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.
