Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
KLA recruits race against time for
training (CNN)
Victor, a New Yorker who volunteered for KLA. Photo by CNN
THE BALKANS (CNN) -- Thousands of new recruits are signing up to join the Kosova
Liberation Army as it battles Serb forces in Kosova.
At one hidden camp alone, the KLA claims 1,000 men are getting basic training before being
sent to the front.
Basic training is hard -- and fast. In just a month they must be ready for real combat.
"We have very good training," said Victor, who came to the camp from New York.
"We do things in a month that others perhaps do in several years."
Young and old, the recruits left homes and jobs all across Europe and the United States.
All of them say they are ready to fight Serb forces, who they believe are killing their
relatives in Kosova.
But time is not on their side. Despite 50 days of NATO bombing, Serb forces reportedly
continue to ethnically cleanse Kosova.
NATO has all but ruled out a ground force to fight Yugoslav forces in Kosova, but the KLA
says it should be properly armed so that NATO can use the group as their proxy on the
ground.
The KLA knows the terrain in Kosova, where they have been fighting Serb forces for
more than a year. Many are veterans of the Bosnian and Croat wars. But right now they are
mostly on the defensive in Kosova.
They say they could increase their offensive operations.
"The Serbs are technically superior, but their morale is low," said one KLA
soldier. "When we directly engage them, they run or desert. They mostly fight us from
a distance. What they do is assault villages that are completely defenseless."
The KLA says it captures or buys most of their guns and mortars from deserting Serb
soldiers. But with too little hardware, their best assets right now are their increasing
numbers and fighting spirit.
Fighting in some regions of
Istogu (KP)
Istog, May 13th (Kosovapress) There have been sporadic fighting between the units of KLA
and military serb forces in the region which is under the control of 133 Brigade of the OZ
of Dukagjini.The enemy had losses in human and military technic. The civil population is
in an awkward situation without food and medical.A column of albanian civiles has been
maltreated and not allowed to go in Monte Negro.
Serbian forces forced albanian population to leave
in unknown directions (KP)
Ferizaj, May 12th (Kosovapress) Last night, as result of serbian bombardments in the
direction of Llanishtit, an albanian civilian was killed and many houses are being
destroyed.After serbian forces reached to penetrate in albanian villages in the mountains
of Jezerc, KLA forces were forced to quit their resistance in order to save albanian civil
population from eventual massacre. Meanwhile, today this population with over than 700
tractors and other means of transportation was forced to leave and they moved towards
Shtime.They were mainly children, women and old age people.According to the
informations,another civil column made of 78 automobiles has been seen passing from
Shtimja towards Caraleva Gorge. whereas again today, another column with albanian civilian
has been forced to move from Caraleva towards Duhël but they were not allowed to go
forward, so they turned back after being beaten by serbian terrorists and after being
treated as slave. According to our informations, many young people are captured by serbian
terrorist forces.
Serbian police has arrested at
least 30 young albanians in Llap (KP)
Podjevë, May 13th (Kosovapress) Great number of the displaced population is placed in the
eastern villages of the Llapi region. Yesterday serbian police has undertaken a barbarious
attack and they`ve arrested at least 30 young albanians who were placed there together
with their families.They were arrested by serbian police and they were taken by force and
as well as badly beaten, then they were send towards Podujeve. There no informations about
their fate. Today, serbian forces are continuing to shell with heavy artillery in the
direction of the villages Tërnavë, Rimanishtë, Sharban and Siqevë. These shelling have
been executed by serbian positions in Bellopojë and in Tërnavë. We have no informations
about the consequences caused by these serbian attacks. Based in the reports of our
observers direct from the region, 31 serbian positions are identified in the region of
Llapi. Whereas serbian forces placed in the Podujeva town, are spread and placed in
albanian houses.
