Chris Masters:

According to this Global Positioning system we are standing on the edge of a war. Behind me is the Kosovo border. Earlier standing near here we watched this same satellite technology guide a cruise missile along this valley, scorching through the clouds, across the border into Kosovo - soon after it passed we heard the anti aircraft fire open up, and then there was silence. For all the brilliance of the probing eyes of the satellites there are some things they can't tell us. They can't tell us all that is happening inside Kosovo. They can't see into the lives of the people.

 

Shkendija:

I have my parents there, my husband, my sister. If something happens to them, I don't think there is something worth living. Even though one is strong, people are strong, they have to continue living and working. But it's very hard. For the moment I have lost everything.

 

Adriatic:

I cannot describe everything I lost, but I'm going to tell you one thing. I lost my life you know, because all I had back home was my life, were the things that made my life complete.

 

Chris Masters:

The systematic eviction of his own people from his own state of Kosovo crowns a decade of murder and tyranny in what is left of Slobodan Milosovic's Yugoslavia.

 

Philip Reeker, 1st Assist. US Embassy, Macedonia:

You determine that there is insurgent forces in a village, so you drive the people out, burn the village, shell their houses, kill their cattle, chop down their fruit trees. I mean its really a sort of medieval approach to things.

 

Chris Masters:

Now what are the true goals of the NATO forces which oppose him? In this report we look into a future at war with the past.

 

Title:            Eviction Of A Nation

 

Chris Masters:

At this camp on the Macedonian side of the border, Adriatic, sits with his father, beseeching news of his family and country.

 

At the closest border crossing another family endures an agony of waiting as Macedonian police check their papers. The ones who cross in reasonable shape have had possessions enough to bribe their way forward. It's exhausting none the less. A strange war indeed when you can look down on the discarded property of a nation emptied of its people. You can see the Serb soldiers looting the vehicles.  You can hear the NATO aircraft above, and you can sense the menace, the hint, the shock of war.

 

Kastrati Family:

They turned around and started to shoot at the people.  First they killed my aunty, then wounded Grandma, and shot dead Mum's other aunty. That's when we heard the child. She was young and has a child. All she did was yell: "Take this child from me!" Her husband tried to protect the child with his body. We were lucky because we were behind them. Although they were wounded and killed, the three men kicked their bodies just in case they were alive. Then we ran away because of the police. 

 

Chris Masters:

So how, why and when did this happen? Although Kosovo had a 90% majority Muslim Albanian population it is seen by orthodox Serbs as sacred territory. Perhaps the beginning was 1389 when the Turks expelled them. Perhaps it was 1989 when Yugoslav President Milosovic visited the region and listened to accounts of harassment by the Albanian majority.

 

Archive footage, 1989, Serb man:

"The police attacked us. They hit women and children. The Albanians got in among us. We were beaten up!"

 

Archive footage, 1989, Slobodan Milosovic:

"No-one should dare beat you!"

 

Kiro Gligarov, Macedonian President:

I think that the basic blame for this situation lies with President Milosovic. Exactly 10 years ago he took away all the rights which Albanians acquired in the former Yugoslavia.

 

Chris Masters:

Milosovic's stripping of autonomy of the Kosovar Albanians exacerbated ethnic tensions. Never difficult in a community obsessed with a past suppressed and unreconciled through the communist years.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author "Warrior's Honour":

When you suppress the truth it begins to fester. When the lies begin to accumulate you get ethnic paranoia. You get myths - massacre myths, genocidal myths, you get a whole compacted mass of lies which lie on top of the people and make them literally ill.

 

Archive Footage, 1990, Albanian?? woman:

"We think our country has never been able to trust them and never will. They're a nation of smugglers, black-marketeers and drug traffickers.  They trade in drugs. They life and cheat. Their sole aim is to destroy and plunder Serbs and nothing more. And Serbs have always strived to educate them. "

 

Chris Masters:

But for the most part, until that time, in the cosmopolitan European capital Pristina, the neighbours were generally tolerant.

 

Shkendija:

Well we had quite a nice time. I mean we were just children and we had no concept of hatred and we had a good time.

