Images of Kosovo

In early 1999 the world watched in horror as the crisis in Kosovo escalated and the atrocities committed there were reported. A few days after Nato entered Kosovo as a peacekeeping force, I also came to Kosovo with an international medical aid organization, IMC. This article was written at the time and the writing style, not my usual one, reflects some of the confusion, elation, horror and hope of that time. I have left it deliberately unedited.

The sun is rising in a huge red ball over misty hills as we cross the border from Macedonia into Kosovo. I brought a dozen rolls of film and cannot bring myself to use them. I am left with the pictures in my head. The mist lies heavy, low in the fields. Where the light touches the mist, the fields blush, a poetic reminder of the blood that has coated this country for the last nine years.

Bekim, a Kosovar Albanian doctor and Linda, his nurse, sit on the edge of their seats. For them this is the first sight of their homeland after four long months of exile and horror and before that, years of being denied education, health and basic human rights. Both are coming home to Pristina, unknowing if their homes still stand or if their families are alive or dead.

‘Look what they did,’ Bekim keeps saying as we pass houses and restaurants burned or flattened by shellfire. Linda clutches my arm, her eyes huge. Bekim rolls down the window of the car, “to breathe free air,” he tells me, his voice choked and tears running down his face.

Line upon line of army vehicles ply both sides of the road and then there is Pristina – suddenly spread before us the city, red and brown in the early morning light. It looks untouched. Inside though the houses have been devastated. Personal treasures have been destroyed and valuables stolen. Death threats and insults are painted on the walls and booby traps await the unwary.

In our newly rented house, we are told not to lift any ornaments, not to enter rooms that have not been cleared by K-FOR, not to open cupboards, turn on electrical appliances or walk in the garden. My introductory talk is from Fred, an Australian expert in explosives – how to keep from getting blown up – heavy fines for anyone who forgets the protocol, like going into an uncleared building. My colleague picks up a fragment from a hand grenade to take home as a souvenir. I turn away. The house screams of violation, graffiti on the walls as you enter and all semblance that it was once a home gone. It even smells alien.

Driving through the streets is like driving through a ghost town; few people walk the streets except for British troops on full alert: men facing front and rear, rifles on station. Practically every shop is smashed and broken. Garbage is piled high in the streets; stray dogs and cats scavenge. The smell is ripe but some piles are burning as the returning people try in vain to clear it away, there is no fuel yet for garbage trucks.

Within days are signs of life. Some food is beginning to appear, limited supplies are trickling into the shops and within a month much will be back to normal – but not yet. Café bars are beginning to open with one enterprising soul calling his K-For in honour of the men who keep the peace here. Ten days after my arrival I am treated to a very plain pizza and beer at a newly opened café. With a curfew in place in Gjilan, no such pleasure has been possible. Ten days of bread and tomatoes. The pizza was wonderful.

‘Garages’ appear – jerry cans of petrol with empty lemonade bottles as funnels – row after row of cars that have made the trip to Macedonia, filled their tanks and siphoned off what they could spare to sell. More appear every day; buses empty their tanks before returning to Macedonia. Now almost one hundred men sit on the approaches to the city beside cars of every shape, age and rustiness and more and more are coming. So far they are keeping their cigarettes well away from the petrol.

Everything they own has been stolen or destroyed. There is great hardship here, the city has water for only one hour every day and electricity most of the time but little else. People queue for hours for the hope of bread and 400 apply every day to IMC for jobs: doctors, teachers, businessmen, willing to take even the most menial job in a world where there is no state, no industry, no money. One man cries as I tell him there is no work.

There is little peace between Albanian and Serbian Kosovars. Gunfire is common at night and most mornings find a new fire burning in a Serb house. Serb areas are “liberated” by revengeful Albanians – Gypsies are expelled – they looted too many homes during the crisis- and are hated by everyone. One blind old gypsy lady walks the road between Gjilan and Prishtina and back again.

In the hospital little work is done because of the hatred there, a hatred expressed very quickly with violence. Almost everyone seems to carry a gun or knife and seem only too prepared to use them. A huge explosion rocks the whole city – The British are destroying arms and explosives found here.

There is a feeling of euphoria in the city. The people are delighted to see the British army and the troops allow children to climb on the tanks. They wave back to the people and stop to speak, shaking hands, Balkan style. Yet they have a deadly serious purpose. It is the troops who disarm everyone they find with weapons, be they Albanian or Serb. It is the troops who patrol the streets in full combat gear, always on alert. It is the troops who curtail the most fervent of the KLA and the troops who try to allow ordinary people freedom within their own city.