Another successful KLA attack in the Kaçaniku
gorge (KP)
Kaçanik, May 12th (Kosovapress) Today about 17°°o`clock, a guerilla unit of the 162
Brigade "Agim Bajrami", has undertaken a sudden attack in the so called place
Kashan, Kaçaniku gorge against serbian terrorist forces circulating in private cars in
the relation Hani i Elezit-Kaçanik. As result, two serbian cars have been destroyed and
the number of the killed soldiers goes over 10. After this successful KLA action, serbian
forces started to shell with heavy artillery towards KLA positions.
Refugee in Calgary tells how her
children watched their father being killed (Calgary Sun)
By BILL KAUFMANN, Calgary Sun
A Kosovar refugee who's found sanctuary in Calgary told yesterday how Serb paramilitary
troops mutilated and murdered her husband and father-in-law.
The only articles Miranda Zherka said she was able to take with her were identification
cards for her dead husband, Nexhmedin.
"She took them from her husband's pocket," said Zherka's aunt and translator
Flora Dukagjini, who wept with her niece as she held up the dead man's blood-stained
driver's licence and identification.
"She wiped the blood off them so she could have it to (remind) her children who their
father was."
On March 24, the day NATO's bombing against Yugoslavia began, Zherka said 10 masked Serb
paramilitary troops knocked on her door in the Kosova city of Gjakove, telling her family
they had 15 minutes to leave.
"They took my father-in-law and husband and mutilated their legs so they couldn't
walk," said the red-eyed woman as she cradled her daughter Genta, 5.
"They massacred them in front of me and my children. They said, 'This is what NATO is
doing to you.' "
She said her family had to wait until their home -- torched by the troops -- burned down
before they could bury the men.
She then fled with her three young children to relative Lirie Beqa's home.
On March 29, the women said the troops, who they identified as members of the notorious
Serb paramilitary group Arkan's Tigers, evicted them from the Beqa home.
"Everyone had a gun to their back," recalled Lirie Beqa, 33.
During their six-hour walk to the Albanian border, Lirie said Serb police descended on
them, taking away her husband, Afrim, 38, and her brother-in-law.
When they reached safety in Albania, her brother-in-law showed up, saying he'd escaped the
Serb police.
"I would love to know if my husband is alive so I can be with him," she said.
The two women and their six children arrived in Calgary on Tuesday as part of a family
reunification program.
About 550 more Kosovar refugees are expected to settle in southern Alberta.
Both women said they yearn to return to Kosova once peace comes, but added re-building
will be a daunting task.
"We have nothing back home -- all our houses are burned," said Beqa.
Even though the persecution accelerated with the NATO bombing, Beqa said she fully
supports the air campaign. And she had a message for local anti-NATO protesters.
"The bombing is (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic's fault and do you know what
the Serbian people are doing to Albanians?"
Meanwhile, the 5,000 Kosova refugees being given safe haven in Canada will be sent across
the country to find homes.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada said it hopes to find homes for 1,550 of the refugees
in Ontario, another 1,200 in Quebec, 550 in Alberta, 550 in B.C., 350 in Manitoba, 300 in
Saskatchewan and the remainder in Atlantic provinces.
Reporter's Notebook from Prishtina
By STEVEN ERLANGER, NY Times
Amid the ashes and the fear, there is a sort of gallows humor. One Albanian man, pointing
to the taped glass of the Corso cafe in central Pristina, said, "Here we call this
Windows '99."
Albanians have always frequented the Corso, and they continue to do so. But they don't go
to the Brooklyn Bar, where Serbs sit under a modernist wall hanging that depicts the
Brooklyn Bridge. They are not congenial company for Albanians.
Two Views of the Future
Albanians and Serbs, interviewed separately, endlessly chew over the possible future of
Kosova. Surprisingly, perhaps, in view of their pain, the Albanians seem to have more
confidence and seem ready to try to live again with Serbs.
After all, an Albanian named Rahim said, many more Albanians still live in Kosova than
Serbs, "and we have NATO on our side."
