The Independent of London, 6-9-99
In this dark land, liberation can only
end in more bloodshed
>From Robert Fisk inside Kosovo
If cliches were permitted in Pristina
and its like, city of fear would not be
good enough. There are rifle shots in
the empty streets, loud, close to hand,
from somewhere behind the 15th-century
Imperial Mosque. There is the constant
roar of Nato jets and a thump of bombs
in the hills around Kosovo's capital
that changes the air pressure in
Marshal Tito street. There are acres of
looted houses, homes to the persecuted
Albanians, two of whom I met - still I
wonder at their courage - walking down
the Corso arm-in-arm, a husband and his
pregnant wife waiting for their day of
liberation.
And there are the Serbs, fearful of
their future, unable to sell their
homes, tens of thousands of them, still
unable to grasp what Yugoslavia's
"peace" with Nato really means. "The
Albanians are coming with Nato," a girl
said. "This will become an Albanian
city."
Nato, of course, is unconcerned by the
fate of Kosovo's remaining 100,000
Serbs - mostly civilians and innocent
of the crimes of Serb militiamen - and
is already talking blandly of their
"probable" departure.
First the Kosovo Albanians were
"ethnically cleansed" by the Serbs. And
in a few days - two weeks at most - the
Serbs will be "ethnically cleansed" by
Nato's Albanian allies.
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have both
promised to protect Serbs as well as
Albanians in this dark land. Both will
fail. "Moving around is not safe - you
have to know that," an army major told
us frankly. And I have the impression
that Pristina is already lost to the
Serbs.
As usual, there are the heroes. Two of
them were the Albanian couple and
another was a reservist soldier called
Zoren Brankovic who runs the biggest
key cutting shop in Kosovo. He pointed
to the single-storey, yellow-painted
house in Ruga Zejtaret. "My father was
born here and I was born here and all
the Brankovics lived in this small
area," he said.
And he pointed to the mass of rubble at
one end of the street - Nato's work -
in which his cousin had died. "No, I
will never leave. This is my home - my
very own home which belongs to our
family. I have a brother here and a
wife and three sons and we want to live
here with our Albanian neighbours. The
Albanian people of Pristina were never
a problem - the money of the KLA and
the mafia is the problem. Everyone came
to my shop - Albanians, Turks, Serbs,
Montenegrins."
But that was then, and this is now. And
walking past the bombed-out post office
- Nato's work again - we found Marjana
and her boyfriend, Nikola, arms draped
around each other, she holding a rose
on a long stem. "Why should I leave
when this is my home and my country?"
she asked. Nikola, who was at work in
the Jugopetrol plant when Nato
destroyed it in April, talked about the
Orthodox monastery at Gracanina and
admitted he wanted to marry Miljana.
"They should never have stopped the war
when they did," the girl said. And
there was another of those loud,
echoing rifle shots. Who was shooting
at who, I asked?
They shrugged. But I suspect their
ignorance. I have a shrewd, unpleasant
suspicion that the Kosovo Liberation
Army are not waiting for Nato to enter
Pristina to stake their claim. I think
they are already here, amid the houses
of the dispossessed, waiting to move
before a single British paratrooper
marches down Marshal Tito street.
Indeed, not far from Urosevac -
scarcely 15 miles from here - the
Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai drove
into an ambush yesterday morning. He
and his Serb driver, Ivan Cvejic, were
wounded. The KLA fired 20 bullets at a
bus on the Pristina-Prizren road a few
hours later.
So what life is left for the Serbs
here? For mile after mile yesterday, I
drove alone through an abandoned Kosovo
on the road from Raca, the Albanian
homes long incinerated by the Serbs.
Rumours are already moving through
Pristina than the Serbian government
will not allow the 100,000 Serbs to
leave Kosovo, that the cities of
central Serbia cannot absorb more
refugees.
A thunderstorm was darkening the skies
as I approached Luzane. On the
bombed-out bridge lay the skeleton of
that terrible bus - the Pristina-Nis
bus that Nato destroyed with a missile
last month - with its steel roof frame
and a boy's sodden left boot on the
road beside it. Below, beside the river
into which many of the dead were thrown
- Serbs and Albanians alike - I found a
tangle of mouldering clothes and a
spray of plastic flowers, bright
crimson and yellow and purple amid the
real pale blue cornflowers of the
riverbank, a token of remembrance to
the death of both Serbs and Albanians,
the last memorial to a Kosovo that
might have been but never was.
For they are still here, the Albanians;
not many perhaps. But the couple we
stopped on the Corso yesterday
afternoon told - between frightened
glances and the wife's nervous pleas to
her husband to stop talking and leave -
the story of the pst two months.
"We spend all our time in a flat," he
said simply. "Day and night. We just
stay in, that is all. We move from
house to house, from flat to flat, all
the time, in case they come for us. My
own brother has disappeared. I've been
to the Milosevic police to ask where he
is." At this remark I drew in my
breath. Kosovo is not a place for the
brave. "No, I couldn't find him," the
man muttered. "I have lost my own
brother"
His wife muttered desperately again, a
young woman, newly pregnant, a child
conceived amid her people's nightmare.
They turned away from us and walked
quickly away, arm in arm, waiting for
the tomorrow that Marjana and Nikola
and Zoren Brankovic, deep down in their
hearts, fear more than they can ever
admit.
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