans the faces peering from the windows. One day, when he heard
his family name called over a bullhorn by an aid worker searching for a specific refugee,
he scrambled expectantly out of his tent hoping that he might find his mother or father.
Every day he tries to call home to Pristina, even though the line has been dead for days.
"I think they are trapped in Pristina," Kosova's capital, said Murat, a drawn
and distracted look on his youthful face. "I think they can't get out now."
In the chaotic hours when ethnic Albanians were forced from their Kosova homes, hundreds
of parents and children lost track of one another. Some of the children, who range from
toddlers to teen-agers, crossed the border here alone or with relatives. Others were
separated when Macedonian police officers forced 50,000 Kosova Albanians out of a
makeshift refugee camp near the border three weeks ago.
Murat last saw his father when his father told him and his sister to leave home and take a
train to Macedonia as word spread in Pristina that Yugoslav forces were ordering people to
leave. His parents said they would soon follow, but never arrived.
Lost children have been a tragic by-product of many refugee crises. But the chaotic nature
of the exodus from Kosova, the actions of the Macedonian government, and a complicated
international evacuation program have made efforts to reunite families particularly
daunting. Adding to the potential problem, 70 percent of Kosova's 1.8 million ethnic
Albanians were under 30.
Unlike Albania, Macedonia has been urging refugees to move on, and calling for more to be
evacuated to other countries. And when Macedonian police rousted the 50,000 Kosova
refugees from the camp in the town of Blace, it further scattered families. Macedonian
officials flew 2,000 refugees to Turkey, bused 15,000 to Albania and divided the rest
among six camps here.
When the sun came up, Jehona Aliu, a 5-year-old girl, was found wandering alone in the
remains of the camp. Aid workers have posted her photograph in the larger refugee camps in
Macedonia and are trying to determine if her parents were sent to Turkey or Albania.
Three weeks have passed, but Jehona's parents have not emerged. British NATO soldiers at
first cared for her, but she is now living with a refugee family in Macedonia. They are
missing children of their own.
By one count, Murat and Jehona are two of 253 ethnic Albanian children in Macedonia
refugee camps separated from their parents, the International Committee of the Red Cross
says. But there are other children unaccounted for because 776 parents have reported that
their children are missing and are not on the Red Cross lists.
Of lost children aid workers know about, few have been completely abandoned and most are
being cared for by relatives. The Red Cross is posting the names of children it has
located on bulletin boards in the camps here, hoping parents or relatives will come
forward. But with refugees here being evacuated to a dozen countries in Europe, it could
prove difficult to find them quickly.
So far, though, only 54 children have been reunited with their parents through the efforts
of the Red Cross and Save the Children. Aid workers predict that parents and children are
not likely to be reunited for weeks, possibly months, and countless other relatives --
siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents -- are also missing.
"I would say we are just dealing now with the tip of the iceberg," said Francois
Zen-Ruffinin, a Red Cross spokesman. "We're starting with children. They are the
priority. But just about every single family is missing a relative."
Families started scattering even before the NATO airstrikes. Many parents hustled their
children out of larger towns and cities to the rural homes of relatives for safekeeping.
But when Yugoslav forces launched a major offensive after the bombing began, hundreds of
parents were blocked from retrieving their children.
Even families that began the flight from Kosova together were sometimes separated.
Panicked crowds swarmed aboard trains headed for the border and the Serbian police cut off
convoys of cars, ordering some to the border, and others back into Kosova.
Murat, who lives in a tent with his 25-year-old sister and her husband in the sprawling
refugee camp of 27,000 in Brazda, went to the train station in Pristina after his aunt
burst into in his home in tears a week after the bombing began. Serbs had just expelled
her from her nearby home, she said, and Murat and his sister were told to go to the train
station immediately.
"My father said, 'You go, we'll catch up with you,"' Murat said. "We waited
for three hours. They never came." He managed to reach his parents at a neighbor's
house a week ago, but has heard nothing since.
Other parents said they were forcibly separated from their children. Hyzri Gaytani, 24,
and his wife, Imrani, 20, said the Serbian police expelled them from their home in
Pristina and then blocked them from going to the hospital where their premature baby was
still in an incubator.
"It's been 17 days," Gaytani said, holding his first, and only, child's birth
certificate. "We don't know where he is." Phone calls to the doctor in Pristina
have not been answered. They have asked the Red Cross to see if they can send someone to
the hospital to find their infant.
Families that had already been split up in Kosova have been divided yet again. Fatmira
Mehmeti, 15, said she, her sister and two brothers were separated from their parents after
being taken to their uncle's home in Pristina for safekeeping. After the NATO bombing
began, the children fled with their uncle to Macedonia.
When Macedonian police officers cleared out the Blace camp, the two girls and one of their
brothers managed to stay with their uncle. Their other brother, aunt, grandmother and
three cousins disappeared. "Somebody told us they went to Turkey," Fatmira said.
"But nothing is confirmed. We don't know anything."
Along with children, elderly and mentally ill people have been found wandering alone in
Brazda. A dozen people in their 60s, 70s and 80s and two mentally retarded teen-age boys
are being cared for in a tent run by the International Catholic Migration Committee.
Neither of the boys can offer a hint as to who they are, their age, their home or who
cared for them. When strangers appear in their tent, one offers a warm smile, waves his
hand in the air and blurts out garbled words. The other stares blankly at a wall of the
tent, seemingly traumatized by the tragedies that brought them to Brazda.
"It's quite likely we're not ever going to find their families," said Albert
Ramirez, a social worker from Austin, Texas, who has been caring for the boys. "They
can't communicate with us at all."
In another tent, Benin Kukiqi and his college-age friends represent one more group,
teen-agers and young adults separated from their parents. Kukiqi, 20, is the oldest of
five students sharing a tent in Brazda. None of them know where their parents are.
All five are childhood friends from the town of Glogovac in northern Kosova. Taking
classes at Pristina University, they were dozens of miles from their families when the
NATO airstrikes began a month ago. Kukiqi, a mechanical engineering student, said the last
time he spoke to his parents was from a phone booth in the main post office in Pristina
the day the strikes began.
His mother, he said, lectured him for taking the risk of walking through the center of
town to make the call. Since then, phone lines to Glogovac have been dead and no refugees
from the town have emerged. He has no idea where his parents and 17-year-old sister are.
"There has been nothing at all," he said, "just rumors."
He and his tent-mates keep busy working with relief organizations in the camp, a seeming
distraction from thinking incessantly about the missing. Kukiqi, steeling himself from
what could be weeks of doubt and worry, said the best thing he can do is stay in one place
and wait.
"I am staying here to wait for some kind of contact," he said resolutely.
"If my parents are alive, and I hope they are, they will find me here."