Official Serbs strut through the cities with confidence. But many Serbs privately worry
about how a future can be shaped after so much violence. Many say if Kosova Liberation
Army members are installed at the center of a new police force, as a Western draft peace
plan would have it, many Serbs would be unwilling to remain. Few Serbs here regard the
rebel group as anything but a terrorist organization committed to killing Serbs and
winning Kosova's independence.
UNHCR Says few Kosova Refugees Agree to Relocation
(Reuters)
KUKES, Albania, May 13 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on
Thursday that it had been able to persuade very few Kosova refugees to move away from the
unsafe border area in northern Albania.
A UNHCR official blamed a lack of information on new camps set up in southern Albania for
the unwillingness of tens of thousands of refugees to relocate from the border town of
Kukes, which is within shelling distance of Serb artillery in Kosova. Two days after the
UNHCR began a campaign to persuade refugees to move, fewer than 3,300 had agreed to leave
for the south, possibly on Friday.
"This is not an overwhelming response," UNHCR spokesman Ray Wilkinson told
reporters.
He said information about the various camps built by NATO troops was not being circulated
among the various aid agencies, and no central authority was coordinating the efforts.
"There is no information at all," Wilkinson said. "We are not informed of
many bilateral agreements between various (national) armies," he said.
Nearly 430,000 refugees from Kosova have crossed into Albania, most of them near Kukes,
just 18 km (11 miles) from the border, since NATO began its air strikes against Yugoslavia
seven weeks ago.
Most have moved on to other camps in Albania or foreign countries, but some 100,000 have
settled in six tented camps in the Kukes area run by various western agencies.
Wilkinson said 3,000 refugees from a so-called tractor camp had agreed to leave, along
with 280 from a camp run by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).
"We need a lot more information," a spokesman for the Medecins Sans Frontieres
camp said. "For the moment we only have a list of where the camps are."
Many refugees are reluctant to be uprooted a second time after being forced to leave
Kosova and want to stay in Kukes, close to their homeland, although camps here are crowded
and have inadequate sanitary conditions.
Western officials have said they do not want to relocate refugees forcibly, and Wilkinson
said he was checking a report that an Italian-run camp that sleeps 3,000 would be closed.
Nearly 4,000 refugees arrived in Kukes on Wednesday from the villages of Petrov, Slivovea
and Mullpole in central Kosova.
Wilkinson said more were expected on Thursday, possibly a large convoy headed for
Macedonia that was said by refugees to have been diverted by Serb forces to Albania.
The UNHCR estimates that a total of nearly 750,000 people have fled Kosova, the southern
province of Serbia, since the showdown between NATO and Yugoslavia began.
First refugee family prepares to
leave post for new life in U.S. (AP)
By Melanie Burney, Associated Press
FORT DIX, N.J. (AP) — Nearly 1,800 Kosova refugees have found sanctuary at this
former Army base since the United States began airlifting them from the Balkans last week.
Federal officials today were to help a couple and their child become the first refugee
family to leave the base for resettlement, said Lisa Swenarski of the Department of Health
and Human Services.
The United States has agreed to accept up to 20,000 of the hundreds of thousands of people
fleeing violence in Yugoslavia.
The government has been working to find sponsors for the refugees brought to Fort Dix. The
sponsors — families, churches and charities — will help the people find
apartments and jobs, assist with school enrollment and arrange for them to take English
classes.
Most will be assigned a city where they can receive one month's apartment rent. After the
first month, the Department of Health and Human Services will provide medical assistance
and cash grants similar to state welfare payments.
About 800 more refugees are expected to arrive at Fort Dix by the end of the week. The
housing area of the base set aside for the refugees is nearing its capacity of 3,000, and
the facilities will be expanded to handle 1,200 additional people, said Swenarski.
Military officials have tried to make the base a comfortable place for the refugees, with
signs inside the dormitories translated into Albanian and special training for cooks in
Albanian foods. The area has come to be known as the "Village.''
In a play yard area on Wednesday, adults sat in groups at wooden picnic tables. Youngsters
played on swing sets and slides, but the adults still carried the gruesome memories of
their ordeal.
