Pristina 14 July 1999
Mirdita,

Yesterday in the late evening we worked on some proposal Rand is bringing to UNICEF this morning. Stuart and Hudson, who are now 5 days already in Peja in the north-west of Kosov@ had come this evening to Pristina in order to have some talks about what they have been doing in the last 5 days. Kosov@ is small and the roads are good so within 2 hours you can reach Pristina from almost any place in the country. The idea is that Hudson and Rand will go to UNICEF, Flo, Stu, Janine and I to Peja, to see the place. Since there is a problem there finding a good place to sleep. Since a lot of houses in the town are destroyed and a number of wellpaying NGO's have arrived (medical and rebuilding NGO's) the prices of the houses and rooms went sky-high. A two room flat they said easily will do $1500, with a minimum contract for a year. The last week they stayed at IRC's sleeping house, they could rent a room there for 100 Dm per week, but next week that is not possible any more since IRC needs the place themselves. If those prices are true, we can't work in Peja, since we simply don't have that amounts of money available at this moment in time. That would be a pitty since as Stu and Hudson told the people in the town and especially the refugees from villages who returned here and can't go further since their houses and mostly the whole village are destroyed. To see the situation and to find out if there are no cheaper ways of doing it, f.e. sharing place with another NGO. We walked down sunny hill, met Arta and her husband on the way down. Arta pinpointed out for me each serbian house she knew. Some of them were looted, other had new people inside, three were burned and even one was still burning, somebody put fire to it last night. This is now happening more and more, the returning refugees take revenge and loot, destroy and burn down serbian houses. Even kill remaining serbians as what happened yesterday in Peja. An elderly couple, who weren't afraid and didn't wanted to go, since they had done nobody any harm were killed in Peja and then put on the main bridge. The workers from IRC, on their way to some remote village to estimate the damage there were the first to see the bodies. They informed KFOR, who has their barracks about 50 meter down the road, but obviously hadn't patrolled that night, at least not the main bridge. Since no public transport is organised yet, to be honest nothing public is organised yet, the most worrying thing is f.e. collecting waste, in Pristina in some parts there is something spontanious happening in that direction it seems, but anywhere else the waste piles keep growing higher. Anyway back to the buses. This is all private initiative and therefor nobody can really tell what is going where and when. Some buslines get more or less established, just because of the driver comes every day around the same time, but most are just as the minibuses in Albania, they come, have a little note on them were they are going and wait until the bus is full enough to go. We were lucky, we only had to wait about 15 minutes before a bus to Peja showed up. In that time I walked again through the whole busstation. It is a wonder what two or three bombs can do, the busstation in Mostar, which is almost similar to this one (the Yugoslav building style hasn't got that much creativity), also similar destroyed, was hit by a few hunderd shells before it was so totally damaged as this one. If there had been police inside as NATO had expected then they surely didn't come out alive. Leaving Pristina we drive through the former industrial zone, also here destroyed factories and bombed out factory halls, basically all results of the nATo bombardments. All these places are now occupied by British, French, Dutch, Canadian, American, Belgium, Polish, and what ever other army is there. You just drive for some kilometer through the biggest military complex in this area. It is green tent, army car, tanks, machine posts everywhere you look. The whole invasion force, which mostly must have been in Macedonia, since so many army materials I haven't seen in Albania, is now here, at least this is there main depot. Military posts from KFOR you see allover the country, as well as checkpoints. Our bus was stopped twice, but always was waved through immediatly, no soldier came in to see if we transported any weapons. Some of those checkpoints are rather impressive, big tanks in the middle of the road with the gun aimed at the traffic and around it a dozen of impressive armed and rambo style looking soldiers, hanging around looking bored, Italians in this case. The british checkpoints are more what can you say, british, less show. The Germans as we had them the day before are rather german, all accoording the rules in the book. The villages we are passing through are basically also starting the live up again. Allthough 40% of the lifestock haven't survived this war, we see a lot of cows in the fields, wondering where they were hidden in the last months, it could be that they took them into the forests (but who knows, the farmers of course, had no possibility today to speak with them), also a lot of farmers harvesting. Nobody seems to be really afraid of random mines and other dangerous things. You see how the kids are playing at the fields as well. And besides from one airplan bomb, which was very well viseable and had the well known white plastic mine ribbon around it, we didn't see any mine signs this day, just in Peja a paper on a door, saying "mine". In every village some houses are destroyed, mostly just blown up from the inside and burned down. Sometimes just one or two house, sometimes a whole street and in some cases even a whole village. Furtheron you can see that troops, most likely the serbian army, have been shooting randomly with the shells at houses at the road side, probably as they were driving by. As well as they have been shooting with automatic guns, just to break all the windows as they drove by. Everywhere you see people, cleaning up, building, transporting building materials, it is impressive how this country is returning and starting again. Between the ruins you see tents standing, people camping in the garden in front of their destroyed house. Although I wrote that there is food in Pristina, of course not everybody is able to buy it, especially not those who lost everything and have no relative working abraod. So you see everywhere in the country the distribution places, where people can get free food. Almost 75% of those points are runned by Mother Theresa organisation (food comes basically from WFP). Their distribution points or field offices mostly excisted already before the war and were heavily demaged and looted during the war, since the Mother Theresa fund of course