The second day of July, a night of celebration, the streets of Prishtina fill with Albanian Kosovars. Thousands pile on lorries, on top of cars, anything they can find and drive round and round the city, blowing horns, waving flags from every NATO country and showing the world the sheer joy of freedom. Pretty girls and handsome boys almost falling out of car windows; dancing men in national costume, grandmothers with children waving from windows. Finally so many vehicles fill the streets, movement is hardly possible.

Thousands line the streets. In the biggest street party imaginable old women cry over me, mothers give me their children to hug, old men shake my hand and young ones want to dance. Among the many invitations to dinner a young man hugs his three-year-old daughter as if he will never let her go. Today his wife and children returned and it is also their fifth wedding anniversary. ‘Come to my home and help us to celebrate,’ he insists to this stranger from Scotland he met in the middle of a parade.

Rod stands on a very old broken down car to take a photograph. The owner, a young man in his early twenties, pleads with him to get down. ‘My home is burned, my possessions gone, I have just been released from a Serbian prison, ” he tells us. “This is all I have.’ He is 21 years old and looks 40.

The journey from Prishtina to Gjilan in the south of the province shows remarkably little in the way of destruction. Kosovo is a beautiful country, very similar to Scotland I find myself thinking.

Just as you relax you spot a solitary house with roof open to the sky, shellfire evident of Serb target practice, then, a burned out building that was once a restaurant. Yet now, only a week after peace, men are gathering the harvest. Piles of hay rising six or more feet high are heaped onto seemingly insubstantial open-bed carts. Ancient tractors pull the loads and without exception the boys and men sitting proudly atop their work , wave, cheer our car and signal victory. ‘Thank you, thank you, NATO,’ was repeated from a multitude of smiling faces that make me want to cry. How can I tell them I am ashamed of the bombing?

Reception in the Serb towns and villages is understandably less exuberant. Sullen looks follow the passage of the car, in some cases stones follow THAT. The flags flying from the aerial of the car taunt them – a stark reminder of their defeat. These are now the people hunted and hated, a new generation of hatred is born.

The Mayor of a Serb village is escorted by K-FOR to talk to Nato officials. The village is surrounded by hostile Albanians. They have no food, no medicine, no communication. They cannot harvest their crops and they have taken in other Serbs from neighbouring villages as they are forced from their homes. They agree to allow us to bring a mobile clinic there but only if we can bring Serbian doctors and nurses from the hospital. We agree and no more stones follow our car. IRC provided them with food but they live under siege with no hope of improvement.

Close to the Serbian border villagers have been refused entry into Serbia. By day they harvest their crops. By night they leave their homes to sneak over the border into the comparative safety of Serbia. Such is their lives now.

In one Albanian village two elderly Serbian couples refuse to move. Their Albanian neighbours ensure they have food and are well cared for. In another village, Serbian children use the school in the morning, the Albanian children in the afternoon, and the troops have to check it for booby traps between each change over. Such are the contrasts.

Kosovo is a beautiful land: high verdant hills, deep lakes and abundant trees but this beautiful countryside has a kick. Sharp reminder of hidden dangers is seen when passing inviting lakes lined with trees – the side of the road is decorated with NATO “ribbons” – a sign that it has not been cleared of landmines. People take their chances or send their animals into fields and gardens to check for themselves. The growing number of mine-strike victims hold testimony to the danger of that.

We commandeer any building we can for our clinics.

A burned out tank and military lorry destroyed by NATO bombing; a bus overturned and a car destroyed by the Serb paramilitary emphasise that this is a war zone, newly liberated.

In the villages life has always been hard, now it is deadly. Wells have been contaminated by dead bodies, some harvests were never planted or have been burned and women and children show signs of months in the mountains.

One young mother holds her severely malnourished baby, eyes haunted. The child was born a month premature while they were hiding in the hills. Now her milk has dried, she had nothing to feed her baby. The baby hardly stirs – eyes seemingly too large in a tiny face, a fair reflection of his mother. It takes two days to track down baby formula. Fatima follows me with pleading eyes from the door to the kitchen when I bring it to the hospital – she watches every move as I make up the bottle.

An old man bares his leg to show badly healed gunshot wounds; a young man with no legs is carried in a cart to meet our doctor; an abscess is lanced with a solitary needle tearing at the skin while the wee boy is held down by his family. Oh for a scalpel.

News arrives of three children caught in a nearby minefield – one dies.

Everyone has needs, some we can meet, most we cannot.

Often all we can offer are vitamin tables yet the fact that we are coming to their village at all heartens them. Villagers bring gifts of food and strong Turkish coffee. It makes me ashamed of how little I can do.

Villagers point out the hills behind them where Serbian troops shot at anything that moved and the hills in front of them that were held by KLA. Caught in the middle, the village is now bullet-torn and houses still blackened by shellfire.

