volume 3 • number 116 • 1999
TRANSCRIPT
UNHCRUnited Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees
V O L U M E 3 • N U M B E R 1 1 6 • 1 9 9 9
Kosovo:One last chanceThe race against winterYet another exodus
Kosovo:One last chanceThe race against winterYet another exodus
2 R E F U G E E S
T H E E D I T O R ’ S D E S K
Question: What was the world’s largest war this year?
Answer: In a conflict virtually unnoticed by the outside
world, Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, each over one
quarter-million soldiers strong, fought over a meaning-
less piece of land. Tens of thousands of people were
killed, wounded or captured and at least 600,000 civil-
ians were displaced.
Question: What was the world’s most brutal war of recent
times?
Answer: For eight years virtually the entire population
of Sierra Leone has been uprooted, mutilated, raped or
abducted. At least 50,000 persons were killed.
Question: What is the world’s largest current refugee
problem?
Answer: There are still more than 2.6 million Afghan
refugees, but UNHCR’s programs to help them have
been virtually bankrupt for months because of lack of
donor interest.
The general public could be forgiven for answering
“Kosovo” to all of the above questions, but the unprece-
dented news coverage and military, political and financial
commitments pledged to solve the Kosovo problem have
once more raised troubling and legitimate concerns among
aid organizations about how and why the ‘international
community’ responds to different humanitarian crises.
The world’s most powerful nations, which are also
the major donors, will always commit more funds and
human resources to crises which may affect their own
national interests. Hence Kosovo and not Kabul.
In an era of ever tighten-
ing budgets, donors have also
become impatient with
apparently intractable prob-
lems such as Afghanistan.
In one important sign of
this, governments increasing-
ly ‘earmark’ their contribu-
tions to organizations such as
UNHCR, funding high-visi-
bility ‘popular’ crises such as
Kosovo and ignoring more
difficult situations.
Redressing the balance
will be difficult. The world community, through U.N.
bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
must refocus its attention on longtime trouble spots like
Africa. Greater emphasis must be placed on crisis pre-
vention and long-term economic and social develop-
ment.
But countries and regional organizations in those
same areas must also redouble their commitment to
effectively tackle their own problems.
If these show progress then the rest of the world may
follow. Which is why recent home-grown attempts to
solve wars in the Horn of Africa, Congo and Sierra
Leone, however tentative and faltering, may eventually
bring some good news for hundreds of thousands of
uprooted people.
Why Kosovo and not Kabul?
Internally
displaced
persons and
local Afghans
awaiting a
food
distribution in
the devastated
Afghan capital
of Kabul.
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2 E D I T O R I A L
Is humanitarian aid distribution fair?
4Kosovo’s race against winter. By Fernando del Mundo and Ray Wilkinson
Chronology.A history of Balkan events.
Opinion Serbs do not forget. By Tim Judah
StatisticsThe war by numbers.
The first exodusKosovo’s flight started in 1990.
16 C E N T E R F O L D M A P
18 O R I G I NStart of the Kosovo conflict. By Nicholas Morris
20 S E R B I AEurope’s newest exiles.
MontenegroAll welcome.
22 I N T E R V I E W
A talk with UNHCR’s special envoy.
24 O P I N I O N
Military-aid cooperation. By Cedric Thornberry
25 G O I N G B A C K
Going back to Kosovo. By Fernando del Mundo
Saving livesCharity suffers while saving others.
27 A F R I C A
Africa suffers in silence. By Peter Kessler
28 S H O R T T A K E S
30 P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S
31 Q U O T E U N Q U O T E
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4Kosovo refugees arrivein Kukes, Albania. Themajority of nearly
450,000 people who soughtrefuge in Albania passedthrough this tiny bordertown.
20 Ethnic Serbs whofled their homes inthe town of Pec
fearing ethnic Albanianreprisals, seek protection at anearby KFOR checkpoint.
27Unaccompaniedminors from theCongo in a Tanzanian
camp. There were widespreadfears that the plight ofAfrican refugees was ignoredduring the Kosovo crisis.
EEddiittoorr::Ray WilkinsonFFrreenncchh eeddiittoorr::Mounira Skandrani
CCoonnttrriibbuuttoorrss::Judith Kumin, Ron Redmond, KrisJanowski, Paul Stromberg, VesnaPetkovic, Diane Goldberg, WendyRappeport
EEddiittoorriiaall aassssiissttaanntt::Virginia Zekrya
PPhhoottoo ddeeppaarrttmmeenntt::Anneliese Hollmann,Anne Kellner
DDeessiiggnn::WB Associés - Paris
PPrroodduuccttiioonn::Françoise Peyroux
AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn::Anne-Marie Le Galliard
DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn::John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot
MMaapp::UNHCR - Mapping Unit
RReeffuuggeeeess is published by the PublicInformation Section of the UnitedNations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily thoseof UNHCR. The designations andmaps used do not imply the expressionof any opinion or recognition on thepart of UNHCR concerning the legalstatus of a territory or of its authorities.
RReeffuuggeeeess reserves the right to edit allarticles before publication. Articlesand photos not covered by copyright ©may be reprinted without priorpermission. Please credit UNHCR andthe photographer. Glossy prints andslide duplicates of photographs notcovered by copyright © may be madeavailable for professional use only.
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IISSSSNN 00225522--779911 XX
CCoovveerr:: Villagers who fled their town in late March return to their destroyed homes in Kosovo.U N H C R / R . C H A L A S A N I
UUNNHHCCRRP.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.org
N ° 1 1 6 - 1 9 9 9
By Fernando del Mundo and Ray Wilkinson
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovars have returned home, but the approaching winter is a new enemy
Osman Hysenlekaj found thebody of his 83-year-old fatherstuffed into the well of thefamily house at the foot of theMountain of the Damned.
In his frantic search for the old man afterhe returned from Albania in June,Osman had, at first, paid no attention tohis surroundings. But now, in the fading
Civilians who were herded aboardspecial ‘refugee trains’ walk alongthe track from the train to anearby border crossing at Blaceand safety in Macedonia.
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A RACE AGAINSTA RACE AGAINST
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6 R E F U G E E S
light of a pleasant summer evening, helooked again at his father’s corpse and thenat the once graceful stone house in the vil-lage of Stralc i Epërm in western Kosovo.The building had been reduced to acharred shell. His 40 sheep and 10 cowshad long since disappeared and the nearbyfields were wilted and empty.
Osman cleaned out a barn to shelter hiswife and children and, a few days later,erected a tent he received from UNHCRunder a nearby tree to make the blisteringsummer heat a little more bearable for hisfamily. “All I know is that I have to get onwith my life,” he says now with no obvioussign of bitterness. “I am ready to work andtake on any job, but I need help from Godand a miracle to get us through this winter.”
The Kosovar, like many of the hundredsof thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled
à their homes earlier this year, said he hadalready given thanks to the Almighty oncefor delivering his family so quickly fromthe nightmare that had engulfed the re-gion in spring.
It began on a Sunday, March 28, when alocal gypsy came to the family home withan ominous message: they had one hour toleave, one step ahead of a military sweep ofthe region by Serbian forces. Hysenlekajand his two sons escaped to the snow-cov-ered hills and eventually made their wayto the neighboring Yugoslav republic ofMontenegro and then to Albania.
His wife, Sanise, and four other chil-dren clambered aboard a tractor trailer and,to the jeers of policemen telling them to“Go to Albania, Clinton is waiting for you,”lumbered slowly toward the frontier andthe town of Mamurasi. Seventy years ago,
Hysenlekaj’s father had sheltered in thesame town to escape an earlier Serbpogrom. This time, the patriarch decidedto stay home.
THE FIRST CASUALTIESOn that bitter March day Hysenlekaj se-
nior became one of the first of an estimated11,000 people who were deliberately slaugh-tered during the following several weeks inwhat became one of the most dramatic andcomplex humanitarian crises in history.
There had been far larger refugeeflights, even in the recent past: nearly twomillion Kurds were uprooted in the wakeof the Gulf War. There were faster exo-duses: in 1994, more than one millionRwandan Hutus flooded across the borderinto Zaire in just a few days.
Nevertheless, the Kosovo emergency
Blace border crossing, FYR of Macedonia early April 1999.
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was unique. The first of nearly one mil-lion refugees began fleeing the regionwithin hours of the March 24 start of a 78-day NATO bombing campaign. Yet withinthree months, in a dramatic reversal offortune, most of those who fled returnedhome to shattered villages and a devas-tated province. Perhaps never before hadso many people left and then returned insuch a short time.
Never before had a refugee crisis beenso interlaced with big-power politics, in-volving virtually every important capitalin the world and a military campaign bythe most powerful military alliance,NATO, ever assembled. And never beforehad what all the major players insisted wasfundamentally a humanitarian problemproduced such a profound aftershock.
In a gruesome knock-on effect, the re-
The seeds of unrest andconflict in the Balkans canbe traced back to at leastthe end of the last centurywhen the then majorpowers in the region metto redraw the area’sfrontiers, with little regardfor ethnic composition.Following are somehistorical andcontemporary highlightssurrounding the Kosovocrisis.
1878The world’s Great Powersredraw the map of theBalkans at the Congress ofBerlin after years of conflictin the region and increasingtension with Russia. Threenew countries, Serbia,Montenegro and Romania,are established to easeinternational tensions butthe wishes of the localpopulations are ignored.
1912-13Two Balkan wars are foughtinvolving all the regionalpowers and Serbs,Romanians, Bulgarians,Greeks and Albanians joinforces to expel Ottomanforces from the Balkansafter several centuries ofdomination.
June 28, 1914Archduke Franz Ferdinand,heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is shotdead by a Serb assassin inthe Bosnian capital ofSarajevo, precipitating theoutbreak of World WarOne.
December 1, 1918Yugoslavia, “the Kingdom ofSerbs, Croats and Slovenes”is created from territoriesformerly occupied by theold Turkish and Austrianempires.
October 24, 1944Josip Broz Tito’s communistpartisans liberate Belgradeand establish a communistregime in Yugoslavia.
April 24, 1987Serbs launch their firstmajor protest in the town of Kosovo Poljeagainst alleged persecutionby the province’s majorityAlbanians.
1989Belgrade ends Kosovo’sautonomous status and anestimated 350,000 ethnicAlbanians seek asylum inEurope in the next decade.
June 25, 1991Slovenia and Croatiadeclare independence fromYugoslavia.
March 3, 1992Bosnia and Herzegovinaproclaims independence,but Bosnian Serbs lay siegeto Sarajevo and overrun 70percent of the country.
November 21, 1995Dayton Peace Agreementsigned to end hostilities andpave the way for theeventual return home ofmillions of peopledisplaced by the conflict.
March, 1998After years of risingtensions, fighting erupts inKosovo between themajority Albanians andSerbs and within monthssome 350,000 people havebeen displaced or fledabroad.
October 27, 1998Yugoslav PresidentSlobodan Milosevic agreesto a cease-fire and partialpull-out of Yugoslav forcesand the Organization forSecurity and Cooperation inEurope sends the first of2,000 ‘verifiers’ to monitorthe agreement.
February, 1999Talks are held inRambouillet, France, butdiscussions break down andtensions and repressionsrise again in Kosovo.
March 24, 1999After repeated warnings,NATO launches its 78-dayair war. Within three days,ethnic Albanians begin toarrive in neighboringAlbania and the formerYugoslav Republic ofMacedonia in hugenumbers, walking, ontractor-trailers and by car.Authorities expel thousandsof persons by special‘refugee trains’ toMacedonia, virtuallyemptying all major towns,
such as Pristina, ofAlbanians.
April-May 1999International agencies,governments and a specialhumanitarian task forcefrom NATO called AFORbegin to construct dozensof camps for refugees inanticipation they will spendmany months in exile. Some444, 600 refugees flee toAlbania, 244,500 toMacedonia and 69,900 toMontenegro. Because ofpolitical pressures on theMacedonian government,more than 90,000 Albaniansare airlifted to 29 countriesfor temporary safety.
June 3, 1999Yugoslavia accepts a peaceplan requiring withdrawal ofall forces from Kosovo andthe entry of peacekeepersunder a U.N. mandate.