 

Fahrije:

We lived as neighbours for 14 years in Kosovo Valley but we never visited each others homes. We just used to say good morning or good evening to each another. We never had any major problems.

 

Chris Masters:

Milosovic's oppression of Kosovo helped form the Kosovo Liberation Army and provoke vicious fighting which was observed rather than suppressed by the OSCE - the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

 

OSCE man:

"They're lobbing shells down here right now.  We're hoping they're hitting buildings and making stubble out of stucco, you know, but we don't know how many people are in there. It seems to be part of an ongoing operation. It just seems to be that this is the plan, to systematically go from one village to another."

 

Chris Masters:

Fahrije's husband Imer, a former politician, died of injuries sustained after months of torture. This is the first time his scattered family has been able to visit the grave.

 

Fahrije:

I lost my partner for life. His only desire was to see Kosovo free. If he would have died from a bullet it would not have been so bad, but he died a terrible death from torture.

 

Chris Masters:

Imer Sfarca was one of thousands of victims of opposition to Milosovic.

 

Witness:

That day the Serb forces surrounded the village but they were not any of the KLA soldiers. In other words there were only civilians. The Serb forces started to separate men and women and children from each other.  They killed about 42 civilians, among them a 12 year old boy. 

 

Chris Masters:

In January this year, the murder of ethnic Albanian civilians at the village of Racak appalled the international community.

 

Witness:

My cousin was hit in the shoulder and in the leg.  I was horrified by his story while he was telling me.  He was among my two other cousins who were also killed by the merciless bullets of the enemy. My wounded cousin started to crawl around to a nearby river and stayed hidden there all day ‘til the Serb forces left. I was horrified when he told me that my other cousin was decapitated along with others. Some of them were scalped. He could hear the screaming of the others who were beaten first and then killed in a barbaric way.

 

Chris Masters:

United Nations War Crimes Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour was turned away at the Kosovo border when she attempted to investigate the massacre.

 

Justice Louise Arbour, International War Crimes Tribunal:

I always took the position that it was pretty futile of the Yugoslav authorities to keep us out, because in crime scene investigations is very useful in a criminal case. But you can't shelter yourself from scrutiny by preventing this kind of access.

 

Chris Masters:

A further hint that Yugoslavia was preparing to repel all boarders might have been evident the following month at Rambouillet in France, when a peace agreement could not be reached. U.S. special envoy was Christopher Hill.

 

Christopher Hill, U.S. Ambassador, Macedonia:

I think for the Serbs it came down to one issue and that was to have an international force there - a force that we felt was essential to getting the deal implemented, and ultimately the Serbs just decided they could not live with that.

 

Philip Reeker, 1st Asst. U.S. Embassy, Macedonia:

I think the biggest problem at Rambouillet was that the Serb or Yugoslav delegation came without a real intention to negotiate. It's clear now that there wasn't good faith on their side.

 

Chris Masters:

Ambassador Hill's first assistant at Rambouillet was a former Brisbane High school student Phillip Reeker. Reeker based at a battered U.S. embassy in Macedonia had been watching the Serb buildup in neighbouring Kosovo.

 

Philip Reeker, 1st Asst. U.S. Embassy, Macedonia:

Well through the summer and spring last year and into the fall there was a tremendous human tragedy as the Serb forces ostensibly repelling the KLA, really oppressed the people of Kosovo, in the villages in particular.

 

Shkendija:

So this is the family that accepted us. This is the landlord, his wife and four their children - 2 daughters and 2 sons, and I was the first one to come here from Kosovo with my little daughter of one year - she's sleeping at the moment. This is Bessa from Roshabus [phonetic], she came 2 days ago.

 

Chris Masters:

Shkendija was another good witness of the buildup in Kosovo. As a translator with the OSCE's verification mission she was enough aware of the growing threat to get out. She had time enough to carry away her young daughter, but her husband and the rest of her family are still in Kosovo.

 

Shkendija:

I am scared because he was OSCE member too, so we were warned that when they leave we will be killed, so I think that he is in danger.  Because yesterday I heard that the house of the OSCE office were settled in my town they said that it was burned by Serbian forces.

