Kosovars Survive War in Mine Dugout

Associated Press-Last Updated: July 20, 1999 at 6:20:25 a.m.

Ēikatove e Vjetėr, Yugoslavia - The bombs had stopped falling for more than a month and Serb forces were long gone when three ethnic Albanian massacre survivors, terrified by the killings they'd witnessed, finally emerged from their hiding place in an abandoned strip mine.

The tale of Sokol, Petrit and Selman Morina, who survived by wedging themselves inside rock hollows and eating only bread dough baked in the sun, was so extraordinary that it has captured the imagination of members of the Kosova Albanian community - who themselves have a thousand tales of survival to tell.

``I was ready to die of hunger, but not to give up to the Serbs,'' said Sokol Morina, 43, who finally emerged with the others from hiding last week and were told NATO forces had freed the province five weeks earlier.

``They told me we were free, and there were no more Serbs,'' he said in an interview Monday, adding that the men hadn't realized the tanks they heard lumbering by for the past month were NATO's. ``I hugged the whole village that day.''

For nearly three months, Sokol, his nephew Petrit and cousin Selman had hidden by day in the mine's lunar landscape, drinking water from stagnant pools filtered through a handkerchief.

They lived in terror that Serb patrols on the ridge above would spot them.

Their odyssey began April 17 when Serb police moved into the village of Ēikatove e Vjetėr, about an hour east of Pristina, and began rounding up people, separating men from women and children.

The Morinas were brought with five others to a yard, where police demanded to know where ethnic Albanian guerrillas were hiding. Then, without warning, ``they started firing,'' Sokol Morina said. ``They didn't even make us raise our hands.''

Sokol's father and brother were killed. But he, Petrit, Selman and a man they knew as Emin survived. Emin was badly wounded in the side. Selman suffered wounds to his forearm and back.

The men pretended to be dead and the police left in search of others. Sokol tentatively called out for his brother, but got no answer. Selman stood up and the two fled to a chicken coop to hide. Outside, they heard the sounds of looting and flames. Petrit carried Emin to a nearby house.

When night fell, Sokol and Selman moved to the edge of the iron and nickel strip mine.

``We thought the Serbs would never imagine anyone could live here,'' Sokol said. After several days, Petrit and Emin joined them. They returned periodically to the now abandoned village for food, foraging in empty houses.

The four decided to seek better cover under the gnarled, red rock formations inside the strip mine. But it was a mixed blessing. The shelter was good, but the basin was exposed to the road above and woods on the other side, where Serb forces traveled.

On Monday, Sokol and Petrit displayed the rock-sheltered hollows where they lay on their backs by day and emerged only at night to talk quietly together. Rain sometimes soaked the dirt floor and the sharp rock edges tore their hands. They urinated in a cutoff plastic bottle and emptied it through an opening.

Sokol and Petrit slept wedged inside one 2-foot-high hollow. Selman, 51, a former miner, and Emin had smaller spots nearby. A piece of dirty foam lay in Selman's hollow; plastic mineral water bottles littered the area.

``This was like a prehistoric way of living,'' Sokol said, standing atop his rock hollow. Then, spreading his arms, he said: ``I never thought I would live to stand up here! Damn, I'm free now!''

Sokol, a former electrician at the iron-nickel plant passed his days thinking about old quarrels, conversations and soccer matches he played in his youth. Petrit, a metallurgist at the plant, wrote a diary.

Occasionally, crawling for an hour along a water channel for the factory, they would visit their village. Eventually they brought Emin, his wound festering badly, back to the attic of his

home because he could no longer stand the cold. They returned every three or four days with food and water. After two weeks, Emin was dead.

With more and more Serb forces occupying the town, the three felt it was too dangerous to return, so for five weeks they stayed in the strip mine, surviving on a 55-pound bag of flour.

Military vehicles continued to rumble by. But the men didn't realize they weren't Serb anymore after mid-June, when NATO entered the province.

On July 12, they decided to take a chance and lit a daytime fire. Some children who saw the smoke came over.

``When we heard they came from our village, it was the happiest time of my life,'' Sokol said.

Sokol says his thoughts never wavered from his wife and children, refugees in Germany. They didn't know he was alive, but Sokol was able to use a visitor's satellite phone to leave word with a relative living there - and found out his sixth child had been born only days earlier. Her name is Donika.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Hatred and violence in Kosova are claiming new victims even as old ones are just being documented by international investigators gathering evidence of atrocities during the brutal Serbian clampdown on the province.

Four ethnic Albanians killed over the weekend near Klina, in western Kosova, provide stark evidence that the ethnic hatreds that led to the brutal Serb-Albanian conflict are continuing despite attempts by NATO-led peace forces to cap tensions.