June 12, 1999Russian and NATO forcesenter Kosovo, followed thenext day by the firstcontingent of UNHCR andother humanitarianagencies.
June 14, 1999Despite appeals by NATOand UNHCR to be patient,refugees begin to floodback into Kosovo, and inone of the fastest refugeereturns in history 600,000return to the shatteredprovince within the firstthree weeks. As theAlbanians stream home,however, around 200,000Serbs and Roma head theother way, seeking safety inSerbia and Montenegro inyet another new refugeeexodus.
June, 1999UNHCR opens offices inseven locations in Kosovoand under a new U.N. civiladministration, backed bytens of thousands of NATOtroops, begins the work ofhelping hundreds ofthousands of people rebuildtheir homes and find accessto food, water andelectricity with the harshBalkan winter fastapproaching.
A CHRONOLOGY OF BALKAN EVENTS
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turn of the ethnic Albanians triggered thenext of a seemingly endless number of pop-ulation movements in the Balkans, thistime when around 200,000 frightenedSerbs and Roma (gypsies) fled for their livesas revenge killing and other atrocitiesswept the province.
NATO moved the first of more than50,000 soldiers into the prostrate provinceand the United Nations assembled a civil-ian administration, the U.N. Interim Ad-ministration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK),to oversee everything from garbage col-lection and street lighting to the re-estab-lishment of a police force, judges and jails,from the reintegration of hundreds ofthousands of people to the large-scale re-construction of an entire region.
“Kosovo will be the most challenging,the most complex peace implementation
operation ever undertaken by the U.N. sys-tem or the international community inmodern times,” said former Swedish PrimeMinister Carl Bildt who had earlier run asimilar but more limited international op-eration in neighboring Bosnia. U.N. Secre-tary-General Kofi Annan said puttingKosovo together again would probably takeat least 10 years. The estimated cost couldrun as high as $30 billion.
Dennis McNamara, UNHCR’s specialenvoy in the region and Kofi Annan’sdeputy special representative in charge ofhumanitarian affairs in UNMIK, said sinceday one of the crisis, it had been a constantrace against time for aid agencies; first tohelp the fleeing refugees find sanctuary,then to help them return home and cur-rently to help them survive the nextBalkan winter.
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Aerial photo of one Kosovo village shows 80 percent of the buildings destroyed.
WIDESPREAD DESTRUCTIONImages from U.S. sources, taken from
high-flying reconnaissance aircraft showedmore than 67,000 buildings out of 271,314surveyed had been damaged or destroyed.A separate initial assessment of villages in-dicated widespread destruction of schoolsand health centers, agricultural produc-tion halted, the availability of food dra-matically reduced and water supplies pol-luted by ‘a range of materials, includinghuman as well as animal corpses.’
Damage in the province was very un-even. While some areas escaped virtuallyunscathed, others were almost entirely de-stroyed. When UNHCR’s Maki Shinoharavisited the small village of Cabra nearKosovska Mitrovica she discovered everyone of the 175 houses “turned into piles ofrubble” after being deliberately torched
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and then bulldozed. “Some men havereturned during the day, living in blueUNHCR tents wedged between the heapsof rubble, wandering around the onceprosperous homes, school and clinic,” shesaid.
But within weeks of the large-scale re-turn to Kosovo, the province came back tolife as people jump started their old lives,clearing rubble from destroyed homes, sal-vaging whatever was left in the fields, re-opening shops and starting open air mar-kets with goods from neighboring Alba-nia and Macedonia. Ã
To meet the approaching threat of win-ter UNHCR and European and Ameri-can government agencies rushed 56,000shelter kits which include plastic sheet-ing, timber and tools to Kosovo allowingfamilies to weatherproof at least one roomin a destroyed house before bad weatherdescends in November and December.UNHCR planned distribution of 30,000tents, 60,000 stoves, more than one mil-lion blankets, 550,000 mattresses and183,000 hygiene and kitchen sets.
Japan offered more than 500 prefabri-cated and self-contained family shelters
which proved their worth when a majorearthquake destroyed large parts of thecity of Kobe several years ago.
“The return of refugees went rela-tively smoothly,” said Dennis McNa-mara. “And we should have few prob-lems with long-term reconstruction.But our current headache is that onestep in between—emergency rehabili-tation. The challenge in the next fewmonths is going to be getting Kosovo’spopulation through the winter intonext spring when it will be an entirelynew ballgame.”
“The Serbs are not a forgive and forget nation”Albanian refugees have successfully returned home, but that isnot the end of the affair in Kosovo
As far as refugees are concerned Koso-vo has turned out to be the most grotesqueof paradoxes. A simultaneous triumph andtragedy.
Most have already returned. Despitecriticisms from some, they had been lookedafter in what could only be described asfive star camps — if you want to comparethem with other refugee centers. Ninety-two thousand were evacuated and caredfor in third countries.
Inside the province all the internallydisplaced have also returned. Many of theirhomes were burned and looted, but thestrength of Kosovo Albanian extendedfamily networks means far fewer will haveto live in collective centers than is the av-erage elsewhere.
Another point in favor of a quick returnto normal is that Kosovar modern historyhas meant that almost every family hasmembers working abroad. Anyone whoknows Kosovo will also know that whilefamilies tend to have large compounds theequally large houses are always in a stateof permanent construction because bitsand pieces are built as money filters in fromrelatives abroad.
This means that many Kosovars, un-like in the west, know how to and indeeddo build their own houses. If their houseis burned, most people will simply start re-building. With extra money expected from
the European Union and other sources, itis more than likely UNHCR’s role in help-ing these build to rebuild their lives willbe far smaller than initially anticipated.
So much for Kosovo’s refugee triumph.The tragedy lies in Kosovo’s historic cul-ture of revenge. The return of the Albani-ans has led to the flight of the Serbs, manyof whom may well have approved of theoriginal expulsion of the Albanians. It wasrevenge, they argued, for the Albanianshaving caused the NATO bombardment ofYugoslavia, so NATO could look after them.
Since NATO did look after them, andin a far more dramatic way than the Serbscould have imagined, they now find them-selves paying the price of being KosovoSerbs. Fine words about multiculturalisminterest nobody here and the history of Ser-bian-Albanian relations in Kosovo this cen-tury has been nothing else but an endlesscycle of domination and revenge.
PICKING UP THE PIECESNeither NATO or the U.N. can break
that cycle, but inevitably it falls to UNHCRto pick up the pieces. Since NATO tanksfirst rolled into Kosovo on June 12, some200,000 Serbs, gypsies and others have fled.Still, Bernard Kouchner, the head of the newU.N. administration in Kosovo, has appealedto the perhaps 25,000 remaining Serbs tostay. But is that a responsible policy?
As far as UNHCR is concerned there isno argument. In the former Yugoslavia that
question was first posed by Serb forces inthe summer of 1992 in Bosnia. “Bring busesto get these Muslims and Croats out,” theytold UNHCR. The organization agonised.Should it help save people whose lives werein danger, the price being that it served theinterests of the ethnic cleansers? The an-swer then, and ever since, has been thatlives come first.
So, yet again, UNHCR is having to helpdesperate people flee, this time Serbs. But,unlike for the Albanians, there will be nobombing to secure their return.
Some think, but may find it politicallyincorrect to say so publicly, that if the Serbsare cleansed from Kosovo then that is theend of the matter. After all, Greeks do notyearn to return to their ancestral homesin deepest Anatolia, any more than Turksdo to return to Thrace.
If they do harbor such thoughts, theymay find themselves proved wrong, if notin the near future then in decades yet tocome. Aleksa Djilas, the Serbian historianand political commentator says: “The pos-sibility of revenge increases the desire. Sowhile today Albanians wreak their re-venge, the day may yet come when Serbscan wreak theirs.”
The way the Serbs have lost Kosovomeans that tomorrow the Serbs will haveno chance to get it back. But what will hap-pen in 10 or 20 years? Just over a decadeago, no one could have predicted the shapeof the world as it is today.
Djilas says that the spirit of revanchismmay grow. “Of course,” he adds, “I wouldnot support such a thing, but Serbs are notexactly a forgive and forget nation. If theyhave remembered the 1389 defeat for 610years, why not this one?”
Tim Judah is a journalist and author of:“The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruc-tion of Yugoslavia” (Yale University Press,1997). B
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SERBIAN HOLYLANDKosovo is considered the holyland by
most Serbs, ironically because of a battlethere that their ancestors lost in 1389 toMoslem Turks. In the following centuries,legends flourished around the defeat un-til it was transformed into a mythical vic-tory fought on behalf of the Christianworld against invading Moslem hordes.
But by the late 1980s, in an estimatedpopulation of around two million, ethnicAlbanians who mostly follow Islam out-numbered Serbs by a ratio of around nine-to-one. When Slobodan Milosevic inflamedSerbian partisan passions by revokingKosovo’s autonomy in 1989, he set the stagefor a showdown between the two groups.
While the outside world focused its at-tention on the violent breakup of the Yu-goslav Federation in Slovenia, Croatia andBosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, thefuse was also running in Kosovo.
Between 1989 and 1998, as repressionbecame widespread, some 350,000 Alba-nian Kosovars sought sanctuary in Europe.Widespread fighting erupted in March,1998 and within months another 350,000civilians were displaced inside the provinceor fled abroad.
UNHCR operated a $28 million pro-gram with 84 personnel, helping a total of400,000 people but in late March of thisyear, along with other international orga-nizations, it was forced to pull out of theprovince ahead of the NATO air cam-paign.
“We, like everyone else at the time,thought that if it came down to a shootingmatch between NATO and Belgrade, itwould last for a few days, and we wouldsoon be back in operation,” recalled UN-HCR’s Fernando del Mundo who wasworking in Kosovo at the time.
The bombing campaign lasted for 78days. Nearly one million peopleflooded out of the province intoneighboring Albania, the for-mer Yugoslav Republic of Mace-donia and Serbia’s sister repub-lic of Montenegro. Several hun-dred thousand people weredisplaced within the province,hiding in the mountains ortrekking from village to village,sheltering for weeks andmonths in basements and otherhideaways.
UNHCR had emergencystockpiles in the region foraround 100,000 people, but had
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not anticipated a deliberate, well-plannedpolicy to virtually cleanse the entireprovince as Serbian authorities now beganto do. Nor did anyone else, neither majorgovernments such as the United States,France and Britain, NATO or the bulk ofBalkan specialists. Until the last moment,in fact, it had been hoped that peace talks
in Rambouillet, France, would piece to-gether a face-saving compromise.
A CONUNDRUMNicholas Morris, who was then UN-
HCR’s special envoy in the region, high-lighted a conundrum which the agencyfaced at this juncture: key western govern-
ments were urging UNHCRto prepare to implementRambouillet only days be-fore the exodus began. It isunlikely, Morris argued (seepage 18), that these samegovernments who were sub-sequently highly critical ofUNHCR’s lack of readinesswhen refugees did begin toarrive in neighboring coun-tries, would have respondedto a request for preparationspredicated on the failure oftheir own peace efforts.
Refugee crises are often
Kosovo refugees pass a KFOR tank column on their return to the village of Sopi.
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B The most recent census was taken inKosovo in 1991 and listed a population of1,956,196. It was boycotted by the majorityof ethnic Albanians and was regarded at bestas a ‘guesstimate.’
B The ethnic Albanian population wasthought to be around 1.7 million people andthe Serbs around 200,000 with far smallernumbers of gypsies and other minorities.
B After abolition of Kosovo’s au-tonomous status in 1989, around 350,000ethnic Albanians left Kosovo and applied forasylum in western Europe.
B When the latest crisis began in 1998another 100,000 people left the region.
BNATO began a 78-day air campaign onMarch 24.
B A total of 848,100 ethnic Albaniansfled or were expelled, including 444,600 toAlbania, 244,500 to Macedonia and 69,900to Montenegro.
B An estimated 45,000 refugees arrivedin Macedonia on April 2 in the largest 24-hour exodus during the crisis.
B A total of 91,057 refugees were airlifted from Macedonia to 29 countries as part of the Humanitarian Evacuation Program.
