Humanitarian Situation on Slippery Ground
(By AIM Podgorica correspondent from Pristina)
AIM Podgorica, 24 December, 1998
More than two months after signing of the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, Malisevo is still a deserted town. For five months already, three thousand inhabitants of Malisevo are in surrounding villages and other places of Kosovo where they have found refuge, forced to spend the winter in very difficult conditions. High Commissioner for Refugees of the UN Sadako Ogata in the course of her last week's visit to Malisevo and the nearby village of Dragobilj saw for herself the conditions in which lives the family of 25 members of Kosovo Albanian Hayrulah Hoti from Malisevo in a small house of two premises which belongs to the native Alush Pacharizi. The family of the host also has more than ten members. The humble tenants and their subtenants are somehow managing to make ends meet, so they do not starve...
Having seen members of families Pacharizi and Hoti standing crowded side by side, Ms. Ogata declared: "There is no need to look, there are no conditions for living here..."
Ms. Ogata, head of the OSCE Verfication Mission for Kosovo William Walker, and journalists who accompanied them, saw in Malisevo just three elderly Albanians living at the outskirts of the town. They told her that nobody dared return to Malisevo because of massive presence of Serbian police. To the question of William Walker what humanitarian aid they needed the most, they replied: "We need security for life the most"...
Maybe nobody would have heard of Malisevo, one of the poorest municipalities in Kosovo if armed conflicts had not begun on its territory. This town which is in the central region of Kosovo has for months been the seat of the main staff of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (OVK) which was visited by numerous foreign journalists and certain domestic ones who carried various statements of its leaders and described the established organization within this armed formation of Kosovo Albanians. Last summer, it was from this town that the estimate arrived that the OVK controlled 40 per cent of the territory of Kosovo. After the offensive of Serbian police and military forces in the neighbouring Orahovac which suffered great damage and had a large number of victims among the civilian population, the position of the OVK in Malisevo was seriously shaken. Before the new offensive of the Serbian forces in Malisevo, its population and a large number of refugees from other parts of western Kosovo left looking for refuge in safer places. Members of the OVK withdrew with them in order to avoid endangering lives of the civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, as they explained later on. The police and the army took over control of Malisevo without a single shot fired, but nowadays it looks as if severe combats had taken place over there. For days, all usable objects were taken away from the houses, and the houses were set on fire. International mediator between Pristina and Belgrade, Christopher Hill, saw this for himself when he visited the area accomplanied by Veton Suroi. After return, Suroi declared to journalists that they have seen policemen entering the houses and robbing them. Asked to give his opinion, Hill replied briefly: "I cannot tell you anything, I must consult with Washington..."
Nevertheless, the early and sharp winter in Kosovo does not cease causing problems to the refugees and the displaced population of Kosovo. One could say that the humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided, because there are no more people staying outdoors. They somehow all found a place to stay even if it were in houses with no windows and parts of roofs gone, covered with nylon bags. According to data of the UNHCR, 75 thousand Kosovo Albanians have returned to their homes since singning of the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, and 175 thousand have been displaced within this region. Therefore, it is unnecessary to talk about solidarity. Humanitarian organizations are trying to bring the necessary quantities of food and they can be prevented in their attempt only by great snowdrifts which came already in November. Refugees are nowadays aware that aid will not arrive for days and they are economizing with their supplies. Their big problem is lack of adequate clothing and footwear for temperatures several degrees below zero.
Health services have become, as they say, great luxury. Since the demolished and robbed town out-patient clinic in Malisevo is unable to offer medical services to the 50 thousand inhabitants of Malisevo and its surroundings currently living there, people are forced to go to the clinic in the village Pagarusa or to the improvised points stationed in a few villages in the interior of Malisevo municipality.
From time to time a mobile medical and sanitary crew passes
through the village. The clinics in Dragobilje and Ostrozub
practically do not work either. They are in the vicinity of
the road down which vehicles of the Serbian police often
patrol. The natives believe this to be a provocation, so they
avoid even showing up there. Physicians, on the other hand,
warn that in conditions in which a large number of Albanian
inhabitants live, various diseases with serious consequences
may appear, especially when the elderly, children and pregnant
women are concerned.
In the talks with Sadako Ogata it was said that
refugees fully depended on international humanitarian aid, but
that it would be much easier to endure the whole situation if
the police withdrew and allowed people to return to their
homes even if they were half-demolished. Certain Isuf Mazreku,
one of the three who mustered their courage to remain in their
houses, said to Ogata: "Children are traumatised and do not
want to return home as long as the police are in the police
station in Malisevo".
Just a day after Ogata's departure, the main staff of
the OVK issued a statement in which it was demanded from the
OSCE verification mission and the diplomatic observation
mission that they make the police withdraw from all locations
where Albanian population is concentrated, especially where
they have found refuge after March and from places where
return of civilian population to their homes is prevented
"which were burnt to the ground by Serbian police". The OVK in
fact referred to the decision of UN Security Council
Resolution 1199 and the Contact Group. In fact, members of the
OVK sent warning that their patience was at its end and that
if they failed to comply to these decesions, members of the
police would take the brunt of their attack.
It is known that at the meeting with Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic a month ago, William Walker asked
the following question: "Who is Serbian police guarding in
Malisevo?" What was the answer nobody knows, but it is a fact
that the forces which were said to had withdrawn from Kosovo
have returned again. New forces are also being sent to Kosovo.
The fragile peace in Kosovo is on serious trial again ...