Kosovo: Lunch Among the Ethnic Cleansers Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit INDEPENDENT (London) June 15 Liberation of Kosovo - Lunch and denial among the ethnic cleansers ROBERT FISK in Polje Kosovo Kosovo Polje is not known for its cuisine. It is the heartland of Serbism, site of Serbia's 1389 battle with the Turks - the greatest defeat (so far) in Serbia's history - and the location of one of the country's ugliest Tito-style railway stations. Currently, parts of it are on fire, but anything is worth trying to flee the cockroach-haunted restaurant of the Grand Hotel in Pristina. Our first stop - a pleasant garden pizzeria that I had regularly visited last year - was closed, its gate padlocked, its owner already fled to what is now called "Serbia proper". Just a street away, there was a house on fire, its roof slowly crumbling into blazing rooms, its tiles exploding in the heat. In any other country, there would be crowds, fire engines, tearful home-owners. But all we found outside the crackling building was a boy on a bicycle, practising how to backpedal. I walked up the driveway and saw a figure retreat into the next-door house. There was a pile of bottles and food cans - military rations, I suspected - beneath a tree in the garden. The Serb owner, or the policemen who had taken over his home after his departure, had simply torched the place to prevent anyone else living there, in the same way that you or I might lock the front door when we left. There was a bar 400 yards away where soldiers were drinking Sprite - at least it looked like Sprite - and I asked them where we could eat. They gave us an address and the conversation went like this. "If you go down that street past the burnt houses, take the first turning to the left where there is a building on fire and a bit further on, on the right, there's a good restaurant which serves pork lunches." We followed the directions to the letter and there was the Zhivil Gaj taverna, an artificial turf terrace beside a real garden of brilliant yellow and red roses. Bratislav Valikojic, the owner, was not at all nervous of all the fires, nor, it seemed, the cascades of rifle fire that sprayed into the sky from every soldier's rifle in Kosovo Polje. He served a Serbian salad (too little cheese, far too many onions) and hunks of pork that could have satisfied an army. Our fellow guests were an interesting bunch. There was a Yugoslav army colonel and his pretty wife at one table while at another sat three men, one with shoulder-length hair and a beard, all with knives in their belts, another with half a bottle of brandy pushed into his camouflage trousers. Other patrons arrived in black shirts and headscarves with pistols tucked into their belts. It was a bright sunny day, despite the drifting smoke haze, and we asked for mineral water and red wine. At this point a spent round - fired into the air by a celebrating Yugoslav soldier half a mile away - cracked on to the terrace floor beside us. A militiaman picked it up with amusement. Just outside, 20 yards away, two drunken soldiers were brawling, one of them beating the other over the head with the butt of his Kalashnikov rifle until a comrade intervened to prevent both men shooting each other. "No wine, it's against the law," Mr Valikojic announced. Against the what? "There are very strict rules against selling alcohol in Kosovo," he replied. Government regulations. Of course. The Yugoslav authorities, anxious to prevent "unruly elements" committing crimes, banned the public sale of alcohol in Kosovo some weeks ago. Outside on the road, a Yugoslav armoured column moved sluggishly past our restaurant - tanks and artillery and rocket launchers. It was only when the other guests had left that Mr Valikojic invited us inside and said that we could "order freely now". He served the finest chilled red wine - far too much of it - and more pork and salad. And he wanted to tell us about the local Serbs. "If people from [Kosovo] Metohija start leaving, no one is going to remain," he said. "But here in Kosovo Polje, the Serbs are the toughest. We'll keep all this. The area is almost etnicki cisto [ethnically clean]." He talked about casualties. His nearest neighbour had been killed by a landmine set by the Kosovo Liberation Army (who had in turn stolen it from the Yugoslav army) with 19 other Serb soldiers, including the son of a woman who used to work in the restaurant. Mr Valikojic's brother-in-law was killed by a sniper on his way to a funeral in Glogovac, again by the KLA. Mr Valikojic had few thoughts about the Albanians, no knowledge, it seemed, of what every guest in his restaurant must have known, or even - the thought often crept through my mind - participated in. I couldn't see the young man with the knife and the long hair or the guy with half a bottle of brandy in his pocket