B Within three weeks of the signing ofa peace accord, more than 600,000 refugeeshad flooded back into Kosovo in one of thefastest returns in modern history.
B In the same period an estimated180,000 Serbs and Roma fled in the oppo-site direction to Serbia proper.
BOne official British report said at least11,000 Kosovars had been killed by securityauthorities during the conflict.
B UNHCR estimated at least 67,000 andpossibly twice as many homes had been destroyed or badly damaged during the conflict.
KOSOVO STATISTICS
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defined by one particular moment or oneparticular incident. Kosovo became em-bedded in the world’s conscience with thearrival in the former Yugoslav Republic ofMacedonia of the so-called refugee trainsand the incarceration of thousands of flee-ing Kosovars in a nondescript open field ata border crossing called Blace.
Tens of thousands of Kosovar civilianswere packed onto the trains by Serbian au-thorities from the province capital of Pris-tina and other stations for the short journeyto the border. Inevitablythe trains and long lines ofshocked people carryingonly a few hastily gatheredpossessions were com-pared, if incorrectly, withthe wagons which hauledJews to the gas chamberduring World War II. Theword ‘genocide’ began to beused indiscriminately.
The Macedonian gov-ernment, fearful that a
massive influx of ethnic Albanians coulddestabilize its own fragile ethnic mix, at onepoint kept thousands of new arrivals in anopen field with virtually no medical assis-tance, little food, and limited access for aidagencies.
Under growing international pressureand under cover of darkness, the authori-ties, in an equally controversial move tothe initial detention, suddenly bundled therefugees on flights to Turkey and shippedothers to Albania and to nearby hastily
constructed camps. Anunknown number ofpeople died in that openfield but by morning theonly thing left was thesad debris of mass flight—sodden blankets, rippedclothing, a few children’stoys, a few pieces offlimsy shelter, and thewretched smells left bythousands of terrifiedpeople.
Perhaps neverbefore had somany people left and thenreturned in sucha short time.
CRYSTALIZING THE CONFLICTBlace field crystalized many aspects of
the crisis. The world at large, includinggovernments, saw for the first time thesheer brutality and the careful planningbehind the cleansing of Kosovo. Eventhough the destruction of the city of Vuko-var, the siege of Sarajevo, the detentioncamps and the mass rapes of Bosnia hadoccurred only a few years earlier, there wasan incomprehension, an unwillingness toadmit that “This is happening again in Eu-rope, in 1999.”
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In addition to not forecasting the exo-dus, there was also now the perceived un-readiness of aid agencies once the influxbegan and their inability to deliver emer-gency supplies quickly enough, to buildcamps for the exiles and UNHCR’s failureto protect refugees at Blace field.
UNHCR admitted shortcomings insome areas including not getting more per-sonnel and aid on the ground quicklyenough, but Assistant High CommissionerSoren Jessen-Petersen insisted there hadalso been a lot of scape-goating and sheerignorance in play.
At Blace, for instance, while UNHCRwas criticized in some quarters for its al-leged timidity, at least one governmentinsisted behind the scenes that the agencytone down its public statements and evenasked for the recall of one of its spokesper-sons. Humanitarian considerations at the
time were less important than politicalefforts to stabilize a shaky government.
Seasoned journalists who wrote articlescritical of UNHCR’s emergency responselater admitted they were unaware of theconstraints placed on the agency by a cum-bersome financing setup; it has no readyreserves to meet a new crisis and must ap-peal to donors for additional funds foremergencies such as Kosovo, causing in-evitable delays. To some degree UNHCRcan only react as quickly as new fundingis put in place.
And ironically, though Kosovo was themost reported humanitarian story in his-tory, rarely has UNHCR been so under-funded during its own 50-year life.
LIVING HAND TO MOUTH“After the international community
spent billions of dollars on a military cam-
paign which was intended to pave the wayfor the return of refugees, it is a pity theyare now not prepared to spend what wehave asked for and see the refugees backto their villages,” Jessen-Petersen said atone point in the crisis. “We need about 10million dollars a week and are living handto mouth.”
J. Brian Atwood, administrator of theU.S. Agency for International Developmentat the time gave his assessment: “UNHCRwas not doing its job in the early days. Theydidn’t have the resources. They didn’t havethe people. I say that their managementfailure was the direct result of our failurein providing them with the resources.” Fi-nancial cuts forced on the U.N. had“wreaked serious damage which was un-conscionable” Atwood said.
Even as traditional government donorsseverely trimmed their financial support
A doctor with Médecins du Monde helps ethnic Albanians at Morini border crossing.
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for UNHCR (at the height of the exodusItaly had officially contributed $800,000to the agency. The Italian public donatedmore than ten times that amount pri-vately), they channeled unprecedentedamounts to government-to-government,or bilateral projects.
The Italians were the first to establish acamp in the northern Albanian town ofKukes and tens of thousands of refugeesbenefited from this and other governmentrun projects.
But this type of assistance produced itsown headaches. UNHCR was mandatedto coordinate aid and protection for therefugees, but often was among the last toknow about a new program or camp. Thislack of coordination produced waste, over-lap and confusion. In what in other cir-cumstances might be comical, one Euro-pean government established a camp—reaped the media payoff for its actions—but
then its off icialssimply disappearedone night withoutinforming anyother aid agency. Aprivate organiza-tion established an-other camp inKukes, forbadeUNHCR or anyother officials fromvisiting ‘ourrefugees’ and re-fused to attendagency coordination meetings.
“Perhaps one of the most fundamentalmistakes we made was to underestimatethe enormity of the stakes on the table,”one senior aid official said later. “We knewof course that Kosovo was a huge human-itarian crisis, but the political and militarystakes were even higher. In that environ-ment every success, and every mistake wasmagnified. And while everyone was quickenough to take credit they were evenquicker to pass on the blame. We were am-ateurs in this game.”
SYMBOL OF HOPE AND TRAGEDYIf Blace seared the Kosovo crisis into the
world’s conscience, the town of Kukes isdestined to enter refugee folklore, like Sara-jevo and Srebrenica before it, as a vividsymbol of human tragedy, but also perhaps,ultimately of hope.
Northern Albania is a starkly beauti-ful place of wild mountains and deep fjord-style lakes. Communist-era plannersscarred the landscape with a series of five-storey concrete apartment blocks at Kukesto house workers for nearby mines whichhave since closed. It is an area of feuding,gun-toting mafias, clandestine armies,smuggling and almost universal unem-ployment. A twisting, crumbling roadlinks Kukes to Morini, a seedy and sleepyborder post with Kosovo.
More than 440,000 refugees escapedinto Albania, virtually all of them throughMorini and Kukes, a town of just 28,000people. It is difficult to imagine any smallEuropean or American town handling asudden influx of destitute and terrifiedrefugees around sixteen times its own pop-ulation, but Kukes did so with a degree ofaplomb.
One of the most remote places in Eu-rope, Kukes suddenly became a nerve cen-ter for the world. Dozens of internationalnews companies established permanent
satellite links withthe town. Hun-dreds of mediastars, aid officials,NATO off icials,and celebrities de-scended on thearea, renting seedydowntown apart-ments from localsfor $3,000 amonth.
A down at heelhangout, perhaps
appropriately called Bar America, becamethe unofficial hub of the whole affair whereswaggering guerrillas of the Kosovo Lib-eration Army kept journalists waiting fordays promising trips into ‘the occupied ter-ritories’ and where local gangs were over-heard wheeling and dealing alleged whiteslavery deals among the refugees. Unem-ployment disappeared as locals becamedrivers, translators and odd-job men. “Itwas Christmas in Kukes for the locals,” oneaid official said. “They had never seen suchwealth, even though it was generated by arefugee crisis.”
Thousands of tractors, some withouttires and running on steel rims, carryingseveral families at a time swamped the lit-tle town. The Italians established theirhigh-tech camp near a disused mine andofficials and troops from the United ArabEmirates built, by refugee standards, asumptuous camp with a hospital whichwould grace any town in the westernworld.
A rickety fleet of buses and army trucksmoved tens of thousands of people awayfrom the sensitive border zone to spots fur-ther inside Albania. It was not a pretty sight,but the convoy system worked amazinglywell. Many other Kosovars moved in withlocal families or into seven camps on thefringes of Kukes and ignored entreatiesfrom UNHCR to move out of range of Serbartillery. They wanted to be close to the bor-der, they said, to reunite split families andreturn to Kosovo as quickly as possible.
IGNORING THE WARNINGSThat seemed highly unlikely at the
time, but as government and agenciesgeared up for a huge building program tohouse nearly one million refugees throughthe winter, an agreement was struck be-tween NATO and Belgrade. The refugeeswere urged to stay where they were untilKosovo could be made safe, but they again
“Kosovo will be themost challenging, themost complex peaceimplementationoperation everundertaken by theU.N. system.”
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ans just flashed a ‘V’ for victory sign andwent home. ‘We don’t mind the mines,’ saidone old man, ‘as long as the Serbs havegone.’
watched floods of Kosovars going home.“Two gigantic red billboards with skull andbones painted on them in black warnedagainst the danger of landmines. Albani-
waved away the warnings and within daysheaded home as fast as they could go.
“The scene at Morini crossing was sur-real,” said Kris Janowski of UNHCR as he
Kosovo’s first exodusHundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians had alreadyleft Kosovo before the world began paying attention
Serbian security forces came calling forGashi after the young Kosovar had joinedan underground political organization andpublicly demonstrated against alleged gov-ernment atrocities. Forewarned by hisbrother, he made a dash for the border buthis passport was confiscated along with allof his foreign cash. Asecond clandestine at-tempt was more suc-cessful and he eventu-ally made it f irst toSlovenia then Austria,Germany and finallySwitzerland. His wifeand four children re-mained behind inKosovo.
Gashi’s story couldbe the history of anyof the nearly one mil-lion refugees displacedearlier this year in theprovince — with onemajor difference. Hisshowdown with Ser-bian authorities andflight to freedom camealmost a decade earlier, in 1990.
And whereas the plight of hundreds ofthousands of Kosovars received unprece-dented media and political exposure fol-lowing the start of the NATO bombingcampaign earlier this year, the exodus ofhuge numbers of their countrymenthroughout the 1990s went largely unno-ticed by the outside world.
The future of these ethnic Albaniansfrom the earlier diaspora is far less clearthan that of the ‘1999 refugees’ the majorityof whom have already returned home. Howmany of these older exiles want to go back?Will the countries where they are currentlyliving give them a choice? And how willthey and their children reintegrate in ashattered society after so long away?
Ethnic Albanians began leaving the
province shortly after Slobodan Milosevicabolished its autonomous status withinthe Yugoslav Federation in 1989 and be-gan a crackdown against activists. Duringthe next decade a massive exodus, mainlyto western Europe, took place.
Between 1980 and 1988 fewer than
42,000 Yugoslav citizens applied for asy-lum in Europe, but between 1989 and 1998the number jumped to 793,000 as the stateimploded. An estimated 350,000 of themwere ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
Most migrated to Germany andSwitzerland where many already had rel-atives, but their welcome was far differ-ent to the support and help the interna-tional community offered the 1999 exiles.
During the 1990s fewer than 10 percentwere recognized as refugees even thoughrepression in Kosovo continued to esca-late. Indeed Kosovars were often labelledwith unsavory reputations linked withsmuggling and drug rings.
REFUSED ASYLUMGashi, the young Kosovar locksmith
who fled in 1990, was refused asylum bythe Swiss authorities, as were two of hischildren who subsequently joined him.Since then, he has been living precariouslyin Geneva on temporary permits, facingthe periodic threat of expulsion and fill-ing menial jobs to support his family.
He is both bemused and full of ironyabout the different treatment afforded hisgeneration and the latest refugees. “Whenwe talked about crackdowns and massacresthen, no one believed us,” he said in a re-cent interview. “Before this NATO war,
the Europeans didn’tknow anything anddidn’t want to knowanything. Now theirattitude has changed180 degrees.” Person-ally, he said, he felt “be-trayed.”