 

Chris Masters:

On March 20 the OSCE peace monitors pulled out. On March 24 the NATO air strike began, and Slobodan Milosovic's "Operation Horseshoe", the eviction of a nation was already underway.

 

Jonathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

There is no doubt that President Milosovic was planning for ethnic cleansing. That about 25,000 ethnic Albanians were kicked out of Kosovo in the ten days before NATO's air campaign began so the trend was there. But equally there is no doubt that it was precisely the air campaign of the alliance - originally designed to prevent ethnic cleansing, which actually triggered off the biggest ethnic cleansing.

 

Philip Reeker, 1st Asst. U.S. Embassy, Macedonia:

We had seen even during the Ramboiullet negotiations the Serb forces build up outside and inside Kosovo with an additional 30,000 troops moved in and some 400 armoured vehicles. You know, you don't just turn into Pol Pot overnight.

 

Chris Masters:

Although the principal goal of the strike was stated as humanitarian, the protection of these people on the ground was something NATO could not achieve.

 

Jonathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

It was never achievable militarily from the moment that President Milosevic decided he wanted to get rid of the ethnic Albanians but keep control over the territory of Kosovo.  So in practical terms Western leaders knew, or at least should have known from the beginning, that it was not achievable.  But there was a political imperative to try and suggest that the aim of the war was actually to protect the ethnic Albanians.

 

Chris Masters:

As the strikes continued into the second and third weeks a secondary aim of an early capitulation by Milosovic was also astray.

 

Christopher Hill, U.S. Ambassador, Macedonia:

You know, when you get into a use of force, you're into a whole new dynamic.  Peace has a certain dynamic. Even in a peace dynamic you can't predict everything, but when you get into using force, when you get into dropping ordinance in the middle of Europe - you're into a different scenario.

 

Johathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

I think that when we look at the operation in Kosovo we must not look for too much logic. Ultimately it was an accumulation of frustration in all the European capitals, in the American capitals as well and finally the belief that at the end, we need to confront Milosovic - the core of the problem.

 

Chris Masters:

But for the refugees streaming out of Kosovo, certainly the ones we spoke to - there was no blaming NATO.

 

Arsini:

It's not true that Albanian people were afraid or scared from air strikes. Only we scares and afraid it was only from policemans and these paramilitary forces, Serbian forces.

 

Merita:

When the NATO attacks started we lost contact and we could not communicate any more, nor could I go there when OSCE started leaving, because the roads were closed immediately after the OSCE left Kosovo.

 

Adriatic:

You people don't belong here.  This is not your land.  We need to throw bombs on each of your houses.  We should kill you all right now.  You, you are Neanderthals, you know, people which lived in the stone age, all sorts of things.  You know you couldn't dare, you wouldn't dare to look at them behind as they were droving us, as they were pushing us, this mass of people, you couldn't dare because they might just say, OK, you watched, now turn back here and I want to shoot you in your head right now. 

 

Sanije :

They said: "Put the money in the blanket". 200, 300 Deutschmark .....everything the people thought they would need on their journey......"Or we are going to kill you". And the Serb said to the Serb: "Get your bullets ready, we are going to kill them".

 

Dulja:

When they go into a house and they see a woman with gold they say: "Come on, take it off!" And they take it. "In two minutes I don't want to see you in the house any more." We didn't take anything with us but the clothes we were wearing.

 

Chris Masters:

Evident particularly in the sacking of the capital Pristina, was some considerable planning.  The city was emptied, block by block.

 

Imihan:

As you see they planned long before, you know, because we heard, this part of Pristina, because telephones were working still, so that part was expelled, another part, so even we know our turn. 

 

Lina:

We have two entries in our house, they broke in both doors, the first floor and on the second floor, so they entered both ways. They got us in a small room, they kept us there for maybe five or six minutes and they said that why are you waiting so long, the trains and buses are already ready for you.  They're waiting in Kosovo Polje to take you out, so leave as soon as possible.  Lucky for us they didn't kill anybody, they had big, big guns, they had black masks, and black clothes, and they had bloody knives.