indentifies itself heavily with the Albanian case (the other 25% is covered for 12% by UCK and 13% by other (foreign) NGO's). Also everywhere cars from NGO's. Especially a lot of medical NGO's are driving around, Medicines sans Frontier, Medical Corps, Medicine du Monde, Pharmacies du Monde, MedAir, you name it they are here. And CARE and IRC is heavily present, you see their cars everywhere. For the rest dozens of mine clearing groups, the HALO trust in the armed jeeps, the European Landmine Solution, HELP demining, Norwegian Demining Group, I have never seen so many specialists on this field together, in Pakrac where we had about 60.000 or more landmines and tons of UXO's were i never saw one of them, maybe they have been there, but never in those numbers as they drive around here. Just outside Pristina we see the leftovers of what I think has been 4 chicken farms. They obviously were destroyed by an airstrike, probably also seen as possible places were the army could have hide themselves. The blast must have been enourmous since the iron of the roofs has been flown over hundreds of meters. The iron construction is looking like modern works of art and I don't think that this place in any way can be rebuild easily. It is more like take all down and build it again. They looked as they were just been finished before the war had started. Ten or so kilomteres further we have to make a small d-tour, since NATO had bombed a bridge and they did the job very well, not much working bridge left over here, this will cost a lot of money to rebuild. In the last weeks a nice dirt track was established, a bit like the normal roads in Albania, we joked. The closer you get to Peja the more damaged houses can been seen. Also the first totally destroyed villages in the valley, even from the distance (that must be about 4 or 5 kilometer) you can see that all the roofs are gone (you can notice that easily, normally roofs are orange and so when that colour is missing it means that there the roof left). The next bridge which NATO wanted to take out was just 5 kilomters further, here they didn't do the job carefully enough, besides a large hole in the middle the bridge is standing and most personal cars are driving over it. Not busses and trucks, so we have to make a rather long d-tour from almost 5 kilometer over dirt tracks, it felt a lot like in Albania, humping, bumping, dancing cars. The Serbian army or the paramilitary had shown a special interest in petrol stations. They are all destroyed, but before they must have taken out all the petrol, since the fires they have made there afterwards don't show that the fueltanks were full. Anyway it means that there are no working gasstations in Kosov@ at this moment. But of course a kind of solution is found, since cars are driving, at each entrance and exit of town people are standing selling petrol out of small containers and in liter bottles. Due to the transport problems the prices are high, but nevertheless the amount of cars on the roads is enourmous. Most of them have their numberplates on them surprisingly, most of them have removed or glued or painted over the red star on the old yugoslav numberplates or the yugoslav flag on the newer ones. You can notice who was brave enough to really remove that small sign of yugoslavia and who just put a sticker over it, since you never know if the Serbian authorities come back, you know. We drive into Peja, to say that the town is as demaged as Dresden in the second world war would not be right, that is a very big exaguration of the destruction. All the appartment buildings are practicaly undamaged, all looted, but for the rest not put on fire or so. All shops have been emptied, the first people back in Peja found an almost empty place. Lot's of the older houses are burned down, especially those which were kind of part of the old center of the town. In the town it is the real post-war atmosphere. The smell of burning buildings, every night the last remaining undamaged serbian houses are burning, even with this high amount of Italian and Spanish troops it can't be stopped. The Italians look funny with the cock feather on their helmets. I think that almost 50% of the buildings have been destroyed one way or another, from totally, till light. Walking through the town is like walking through Mostar 6 years ago, everywhere people, army cars, people waiting to get food and repairing materials, improvised shops. The improvised towncouncil is renting out all the serbian shops, on all of them there are signs saying that. Walking through the town we meet everywhere people we know from Albania, people from the Kosovar Youth Council, some people from Mullet refugee camp, and the people from the OSCE in Tirana, who immediatly say that they will help us finding a cheap room, but can't say anything before Friday. We look at one of the houses which is offered to us for rent, a beautiful undamaged at least 150 years old place, with the nicest garden you can imagine. But the price $1700 and with a minimum of one year is making the decision very easy. Impossible for us to rent this place. We visit people from GOAL, who are also setting up some community work here and love to work together with us and they give us the tip to go and see the former school of the blind, which is now used as a transit camp. They offer us a ride over there and the first person I see there is Michael, one of the coordinators of People in Need from the Czeck republic. They are working here and of course our volunteers could be of a great help here and we can even sleep with them in their place, no problem. Soon after Flo, Janine and I have to go back to Pristina, since it is getting late already and we don't want to miss the last bus or come back in Pristina in the middle of the night. It is still not clear how sure the roads are in the night. Driving back I start to look if I can see the UCK, the whole day I only saw 3 person in Peja who could be UCK. All three were dressed up in blue jeans and green t-shirts. But you don't see armed UCK soldiers on the street. Driving back I figured out that they had their places in school buildings along the road, red Albanian flag in top and two or three people sitting in front of it in blue jeans and green t-shirt. Also I saw passing through a village a big foto standing, a young boy in uniform, with flowers and candels around it. The local UCK hero probably. Furtheron it was surprising how all the Mosques in this country are still almost all undamaged. On the way back however I saw an orthodox church totally destroyed, so that is probably done in the last weeks. Just before entering Pristina there was the following writing on the wall: "Clinton fac (fucked) YU (goslavia), Monika, Celza and Hilery....... tomorrow back to Tirana.

wam :-)