Gashi has not seenhis wife and two otherchildren since he flednearly a decade agofrom a village calledPeqan in the SuvaReka area of Kosovo.They, too, were forcedto flee to Albania ear-lier this year and theirfamily home wasburned down. He has
since talked with hiswife by telephone and his family is well.
He will return home before the end ofthe year to an uncertain future. “Therewill be a few problems,” he acknowledges,especially for two teenage children whohave become used to the sophistication ofGeneva city living and who will now re-turn to a simple village existence. “Butthere will be no regrets. Our future is inKosovo.”
The majority of those Kosovars wholeft at the same time as Gashi will alsoeventually return to Kosovo. Most willprobably go willingly, and with NATO andthe U.N. guaranteeing the province’s safetyand security, European governments willtell even those Kosovars who have startednew lives and want to stay that it is nowtime to go home. B
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Early Kosovar asylum seekers at a reception center in Bavaria, Germany.
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liver the billions of dollars needed for hu-manitarian aid and long-term reconstruc-tion.
In the broader humanitarian context,how will the preference shown in Kosovofor government-to-government programsaffect the coordination of future complexemergencies and the funding of organi-zations such as UNHCR? What effect willNATO’s role as both belligerent and ma-jor aid participant have on future human-itarian-military cooperation?
The debate over NATO’s decision tobomb Kosovo will continue endlessly. Wasit the only way left or was it the case, touse a Viet Nam-era analogy, of ‘destroy-ing the village to save it?’
Whatever the merits of those argu-ments, however, it is clear that once thecrisis began, the humanitarian operationwas an overall success. Despite the initialslowness in responding to the exodus and
despite other mistakes, nearly one millionrefugees did receive assistance. Local gov-ernments and host families played a ma-jor part, of course, but the end result wasthat there were fewer deaths than wouldbe expected among a huge and vulnerablepopulation which quickly received at leastminimal shelter, food and medical care asthey left Kosovo. And when they returnedhome, the refugees showed a resilience andstrength of purpose to rebuild their homeswhich will be a major building block in try-ing to patch together the shatteredprovince. B
Carl Bildt noted that in the case ofBosnia a formal and binding peace agree-ment, the Dayton accords, had been signed,but there was no such framework to guide
the new administrators in Kosovo, mak-ing their task even more difficult.
The regional repercussions were im-mense. Serbia itself was crippled by the ef-fects of the bombing campaign and a vir-tual international pariah. The political sit-uations in Montenegro and Macedoniawere fragile. Albania remains the poorestcountry in Europe. Bosnia hosted morethan 20,000 Kosovars and its own internalproblems remained sensitive to regionaldevelopments. There were concerns thatonce the spotlight shifted from Kosovo, theinternational community might not de-
“Aid workers armed with hand coun-ters quickly gave up attempts to monitorthe flood. Locally built Zastava cars whichnormally seat four were often crammedwith nine people, roof racks groaning un-der the weight of mattresses and furniturepiled higher than the cars themselves.Their chassis scraped along the road. AU.N. aid station had been established hand-ing out free food, but in the rush to gethome, vehicles just drove by.”
“When hundreds of thousands ofrefugees like these decide they want to gohome, you just step aside and let them,”one awed aid official said of the return.“You go with the flow.”
The dangers officials warned aboutwere real enough. Dozens of people werewounded and some killed in the first fewweeks, not only from the hundreds of thou-sands of mines which had been deliber-ately planted, but also from unexplodedordnance, especially deadly cluster bombs,dropped by NATO aircraft. Mine expertssaid Kosovo was at least as dangerous asBosnia, Cambodia and Angola, and it couldtake ‘a generation’ to make the region evenrelatively safe.
As the crisis entered a new phase, all ofthe parties involved faced problems andheadaches as large and complex as duringthe emergency itself. In addition to minehazards and the race against winter, howcould the new U.N. administration suc-cessfully coax back the tens of thousandsof Serbs and gypsies in the face of contin-uing atrocities against their communities?
There was general agreement that alasting settlement would be impossiblewithout addressing the grievances of thesegroups. And though it would be danger-ous to draw too many parallels, it was dis-couraging to note that hundreds of thou-sands of persons displaced in other parts ofthe former Yugoslavia, 500,000 in Serbiaand Montenegro, and many others inCroatia and Bosnia, were still waiting toreturn to their homes years after the shoot-ing had stopped in those regions.
The bulk of the ethnic Albanians forcedto flee this year, even the more than 90,000who were flown to 29 countries around theworld for temporary refuge, had returnedhome by autumn or signalled their inten-tion to do so. But what about the estimated350,000 Kosovars who fled during the early1990s? Would they be allowed to stay inEuropean countries where they had livedfor years or, if they returned home, howsuccessful would their reintegration be?
Aid is distributed to refugees returning to Pec, one of the most badly damagedtowns in Kosovo.
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Whatever the meritsof the bombingcampaign, it is clearthat once the crisisbegan, thehumanitarianoperation was anoverall success.
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B A L K A N E V E N T S1 Members of Slobodan
Milosevic’s Serbian CommunistParty demonstrate in Belgrade in 1989‘defending Serb rights’ throughout thecountry. It was rising nationalism andBelgrade’s decision to end Kosovo’sautonomous status that same yearwhich sparked the crisis between Serbsand ethnic Albanians in the province.
2Widespread fighting spreadthroughout Kosovo in 1998 and
UNHCR helped an estimated 400,000people inside the province during theyear. Here an aid official checks stocksbefore distribution.
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7An accordwas signed in
early June endingthe fighting inKosovo. Withinweeks the bulk ofthe refugeesreturned home inone of the swiftestand largestrepatriations inmodern history.
K O S O V O
8The NATO aircampaign wreaked
widespread damagethroughout Serbia,including against someunintended targets. Asanatorium in the town ofSurdulica which had beenrenovated by UNHCR tohouse refugees wasdestroyed when threemissiles hit the building.Sixteen refugees livingthere were killed.
9As Kosovarrefugees returned
home, around 200,000Serbs and Roma (gypsies)fled Kosovo fearingrevenge attacks. Thebulk of them, like theSerbs pictured, soughtrefuge in other parts ofSerbia itself though U.N.officials had urged themto stay in Kosovo.
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3 As a NATO bombing campaigngot underway in late March the
first of nearly one million ethnic Albanian Kosovars fled to neighboringcountries. A family arrives in the Albanian border town of Kukes. Hundreds of thousands more civilianswere displaced within Kosovo itself.
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5Nearly 92,000refugees who
reached Macedoniawere thentemporarilyevacuated to 29countries outside theregion after theSkopje government
made clear it could not absorb any more people. TheseKosovars were en route to the United Kingdom.
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4Nearly one-quarter of a
million people fledto Macedonia. Manywere housed inhastily constructedcamps such as theone at Cegrane untilthey returned home.
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B More than 67,000 Yugoslavs,mainly ethnic Albanians, appliedfor asylum in Europe in the firstsix months of 1999.
B Cuban President Fidel Castrooffered to send 1,000 doctors toKosovo and other areas of theformer Yugoslavia.
B The European Union pledged$500 million for each of the nextthree years for Kosovo recon-struction.
B The World Food Programannounced plans to feed 2.5 mil-lion people in Yugoslavia, includ-ing Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia.
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6The majority ofrefugees who reached
Albania found shelter withhost families. An elderlycouple and their grandchildpose for a formal photographwith their hosts in theAlbanian town of BajramCurri.
ALBANIA
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FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA
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Albanian refugee exodus
Serb exodusRefugee return
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When the Kosovo crisis began togain international attention twoyears ago, it was presented pri-
marily in terms of humanitarian assis-tance and reconstruction. But High Com-missioner Sadako Ogata reported as earlyas September, 1998, that “Kosovo is a po-litical problem, with devastating human-itarian consequences, for which there isonly a political solution.” At the heart ofthis problem were long-standing abuses ofhuman rights.
The long sim-mering crisis tookon a new dimen-sion in February,1998 with majorclashes betweenYugoslav and Ser-bian security forceswho indulged insevere humanrights abuses andthe Kosovo Libera-tion Army whichgained increasedcontrol of territoryand roads. Therewas only limited need for relief assistance.
In a counter-offensive in July last year,the security forces re-established controlover a number of key areas. They inten-sified a campaign of terror and forced dis-placement as a massive collective punish-ment against the civilian population for itsperceived support of the KLA which itselfwas responsible for human rights abuses.
By late September 1998, more than350,000 persons had been displaced insideand outside the province and High Com-missioner Ogata concluded that no just andlasting solution would be possible withouta fundamental change in Belgrade’s atti-tude toward Kosovo’s Albanians.
The U.N. Security Council’s SeptemberResolution 1199 demanded the withdrawalof security forces from Kosovo which be-gan in late October. As the KLA reassertedits presence, the first unarmed members
of the OSCE (Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe) Kosovo Veri-fication Mission deployed and many dis-placed persons began returning home.
NO SOLUTIONIt was understood by all, however, that
this was not a long-term political solution:that only a little time had been bought inwhich to find one. By late December, thecease-fire was breaking down and securityforces embarked on a series of ‘winter ex-ercises’ clearly aimed at KLA strongholdsbut which also caused new civilian dis-placements.
The Rambouillet negotiating processbegan in February 1999, but the violenceand displacement continued and acceler-
ated markedly after the talksended without agreement on 23February. When U.N. and NGOhumanitarian agencies had tosuspend operations in March,an estimated 260,000 personswere displaced within Kosovoitself, 100,000 elsewhere in theregion and since early 1998 closeto 100,000 had sought asylumfurther afield, chiefly in Ger-many and Switzerland.
By early this year UNHCR’sKosovo operations were help-ing an estimated 400,000 per-sons inside Kosovo in an opera-tion widely seen as effective. As
in the earlier Bosnia conflict, UNHCR or-ganized international convoy teams andmade no distinctions among recipients ex-cept on the basis of need. Unlike Bosnia,access for the convoys and humanitarianstaff was rarely denied and delivery wasmuch easier, including to Serb civilians.
But the limitations ofa humanitarian responsein the absence of success-ful political action hadagain been made starklyclear.
During the weeks ofNATO air action, around850,000 refugees fled orwere expelled fromKosovo. UNHCR becameengaged in an operationas difficult and complexas any the agency has
| O R I G I N |
ORIGINS OF A CRISISAn operation as difficultand complex as anyUNHCR has faced
There were nolack of claimantsfor successes andan obviouscandidate forblame forperceivedshortcomings.
By Nicholas Morris
faced. The practical problems of assistancewere huge, but there were also major pro-tection headaches in a highly charged po-litical environment where the stakes forconcerned governments were high.
The former Yugoslav Republic ofMacedonia was reluctant to grant asy-lum. There were security problems inMontenegro where the government wasready to protect refugees if it could, butwhere the presence of federal securityforces posed a threat to its very existence.The KLA was actively recruiting andmany families were split up duringflight.
The most immediate problem was thatUNHCR, like almost every western deci-sion maker and indeed many Kosovo Al-banians, did not predict the mass expul-sions. Until days before the exodus, keywestern governments were banking onpeace and urging UNHCR to prepare forthe early implementation of the Ram-bouillet accords.
NATO bombing began after the failure of theRambouillet peace talks in France.
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FAILED PEACE INITIATIVEIt is unlikely these same governments,
some of whom have been sharply critical ofUNHCR’s lack of preparedness, wouldhave responded to a request for massivepreparations predicated on the failure oftheir own peace efforts. To have been pre-pared for what actually happened, such arequest would have had to be already metat a time when the success of peace effortsstill looked possible.
UNHCR’s key concern as the exodus be-gan was less the absence of contingencyplanning and stockpiles than lack of fieldstaff with a high level of experience andkeen political judgement.
A week after the exodus began and with300,000 refugees already in Albania andMacedonia, UNHCR asked for NATO’s as-sistance in an understanding which ex-plicitly recognized the primacy of the hu-manitarian organizations. The potentialproblems of humanitarian groups workingwith a military are well documented. Butthe reason for UNHCR’s April 3 requestwas that there was no other way to unblocka political impasse in which up to 65,000people were left stranded on the Kosovo-Macedonia border. NATO’s readiness tobuild camps and the start of the humani-tarian evacuation program was the ‘pack-age’ Macedonia required to allow asylum.