 

Imihan:

So we expected it was Thursday and we were expecting that police will come to our street, because it was full of people from the other streets.

 

Chris Masters:

As the streets were emptied, people crowded into the homes in the next blocks until most had been hunted to the centre of the city, now a human river.

 

Imihan:

So when we came to the centre, and centre, I mean coming to the centre Pristina was ghostly empty.  It was sunny, but empty completely so you can see it from the streets - a river as if we were the main river and the river of the other street joining this main river.

 

Adriatic:

You know, as we went through the centre of the city, this long line of people walking through the centre of the city, all these - from the moment on we were refugees. All these refugees walking through the centre of the city were thrown with stones, with glasses, with who knows what, from the Serb part.  These civilians, some of them went out in the streets and shouted, Go to hell!  This is what you deserve! 

 

Chris Masters:

No one could deserve the fate that befell this woman. Left to care for her two grandchildren, she lost them both. The first died of exposure.

 

Mihane:

I heard someone saying: "A child is dead, a child is dead" And he was my son's child.

 

Chris Masters:

The second child in her care was crushed to death in the crowd.

 

Mihane:

Someone in the crowd said: "Hang on, hang on he's still alive". The police were kicking his body backwards and forwards. They said "Don't bother to come closer. Just feed it to the dogs because he's just another Albanian kid and the Albanians have plenty of kids, whereas the dogs are hungry. Feed it to the dogs".

 

Chris Masters:

The later arrivals reported by the time they passed through Pristina - there was little left of the city.

 

Sanije :

When we went to the train station Pristina was deserted - or only a few people. If anyone at all was still there they'd be too frightened to go out or seek help. All the shops were looted and ransacked and most of the houses, especially those belonging to public figures were burned. After we left, who knows what they did.

 

Chris Masters:

One of targets of the Serb police was the editor in chief of the major opposition newspaper, Koha Ditori.  Baton Haxiu was given up for dead, but as this editorial conference in exile shows - the obituary was premature.

 

Baton Haxiu, Editor-in-Chief, Koha Ditore:

I was "dead" for many days and I am just for seven days eating just apple and drink tea. I was alone in basement. And so paramilitary forces is coming early morning in 9, 9:15, so they are going in any flat, any houses, and said you have three and four minutes to left houses and flats and I think in nine, three, five, forty, thousand people is going in the street and from my small windows I saw one woman with child, and I said this is the time to go. I am going out and I said to this wife from now on you are my wife and this child is my child.

 

Chris Masters:

While the treatment of the city people had been harsh, it was worse for those caught in the open countryside. There are growing accounts of atrocities.

 

Halit:

My son left with a tractor together with his wife and three children. They were caught by Serbian forces and they were robbed of all their belongings together with 20,000 Deutschmarks, and afterwards they were executed. I don't dare to go and find them. There is nothing left for them, for us.

 

Merita:

First of all we saw those people with masks through the window and we were very scared. They entered our apartment building and went to the first block.  We were very scared, wondering what was happening there. Then they came to our block.

 

Chris Masters:

Merita, just 17 years old, became separated from her parents when they hid in the forest.

 

Merita:

Then they started shooting, so we couldn't stay in our homes and we had to leave and go to the mountains. We stayed there one week under very difficult conditions.

 

Chris Masters:

Crowded in a nearby billet, this family is also separated. All their men were taken away. The story of their own journey from their village through Pristina to here, is for them, unspeakable.

 

Kastrati:

Everywhere were Serb police gathered the women and the kids together from the four corners of Pristina, to the centre.  They were always kicking us, pushing us around. Even in our own houses they used to storm in, beat us, swear at us, see us fall and make us rise again, watch us in the bathrooms and a lot more which I'm so ashamed to say.

 

Besa:

The worst thing for me was when the Serb forces shot my Grandma. I held and I kept her for 24 hours 'til I cleared a grave for her.

 

Chris Masters:

Crossing the border into Macedonia did not always mean the end of the horror.  The first makeshift camp at Blace turned into a quagmire when the rains came. The mostly orthodox Macedonian police were often far from sympathetic.

