Strife with Kosovo still persists

By Alex Liebman

SHAWN CHENG/YH

This summer, I had the opportunity to work with refugees from Kosovo in Louisville, Ky., an experience that proved to be deeply emotional and educational, reassuring yet at other times profoundly disturbing.

Initially, I was impressed with the values the refugees held. At a service at a local mosque, I saw whites from the Balkans praying shoulder to shoulder with African-Americans from Mississippi and Asians from India. It was wonderful to see peaceful racial diversity among people for whom ethnic intolerance has had such vicious consequences. But my enthusiasm was perhaps premature. Indeed, I was to learn, the more likely explanation for the harmony at the mosque was precisely the lack of diversity—those praying were all Muslims.

In an episode that particularly jarred me, I discussed with an ethnic Albanian the massacre of 14 Serb civilians in late July, when KFOR (the NATO-led peacekeeping force) was moving into Kosovo. He was completely unsympathetic—while at first denying that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had committed the act, he quickly admitted that he didn't care that the Serbs had died. When I pointed out that a 15-year-old boy and 65-year-old man had been murdered, he just shrugged and said that they deserved it. He also mentioned that many of the Kosovars had been pleased when they heard the news.

The closer I looked at things, the more I found disturbing. For example, Albanian Kosovars did not want to be in the same room with gypsy refugees fleeing the very same Serbs—partially because some gypsies were accused of colluding with Serbian paramilitaries, but mostly because they just don't like Gypsies. In addition, none of the refugees endorsed Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo's peaceful, democratic opposition leader. Instead, they preferred the more militant KLA, whose actions and ideologies have often not been much better than those they are fighting against. What I finally realized was that the refugees don't want a multi-ethnic, democratic Kosovo—they just want Kosovo for themselves.

Of course, I shouldn't have been surprised. The underlying fact is quite understandable: the ethnic Albanians don't like Serbs. But is their anger directed at Serbs because of the violence perpetrated against them, or do they just not like Serbs as a people? If it is the former, the prospects for the future are mediocre; if it is the latter, we're in for some real trouble in the years ahead. And though the media has virtually stopped covering the issue, the "crisis in Kosovo" isn't over—we are in for an ongoing humanitarian crisis, particularly with the harsh Balkan winter ahead.

We'd all like to think that wars are just conflicts between two governments. Two regimes oppose each other over a piece of territory or an ideology and they fight each other over it. The men fighting as soldiers do shoot to kill, but in the end they respect the other nation's soldiers in addition to its civilians. They are patriotic professionals fighting against other professionals, and will bear no grudge once the war is over. Unfortunately, after working with these refugees, my fear is that the conflict in Kosovo was not so much a war between governments as a war between peoples. And in a war between peoples, soldiers see no difference between shooting an armed man and raping a defenseless 16-year-old girl. Everyone becomes an enemy. There are no limits.

I am convinced that the U.S. has done a good thing in accepting 20,000 Kosovars into America. Refugees come to this country and work hard—many of the Bosnian refugees that arrived before 1995 now own their own businesses or work in factories or on farms, and proudly speak English with their children. However, though I optimistically supported the U.S.-led bombing of Serbia in the spring as a means to peace, I am increasingly uneasy that there is anything the West can do for those who still live in Kosovo until both ethnic Albanians and Serbs cast out their demons themselves.

Alex Liebman is a junior in Calhoun.

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