UNHCR considered that this militarysupport was better coordinated by theagency than provided bilaterally, as it wouldotherwise have been, but had no illusions
as to its ability to influ-ence governments onmatters where their na-tional interests were soengaged.
BURDEN SHARINGFor years the case of
‘burden sharing’ hasbeen argued in hu-manitarian meetingsbut countries of asy-lum wishing donors toshare the asylum, notjust the financial bur-dens, have had littleleverage in the past.With NATO’s presenceon its territory, Mace-donia had leverage andthe humanitarianevacuation programwas the condition forkeeping the border
open. UNHCR launched the programthough it would have happened anyway.
Selecting refugees for evacuation wasfraught with potential protection problems.The concept itself was new; it was not re-settlement and not even temporary pro-tection. Some participating governmentssought to limit their responsibilities by re-fusing to allow immediatefamily reunion, even ofspouses, because this couldhave given evacuees thefull rights of refugees.
One of the ironies wasthat governments whichhad respected UNHCR’srequests with regard to theprotection and non-returnof Kosovo asylum seekersbefore NATO’s action, be-came more restrictive af-ter it. UNHCR even had torefute arguments that be-cause deportees had notthemselves fled persecution, they were notentitled to protection as refugees.
Kosovo and Bosnia have often beencompared, but the fundamental differencesbetween these two operations have tendedto be overlooked. UNHCR’s Bosnia opera-tion was, in a sense, a substitute for politi-cal action and ensuring its success was im-portant to key governments.
The Kosovo exodus was the consequenceof, but certainly not caused by, political ac-tions of key governments. There was sud-
denly a massive humanitarian crisis whichgovernments and NATO urgently neededto contain and major and sometimes com-peting political considerations were at stake.The humanitarian operation was both a ve-hicle for and subordinated to these concernswith no lack of claimants for successes andan obvious candidate for blame for perceivedshortcomings.
DIRECT GOVERNMENTINVOLVEMENT
Unlike in Bosnia, where UNHCR con-trolled the operation and coordination wasrelatively easy, some governments becamedirectly involved in humanitarian initiatives,sought their own visibility and the quick so-lutions which were simply not available.
Coordination in Kosovo, though a man-dated UNHCR responsibility, was alwaysdifficult and at times impossible in a ‘free-for-all’ atmosphere. UNHCR was urgedto coordinate more effectively by govern-ments which then made bilateral ar-rangements for assistance and camp con-struction about which UNHCR oftenlearned post facto.
Some NGOs arrived without knowl-edge of the region or a clear understand-ing of the context or needs and sometimeswithout the necessary experience.
Such early problems are characteristicof high-profile emergencies,but proved particularly dif-ficult to handle in this one.The experience reinforcedthe importance of UNHCRspelling out the challengesand problems more clearlyfrom the start and the needfor a team/consortium ap-proach with U.N. and otherpartners.
UNHCR has commis-sioned an independent eval-uation of the operation toensure that lessons are cor-rectly analysed and learned.
It is to be hoped that lessons will also belearned from the cumulative failures totake resolute political action that con-tributed to making such a difficult opera-tion necessary in the first place. B
Nicholas Morris , whose views do not nec-essarily reflect those of the U.N., was UN-HCR Special Envoy in the Balkans in 1993-94 and again in 1998 until April 1999. This isan abridged article which first appeared inForced Migration Review.
Coordinationin Kosovo wasalwaysdifficult andat timesimpossible in a‘free-for-all’atmosphere.
Wheatflour is unloaded at Urosevacduring aid operations in Kosovo in 1998.
20 R E F U G E E S
T his is a road to nowhere, except a bigblack hole. But for us, there is nochoice. We must go,” said 45-year-old
Didac as he looked north from Kosovo to-ward the hinterland of Serbia recently, hisdark eyes blank and expressionless. His wifeand two children, all ethnic Serbs, alongwith two other fam-ilies huddled silentlyon the back of a trac-tor-trailer. “We aredoomed to becomepermanent wander-ers, shunned by the world,” Didac said ashis small convoy of farm vehicles trundledslowly forward.
Etched deeply into his weather-linedface was not only personal tragedy, but the
dark history of the Balkans. Three timesin less than a decade Didac has become arefugee as successive conflicts engulfed theregion during the 1990s.
Born in the Krajina area of Croatia, Di-dac’s family was among 170,000 ethnicSerbs chased out of that region by the
Croatian army in1995. When hereached his ances-tral homeland ofSerbia and apparentsafety, he was
moved by local authorities and became a‘settler’ in Kosovo as part of the centralgovernment’s efforts to maintain control ofa province dominated numerically by eth-nic Albanians.
But when Albanian refugees beganstreaming back into the province in earlyJune, he recognized ‘it was time to go again’despite international pleas for the esti-mated 200,000 ethnic Serbs and tens ofthousands of Roma (gypsies) in theprovince to remain. “For us life just turnedinto a permanent hell,” Didac said as hejoined a growing exodus out of Kosovo.
Thousands of gypsies tried to escape toItaly, but many were returned.
“We are a people without a country,” saidone Roma. “We go where the wind blows.”
A SIGNIFICANT BURDENAround 200,000 displaced from Kosovo
headed north to Serbia or west to Mon-tenegro trying to escape an increasing num-ber of atrocities. They became an economicburden in a country reeling from war, a crip-pled infrastructure, rampant unemploy-ment and which was already host to the
Serbia, already host to a half million refugees,receives a new influx from Kosovo
Ethnic Serbs flee Kosovo.
EUROPE’S LATEST EXODUS
“For us life has becomea permanent hell.”
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largest single concentra-tion of refugees in Eu-rope, more than 500,000people who had fled ear-lier regional conflicts.
The government inBelgrade initially used aseries of bureaucratic ob-stacles to try to force peo-ple to return to Kosovo.Displaced Serbs were for-bidden to register withlocal police until theyhad ‘deregistered’ inKosovo. But in a classicCatch 22 situation, therewere no civil servants leftin Kosovo to deregisterthem. Without Serbianregistration the new ar-rivals could not obtainpensions, fuel coupons orschooling for their chil-dren. “They are trying toforce them back with redtape,” said UNHCRspokesman KrisJanowski at the time.When some Serbs did re-turn to Kosovo theyfound their situation asprecarious as when theyhad left. The govern-
ment later said it was working urgently toeliminate the bureaucratic bottlenecks andmake the displaced more welcome.
Even when refugees found accommoda-tion, the conditions were often inadequate.A UNHCR team visited the region and inone old school building in Sirco found around120 refugees. In one room seven adult Koso-vars and 12 children shared four beds. In an-other a woman still recovering from an op-eration, her nine-year-old daughter and hus-band and grandfather shared two bare steelbeds and used toilet paper as pillows.
At another location, scores of refugees re-ceived only a quarter loaf of bread and a smallsliver of pate per day as a food ration. In thetown of Leskovac, an estimated 200 peoplewho fled the Krajina region seven years ago,continue to live in a school with no hot wa-ter, no electric boilers, little electric light,leaking pipes and ‘an overpowering smellcoming out of the building’ .
THE LEFTOVERSSince 1991 UNHCR provided an esti-
mated $250 million in assistance to the earlyrefugee arrivals in Serbia. But as one aid of-
ficial admitted: “Let’s face it.The Serbs aren’t popularrefugees with internationaldonors. The bulk of any avail-able funds will go toward re-building Kosovo. The Serbswill get the leftovers.”
Some ethnic Serb refugeeshave managed to start a newlife. Serbia introduced a newCitizenship Law in 1997 andaround 42,000 people were ap-proved for citizenship and per-manent residence. Since 1992nearly 13,500 refugees fromCroatia and Bosnia were resettled by UN-HCR in other regions, primarily the UnitedStates, Canada, Australia, Chile and vari-ous European countries.
Disappointingly only around 5,000 peo-ple had gone back on UNHCR-organizedrepatriation programs to their originalhomes in Croatia and Bosnia by the end of1998. Some of these returns continued
through the NATO bomb-ing earlier this year, with815 civilians returning toCroatia and 35 to Bosnia.
More than a half mil-lion long-time Serbrefugees —joined this yearby an additional 200,000people from Kosovo— areliving their lives in bu-reaucratic limbo, unsurethey will be able to returnto homes some familieshave occupied for cen-turies, or whether they
will be able to start afresh somewhere else. For its part the new U.N. administration
in Kosovo is convinced the key to long-termstability in the province must be the suc-cessful reintegration of the region’s Serbsand Roma. Given the discouraging examplefrom other areas of the former Yugoslaviathat may well remain an elusive goal and afuture potential flashpoint. B
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Tolerance in a sea of hatredOne tiny republic keeps its doors open to everyone
Ethnic hatred and cleansing becamea virulent disease in many parts of theformer Yugoslavia in the 1990s. An hon-orable exception to this behavior hasbeen the conduct of the tiny republic ofMontenegro.
As early as 1991, Montenegrinsvividly demonstrated their opposition toa conflict which eventually engulfed theentire region, when army reservists re-sisted attempts to mobilize them to fightin the Yugoslav army against Croatia,which had declared its independencefrom the old Yugoslav Federation.
As war spread, the tiny republic —population only 616,000— sheltered asmany as 45,000 refugees from Croatiaand Bosnia-Herzegovina. Remarkably,they included both Serbs and Muslimsat a time when other countries in the re-gion were slamming their doors shut toanyone other than their own ethnic kin.
Aid officials particularly rememberthe government’s kindness in 1992 towardMuslim and Serb men who had been heldin wretched conditions in various deten-tion centers in Bosnia, by housing themin coastal hotels which normally cateredto the lucrative tourist trade.
That tradition of tolerance continuedthrough the recent troubles in Kosovo,despite the fact that Montenegro re-mains officially allied with Serbia in therump Yugoslav Federation, the Yugoslavarmy has troops stationed in the repub-lic and Yugoslav police control the com-mon frontier.
The government in the republic cap-ital of Podgorica, which means Underthe Mountain, openly opposed Serbia’sactions in Kosovo, despite the obviouspolitical threats to its own survival, andagain welcomed floods of uprooted Koso-vars of all ethnicities.
Initially, an estimated 70,000 mostlyethnic Albanians sought shelter in Mon-tenegro, a region of splendid beaches,mountains and marshland. The bulk ofthose people returned home in earlysummer when the fortunes of warchanged dramatically in their favor, butwhen Serbs and Roma fled the provincein turn, Montenegro sheltered some22,000 of them.
