Homesick Refugees Await Day They Can Return to Kosovo

KUKES, Albania — Two months after Serbian soldiers destroyed his village of Belanica and drove his family from Kosovo, Idriz Zogaj checks his silver pocket watch as if it can tell him the hour his exile will end.

Zogaj, the 74-year-old patriarch of a family of 20 refugees, is so homesick that it makes his heart ache. He is so tired of doing nothing but remember Kosovo that he begins to cry.

And yet, Zogaj is afraid to pin too many hopes on the international peace deal that Yugoslav President Slobodon Milosevic agreed to this week.

“We do not really believe it is true,” Zogaj said over Turkish coffee and hand-rolled cigarettes Friday. But if it is true, he hastily added, “Kosovo is our homeland and many people have been killed for that homeland. If NATO is there, then we shall go.”

The story of Belanica and Zogaj’s family has been chronicled in detail by the Los Angeles Times as an example of the Serbian campaign of “ethnic cleansing” that has laid waste to hundreds of villages in the province of Kosovo and forced more than a million ethnic Albanians from their homes since NATO began bombing Yugoslavia on March 24.

The personal nightmare of four generations of the Zogaj family began April 1, when Serbian soldiers and police descended on their farm community in south-central Kosovo, looting, burning houses and killing an unknown number of people before forcing the Zogajs out of Kosovo three days later.

Zogaj estimates that 60 dead from Belanica and surrounding villages were left behind.

He also acknowledges that more than 100 members of his extended family, including his grandson, belong to the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, the Serbs’ sworn enemy. A granddaughter and many other relatives are among the 50,000 civilians that KLA leaders say are hiding in the region near Belanica, hungry and without medicine.

Since crossing the border into Albania two months ago, Zogaj has moved his family twice before settling into an empty warehouse for which they pay about $100 a month.

They have given the warehouse, with its smoke-blackened walls and concrete floor, a semblance of home life. In one corner, a rug and mats on the floor make for a traditional Muslim living room, and, in Muslim custom, the inhabitants take off their shoes before entering; another area serves as a kitchen where the Zogaj women bake bread in an electric oven.

Zogaj’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren ramble about and are welcome in the laps of the elder men. But Zogaj admits that his only comfort in the past few months has come not from his family but from the sound of NATO bombs hitting Serbian positions along the nearby border with Yugoslavia.

“We never thought we would be gone so long,” he said. “We thought Milosevic would resist for three or four days and would withdraw.”

The peace deal finally reached Thursday calls for Serbian troops to pull back and for an international peacekeeping force to move in ahead of the refugees.

Like many refugees, however, Zogaj is disturbed by the fact that Russians will be peacekeepers.

Ethnic Albanians see the Russians as allies of the Serbs and fear a de facto partition of Kosovo with Russians holding the mineral-rich north for the Serbs.

“We don’t want to deal with the Russians,” Zogaj said.

He also said he doesn’t understand why the agreement doesn’t call for the expulsion of all Serbs from Kosovo.

Although family members say that Serbs and ethnic Albanians got along well before the war, they cannot envision living together now.

“They have committed terrible crimes against us,” Zogaj said. “How can we live with them? They have no morals.”

Many refugees are bitterly disappointed that the agreement does not call for an independent Kosovo. That is what the KLA is fighting for, and that, they believe, is what so many ethnic Albanians died for.

But Zogaj said he has faith in the United States and the rest of the alliance.

He believes that the KLA can relinquish its weapons as called for under the agreement and that ethnic Albanians can live under NATO protection in an autonomous region.

“What can we do with a Kalashnikov? We have no planes, no tanks. Better to disarm. If America says we have to disarm, we are ready. But we have to make sure we are in the hands of the Americans,” he said to nods from his son and nephews.

When Zogaj allows himself to think of going back to Belanica, he imagines himself digging up the jewelry that he buried before fleeing his home, not because of its value but because of its link to the past.

His house is gone. Most of his belongings are gone. Now he hopes to get home before planting season begins in October, to sow the seeds of a better future.

“I miss the place where I was born. Even though I will be living in the open air, I want to be in my birthplace,” Zogaj said. “Only someone who has been a refugee knows how it feels to be a refugee.”

Previous stories chronicling the struggle of Zogaj family members since they were driven from their village of Belanica are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/belanica.