Beset in a ‘Free’ Town of Kosovo

Here in the heart of what ethnic Albanians in southern Yugoslavia often call “free” territory, the arrogant, young Kosovo Liberation Army military police officer was clearly enjoying his newfound authority.

Pointing to a blue sign showing still and video cameras with big Xs marked through them, he asserted that interviews with anyone except official guerrilla spokesmen are banned. “You might end up talking to a spy and get the wrong information,” he said.

By taking and holding such a large town as Malisevo, the guerrillas have many ethnic Albanians in this separatist province in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia believing that their long-cherished goal of an independent Kosovo may be within their grasp. But this revolutionary stronghold, while rich in the will to fight, is also rife with political tension, fear and shortages of everything from guns to food.

Malisevo’s guerrilla rulers act more like dictators than democrats. Because there is no properly functioning government, the refugees flooding in from areas hit by Serbian attacks are threatening to overwhelm the rebels’ ability to cope.

Fighters and civilians on both sides, Serbian and Albanian, are dying almost daily in clashes along the border of rebel-held territory, as the guerrillas try to expand their control and Serbian police fight to keep a cordon in place or push the rebel army back. The guerrillas struggle to keep open weapons-running routes from Albania, while the Yugoslav army fights to shut them down.

The guerrilla movement has grown so explosively in the past few months that it is still seriously disorganized. Even the police officer’s effort at media control was ineffective. After sternly issuing his warning, he stomped off up a hillside road, leaving a visitor and his translator free to wander the dusty streets of this market town, sip Cokes at a sidewalk cafe--and chat up residents.

“I would rather say this town is besieged than that it is liberated,” said Idriz Zogaj, a local photo shop owner. “It is surrounded by Serb forces. We are afraid they will massacre the women, the children and the old men. For myself, I don’t care. I’m willing to sacrifice myself. All the young men are willing to die.”

There are not enough guns, he added, for everyone willing to fight.

As Zogaj spoke, tractors and horse-drawn carts on Malisevo’s main road jostled with cheap Yugoslav cars and more than a few Mercedes-Benzes, a reflection of the rebels’ strong political and financial ties to the Albanian diaspora in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.

Elderly Albanian farmers with traditional white skullcaps, their wives bundled up in scarves, bounced by in tractor-drawn carts. A grinning boy who looked no more than 10, waving triumphantly to anyone he recognized, drove a tractor pulling a huge load of Coca-Cola and other bottled drinks up the hill to an open-air market.

One side of the road was lined by several surprisingly pleasant sidewalk cafes. Nearby vegetable shops were filled with tomatoes, peppers, onions and watermelons.

On the opposite side of the tree-lined main drag, dozens of men sold cigarettes from huge, neatly stacked piles of smuggled Marlboro Lights and other foreign brands. Strewn on the ground behind the cigarette sellers was a filthy collection of crushed cardboard, plastic bottles, old bags and other garbage accumulated over months of casual littering with no attempt at cleanup.

Malisevo--the only major town held by the guerrillas--has become the rebel area’s most important distribution center for goods such as cigarettes and bottled drinks, bought for cash in Yugoslavia or neighboring countries and transported with relative ease. Coca-Cola sold here is imported from nearby Macedonia, for example.

Short of Necessities

Yet a surface impression of moderate prosperity and bustling markets belies growing shortages of the things that really matter, residents said.

Zogaj and others estimated that the population of Malisevo municipality, which includes 42 villages and the main market town itself, has swollen from about 40,000 early this year to about 100,000 as refugees pour in to escape Serbian attacks.

From late February to early June--until warnings from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forced some restraint on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic--Serbian forces sought to crush the guerrillas in areas near Malisevo and tried to clear civilians out of the arms-smuggling routes from Albania. As part of that effort, many villages near the Albanian border or in districts where the rebels operate were shelled or otherwise attacked.

Uprooted civilians fled in various directions: into Albania, to government-held parts of Kosovo and into guerrilla territory. Many men who had previously been passive supporters of independence were so angered by Serbian attacks on ethnic Albanian civilians that they flooded into the ranks of the guerrilla forces, contributing mightily to their growth.

But for the rapidly swelling population in the Malisevo area, supplies of basic foodstuffs such as flour, sugar and vegetable oil--which are controlled by the Serbs through a system of state-run shops--are already in short supply, several men said. Since the upsurge of fighting in recent months, the government has further tightened controls on those goods, making it difficult to buy enough food to be brought into the “free” territories, they said.

“Yesterday a man came to us who hadn’t eaten for 24 hours, and he asked for five or 10 kilograms of flour,” Zogaj said. “The bakeries can’t get flour anymore. People are running out of the supplies they have in their homes.”