The government’s openness toward allvictims of war showed a welcome touch ofhumanity in an area where ethnic intol-erance has become the norm. B
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Refugees: The Kosovo crisis seemed tobe a race against time with the internationalcommunity always playing catch-up...the raceto help hundreds of thousands of fleeingrefugees...the race to assist the flood of re-turnees and now another race against the ap-proach of winter.
a. A half a million people fled in 10 dayscontrary to all predictions. Then a half amillion people went back in two weeks,again contrary to all predictions. Playingcatch-up was inevitable.
q. Can the humanitarian community winthis latest race?
a. We’ve managed more people in moredifficult circumstances than Kosovo overthe last few decades so the humanitariantask is eminently doable. That’s not the ma-jor hurdle. The real challenge is the over-all political, security and military envi-ronment and the plethora of major actorsincluding NATO, the European Union andthe UN. How are they going to fit to-gether?
q. UNHCR was heavily criticized for itsperformance at the start of the Kosovo exodus.
a. Part of the criticism was valid, someof it invalid and some of it in-between.Parts of the system should have moved ef-fectively and quickly, but there were nopredictions of the magnitude of the exo-dus by any government. We had appealedearly for donor support for contingencyplanning. The support was not forthcom-ing. Those factors must be balanced againstthe slowness of the response.
q. Why was UNHCR constantly under-funded by donor governments who also un-dertook far more government-to-governmentprograms, so-called bilateralism, than seenpreviously?
a. It was a Catch-22 situation to some ex-tent. Initial criticism led to withholding offunds and an amazing situation where wehad to keep appealing for humanitarianfunds during a conflict when governmentshad spent billions on military hardware. In-creased government-to-government pro-grams are a reflection of a global phe-nomenon. Governments see bilateral pro-grams serving national interests moreeffectively. Hence there is support forNATO’s post-conflict role, for EuropeanUnion and OSCE bodies and at the sametime there has been very inadequate fund-ing for an organization like UNHCR whichis charged by these same players with co-ordinating the humanitarian response.
q. Given that many of these governmentsare also major donors of UNHCR, isn’t thisa worrying development for the future?
a. Donors have many voices. There isrhetoric supporting UNHCR’s coordinat-ing role but those same institutions fundagencies bilaterally and issue precise in-structions not to be coordinated by the U.N.Those are inherent dilemmas which haveto come out in the open. The current situ-ation cannot continue.
q. Did UNHCR underestimate the sheerpolitical and military complexity and magni-tude of Kosovo?
a. On the humanitarian level we havehandled more difficult situations. But onceNATO launched its first military actionever, the stakes were fantastically high po-litically and it was no longer business asusual. Humanitarian agencies are likely toget crushed when elephants of that sizeare unleashed and we are convenientscapegoats when things go wrong. It wasalso a media war, a media circus, a four-month crisis 24-hours a day and the only
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Dennis McNamara became UNHCR Special Envoy in theBalkans as the Kosovo crisis exploded into full-scale conflict. Hewas subsequently also named as a Deputy Special Representativeof Secretary-General Kofi Annan in charge of humanitarianaffairs for the province and in the following interview examinessome of the early problems and the future.
A 13-year-old girl who lost both legsto a booby trapped mine when shereturned home, at Pristina hospital.
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news seemed to be bad news. Today, infor-mation and perception are as important asactual performance and that’s a lesson wehave had to learn. If you don’t you will betrampled.
q. Humanitarian military cooperation hasalways been a delicate subject. Will Kosovostrengthen or sour future coordination?
a. That’s a key question. During the warthis massive interface meant constantlyredrawing the lines of responsibility.NATO was one hundred times superior inmanpower and resources and when not en-gaged militarily they began setting sched-ules for repatriation and doing other thingsthat were our mandate. They didn’t ap-preciate us saying ‘hold it, don’t do that.’And we didn’t appreciate them overstep-ping the line. The powers that be, how-ever, recognized they couldn’t solve the cri-sis purely militarily so they returned to theU.N. to manage the consequences. It’s beendifficult for both groups. I’m sure it will af-fect future cooperation.
q . The threat of mines is going to be withus in Kosovo for a very long time?
a. They recently found a World WarTwo unexploded bomb at London airport.Kosovo will be no different. But unexplodedmilitary ordnance may be a bigger prob-lem than mines themselves. We don’t knowhow much is out there and where it is. Weare talking years here.
q. In humanitarian crises there alwaysseems to be a dangerous gap between emer-gency assistance and longer term recon-struction which seems to be happening inKosovo too.
a. The rebuilding of civil society mustbe in the frontline with humanitarian re-lief. Funding states must be committed andalert enough to send in the people who aregoing to rebuild the roads and electricalplants, the judiciary and the police alongwith the aid workers. They should be onthe ground with us so that this dangerous,lawless environment is not allowed toflourish in a vacuum.
q. Isn’t it just naive and wishful thinkingto believe Kosovo can be multi-ethnic againafter such violence and atrocities? After all,hundreds of thousands of people are still wait-ing to go home in Bosnia.
a. To be sure, revenge is in the air andwhether this hatred is stemmable or not,I’m not sure. What’s for certain is that pro-
tection means both physical and compre-hensive legal protection and this tragic gapin protection in Kosovo could be fatal tothe ideals of multi-ethnicity.
q. One refugee exodus seems to beget another. Is there any way to break this cycle?
a. Hundreds of thousands of peoplehave returned to Kosovo but the conflictproduced another 200,000 refugees. Thecycle continues. It’s hard to be optimisticbut population stability is the bedrock ofhuman rights and democracy.
q. Donors increasingly earmark funds forspecific crises and the hundreds of thousandsof refugees already in Serbia have sometimesbeen forgotten by the international commu-nity. Isn’t this another dangerous trend?
a. Earmarking funds is clearly politi-cally driven but UNHCR has channeled$250 million to Serb refugees since 1992. Itwill be far more difficult to get new fundsfor the latest Serb displaced and for thelongtime displaced in Serbia who are livingin pitiful conditions.
q. What is UNHCR’s medium and long-term role in Kosovo following the return ofthe majority of refugees?
a. We will continue to address the hu-manitarian hazards of winter. We mustcontinue to care for refugees in Albaniaand Macedonia who have not returnedhome and address the problems of Koso-vars who went further afield to Europe,Oceania and North America. We will beengaged for a very long time.
q. What about the surrounding states whohoused so many Kosovars?
a. A fundamental message must be ‘Youare not forgotten because you’ve served yourpurpose.’ Our message is ‘We will remaincommitted to you.’ These countries are an-gry about the lack of economic assistancethey believe they were promised and Euro-pean nations must invest in these countries.
q. But we’ve seen this all before. The cam-eras go away and the world forgets.
a. Kosovo is too important politically tobe simply brushed aside when the televi-sion screens are empty. When politiciansare embarrassed by television images theyrespond. But, slogans and images are notthe way to run international affairs. We hada war in Kosovo based on principle. Nowlet’s invest in the future by continuing tosupport these same principles. B
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Surely it is not an ineluctable naturallaw that peacekeeping’s soldiers andhumanity’s warriors must always
snarl when the cause of peace and hu-manity brings them together in some sav-age new scenario?
They have complementary roles in as-suaging the outcome of disaster. Eachknows its specialist segment of responsi-bility. But each pursues a common goal.
The era of U.N. Cold War peacekeep-ing, mostly after cease-fires between feud-ing countries, led, a decade ago, to morecomplex operations that beganin Namibia and Central Amer-ica. For the first time, multipletasks —political, military, police,humanitarian, legal, develop-mental— arose.
Since then, the internationalcommunity has been increas-ingly drawn into calamitous in-ternal conflicts ranging from theformer Yugoslavia to Rwanda,and UNHCR has become an ha-bitual participant together withcountless, but often divergent,U.N., intergovernmental andnon-governmental organizations.
Each body has a differentmandate and focus. This at onceaffords potential for friction ineven the most harmonious operations. InNamibia, for instance, UNHCR’s mandatedemphasis on returnee welfare was not en-tirely consistent with the United NationsTransition Assistance Group (UNTAG)mission’s overall duty of impartiality to-wards all Namibians.
How does military-civilian frictionarise? In theory it should not. It is the mil-itary’s business to support UNHCR andother humanitarian bodies’ relief activi-ties. UNHCR does not challenge the mili-tary’s security role. But humanitarian ac-tivities may be intimately linked to the mil-itary in that peacekeepers may, indangerous environments, be mandated towork with UNHCR to deliver protectionand assistance to those in need. The mili-
tary may also be asked to supplement thehumanitarians’ logistical capacity.
DIFFICULTTO SEPARATE
Thus civilian and military tasks mayencroach upon one another and cannot—other than on paper— be fully separated.How, for instance, is the military’s nega-tive evaluation of the security of a proposedrelief convoy’s route to be weighed againstan imperative to reach a specific villagewhose inhabitants are starving?
Four years ago, UNHCR produced twobooklets: A UNHCR Handbook for the
Military on Humanitarian Operations anda training module for its own staff onWorking with the Military. Still relevant,they deal gently with a basic truth of mil-itary-humanitarian relations.
This is, that many humanitarian work-ers seem young and inexperienced to theirmilitary counterparts. Soldiers, in turn, areoften seen as favoring simplistic, short-term and aggressive solutions to complexissues. There are, often, different mind-sets, and it would be wrong to disregardthe reality that training, experience anddivergent approaches to decision making,use of resources, command and control,may increase difficulties of mutual un-derstanding and enhance any tendency tothink in stereotypes.
Cooperation among humanitarian bod-ies, and among the sprawling family of U.N.organizations, should further improve withthe strengthening of the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA), but renewed attention needs tobe given to civilian-military relationswhich could become a major issue in thenew century.
Above all, the need of both military andcivilians is for education for mixed peace-keeping operations, and for informed lead-ership, especially in the field. Much prej-udice and misunderstanding comes fromignorance of each other’s professional tasksand values.
NATO has been trying to incorporatehumanitarian concerns and civilian rolesinto its main peacekeeping exercises in re-
cent years without alwayshaving full support from themajor agencies. Many defenceforces now teach peacekeep-ing, including civilian tasks,as part of their staff courses.
Bridging the chasm willnot be easy. Two major struc-tural problems create unnec-essary tension.
It is hard enough to main-tain good coordination be-tween soldiers and humani-tarian workers when both an-swer within a unified chain ofcommand emanating from asingle head of mission in anintegrated peacekeeping op-eration. Deliberately to split
military and civilian operations into twoseparate entities, as has happened in theBalkans, looks like reckless endangerment.
Moreover, the wasteful organizationalgyrations imposed in Europe to placate acertain anti-U.N. attitude must inevitablydiminish the coherence and strength ofmixed-task peacekeeping.
No. It is not an immutable law of naturethat soldiers and civilians should disagree.But they do need every opportunity andencouragement to talk to one another, andto learn to understand and respect one an-other’s mandate and professionalism. B
Cedric Thornberry was Head of Civil Af-fairs and Assistant Secretary-General in theformer Yugoslavia, 1992-94 and a U.N. peace-keeper in Cyprus, the Middle East and Namibia.
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LEARNING TO LIVE WITH THE MILITARYSoldiers and humanitarian workers often makeuneasy partners, but they need each other
British soldiers distribute bread to refugees at Stenkovic 2 camp, Macedonia.
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A SENSE OF DÉJÀ VU....A returning visitor finds a continuing degree of resilience and optimism in Kosovo.
In the devastated ruins of Lodja therewas a determined sense of renewal inthe air. A dozen residents busily re-
paired a school for use as temporary quar-ters while they rebuilt their homes in anarea which was considered the heart andsoul of Kosovo’s second largest town, Pec.UNHCR provided the civilians —artists,professionals and entrepreneurs— with re-
pair kits and other aid agencies fixed theelectricity and water facilities. One 70-year-old woman stared at the unblemished facade of her home, which hid the ruin behind, and sighed: “This is my life...everything I had I spent to build this place.”But when her daughter began to cry, theold woman almost angrily hushed her. Reconstruction must continue despite thepersonal despair.
That was last year, before the NATO
air campaign and the worldwide headlinesand I visited Lodja several times as a UN-HCR field officer. An air and ground as-sault by Serbian paramilitary units had re-duced virtually all of the 100 houses and amosque in Lodja to rubble. It reminded mea little of my home in Manila, one of themost heavily devastated cities in WorldWar II. Troops had scrawled graffitti on onewall declaring ‘Café Lodja does not existanymore’, similar to signs other victoriousSerbian forces had plastered across theBalkans in the 1990s.
I revisited Lodja recently, after most Albanian refugees had again returned.There was an immediate sense of déjà vu.
To be sure, there was even more de-struction than I remember. Downtown Pec,with its cobbled streets of gold shops andboutiques, had also been levelled. But therewas that same sense of resilience of a yearearlier. A 44-year-old Albanian surveyedthe wreckage of his home with his wife andfour young sons, still brimming with hope.“We have to start organizing ourselves first,and then things will get better,” he said, ex-plaining he planned to reopen his carpen-try shop as soon as possible.
Anyone who knows Kosovo well wasnot surprised that hundreds of thousandsof refugees, even those as far away as theUnited States and Germany, would ignorethe pleas of the international communityto be patient before returning home. In1998, civilians had moved like a whirlwindfrom one village to another, always withinthe vicinity of their own homes, as theSerbs and Kosovo Liberation Army playeddeadly games of hide-and-seek and catch.Whenever there was a lull in the conflict,they returned home as quickly as possible.