 

Sanije:

Macedonians were shouting "go back". We wanted to find somewhere to rest  -  the kids were so tired, we were so tired.

 

Sabri:

I  think we had a dogs life.  I called it like this you know, when I speak with my friend, I say we are dogs now, we are not people any more.  Macedonian police and army they treated us very bad you know, they even they beat people, I saw.  I saw beating children even.

 

Sanije:

It was raining. It was overcrowded. There was very little help. The sleeping conditions for children were terrible. It was raining, they were on the grass, I had only two blankets and covered them with a plastic sheet to keep the rain off. No one slept.

 

Chris Masters:

Radusa was one camp still in Macedonian control.  Macedonia, a poor country further impoverished by the war, has a limited ability to meet the crisis. Its own volatile ethnic mix is a further strain on its will. At Radusa after three weeks, the first international aid was just arriving.

 

Jeremy Hartley, UNICEF:

We understand that they haven't received the sorts of supplies that some of the other camps have through the NATO infrastructure, so we've come up here today specifically with some supplies for children - with baby food, some regular food items, clothes for children.

 

Arsini:

It's very difficult, really, it's very difficult because here is condition all very badly.  We don't have water supply, and or the, and the toilet, it's everything is mess there, it's not useful as toilets, even, we don't have water supply for shower, yes we got here childrens which didn't take shower maybe three weeks, so everybody's afraid maybe any disease or maybe any epidemic to come.

 

Chris Masters:

But after the shock of the first wave some order came to the camps. The 19 nation alliance of NATO, on standby in Macedonia to implement the peace plan in Kosovo, was mobilised to attend to the growing refugee invasion.

 

French refugee Camp Officer, addressing refugee woman:

(woman)Q:            "Where is my father? I don't know".

(Officer) A:            "Ah, you don't know. If you want to see, go to see - like you want. It's not a prison. This is not prisoner here.........No, tell her she can go everywhere here. It's not a prison."

 

Chris Masters:

The Australians were there too. CARE AUSTRALIA was nominated to take over this camp so the French could return to their duties.

 

Bob Allen, CARE AUSTRALIA:

Q:        I just wonder if you could tell us, Bob, what's happened now?

A:         Well currently of course we've got an overflow of refugees on the reserve tents that we had made ready for them.  We are now, because some went out to Germany yesterday, finding out where the empty tents are, arranging with the community leaders to clean those tents, ready for receipt of more refugees.

 

Chris Masters:

The sudden crush of all these refugees towards the border appears to have been an attempt by Milosovic to spill the tension. The refugees were being used as weapons.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author, "Warrior's Honour":

Mao said, guerillas swim in a population like fish in the sea. He's literally draining the sea.

 

Giro Gligarov, Macedonian President:

It is easy to see that it's quite unpleasant for Milosevic to find himself alone with the Kosovo conflict on the international scene.  Therefore, it would be favourable for him it would seem if the conflict could be spilled over and such possibilities do exist to engage neighbouring countries into this conflict which would enable him greater manoeuvring space for tactical moves on his part that would gain him something.

 

Chris Masters:

There are lots of ways to fight a war, and lots of ways to counter-attack.

On a former rubbish dump, the Germans constructed this weather proof camp, complete with heaters, sanitation, running water and playground.

The French camp now being handed over to the Australians, was not far behind. They worked around the clock to get it up in two days. They are just now catching up with the demand for food and medical supplies. As reports come in saying a further 100,000 refugees are waiting to cross, the water tanker is now on a constant delivery.

 

Christopher Hill, U.S. Ambassador, Macedonia:

I mean if God forbid, there's those kinds of numbers, we'll deal with those as well. We are here in 1999 and we have a dictatorial regime in the middle of Europe using people as a means to make his point, using human beings as a means to try to destabilise his neighbours, and we simply can't let him get away with it.  We need to understand that our values are under attack here and we've got to defend our values.

 

Chris Masters:

For most of these people, the return of order means reunion with families, lost, scattered, separated. New arrivals are registered.

A bush telegraph is hastily assembled. Messages and lives are pinned to a wall.