standing guard duty in a barracks. We had sat, I'm sure, among the bad guys, among some of the "cleansers" in this town which was "almost ethnically clean". So we asked whether he realised how much the Albanians had suffered, and he said this. "Be sure that they did not. They were harmed in a different way, forcing them to go out [of their homes] but physically they weren't maltreated . We used to be on good terms. Albanians helped to build this house. Albanians came to my parents' wedding." Lies and half-lies and - about the house and the wedding long ago - probably the truth. The first will outlive the second. INDEPENDENT (London) June 15 Liberation of Kosovo - The baby was named K-For in hope: two days later she died By ROBERT FISK in Polje K-FOR died yesterday morning. She was only two days old and lay inside a coloured dishcloth in the arms of a relative as her father, Mehdi Lahu, walked up the filthy lanes of Vranjevac on his way to the makeshift graveyard beneath the trees. "She was conceived when the Serb police were oppressing us," he wept. "She was carried inside her mother for two months on our flight through the forests. And she died after her mother hid with me for two hours in the basement while the police raided our home." It was the last raid by the Serb police, on the night British troops of K-For arrived in Pristina. Mehdi and his wife, Hajrie, had wanted to celebrate the child's birth as a moment of liberation but the baby came late and - because of the last Serb looting spree - was born without medical aid. Mehdi's elderly mother cut the umbilical cord with a razor. "Then it happened this morning: she just died. We wanted to name her K-For and we wished to ask Mr Jackson to be the godfather but this could not happen. We hope that the life of K-For is longer than this little girl's life and that they will bring us freedom for the first time in 120 years." He meant every word he said. He did believe that General Sir Michael Jackson would be his child's godfather. And all the while we talked, little K-For lay under the dishcloth in the arms of Lutfi Lahu, the father-in-law of Mehdi's sister. It was a heartbreaking sight. Perhaps K-For is the last Albanian victim of the war. Or maybe she is the first to die in peacetime. Mehdi had no doubt who was to blame. "We are refugees from Glamnik," he said. "The Serbs ordered us from our homes on the day in March that the OSCE delegates left Kosovo - and we walked the forests in hiding for the next two months. "Hajrie was very pregnant. She was not in good condition and the baby was born five days late. We were in a relative's house here in Vranjevac and every day the police would break into our home. And each day we had to hide in the cellar. We'd been there for two hours on Saturday and after the police left our baby was born." A small crowd of Albanians had gathered round us in the cobbled roadway with its open sewer, a burnt Albanian home behind us, the trees of the graveyard just up the street. Mehdi wept as he spoke: "We want to go home to Glamnik. There were many houses there that were burnt. We had one of the three that were still undamaged. But we've heard now that the police were living in it and that they burnt it when they left." Another man in a pink shirt asked if he could speak. "I am Mehdi's brother Nexhmi," he said. "I arranged my brother's wedding on 24 May last year and I want to tell you about it. "In our tradition, the bridegroom's friends and family all travel to the bride's family to collect the girl on the day of the marriage. That day we could have had 100 cars to go there. But the Serb police would not allow it. We were so afraid. We could send only two cars. And we couldn't fly our flag." Mehdi listened, wiping away his tears. From time to time, Nexhmi gently took the almost weightless bundle in the dishcloth from Lutfi and held it to his chest. "Our baby was born at nine o'clock in the morning," Mehdi kept repeating. "We had electricity but no water - only enough to sterilise the knife. I helped my wife to give birth but my mother is old and could not help much. Now my only concern is to find medicines for my wife. I have lost my baby but I still have her." Mehdi Lahu is 30 and a mechanic by profession. Hajrie is just 24. It was their first child. "We don't blame Nato for the suffering of our people," he said. "We only blame them for starting the war late. Our baby didn't die because of Nato but because of the lack of medicines." Nexhmi interrupted him. "Our people have a belief about life," he said softly. "We say that it's never too late." We all shook hands and they walked away beneath the trees, Mehdi with clasped hands in front of him, Nexhmi clutching the bundle. And then they disappeared round the corner of the burnt house. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-06.19.99-05:33:53-7903