The stories begin to blend into one another, so many atrocities, so much hatred it becomes unreal and I leave with more guilt at my back.

We are flagged down by an old man. He waves a paper in our faces and talks with the driver. A medical emergency? No he has found where a Serb neighbour has taken his personal belongings and wants us to help him reclaim them. We direct him to K-FOR. They are never far away. But I carry the image of his forlorn figure with me as we leave. When you have little, the little you have matters more.

Roadblocks are everywhere. In this area of Gjilan the Americans try to maintain the peace. The American marines are less friendly with the people than the Brits in Prishtina – here they seldom smile, they take no little gifts from the children and are forbidden to leave their compounds. It is a sharp reminder that this is still an area of conflict. It will be a long six weeks for them. But I confess I was glad enough to see their KP rations.

Marines keep the peace at Gjilan hospital. Here is the only hospital in Kosovo that is even vaguely working. IMC appear to have worked a miracle. With the help of the American marines they have managed to clear it of weapons, have organised a board of 3 Albanian doctors, 2 Serbian doctors and we two internationals. We sit uneasily, all in the same room, the Serbs sit at the foot of the table and refuse to move closer, the Albanians are icily polite.

‘This is too hard,’ they tell me in a quiet moment. We assure them they are doing better than anywhere else is and the information that other organisations such as the Water Company and the Electricity Company are following their example encourages them. I tell them the whole world is watching Gjilan to see how Albanian and Serbian are going forward – I am unaware that Kosovo is no longer newsworthy – no one is watching – no one cares.

It is only possible with the American marines in situ. No guns are allowed in the hospital, everyone is searched on arrival, no flags are allowed, no propaganda. Half the staff has returned. The Serb still won’t come out at night – it is too dangerous for them. But they do come; volunteers like everyone else now. Patients feel confident enough to come but Albanian is treated by Albanian and Serb by Serb. It is hard to see how trust can ever return.

An assessment of the hospital facilities. There is nothing left. An inadequate service before has now become appalling. Hundreds of doors are blown apart, holed, K-FOR’s “clearing” of suspect areas after the Serbian occupation. The only equipment left is antiquated and no longer works. Beds have broken springs and old mattresses, there are no sheets and the paediatric ward is over-run by rats. Flooring has been torn up, with no water, sanitation is desperate and the smell pervades the whole place.

K-FOR marines agree to give up their “dossing” down area to rebuild a ward for the children. A project which they enter with glee, something constructive in an area of destruction.

The baby “box”. Here I find Vanessa. Nine month old Vanessa, abandoned by her mother, living in an obstetric cot. She is tied down so she does not fall out. She struggles to sit up, first to her left side, then to her right. Nine months old, she needs stimulation, she needs attention, she needs food. I must lift her. I carry her on my hip for the rest of my inspection. She doesn’t want to go back to her cot. I don’t want to leave her.

Three other babies, new born, abandoned by their mothers, two in one cot. They are all girls, born to teenage mothers with no family support. Are they rape victims? Are they gypsies? Or Serbian? There is no food, no nappies, no clothes. Albanian volunteer workers bring the little they can spare. Another day to track down baby formula for them, mainly by flagging down any aid van I see no matter what nationality, I may be the only one willing to abandon egos and work combine resources but the disapproval of my bosses mean little in a war zone. Another hour to teach the staff how to prepare it and care for the bottles. I leave one months supply of food – how inadequate.

Flashes of images haunt my dreams. Old men, women old before their time. Blood pressure of 200 and above. Young women with no husband, mothers with no sons. Young boys copying the soldiers, parading behind them. Young men barely old enough to shave, heartbreakingly proud to be KLA. Burning houses, fleeing Serbs, hungry children. Vanessa. Often sorrow and joy is intermingled within minutes of each other giving testimony to the horrors they faced. So many emotions. I too swing through them quickly, one after another and am left with the inadequacy.

Since then the charity Hope and Homes for Children have opened two homes there for children like Vanessa. Reported in their recent newsletter:

“We have just had our 50th admission since we opened the first of our two homes just 15 months age. The home in Pristina is for abandoned babies and small children, and 15 of them have been adopted within Kosovo and two have been reunified with their natural families. The other home in Prizren, which we opened only ten months ago, if for older children in need of protection and this has provided a sanctuary for 24 children, 18 of whom have been reintegrated back into the community. This is remarkable as they have all suffered in various terrible ways. All credit for this wonderful success is due to the love and dedication of Jacqui Fleming our Country Director, and her local staff”.

If you want to know more about the work of Hope and Homes for Children all over the world, click on their website at hopeandhomes.org.