A SMALL PLACEKosovo is a small place. The Albanian I
met in the ruins of Lodja knew me. He hadseen me in September, 1998 in the villageof Krusevac. More than 25,000 ethnic Al-banians were fleeing from a Serbian mili-tary sweep and as the sound of artilleryblasts followed them, they pleaded withme to somehow stop the bombardment. Icalled UNHCR’s Belgrade office. The mat-ter was raised at the highest levels, but Iwill never know if the phone call made anydifference.
The Albanian, who admitted that he wasa KLA soldier, said he saw me again the following day in Istinic, just south ofKrusevac, where the civilians were corneredbecause the Serbs had blocked the road.
The massacre at Racak village in January in which 45 persons were executed.
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At the time UNHCR was help-ing around 400,000 people andstaff members, including localpersonnel who had everything tolose in such a dangerous environ-ment, roamed the province invulnerable ‘soft-skin’ vehicles, often visit-ing areas where international observerswould not go, on assessment missions togauge the needs of the population.
We had run convoys virtually every sin-gle day since the spring of 1998. A col-league, Francis Teoh, led the last fleet oftrucks before we were ordered out ofKosovo in advance of the NATO attacks.
The trip between the town of Mitrovicaand a village called Ade normally takes 30minutes. That day, as he negotiated 11 check-points, it took him several hours. At one road-block special forces troops beat up a driverand shoved a Kalachnikov rifle in Francis’stomach as he tried to intervene. ‘Nemaproblema’ (no problem), he assured the sol-diers as his infectious smile and sense of hu-mor rescued him yet again from a tight spot.
We were ordered to leave for Macedo-nia that same night. Most of us thought wewould be back within a few days. Theshooting lasted for 2 1/2 months.
When I did go back, the pattern of ouraid effort had changed. We continued tohelp the uprooted Kosovars, of course, buta major protection concern now was theenclaves —particularly the pockets of Serbsand Roma who found themselves sur-rounded by ethnic Albanian majoritiesacross Kosovo.
This reversal in fortunes reminded meof a remark made earlier this year by JoHegenauer, who headed UNHCR opera-tions in Kosovo. Asked if there was any dif-ference in the suffering of people in themidst of conflict in Europe compared withother parts of the world, he replied, “War
is war. The pain is the same.”On one of my last working field
trips in Kosovo I encountered agroup of 100 terrified villagershuddled into two houses as specialforces troops conducted an offen-
sive against their village near Pristina.Masked soldiers angrily took away videofilms I had shot of the operation, but an of-ficer apologetically handed them back tome. “There is enough space for everyonein Kosovo,” he said. “But this dirt is con-suming us all,” he added as he twisted hisboot into the mud patch on which he wasstanding.
As I left Kosovo this time, 14 Serbianfarmers had recently been massacred by un-known gunmen. In one of the defining mo-ments in the Kosovo conflict, 45 ethnic Al-banians were slaughtered in Racak village inJanuary. That incident drew worldwide con-demnation. Now it was the turn of an Al-banian acquaintance to show remorse. “Ohmy God,” he said on hearing the news. “Wehave become just like the Serbs.” B
Saving lives... but losing their ownA local charity helped many old and infirm Kosovars, butvolunteers paid a heavy price
As hundreds of thousands of peoplefled their homes during the Kosovo war,in each village and town pockets of peo-ple remained behind. They were the oldand infirm, men and women who eithercouldn’t physicallyleave or had simplygiven up the will tolive. Unable to fend forthemselves “as thedays went on, it be-came apparent theywere facing starva-tion,” says FatimaBoshanjaku from theMother Teresa Society.
The Albanian char-ity had been helping500,000 people earlierthis year, but as the NATO air campaignbegan and Serbian troops intensifiedtheir campaign of ethnic cleansing, thisaid effort collapsed.
Still, some volunteers remained be-
hind and as food levels dwindled theybegan scouring ruined houses for wheatflour to feed the old people.
The charity workers saved manylives, but at a high cost to themselves. In
the town of Djakovica,six society workerswere killed, two werewounded, six capturedand tortured and ninesimply disappeared.Throughout theprovince 100 societypersonnel were killedor went missing.
The society wasnamed after the lateAlbanian nun whowon the Nobel Peace
Prize for her work among the poor ofCalcutta. In its first year in 1990 societyvolunteers helped an estimated 15,000people, mostly families of the unem-ployed.
By 1998 its network had expanded sorapidly, it was able to help as many as ahalf million people and became UN-HCR’s main distribution partner for re-lief supplies.
For months leading up to the NATObombing campaign, multi-agency con-voys hauled food, blankets, mattressesand other supplies to society warehousesfrom where volunteers distributed theaid by tractor-trailer to remote areas,many of which had been cut off by Ser-bian military activity.
It was dangerous work. In a foretasteof things to come, Serbian tanks target-ted one tractor-trailer convoy in Augustlast year, despite aid agency logos beingclearly visible on relief boxes, and killedthree volunteers.
As the chaos increased, virtually allthe Mother Teresa warehouses werelooted and torched. Of 92 clinics, 78 weredestroyed. Most of the society’s 22 offi-cials and 8,000 volunteers fled to neigh-boring countries where they helped or-ganize relief operations.
Today, the society is back in business.The majority of volunteers have returned,38 of 44 branches and as many as 500 ofthe 636 sub-branches operating before thewar have reopened. “Conditions are bet-ter now,” says Jak Mita, the society’s vice-president. “We can work freely.” B
“War is war. The pain is the same”all over the world.
By 1998 the societywas helping a halfmillion people andbecame UNHCR’smain distributionpartner.
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27R E F U G E E S
As world attention focused on eventsin Kosovo, Justine Kokolo and herseven children were surviving,
barely, on a diet of manioc leaves and rootsdeep in the heart of Africa. The familyhad fled Brazzaville, the capital of the Re-public of Congo, late last year when fight-ing flared anew between governmentforces and guerrillas. But they only ex-changed one hell for another.
They fled south to the Pool region, aswampy and inhospitable area virtually cutoff from the rest of the devastated, oil-richcountry. The displaced—the government es-timates there are as many as 200,000 in Poolalone though aid agencies say thetrue figure is probably half that —sur-vive by foraging in the forest andpicking clean abandoned farms. Mal-nutrition has begun to skyrocket andchildren have begun to die, even af-ter escaping the region and reaching
the apparent safetyof U.N. centers.
But food is onlyone of the problemsfacing these dis-placed Congolese.Civilians claim thatNinja rebels operat-ing in Pool, whoback the country’sformer ForeignMinister, BernardKolelas in his struggleagainst the current gov-ernment, use them as hu-man shields against at-tacks by government heli-copters. The guerrillas areoften drugged, the civil-ians say, rampagingthrough the area, issuingbizarre decrees and ordersthat often result in themurder of innocents for noapparent reason.
The situation in theCongo is one of the mostdangerous and difficult inAfrica. But it never makesworld headlines and is, infact, rarely reported at all.Humanitarian officialsworking in Africa worrythat ‘glamour’ crises suchas the Kosovo problemsiphon off not only mediaattention but precious aiddollars, making it ever
more likely that people like Justine Kokoloand her family will remain destitute andhomeless for all of their lives.
AN EMPTY SHELLConditions were so bad in Pool that
mother and family decided to make thedangerous trek back to the capital recently.But Brazzaville itself is a shell of a city.Gunfire echoes through the empty boule-vards 24 hours a day. Food is constantly inshort supply. Many buildings are gutted.The transit center where Justine stays is ahalf-built sports complex which, like mostother centers, has been looted many times
over. It can accom-modate 2,000 peo-ple sleeping on thebare floor of a bas-ketball court. Thenearby once-ele-gant race track isovergrown.
Justine is hav-ing second or eventhird thoughtsabout which is thesafest—or less dan-gerous place—inCongo, if one ex-ists at all. Thereare no blankets forJustine and herfamily and she
now complains, “Life in Brazzaville is ter-rible. I’d like to go back to Lomou (in thePool region) but there is no way to get there.”
Since early 1999 an estimated 35,000malnourished Congo refugees sought asy-lum in the neighboring Democratic Re-public of Congo, itself in a state of turmoil.A further 25,000 traumatized civilians es-caped to Gabon in the first weeks of July.
Since April, despite warnings by UN-HCR about the perilous nature of thingsat home, at least 30,000 people have re-turned from Democratic Congo to Braz-zaville to a very uncertain future.
Salaried employment in the once-thriv-ing capital is virtually non-existant. One-time civil servants squat in the shadow ofa downtown office tower, trading whatthey have for what they need.
Most of these people depend on the lim-ited supplies distributed by a few reliefagencies. But the latest U.N. appeals for ad-ditional funds have thus far not been an-swered, making it unlikely that the lot ofCongo’s victims will improve any timesoon. B
SURVIVING ONROOTS AND LEAVESA crisis largely ignored by the outside world
One of themostdangerous anddifficultsituations inAfrica, but itnever makesworldheadlines.
A child in the destroyed center of Brazzaville, capital of the Congo.
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B Hong Kong reopened a secondcamp for boat people after rioting between ethnic Chineseand Vietnamese groups.
B More than 100,000 Afghansfled the latest fighting betweenTaliban and Northern Allianceforces.
S H O R T T A K E S
Seeking asylum
T he number of refugees and other peopleof concern to UNHCR dropped byaround four percent in 1998 compared
with the previous year to a total of 21.5 million.Figures recently released show the number ofrefugees in that overall figure also fell by a simi-lar four percent to a total of 11,491,710. Other cat-egories of people UNHCR helps include asy-lum seekers, returned refugees, internally dis-
placed persons and certain war-affected people.The largest declines among refugees were inLatin America and the Caribbean which record-ed 11 percent declines, Europe which showed anine percent fall and Africa with a six percentdrop. The estimated asylum seeker population,however, showed an overall increase of 38 per-cent to 1.3 million people worldwide. B
WO R L D
Refugee numbers
A F R I C A
Good news and badWhen African leaders gathered recently
in Algiers for their last summit meet-ing this century, there was some good
news and some bad news for the continent’srefugees. Efforts to end three of Africa’s most in-tractable conflicts—in Sierra Leone, the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo and the war betweenEthiopia and Eritrea—were inching slowly to-
ward resolution. If stability could be reimposed,it would bring relief to millions of people. Thereare currently 450,000 refugees from the SierraLeone civil war and hundreds of thousands havebeen displaced within the country. At least600,000 civilians fled the latest fighting on theHorn of Africa. In Central Africa at least 100,000have left the Congo in recent months, another700,000 are internally displaced and there are anadditional 300,000 refugees from surroundingcountries in the Congo itself. The bad news inAlgiers was it remained very uncertain any ofthe agreements would stick. Even after a peaceaccord was signed in Central Africa, thousandsof refugees continued to flee the Congo. HighCommissioner Sadako Ogata attended the sum-mit and said there was an “encouraging new re-solve in African leaders to stop feeling sorry forthemselves and to tackle the immense politicaland economic problems” which plague the conti-nent. “That new attitude is Africa’s hope for thefuture,” she said. B
The Presidents of Sierra Leone, Nigeria andLiberia witness the symbolic destruction ofweapons.
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Restarting operations inthe HornThe repatriation of Somalirefugees from Ethiopiarestarted in June after beingsuspended in late 1998 be-cause of the continuing hard-ships faced by the returnees innorthern Somalia. UNHCRscheduled three convoys aweek until December andhopes to move up to 60,000people before the end of theyear. Ethiopia still hostsaround 200,000 Somalis ofthe hundreds of thousands ofpeople who had originallyfled their country, first duringthe Ogaden war in the late1970s and then during Soma-lia’s own civil war earlier thisdecade.
A N D O R R A
Every little bit helpsWith a population of around60,000 Andorra is one of thesmallest countries in theworld. However, early in theKosovo crisis, Andorra’s U.N.ambassador donated$100,000 towards UNHCR’sefforts in the conflict and saidhis country would be willingto accept up to 10 Kosovarrefugees in need of medicalassistance. Officials believethis is the first time Andorrahas involved itself in refugeeissues.