Malisevo is largely cut off from routine contact with the outside world by a series of Serbian and rebel roadblocks, which journalists and some other international observers are allowed to cross if they have the right documents and if the stretch of road involved is not at that moment being fought over. Some goods--such as the cigarettes--make it in through backwoods dirt tracks.

At the main government roadblock between Pristina, the provincial capital, and Malisevo, at Stimlje, uniformed Serbian police are backed up by an armored personnel carrier with a machine gun on top.

The asphalt road then winds toward Malisevo through about 10 miles of wooded mountains. Serbian forces have a presence on the mountaintops, where artillery pieces and tanks are hidden under camouflage nets.

But the road itself is a no man’s land. It passes through several shattered villages bereft of movement save for a few forlorn dogs and cats.

In the hamlet of Crnoljevo, red-tiled homes have holes blasted in their roofs and white walls. At the badly damaged village mosque, the metal top of the minaret dangled haplessly.

A Sign Warns, ‘Mines’

Villages come to life again shortly before the Kosovo Liberation Army checkpoint at Blace, manned by nervous young men toting Kalashnikov semiautomatic rifles. Some wore the camouflage uniforms of rebel soldiers, and others were in the black or dark blue outfits of the guerrillas’ military police. A makeshift sign warns, “Mines.”

And on the outskirts of Malisevo, life seems almost normal again: A large public swimming pool was in use by dozens of children.

At one sidewalk cafe, a man who gave only his first name, Jusuf, said he fled to Malisevo two months ago with 27 relatives after police attacked his village of Komorane, burned some houses, took over his home and set up a heavy machine gun at his second-floor window.

Jusuf, 40, chose Malisevo because he had relatives to turn to for help, but in any case he would prefer being in territory controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army over being in a place, such as Pristina, controlled by Serbian authorities.

In government-controlled areas, “if I want to buy some bread or cigarettes and a policeman stops me, he’ll ask for my ID, and when he sees I’m from Komorane [an area known for sympathy for the guerrillas], I’ll be immediately harassed, because I’ll be seen in the eyes of the government as a potential terrorist,” Jusuf explained.

While people like Jusuf may prefer the conditions in Malisevo, they recognize that life could become hell for people here, especially if Serbian police further tighten their grip on the flow of people and goods.

Crops are ripening in the fields, but not nearly enough farmland is under firm guerrilla control for that food to supply the swollen population, residents said.

A few hundred yards from the main intersection, in a third-floor room of an unfinished brick-and-concrete building, Jakup Kastrati was worried about a more immediate problem.

Tough Eviction Notice

Kastrati, 44, head of the local branch of Kosovo’s largest political party, explained that he had just received a strongly worded eviction notice from the guerrillas.

Kastrati and other party loyalists were arguing with the rebels over control of a few rooms--including his nearly bare one, decorated only by a poster of Ibrahim Rugova, the president of an unofficial shadow government elected by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians. But the conflict reflected a far greater struggle across Kosovo between the guerrillas, who are moving rapidly to assert political authority over the entire independence movement, and the moderate Rugova.

Rugova, the politician most favored by Washington, also supports independence--a goal the United States opposes. But he has long said it should be achieved by nonviolent means. Rugova is searching for some formula that would allow him to assert control over the rebels and represent them in peace negotiations. The guerrillas, meanwhile, are trying to push Rugova out of the equation.

The eviction notice warned that if Kastrati and his colleagues fail to turn over their party offices to the Kosovo Liberation Army, “the premises will be taken, and the people responsible will have to take responsibility before the military institutions.”

The notice was signed by Gani Krasniqi, whom Kastrati identified as a former deputy head of the local branch of Rugova’s Democratic Alliance of Kosovo.

However heavy-handed the rebels may be in asserting their authority, they can count on a vast reservoir of anger among ethnic Albanians against Serbs.

“I’m a photographer by occupation,” shopkeeper Zogaj said. “Every month, three weeks of work is just to pay my taxes and bills. But an ordinary [Serbian] policeman can drop by my shop and force me to develop his photos for free. At the cafe near my shop, the police used to drop by and have drinks and food and refuse to pay. One time, one of the policeman said [in ridicule of ethnic Albanians’ hopes for independence], ‘Do you have any Republic of Kosovo to eat?’ ”

Despite the danger, the difficulties and the suffering, many people are remarkably upbeat.

Jusuf, the man who fled here with his relatives from Komorane, said his 8-year-old son will attend school in Malisevo this fall.

“Unless,” he added, “Komorane is a free area by then.”