At the border when a new family is allowed to pass they are fallen on for news.

 

Refugees at the border:

"...if you know the road called Vllaznim Bashkim there are a few people on the road.

What about the new housing development?

The new development....most people have gone.

What about Grava, on that side, do you know anything?

For Grava, no. Because our army holds it.

We're holding it?

Yes.

Where are the people?

They're in the Vllaznim Bashkim. Some are in the mountains.

What about in Grava?

They are still there.

What about Kachanik?

Kathanik is emptied. Nobody's there."

 

Chris Masters:

As many as 800,000 ethnic Albanians have yet to make their way to safety. Half the country is now looking for the other half.

 

Refugee man:

Katchanik and Pristina....nobody there, nobody there.

Were you scared?

No. But the silence was eerie.

 

Shkendija:

Till the last moment we were hoping that these bad events will not happen.  That maybe we can stay home and maybe they will not, the Serbians will not attack us, and that's why he stayed.  But women are not capable to do anything, or to fight or so they just have to move to prevent any death.

 

Chris Masters:

At the tracing tent Shkendija looks for the names of her husband, her sister, her parents, - without success. As she leaves the tracing tent her cousins find her.

 

Shkendija and her cousin:

Hi, how are you?

Hi, I'm alright. How are you?

I'm here with Kimet, over there in room 104. Are you working here?

Yes.

Sabia's over there being registered to go to Belgium.

Where's my family?

Who?

My parents. My mother and father.

I heard they took people from Gilani and forced them to Albania.

 

Chris Masters:

They had given her up for dead, believing OSCE employees had been targeted.

 

Shkendija:

It's terrible. I think it is a disaster, making people leave their own houses. I mean when you leave your own land you homeland, they destroy your soul because it's - when your grown up and all your life is there.  I mean your childhood, your memories and everything.

 

Chris Masters:

In order to relieve the pressure on the Macedonian camps, once families are reunited - those eligible and willing are moved out.

German soldiers and immigration officials are the first to arrange transportation.

This man is farewelling his sister who has managed to keep her small family together.

 

Xemail:

I don't know anything about my family. Seven of us got out and ten are left behind. I don't know if they are alive or dead.

 

Refugee at satellite phone station:

Grab a pencil and take down a number in Germany.....

 

Chris Masters:

The Kosovar Albanians have themselves in the space of a week become an international community. The French have set up a bank of satellite telephones. The queue reaches forever. Relatives abroad are proving the best source of news about increasingly dispersed family networks.

 

Refugee man at satellite phone station:

Shaqir, is that you? How are you, are you well? We are near Skopje. Do you know where everybody else is? Have you heard anything?

 

Bob Allen, CARE AUSTRALIA:

If you remember at the meeting the other day when we decided that there would be communal kitchens established in each of the distribution points. So until they have been built and established, the food that comes in will not require cooking because we cannot have everybody cooking their own meal - too bigger risk of fire.

 

Chris Masters:

Across in the CARE AUSTRALIA tent they are coping with some distress and disruption to the lives of their own. Staff from their operation in Pristina are still missing. Two of their members, missing for a week, have turned up, charged by Belgrade with espionage.

 

Jo Hutton, CARE AUSTRALIA:

I know Steve Pratt very well, worked with him for seven months and don't believe that for a second, and find it very very disturbing that these, that this eventuality has occurred, and extremely concerned about the safety of both Steve and Peter. It is it is really worrying and  it is very very hard on the morale of all of our staff.

 

Chris Masters:

Among the new arrivals CARE do find some of their own staff from Pristina - aid workers who themselves became refugees.

 

Lina Cakaj, CARE Pristina:

Well I feel like I'm born for the second time, because it's completely different out there and it's not so easy being in a camp. It's not so easy to lose everything and come here, share this space, this surface with thousands and thousands of people and not having any kind, any basic conditions for living, it's not easy.

 

Chris Masters:

The adjustments are endless. People struggle not just to stay fed and clean, but hang on to what is left of status and dignity.

