© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.

Letter from Kosovo

 
By a correspondent in Pristina*
March 28, 1999
 
632 words
 
PRISTINA -- The nightmare situation seems to be developing outside the capitol. In Pristina we just have the same chaos we have had already for days.
 
We hear that tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians in Pec, a town in the western part of the province, have been driven out of their homes by Serbian police and are being marched in columns towards the city of Rozhaje in Montenegro.
 
Albanian sources also say that more than 100 people have been killed there, with the dead left laying on the streets. There are reports that, after a shelling attack and looting, the old part of the town was destroyed.
 
Other reports claim that the town of Gjakovica is aflame and that many people there have also been killed.
 
According to reports from Kosovapress, the Kosovo Liberation Army's news agency, Serbian police entered the village of Cirez, where more than 15,000 refugees had been living in the open for more than two weeks, and forced them into a nearby military building -- a possible target for NATO air strikes.
 
The accuracy of all these reports, as well as the number of people involved, is hard to confirm. But everyone now fears mass executions.
 
In Pristina, the only people on the streets are the police and a great number of armed Serb civilians, wandering around town and shooting in various directions. The looting, burning and general destruction continues. Many shops are completely looted and gutted. Cafes and restaurants- even the small, hidden ones where all the journalists used to meet -- have been heavily damaged.
 
Saturday night, there were many explosions in the town -- and not just ones caused by the NATO bombing. There has been the constant sound of explosions around Dragodan, a residential section of Pristina. Albanians living in private houses there are particularly vulnerable.
 
I no longer sleep at home at night. When I return in the morning, the ground is covered with blood. It's impossible to know who was wounded or killed the previous night.
 
The Serbian authorities are apparently trying to get people to flee. In many residential buildings, fliers are posted with the emblem of the Kosovo Liberation Army, calling on people to evacuate their homes and leave town. But the regional KLA commanders denied producing these documents. Since the fliers, written in Albanian, contain numerous spelling and grammatical errors, it seems more likely that they have been posted by Serbian authorities. This would not be the first time they have used such a tactic.
 
Of course, right now, there's not much chance of going anywhere. The bus station in Pristina is full and buses are still operating. But the only routes they travel now are north towards Serbia. Only Serbs are allowed to board -- Albanians are ordered off. Otherwise, there is no way out of town. Paramilitary units control the roads, and no one would dare to try and pass. Some try to use bribes to make their way out.
 
If you do have some money, there's almost nothing to by in the shops. In the few that haven't been destroyed, there's very little to buy: no bread, no milk, no flour, no sugar. You need a fortune to buy a pack of cigarettes and they are becoming increasingly scarce. Medicine is also scarce and expensive.
 
Only a few telephone lines are still working. The mobile phone network has been shut down, and we're afraid the entire telephone system will soon simply be switched off. The Internet is still operating but we expect this too will stop functioning soon.
 
Meanwhile, state-run media proudly proclaims that "Yugoslavia has entered history as the only state that has shot down a NATO plane." The burning and destruction that we see every night, according to Serb TV, is all caused by NATO.
 
 

* The name of this journalist, a correspondent for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting's Balkan Crisis Reports, is withheld to protect against reprisals.

 

Click here for more analyses of the Balkan Conflicts from the Global Beat

 

© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

Home | About | Archives | Advisors | Staff