Evidence of earlier brutality was unearthed Monday in the northern town of Podujevo, where local authorities exhumed the bodies of 19 victims of a Serbian massacre - including 80-year-old Fariz Fazliu, who vanished March 28, the Muslim holy day Bajram.

Hours after International War Crimes Tribunal investigators and British soldiers left the grave site to mourners, Fazliu's two sons and three nephews prepared to give him a proper burial.

A man dug a fresh grave only 10 metres from where Serbs had buried him, in a crude row of graves hastily dug in the dark earth. Fazliu's sons and nephews waited for the local imam to finish another funeral to come tend to their uncle.

The bodies exhumed Monday included six members of the Bugujevci family and seven from the Duriqi family. Four of the dead were children.

Nimon Fazliu said he believes all the people were killed March 28, the same day his uncle disappeared after going to pray at the town mosque. On that day, he said, Serbs rounded up people and took them to the Bugujevci family home, where they massacred them in the garden.

The graves will provide more evidence of the mass killings of thousands of ethnic Albanians during months of Serbian terror, and war crimes tribunal investigators were present to document evidence.

Elsewhere in the province, American peacekeeping forces in Kosova suffered their first deaths when an armoured personnel carrier overturned, killing two soldiers and injuring three others, a spokesman said Monday.

The deaths of the peacekeepers - Spec. Sherwood Brim, 30, of Dallas, and Sgt. William Wright, 27, of Clearlake, Calif. - occurred near Dmorovce, 15 km northeast of Gnjilane, where U.S. forces are based.

The accident came five weeks after U.S. forces, now totalling about 5,000, entered the province along with other NATO troops under a peace accord.

NATO has struggled to prevent ethnic attacks, both by returning ethnic Albanian refugees seeking revenge against Kosova's Serbian minority and others by Serbs targetting Albanians.

As hatred and violence persist in Kosova, political fallout from the war is mounting in Serbia.

For nearly three weeks, protests against President Slobodan Milosevic and his government have spread over much of Serbia as the opposition tries to capitalize on public anger over the defeat by NATO and de facto loss of Kosova. But the opposition remains fractured.

In an interview with the Montenegrin Vijesti daily published Monday, opposition leader Zoran Djindjic rejected co-operation with rival Vuk Draskovic, who has said that Milosevic's ouster should not be the main opposition goal.

Mass Grave Found in Kosova; 2 GIs Killed -- 19 Bodies Exhumed; Serbs Draw Blame

07/20/1999

PODUJEVO, Yugoslavia (AP) -- At the edge of a cemetery overgrown with flowering weeds, local authorities exhumed 19 bodies Monday from a mass grave -- including an 80- year-old man who went missing months ago. Survivors say they were massacred by Serbs.

Though his face had been badly mutilated, relatives recognized Fariz Fazliu immediately when authorities lifted him from grave No. 7, a narrow pit swarming with flies in the northern Kosova town of Podujevo.

The old man's embroidered black and white belt, part of a traditional costume from the region, was still cinched around the body.

"Even the grave is full of blood," said Nimon Fazliu, the man's nephew, believing he saw dark stains on the dank walls of the grave.

Elsewhere in the province, U.S. peacekeeping forces suffered their first deaths in Kosova when an armored personnel carrier overturned Sunday, killing two soldiers and injuring three others, a spokesman said Monday.

The deaths of the two U.S. peacekeepers -- Spec. Sherwood B. Brim, 30, and Sgt. William W. Wright, 27 -- occurred near Dmorovce, 10 miles northeast of Gnjilane, where U.S. forces are based. The accident came five weeks after U.S. forces, now totaling about 5,000, entered the province along with other NATO troops under a peace accord.

A prayer service was held at Skopje, Macedonia's airport and then the bodies were flown to Ramstein, Germany, enroute to the United States.

Brim, 30, of Dallas, is survived by his wife. Wright of Clearlake, Calif., is survived by his wife and two sons.

A U.S. soldier died July 4 in a traffic accident in neighboring Macedonia, and two died in helicopter crashes in Albania while training in the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia.

The NATO peacekeepers have struggled to prevent ethnic attacks -- some by returning ethnic Albanian refugees seeking revenge against Kosova's Serbian minority and others by Serbs targeting Albanians.

In the latest incident of near- daily bloodshed that continues to mar the tense peace, peacekeeping officials reported the discovery Sunday night of four ethnic Albanians killed over the weekend near Klina in western Kosova.