 

Lina Cakaj, CARE Pristina:

You should not forget that these people, they haven't been poor forever, and they used to work for 30 or 40 years. They used to have houses. They used to have a high standard of living. They know what is a good shampoo, a good bath, or a good quality shoes or everything - so you have to be very careful.

 

Chris Masters:

All the while they hear the war going on just across the mountains. To see the war you watch CNN, but to better understand what is happening across the border you must find the KLA. Just three days before, this man, a Battalion Commander with the Kosovo Liberation Army, had been on the front line. He is now recovering from a wound inflicted by an enemy hand grenade.

 

"Axha", KLA:

There were over 30,000 people, women, children, old and young people located in a valley between Radobrav and Reti.  On their first day of the offensive the Serb forces tried to massacre these civilians. There were two battalions.  One is on foot, the other in vehicles coming to carry out the massacre. But the KLA attacked the Serb forces in order to prevent this massacre.

 

Chris Masters:

Innocence is a rare commodity among the warring parties in the Balkans.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author, "Warrior's Honour":

The human rights record of the KLA is very bad. When I spoke to Ambassador Chris Hill in Macedonia he said, Reilley, these people are unlikely to win the Thomas Jefferson award for democracy any time soon.  I mean that's basically my view.

 

Chris Masters:

Their informal alliance with NATO is uneasy. But the KLA remains the best source of on the ground intelligence on what is happening inside.

 

"Axha", KLA:

The morale of the enemy is not high at all because even the Serb soldiers are aware of what is happening. They know that in their heart of hearts they are not righting for their land or their freedom but they are fighting for oppression and tyranny. So their morale is low. The only way that Slobodan Milosevic keeps his soldiers to fight is through drugs and lots of alcohol use.

 

Chris Masters:

Becoming increasingly apparent is Milosovic's preparedness to use his army to fight to the last Serb.

 

Johathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

What is not very clear is how much of the Yugoslav military equipment was hidden away in the legendary bunkers that the Yugoslavs have established over the last 50 years, in order initially to fight a war against the Soviet Union, and therefore how much there is, the ability of the Yugoslav military to continue the warfare. 

 

Chris Masters:

The US soldiers on the ground in Macedonia, having lost 3 of their own in a raid by the Serbs, are on a constant state of alert. But there is continuing insistence they won't be crossing into Kosovo from here.

 

Philip Reeker, 1st Asst. U.S. Embassy, Macedonia:

They are not configured as any sort of invasion force, they are configured as a peace implementation force.

 

Kiro Gligarov, Macedonian President:

When we were reaching the agreement with NATO for the deployment of NATO troops in Macedonia troops from various NATO countries,  we made our stand very clear that we would not agree to these troops being used to undertake invasive action to invade any neighbouring countries including the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

 

Chris Masters:

As the soldiers on the ground mark time and as the air war continued, it became clearer that the main goal of the strikes was less to save the refugees, and more to destroy Milosovic.  To the NATO alliance, this war didn't start five weeks ago. It's burned through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and now Kosovo for most of a decade.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author, "Warrior's Honour":

I think we're gonna have a very unpleasant result in which we degrade his  military to the point that the entry of NATO forces is possible, either through Russian agreement or not, but we will not dislodge Milosevic. But we will be in a situation where he is finally unable to do that part of the world any more   harm, and that's crucial.  As long as he can be neutralised, politically and militarily, he can stay, and then the Serbian people will have to decide what they want to do with him.

 

Chris Masters:

In the meantime the opportunity to negotiate a peace deal is limited while Milosovic continues to run Yugoslavia and the war.

 

Johathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

There are very few scenarios that could be seen now where Milosevic could win Kosovo, because there are very few possibilities for him actually getting any kind of deal from the West, he's simply gone too far.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author, "Warrior's Honour":

That's very important, there's absolute, we have nothing more to say to this man.  We can't replace him, but we don't need to talk to him, not another syllable in my judgement.

 

Johathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

This is the biggest, the only military test for the alliance up to now. It actually has to win because it has to win. There's nothing more logical to it than that.

