Ruin Marks Blood, Honor in Kosovo

A memorial is being constructed here to honor the memory of Adem Jashari and his family, who ignited all-out war for Kosovo’s independence by sacrificing their lives four years ago.

From the perspective of ethnic Albanians who backed the armed struggle against Serbian rule, the ruined home where 20 Jasharis--including women and children--died is drenched not only in blood but also in honor. Glossy brochures for visitors tell the story of events here in that spirit.

Just what happened in March 1998 has assumed renewed importance because the first prosecution witness at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic cited the Jasharis’ massacre as a key point of his testimony. Mahmut Bakali, an ethnic Albanian politician, told the court Feb. 18 that Milosevic had defended the killings to him as a justified police action against terrorists.

A pamphlet available here at the memorial site, though written to glorify Adem Jashari, can be seen as unwittingly supporting an argument central to Milosevic’s defense: that the war in Kosovo originated primarily as a fight between armed secessionists and government forces.

Prosecutors will be trying to prove that Milosevic bore responsibility for the actions of his forces in Kosovo three years ago. The 1998 killings in Prekaz are not listed in the indictment. But whether these deaths, which ushered in a wider war between ethnic Albanians and Milosevic’s forces, are interpreted as a coldblooded massacre or as the result of a justifiable police action could help set the tone for the trial.

Milosevic is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, in part for the actions of Yugoslav soldiers, Serbian police and paramilitary forces. Thousands of ethnic Albanians were slain and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes before North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes forced Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo in 1999 and accept a U.N. administration that continues today.

Most ethnic Albanians see the current situation as virtually ensuring eventual independence for Kosovo, which technically remains part of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

Acting as his own lawyer, Milosevic cross-examined Bakali last Tuesday about the Jasharis’ deaths. In a question apparently meant to suggest that the family forced the hand of police, he asked: “Did you know that they did not want to surrender and they shot at policemen?”

The pamphlet distributed at the battle site focuses on Adem Jashari--a founder of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army--and the 19 members of his family who died with him. It does little more than mention the 36 distant relatives and neighbors also killed in the three-day siege. But the brochure presents a picture of a family fiercely devoted to the fight for independence and ready to give their lives for that cause.

Titled “The Jasharis, the Story of a Resistance,” the pamphlet traces Adem Jashari’s eight-year armed struggle and declares that family members were “loyal co-fighters” who were “ready for sublime sacrifice.”

Jashari’s wife, Adile, was the first person killed in the 1998 siege, “while taking ammunition to Adem,” the brochure says. The last to die was their son Kushtrim, 13, who fell “holding the automatic gun in his hands,” it says. Most of the family members--including Jashari’s mother, a 7-year-old niece and 11 others--were killed when a Serbian mortar shell hit the house, while Jashari’s niece Besarta survived the siege “to tell about the . . . hell,” it says.

According to reports at the time by foreign journalists quoting survivors of the battle, some of the distant Jashari relatives who lived nearby were executed after being captured or killed while trying to flee. The pamphlet does not address how the others died, but it stresses that none of the 20 people killed in Adem Jashari’s immediate family had tried to escape.

Jashari and his family knew the previous night that Serbian forces were assembling for an assault, the pamphlet says.

Growing up on stories of “century-old battles for liberation” waged by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, Jashari came to “adore heroes” and “never parted from his gun,” the pamphlet says.

“In 1991, Adem and his friends went to Albania to get prepared for the battles to come,” it says. “. . . During 1991 they frequently crossed the Kosovo-Albanian border, beginning armed actions against the Serbian police. Numerous actions were successfully undertaken. . . . The Serb state was being hit in its most sensitive part: in its repressive apparatus.”

Serbian police and military first “laid siege” to the Jashari family compound Dec. 30, 1991, the pamphlet says.

Large numbers of armed and unarmed people rushed to Prekaz in support of the Jasharis, and “this was the last time that the police [went] into Prekaz in seven years,” it says.

Serbian forces returned to assault the Jashari compound on Jan. 22, 1998, using “mortars, guns and automatic weapons,” the pamphlet says. Jashari was not home, but the men who were there drove away the attackers. The next day, once again, thousands of supporters descended on the village from the surrounding Drenica region, it says.

“The challenge was too open, and the disgrace of the Serbs was too much to swallow,” the pamphlet continues. “Therefore, they were preparing themselves for the final, fatal and antihuman blow that was to follow.”

Still, the guerrillas kept up the pressure. On Feb. 28, 1998, a small KLA unit was ambushed by a Serbian police patrol near Likosane, but only one fighter was wounded while six police were killed, the pamphlet says.

“A typical Serb revenge was organized,” with police forces using tanks and helicopters to lay siege to the villages of Likosane and Cirez, killing 24 people, “among whom only four resisted with arms,” it says.

That night, Jashari helped evacuate the wounded, the pamphlet says. Then he went home and warned his family members that they might be next. Friends and well-wishers urged them to flee, it says, but “they had decided not to leave their home and land.”

Days later, the family’s last stand began, and Kosovo erupted in war.