Kosova and Montenegro sanctions end By Toby Helm in Brussels

THE European Union is to lift sanctions against Kosova and Montenegro to assist economic regeneration and further isolate President Milosevic.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday agreed that the European Commission should draw up proposals to free the two regions "without delay" from the EU's oil embargo and its flight ban. The discouragement of sporting links would also end.

The EU imposed the sanctions against all of Yugoslavia last year in response to the Serbs' campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosova. Although they will remain in place elsewhere, ministers agreed to consider rewarding specific municipalities and community groups working for greater democracy.

Bitter refugees reclaim their ruined homes

IN the village of Sofalia, just outside Pristina, the newly-returned refugees are driving up in their cars to stare with stony faces at their ruined homes. Comprehensively ruined, mind you. No half measures. There are plans here to make one room habitable before winter in some houses, but what can anyone make out of rubble?

"I lived for 50 years in this house," says Handi Gash. He is beyond further words as he walks slowly round, taking in the horror for the first time. He is 68. "He has no time to do it again," says our driver sadly as we leave him.

What made the scene so poignant in this village, where all but 10 of the 200 houses have been smashed, was the profusion of wild flowers in the gardens. In the sunshine the butterflies were busy. Such beauty amid such squalor.

A glance at these stony faces drives home the depths of their bitterness. Some 670,000 of the 800,000 refugees who fled have returned at a pace which has astonished the humanitarian agencies. A lot of them who drove out of the country have driven back.

Now many of them are coming face to face with their homelessness. It is generating a hatred that will last a generation or more. No wonder most of the Serbs have fled. Those who remain need all the protection they can get from KFOR. They have no future here.

Pristina itself superficially presents a totally different picture. There seems surprisingly little damage, apart from that caused by Nato. On Saturday night we sat outside a cafe watching the young revel in what few joys the city has to offer.

They showed not a care in the world. Their faces were eager, cheerful, intent. Their walk was resolute. The speed with which the younger citizens, in particular, have brought life back into Pristina only five weeks after its occupation has astonished many experienced hands among the aid agencies.

Perhaps the speed of events since March 24 has something to do with it. I think back to Germany just after the last war ended. Many cities were in ruins, yet there was none of the fury you encounter here.

They can hardly bring themselves to speak about it. "Bandits, bandits. . ." - meaning Serb police - cried an old man outside his ruined home. "They didn't fight like soldiers. . . attack only women and children." What the Serb police did has made life in Kosova impossible for the rest of their countrymen.

At least in Germany in 1945 we had some idea of how the country was to be run. But in Kosova, everything from schools to taxation is non existent. The man in charge of Kosova's civil administration, which includes education, health, all the utilities and the police, has a total staff of 13.

Unicef is working round the clock to get 1,000 primary schools ready to open in September. Who is going to pay the school teachers? The Serbs ran most of the official service. They have gone. The Albanians who did a lot of this work were sacked by the Serbs 10 years ago.

The frontier between Macedonia and Kosova at Blace has become a nightmare. We were lucky to get through in two hours. "Who on earth is in charge here?" I wondered as KFOR vehicles, heavy lorries and trailers, the motor cars of refugees, UN Land Cruisers and even hay carts piled up in a fashion that made the M25 on a bad day look benign. Was it the angry American sergeant on a motorcycle, or the Macedonian police, or some soldiers from Eastern Europe who spoke no word of any language save their own?

This was Kosova in microcosm. And what was happening on the border is what may very well be repeated in Kosova itself. Confronted by two lines of traffic facing each on other either side of the frontier and therefore motionless, the cowboys took the law into their own hands. They formed a third line of traffic in order to force their way through, converting confusion into chaos.

The Albanian Mafia is active and likely to flourish. Unless the international community decides soon how Kosova is ultimately to be governed, the ungovernable will take over. Ostensibly, Bernard Kouchner, a former French minister of health, is to be chief civil administrator. As a caretaker, he will do. But who is to be landlord? No one is ready to say whether Kosova will be independent.

Meanwhile, the country is receiving a huge amount of aid. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has visited between 400 and 500 villages, says up to 55,000 homes have been destroyed. In 15,000 of these it will be impossible to fix even one room before winter, now 12 weeks away.

So 30,000 tents are on their way. Returning refugees are being encouraged to bring one of them back on their car. On top of this, UNHCR's shopping list includes 33 million candles, seven million galvanised nails, 4,000 carpenter's pencils and 2,000 chisels.

These people are not looking for charity, but are saying: "Give us the tools and we will finish the job". Total cost to UNHCR? Just under £250 million of which only £106 million is in the kitty. This programme is costing £7 million a week.