 

Christopher Hill, U.S. Ambassador, Macedonia:

I think its gonna take a long time, but I think what the Serbs need to understand, or what those who support the policy need to understand, is just as Kosovo is important to them, NATO is very important to us, and we are going to prevail.

 

Chris Masters:

But defeating Milosovic is only one goal. Stability in the Balkans, the reunification of Europe, and the maintenance of NATO exceed their ambitions to topple a dictator. The next battle in the Balkans after Milosovic will be to determine its latest shape. The Americans want greater unity and fewer borders.

 

Philip Reeker, !st Asst. U.S. Embassy, Macedonia:

Independence for Kosovo is not on the table. It's not something that we see as a benefit to anybody. We have enough borders in the Balkans and we don't need to create any more.

 

Johathan Eyal, Royal United Services Institute:

The objective of multi-ethnic states and of not changing frontiers is very appealing to an American public opinion.  The United States was created by people who for one reason or another left their nationalism behind.  It is very easy to sell the policy of multi-ethnicity in the context of the United States and to advocate that the war is about a multi-ethnic state.  The reality is that the outcome of this war will be an ethnically pure Kosovo, the creation of a new state in Europe and the re-drawing of the frontiers, precisely what nobody wanted when this operation began.  This is the horrible logic of this whole war, that what history put together, war is now taking apart.

 

Chris Masters:

The refugees commonly state their main objective is to get back home. But what of the prospect of resettling alongside their former neighbours.

 

Gazmend:

I speak for myself and maybe 70% of the people. I'm not any kind of representative but I couldn't live with the Serbs again.  How could I live with them after they killed my father, mother, brothers and sister?  If it didn't happen with my family, even if it was my neighbour, I couldn't. 

 

Fahrije:

I can't understand how can Serbs can live with us. Even though Albanians are peace-seeking and are able to forgive almost anything I can't understand how Serbs can live with us knowing the consequences of what they've done. Night after night they've burned, they've destroyed . Whoever they've caught, they have killed - women, children, old folk. No-one knows exactly how many but the word is there are a lot of dead and wounded. 

 

Baxton Haxiu, Editor-in-Chief, Koha Ditore:

My neighbour was in paramilitary forces, my neighbours deport us and I don't know how they can see Albanians in their eyes and for that many Albanians now said never forget, and never forgive. But I hope Albanians really never forget this what's happened with them but may be forgive.

 

Adriatic:

I also feel pity for this, for these people, for these this entire nation, 'cause they don't want to see into it that they don't belong to the future, they don't belong into a civilised world.

 

Chris Masters:

The plan of the west is not just to defeat Milosovic but to impose democracy on Yugoslavia. To put in social controls and institutions that deal with grievance, to stem the illness, the contagion of blame that bleeds so constantly into the present.

 

Justice Louise Arbour, International War Crimes Tribunal:

We pay a price for never have, having had until now, a kind of international order in which this kind of, this culture of grievance and of victimise, unredressed victimisation leads to extremes and to completely irrational and immoral posturing now. This is to a large extent the price that we pay as an international community for not having given ourselves the means to challenge the impunity and unaccountability of the worst offenders amongst us, which are essentially the people who oppress and kill their own people. 

 

Michael Ignatieff, Author, "Warrior's Honour":

Nobody in this world has happy, harmonious pasts.  The past is almost by definition painful.  But there is no place it's more painful than in the former Yugoslavia, and the key moment will be when a Serbian democracy puts Mladic and Karadjic on trial for those crimes, and a Serbian court convicts them of those crimes,  and in Croatia - a Croatian court puts on trial the people who evicted the Serbs from Croatia in 1995.  Those are the trials that'll really draw a line under this vicious past.

 

Chris Masters:

It will take a long, long time to go home and to go forward.

 

Mihane:

Where? I have no one, no place to go. There is no one there to return to. No one. Nothing left. Everything is burned, even the land, everything.

 

Merita:

If I didn't have hope I would be more devastated.

 

Shkendija:

No we cannot blame people. But you know there have happened so many bad things that it will be very hard to put people living together again.

 

Text:

Shkendija and her husband have been reunited. Her parents and sister are still missing in Kosovo.

 

 

End

 

c. Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1999

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