"In the morning I cry,'' said Eshrefe Mustafa, 32. Her eyes filling with tears, she
said she came to the United States with her husband, Milaim, 34, and sons, Armend, 11, and
Arsim, 8, but left behind many relatives, including her parents and siblings. Asked how
she liked America, she said, "Yes, like it. Thank you.''
"But my family ... '' she added, stopping to wipe her eyes.
NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia on March 24 after President Slobodan
Milosevic rejected a plan to end the fighting with the rebel Kosova Liberation Army.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians have fled to neighboring countries.
Milosevic is winning - Ashdown
(BBC)
Tim Sebastian interviews Paddy Ashdown
Nato has two weeks to decide whether to send ground troops to Kosova, Liberal Democrat
leader Paddy Ashdown has told the BBC.
In an interview with BBC World's HARDtalk, Mr Ashdown said he continued to support Nato
and the UK Government.
"We have to grit our teeth and see this through," he said.
Mr Ashdown has always supported the use of ground troops to make it safe for refugees to
return to Kosova. He said Nato's victory depended on it.
"The idea that you can bomb Milosevic into submission has always seemed to me to be a
fanciful one. I hope it works.
"He's winning and we're not.
"And what that means is, when we do what needs to be done in Kosova, unless we do
more to degrade, to bring down the quality of the Serb forces in Kosova we're not going to
be able to do it."
Tears at refugee crisis
Mr Ashdown is a former Royal Marine and has made 14 visits to the Balkans in times of war
- during the current conflict with Serbia and during the Bosnian war.
In his most recent visit to a refugee camp in Macedonia, he openly cried at the scenes he
witnessed.
He told HARDtalk's Tim Sebastian: "If those refugees don't go back then we have no
victory.
"If we are to use ground troops we need to take a decision in the next two weeks.
"If we don't take a decision in the next two weeks we are not going to get a ground
troop victory.
"And as I said to the prime minister when I asked him this question, our will to use
ground troops will determine whether or not at the end of this it's victory or compromise.
"There can be victory or there can be compromise, and you can only get victory if
you're prepared to put in ground troops in. Otherwise it's compromise. And we've got two
weeks to make that decision."
Prime Minister Tony Blair has ruled out sending in ground troops, though there is
speculation that he is on the verge of changing his mind. Conservative leader William
Hague joined Paddy Ashdown on Wednesday in calling for a such a force.
Concert in Alabama to benefit
Kosova refugees (AP)
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- The chatting between two French horn players during orchestra
rehearsal has led to a concert benefiting Kosova refugees.
"We were sitting in the back row and talking about anything but music," said
Susan Stewart, who has been with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra for nine years.
Her friend and fellow musician, Dorrie Nutt, said they discussed the TV images that show
long lines of refugees from Kosova fleeing for their lives.
"There were women saying they didn't know where their children were," Ms. Nutt
said. "We thought about how we panic if we temporarily lose a child in Wal-Mart or
somewhere."
It was then that the idea of throwing a benefit concert was hatched.
"We started talking to our friends and they were immensely interested," Ms.
Stewart said.
The free concert is set for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. in Big Spring International Park in
downtown Huntsville. Red Cross representatives will be on hand to accept donations.
Symphony members will perform, as will musicians from the University of Alabama in
Huntsville and Auburn University.
All of the money collected at the concert will be sent to the national office of the
American Red Cross to be used exclusively for the Kosova refugees. The musicians, who are
coming from as far away as Auburn and Chattanooga, are all donating their time and will
not be paid.
"It's just doing something nice when you are faced with those horror shows on
TV," Ms. Stewart said. "This is a level of suffering beyond what most of us have
ever seen."
Hillary Clinton laments plight of
Kosova children
By Martin Cowley
BELFAST, May 12 - U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton lamented the plight of the children of
Kosova on Wednesday and hailed a peace deal that has brought an edgy calm to Britain's
long-troubled Northern Ireland province.
