Refugees in the Fog

AIM Dobelde, Vitina, February 27, 2001

A thick fog and snow enveloped the village of Dobelde in the municipality of Vitina in the East of Kosovo, which is located in the border area with Macedonia. As if coming from another world, some dozen members of an Albanian family from the village of Tanusevac, just on the other side of the unmarked borderline climbed the steep slopes of a ravine. They were the last to leave the village, which has already been registered in chronicles as "new hotbed of crisis". Behind them they left fog, which masked the secret of a "phantasm" which has turned their village into a new departure point for refugees.

A month ago one Macedonian policeman lost his life and several others were wounded in a village in the municipality of Tetovo in Western Macedonia (with majority Albanian population) in a rocket launchers attack on a police station. Frequently uncontrolled violence of the Macedonian police forces did not bring anything to light, apart from several beat up villagers who had no idea "where the attack came from". However, the dilemma became even greater after a release in which an organisation called KLA assumed the responsibility for the attack. There was much confusion and many information media chose the easiest way out in deciphering this acronym, once so well known in Kosovo. They claimed that KLA was nothing else but the Kosovo Liberation Army (armed formation which waged the war in Kosovo and then transformed into the Kosovo Protection Troops).

However, in its second release this organisation explained that KLA meant the National Liberation Army without specifying which "nation" it was fighting for. This prompted numerous speculations, comments and various reactions and discussions. The Macedonian mass media briefly and clearly claimed that "behind these groups are Albanians who want to separate the western part of Macedonia and create Greater Albania". The non-Albanians brought back the scare of that and such Albania. One after another, Albanian leaders in Macedonia distanced themselves from the armed group claiming that it did not exist and that they had nothing to do with it. Some politicians even stated that criminals were hiding behind this name.

The Macedonian Government sent special troops to the village of Tanusevac, which was marked, as the nest of KLA. During an operation of theses forces in this village a young Albanian "terrorist" as the authorities called him, was killed. Also, Government representatives warned that members of armed groups were being trained in Kosovo wherefrom they entered the Macedonian territory. On the other hand, peace forces under NATO command said that during their control of the border zone they did not find anything suspicious. In the meantime, strong army and police forces surrounded the village of Tanusevac and the villagers fled to Kosovo.

Refugee stories resemble one another. People who already at first sight look like a synonym of extreme poverty and whom potatoes keep alive and who engage in the most primitive livestock breeding and selling of firewood, are heading towards a village on the Kosovo side of the border. For them the village of Dobelde is the entrance. They speak about violence in their village. They accuse the Macedonian forces of repression and of murdering one of their fellow-villagers who, they keep saying was killed for nothing while cutting wood in the forest. The say that they are very frightened which is why they have fled looking for shelter with their equally poor relatives in Kosovo. They have always maintained links with the municipality of Vitina because it was always the closest center for them.

The border established after the disintegration of Yugoslavia was the border of their life and terror. During NATO air strikes against Serbian targets they provided shelter to many Albanian families from Kosovo, even travelling with them deep into the Macedonian territory since, according to them, the Serbian security forces did not stoop from launching punitive raids on their village although it was on the other side of the border. This time they "paid back" the visit to former refugees - who took the new refugees into their still demolished homes. The exiles and their hosts claim that the Serbs who live in the Skoplje Montenegro, which is not far from Tanusevac, incited violence against them.

According to them, they even came to Dobelde shooting from firearms and took some hundred heads of cattle. The all speak with bitterness about the Macedonian authorities, but also about local Albanian leaders who "remembered them when they needed their votes and abandon them afterwards".

Their voices grow soft, some are muttering to themselves and shrugging their shoulders at the very mention of KLA. "There are no Albanian soldiers there", they say adding "we heard about them, but don't know anything". It seems that they want to leave fog behind them same as they came out of the fog. Under their breath some of them say that "there is something in that", but that the "Macedonians are to blame". "If they continue with violence then the people will have to defend themselves" says one of them while others repeat that they have "nowhere to go from their homes".

Be that as it may, tension and fear in the village have made these people abandon their homes and suffer hunger in Kosovo because, as humanitarians claim, there is not enough food even for the locals. UNHCR has its mobile teams and told us that they have additional 309 refugees from this Macedonian village. Not one local villager was willing to escort us across the border which is not guarded either by Macedonians or KFOR peace forces in Kosovo. They know these paths well since they used them once for smuggling bread, but now they are "timid".

Tanusevac remains a potential hotbed of new tensions, and international humanitarian activists fear a new wave of refugees from the surrounding villages. Foreign reporters claim that "Albanians are spreading the frontline of combat further" warning of the danger of a "third Liberating Army in the territories in which they live".

"Where there is smoke there is fire", says a proverb. That is why Tanusevac is simply no longer one controlled "incident". Local observers are still very reserved in their public assessments, irrespective of very heated discussions in the lobbies. They are still unable to say whether this is just "another adventure instigated by the former war elements in Kosovo who, after the conflicts there ended, remained neither here no there and have decided to continue them, but this time in the new areas of unresolved Albanian issue". At the same time, they say that these developments make the conviction that "Albanians are a destabilising factor" stronger, a thesis which according to them plays into the hands of all opponents of Kosovo's independence. On the other hand, the Kosovo political forces are silent refusing to comment something "they do not know and haven't seen". However, the fog which so often falls on Tanusevac, lying high above the sea level, cannot hide the refugees who are fleeing in fear nor their abandoned homes. It can neither cover the black uniforms of young men who still do not allow anyone to come near.

The clearing up of fog might bring into open some new facts before which even silence will be of no help.

AIM Vitina

Besnik BALA