U N I T E D N AT I O N S
Ending a conflictThe U.N. Security Council hascalled for increased efforts toreinforce peace agreementssigned by warring factions. In aformal statement, the Councilproposed a series of ‘practicalmeasures’ ensuring more ef-fective disarmament of ex-combatants and their reinte-gration into civilian society.The Council noted that de-spite peace agreements andthe presence of U.N. peace-keeping missions on thegrounds, combatants in manyrecent conflicts simply kepton fighting.
As many as 45,000Guatemalans fled toMexico starting in the
early 1980s as civil unrestgripped their own country.Some started to trickle backalmost immediately and inthe intervening years thegreat majority have returned
home, either individually orwith governmental and UN-HCR assistance. On 24 June,167 refugees went home inthe last voluntary repatria-tion, effectively bringing theGuatemalan operation to asuccessful conclusion. “I havea dream and that is to estab-lish my own organization towork with the disabled, thosewho were injured during thewar,” said one male refugeewho had spent 16 years in ex-
ile. “We are still nervous. Wewaited for several years inMexico (following the sign-ing of peace in Guatemala),but now we feel we can re-build our lives in Guatemala.”Some 22,000 Guatemalanselected not to go home, andthe Mexican government of-fered the chance of full Mexi-can nationality to members ofthis group, more than 1,200 ofwhom have already receivedcitizenship. B
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A last journey home
29R E F U G E E S
S W I T Z E R L A N D
Tougher rules for asylum seekersSwiss voters, increasingly con-cerned at the growing numberof people seeking asylum intheir country, in June approvednew rules for asylum seekers.The new measures allow col-lective temporary admissionfor certain groups such as eth-nic Albanians from Kosovo, butat the same time limitsrefugees’ rights to make theircase for individual persecu-tion, a necessity for perma-nent asylum. People arrivingwithout proper identificationmust justify its absence to gainaccess to regular asylum pro-cedures. Switzerland antici-pates as many as 60,000 peo-ple will seek asylum this year,the highest number per capitain Europe.
U N I T E D STAT E S
Refugees onlineThe American Red Cross saidit will launch a new online sys-tem for tracking refugees anddisplaced persons worldwide.During the Kosovo crisis, theRed Cross developed an on-line database for Kosovarrefugees arriving in the UnitedStates. Together with Oracle,the software company, itplans to expand this “Dis-placed Persons Linking Sys-tem” as a worldwide generalreference point whichrefugees and other displacedpersons can access.
SO M A L I A
Another famineSouthern Somalia is facing an-other massive famine becauseof limited rains and continuedfighting between rival warlordsin the perennially troubled re-gion on the Horn of Africa. In-ternational aid workers say asmany as one million people areat risk and appealed for $17.5million in aid to help them.Around 300,000 people died inan earlier famine in 1992 in thesame area.
B Holland said it will sendrejected asylum seekers back totheir countries within four weeks.
When nomadic Tuaregtribesmen rose in re-volt against the cen-
tral government in the westAfrican state of Mali in 1990, theentire country was thrown intoturmoil. More than 300,000 peo-ple were forced from their homes,more than one-third of them be-coming refugees in Mauritania,Burkina Faso, Algeria and Niger.In the late 1990s, UNHCR under-took an ambitious program tohelp the refugees return and re-settle the entire northern part of
the country. Theagency spent nearly$240 million on 638returnee sites in theregions of Gao, Kidal,Mopti, Segou andTimbuktu. In lateJune, the agency offi-cially ended its north-ern Mali operation when Africadirector Albert-Alain Petershanded over to President AlphaOumar Konare a 700-page reportwhich summarized its four-yearprogram but also called for future
projects to stimulate economicgrowth and improve security inthe region. A smaller UNHCRMali office will continue to carefor around 2,000 urban refugeesfrom Liberia, Sierra Leone andthe Great Lakes region. B
Seeking asylum
B The European Union approved$4.7 million in aid for Myanmarrefugees living in Thai bordercamps.
B Ireland is considering allowingsome asylum seekers work per-mits to help meet the country’slabor shortage.
B Hundreds of Sudanese fleeingconscription into the rebel SudanPeople’s Liberation Army fledinto neighboring Uganda in July.
ABoard of ImmigrationAppeals has ruled that awoman fleeing violent
abuse by her husband is not el-igible for asylum in the UnitedStates. An immigration judgehad granted asylum in 1996 to aGuatemalan woman, Rodi Al-varado Peña, who had left herhome after her husband hadpistol whipped her, broke win-dows and mirrors with herhead, raped her and kicked her
so badly she haemorrhaged. Itwas argued the Guatemalangovernment had failed to pro-tect her. The Immigration andNaturalization Service in 1995had issued guidelines intendedto recognize gender-based persecution under asylumlaws, but it remained unclearwhether women fleeingspousal abuse —as opposed togovernmental persecution —could seek refuge. The Natu-
ralization Service appealed thefirst decision and in a 10-5 deci-sion, the Board of ImmigrationAppeals ruled Mrs. Alvaradohad not proved she suffered un-der any of the five categoriesoutlined in international andU.S. law: race, religion,national-ity, political opinion or mem-bership in a targetted socialgroup. The dissenting Boardmembers insisted the U.S. hadan obligation to protect anyonewho feared harm because of“some fundamental aspect oftheir identity.” B
They gained infamy as the scene ofsome of the worst fighting in WorldWar II and the battle between U.S.
Marines and Japanese defenders onGuadalcanal in the Solomon Islands hasbeen immortalized in dozens of films andbooks. Since the end of the war the Islands,deep in the Pacific Ocean, slipped back intoobscurity. Recently, however, they becamethe scene of another conflict, this time oftheir own making. The U.N. helped medi-ate an ethnic dispute in June between themajority Gwale population and the minor-ity Malaitan country people. Several per-sons were killed in the clashes and as manyas 20,000 forced to flee their homes. B
SO LO M O N I S L A N DS
Another war in the islands
Kosovo is not the only place in Europe wherethe continent’s gypsies (Roma) are on the run.Finland recently suspended visa-free entry
for Slovak citizens after more than 1,000 Slovakgypsies sought political asylum in the country sincethe beginning of the year. The Roma said they werefleeing persecution in the central European state.However, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda haspledged a ‘new deal’ for the gypsy community as thecountry sought to improve its human rights recordand its chance of eventual entry into the EuropeanUnion. Finland is the latest destination in a string ofcountries targetted in the last few years by gypsyimmigration including Canada, Britain, Belgiumand Germany. B
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Gypsies on the run
U N I T E D STAT E S
U.S. bars spousal abuse victims
Returnees in the Gao region of Mali
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For 11 years he slepton a red plastic
bench at Paris’Charles de Gaulleairport and ate at anearby pizza parlourand fast food restau-rant. Barmen andairport doctorshelped the Iranianwho spent his dayslistening to the radioand writing a diary.But in early July theordeal of 54-year-oldKarim Nasser Miran, known to local air-port officials and immigration officials asMr. Alfred, ended when Belgium grantedhim refugee credentials. He was expelledfrom Iran, without papers, in the 1970safter protesting against the Shah’sregime, but was eventually given refugeepapers in the 1980s. His legal nightmarebegan when his briefcase containing therefugee document was stolen. He wassubsequently arrested by French police
and entered a bureaucratic never-neverland. Because he had no off icial docu-ments he could not be deported and wasdumped into limbo in the so-called ‘in-ternational’ no-go zone of the Paris air-port. The stolen document recently sur-faced and the Belgian governmentoffered him sanctuary. Miran said he hadbeen taking a correspondence courseduring his incarceration and hoped to re-turn to Brussels to complete it. B
World sports bodies and hu-manitarian agencies
joined forces to bring a littlelight relief and relaxation to atleast some of the hundreds ofthousands of Kosovar refugeesduring the recent crisis. The In-ternational Volleyball Federa-tion, which has worked withUNHCR on other projects inAfrica, distributed balls andnets in several camps in Alba-nia and the former Yugoslav Re-public of Macedonia and alsoprovided funds for local instruc-tors. The International Olym-pic Committee, the Interna-tional Football Federation(FIFA), the Union of EuropeanFootball Associations (UEFA)together with UNHCR andUNICEF also provided thou-sands of soccer balls and otherequipment to refugee camp andcommunity schools reachingtens of thousands of kids. “Play-ing a sport allowed refugees todiscover that one can still live,without forgetting,” says 21-year-old Leonora Luttori, her-self a refugee who was woundedin the head and arm and saw herbest friend die in her arms be-fore escaping to Albania and be-coming a local UNHCR fieldworker. The programs werelaunched in anticipation thatthe refugees could spend manymonths in exile, but the groupsinvolved said they will pursuethese activities inside Kosovo it-self as an ongoing contributionin helping to restore theprovince to a semblance of nor-mality. B
Good samaritansT he Organization of
African Unity (OAU) an-nounced the creation of anaward for Outstanding Ser-vice to Refugees and Dis-placed Persons in Africa andsaid the first recipients were
Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire.The award is based on a coun-try’s long history of hostinglarge numbers of refugees, acountry not being a refugeeproducing country itself, andits involvement at the highest
level of government inrefugee issues. The launch ofthe award this year was timedto coincide with the 30th an-niversary of the OAU RefugeeConvention (see Refugeesmagazine No. 115). B
A new Deputy for UNHCRUNHCR has a new Deputy High Commissioner. Frederick Bar-
ton, a director of the U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment, succeeds the Austrian Gerald Walzer who retired in May af-ter a 40-year career with UNHCR. Barton’s latest job was head ofUSAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives. He handled programsdealing with human rights monitoring in Rwanda, land mine pro-jects in Angola, ethnic tolerance and violence avoidance in Indone-sia and programs to promote news reporting in Balkan areas. In 12years in the private sector he dealt with strategic planning, organi-zational development and marketing for a wide range of clients. B
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‘Mr. Alfred’ writes a letter from his ‘bed’ at Roissy airport.©
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cratic and at peace for thefirst time in history.”U.S. President Bill Clinton on avisit to the region.
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“The province of Kosovo isnow one of the largestcrime scenes in history.”Louis Freeh, director of the FBIwhich is helping investigate warcrimes in Kosovo.
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“The U.S. bomblets looklike round silver toys,while the British versionslook like soda cans thathave been painted orange.”A western mine expert warning
children of the dangers of notonly Serbian mines, but also un-exploded allied ordnance.
FFF
“Thanks to Milosevic’spolicies there are no moreSerbs in Krajina (Croatia),there are no more Serbs inSlavonia, there are nomore Serbs in westernBosnia and Serbia has re-ceived about 600,000refugees who are not beingwell cared for.”Serbian Orthodox Bishop Artemijiof Kosovo, condemning the policiesof Belgrade in the last few years.
FFF
“We estimate that mineswill be an everyday fact oflife of the Kosovar peoplefor as many as three tofive years.”U.S. mining expert Donald Stein-berg, on the challenge of mineclearing in Kosovo.
“In Kosovo they got cellphones and psychologicalcounseling. All we are ask-ing for is maize.”A frustrated U.N. official in An-gola highlighting the world’s dif-fering priorities.
FFF
‘This is probably the great-est challenge the U.N. hasfaced since the launchingof the concept of peace-keeping in the late 1940s.”Sergio Vieira de Mello, interimU.N. chief in Kosovo.
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“In the last 10 years, fourtimes we went into warwith tanks and four timesSerbs came back from waron tractors.”Serbian opposition leader ZoranDjindjic on Serbia’s involvementin several losing conflicts in the 1990s.
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“Kosovo must be rebuilt,recreated stone by stone.”Bernard Kouchner, the U.N.’s new civil administrator for Kosovo
“They burned and burnedand burned.”A sister of the Mother Teresa So-ciety describing the Serb with-drawal from Kosovo.
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“I do ask the Serbian popu-lation to stay in their homes.We’ve had enough refugees.We don’t want any more.”NATO’s Kosovo commander, SirMichael Jackson, appealing toKosovo Serbs to stay in theprovince.
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“We must build a Europewith no front line states, aEurope undivided, demo-
© T R I B U N E M E D I A S E R V I C E S , I N C . A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D . R E P R I N T E D W I T H P E R M I S S I O N