Urging greater care for children afflicted by inner-city deprivation or caught up in
conflict zones, Mrs Clinton said in the Northern Ireland capital Belfast that Kosova's
children were "being robbed of their childhood".
Dreams of 'nice, free' Kosova
(Calgary Sun)
By BILL KAUFMANN, CALGARY SUN
After the sickening tale of bloodlust and tragedy, I couldn't help but ask the question,
even though the answer was already obvious.
Why would they do this to you?
"Because we're Albanians," replied Lirie Beqa, matter of factly.
My mind drifted back to a day five years before, when I was in a makeshift bunker
fashioned by Serb soldiers in an ethnically cleansed Croatian village in the Krajina
region.
"Why would you take up arms against neighbors you'd lived beside in peace for so many
years," the heavily armed, camouflaged Serb troops were asked.
Their answer -- devoid of any humanity -- was instead steeped in impersonal politics and
paranoia.
"It's because that pig (Croatian President Franjo) Tudjman wants to put us into the
ground," said one.
They couldn't understand why we couldn't understand.
For the traumatized women and their stoic children facing a battery of cameras and
reporters in Calgary yesterday, what seemed unfathomable to us was just as crystal clear
to them as it was to those Serbs.
There can be no living under the yoke of the Serb police, they said.
In other words, only a costly foreign security presence of long duration will entice them
to go back.
If the West is really serious about fulfilling its promises backed up by air strikes,
we're in it for the long haul.
Critics of NATO's strategy -- and I've been one -- should listen to the words of refugee
Beqa.
Even as bombs rained down around the Kosova hospital in which she was a nurse, Beqa
wouldn't condemn the alliance that, she said, has made her "very happy."
"The hospital doors and the windows were blown out," said the blond Beqa.
Her acceptance of NATO's actions were soon explained. Beqa said she'd handled numerous
ethnic Albanian massacre victims loaded into that same hospital's morgue weeks before the
first NATO bomb fell.
"We have been afraid of the Serb police for a long time," she said.
The great tragedy of the Balkans is that Serbs have been able to truthfully say the same
about their enemies.
Beqa said she tells her three children everyday, "it will someday be nice and free in
Kosova," so they can return.
Despite the smart bombs, that day seems a long way off.
Canadians are being encouraged to
be buddies to Kosova refugees
By DAVID DAUPHINEE, Free Press Reporter
The federal government is expanding its successful refugee sponsorship program to help
move Kosovar refugees from Canadian military bases into Canadian cities.
About 1,550 refugees could end up in five Ontario cities -- London, Windsor,
Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto -- if sponsorship groups step forward as
expected.
Offers of help aren't expected to be a problem, Citizenship and Immigration Canada
spokesperson Huguette Shouldice said yesterday. In 1979-80 more than 7,700 groups helped
32,000 Southeast Asians.
"In situations like that Canadians are very generous and come forward. We know this
from the phone calls we have received already," said Shouldice.
The program links refugees with groups who meet them at the airport, help them find
accommodation, schools, doctors and other basic needs. As well, groups will help acquaint
ethnic Albanians with local customs, show them around and help them meet other Albanians
in the community.
"They are there to be a friend," said Shouldice, while the government picks up
the tab.
Persons interested in helping have two options. The preferred one is to work through an
existing group that has sponsorship agreements -- many churches sponsor refugees this way.
The other is to form a group of five or more people and affiliate with a community-based
group or business.
- Web site: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, includes application form to be printed
and faxed http://cicnet.ci.gc.ca/english/Kosova/index.html
- Kosova hotline: details of new program -- 1 888 410-0009
- Kosova hotfax: faxing forms, offers of help. Special need for translators, doctors and
nurses at military bases -- 1-877 880-8834
- How long is the sponsorship agreement? The contract is for 24 months.
- Is there a financial obligation? No -- the federal government pays for everything.
- Can I take refugees into my home to live? No -- refugees need their own place to have a
normal life.
- Can they live anywhere? No -- only some places are designated. In Ontario, the
designated places are London, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto.
- Can refugees work? Yes -- sponsors can help them find work.