In Macedonia, Refugees Reject Ticket to Cuba

While thousands of refugees who camped out here were eager to sign up for airlifts to Germany, no one seemed willing Thursday to take the United States up on its offer for a ticket to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stay in a U.S.-operated refugee camp.

“Even if they promise to bring us back to Kosovo as soon as it is safe, I would not go to Cuba,” said Bukurie Tahiri, 36, an Albanian-language teacher from Vucitrn, Kosovo. “I might go to Germany because I have cousins there, but I still have relatives in Kosovo, so I would not go to Cuba because it is so far from them.”

Tahiri was staying at a refugee camp operated by the German military--a step above most of the other refugee camps in Macedonia.

Most of the refugees appear to have a psychological barrier against going to Cuba. They fear that they would not easily be able to return home once there, even though Washington has pledged to return them to Kosovo as soon as it is safe.

On Thursday, with more aid reaching the refugees and few volunteering to go to Guantanamo, U.S. officials acknowledged that it is uncertain whether any will actually be housed there.

For many refugees, the first priority is getting back to Kosovo as quickly as possible.

But after being forced out of their homes and then being sheltered at tent camps in Macedonia that they are not allowed to leave, many refugees feel they no longer have any say over their own lives.

“If they made us go there, we would go,” said Miradije Shala, 38, an office manager from the small town of Klina. “But not unless they made us.”

The U.S. government has made it clear that refugees will only be brought to Cuba voluntarily.

Most Macedonian Albanian leaders oppose the idea of airlifting refugees to foreign countries because they fear that such an effort will turn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” campaign into a fait accompli.

“Albanians are upset about Albanian Kosovars being transported to other countries because this would complete the exodus,” said Mithad Emini, the leader of the Party for Democratic Prosperity, an Albanian opposition party in Macedonia. “Maybe it’s good for the families to go abroad for a while, but it’s bad for Kosovo.”

But another leader of the Albanian community in Tetovo--a predominantly Albanian city in the western part of Macedonia--said there might be a secret benefit to sending refugees to Guantanamo Bay instead of to other countries.

“It’s better for them not to go anywhere,” said Xhafer Xhaferi, a physician who is president of the Tetovo chapter of El Hilal, the Albanian Macedonian charity that has placed 40,000 to 60,000 refugees from Kosovo with families. “But maybe sending them to Cuba--rather than Germany, where they’ll feel more comfortable--will guarantee that the refugees come back to Kosovo.”