Refugees long to return home despite problems waiting

By Solita Sarwono

TIRANA, Albania (JP): "God has mercy on us and saved our family from the brutality of the Serbian soldiers," said a Kosovo refugee after arriving in the Tirana refugee camps with all 15 members of his family. His elderly parents, brother, sister, spouses and children had taken two trucks to flee from their hometown Prizren in southwest Kosovo. Now they are using these trucks as a shelter, since these are a better place to live in than the tents.

A few weeks ago they saw the soldiers coming and entering their neighbors' houses. They heard screams and shootings. Terrified, the family hid in their homes located in the middle of their farm, praying and waiting for their turn to be executed. They waited and waited until they did not hear any more noises. When one of the men peeked out from the window, he did not see anyone around. The soldiers were gone. So they packed up some foodstuff, dressed the children, rushed to their trucks and drove away quickly. A few kilometers away they looked back and saw their houses on fire. They knew they had nothing else now but their family. Still, they are grateful to be alive.

This grateful feeling is shared by hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled Kosovo. Almost all of them have experienced and witnessed tortures, rapes and killings at the hands of the Serbs. These refugees told horrifying stories about the barbaric actions of the military. Parents were asked to pay 1000 Deutsche Marks for each child. If they do not have the money, the soldiers shot the child before the entire family. Kosovo families have many children. Many poor farmers have lost all their children in this manner. Another family was eating soup when the soldiers forcefully entered their house. One of the soldiers asked what was in the soup. When he was told that it was only vegetable soup he told them to make soup from meat. They had no more cattle left. So the soldiers shot in cold blood one of the children, and pointed the guns at all the family members forcing them to make meat soup from the dead child and to eat the soup. The Serbs have also burned people alive in their homes.

A woman said one day she heard shootings nearby her home, so her husband urged all the women and children to hide in the attic. Moments later she heard soldiers entering the house making loud voices, followed by the noise of Kalasnikov shots. And then complete silence. The women and children in the attic stared at each other, wondering what had happened to the six male members of the family who were in the house. When they came down from the attic they found their husbands, father brothers and sons dead in the living room. This woman gets furious whenever she hears someone say that what has happened in Kosovo is only bad propaganda on the part of NATO or America.

Even after the peace talks, Serbian soldiers still beat people trying to reach the Albanian borders and tell them: "Go to Clinton!". No wonder two men suspected as Serbian supporters were beaten by other refugees at Kukes camp, and many Kosovo people returning from their refuges have taken revenge at Serbian civilians. Various evidence gathered by NATO and the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR) in Kosovo have confirmed the brutality of Serbian troops.

The prime targets for killing and torturing were children and young men, while women were raped and sometimes killed too. Some men have left the families to join the liberation army forces UCK and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). This explains the very high numbers (70 percent to 80 percent) of women and children living in refugee camps and shelters in Albania. Despite this fact, there are very few female military officers in the camps. When asked by a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) officer about this imbalance, camp commanders responded that they did not need female officers. All refugees are welcome to talk and share their problems with the officers in presence. In reality, most women are reluctant to talk with these male guards about women's problems, varying from reproductive health to rape.

Being the closest neighbor and sharing the same ethnic background, Albania has taken most of the Kosovo refugees. Nearly half a million refugees (of some 900,000 in total) are sheltering in homes and camps throughout Albania. Some of them are hosted in old factory buildings that have not been used for years. But most of them (280,000 people) live in the homes of Albanian families, sharing the small houses or apartments. Albania is a poor country with a total population of around 4 million people. School teachers earn US$20 to $30 per month, whereas the salary of very senior and experienced gynecologists is $80 to $90 per month. Clean water supplies are very limited, with only two to three hours of running water per day (in the rural areas one hour). This results in poor personal hygiene of the population. Despite these poor conditions, Albanians are willing to share their limited resources with the Kosovo refugees.

International organizations give a lot of support to Albania and other neighboring countries. They give funding to assist the many Albanian families hosting the refugees. The amount of money given to each family differs by organization. Some organizations give families $50 per month ($25 for the Kosovo family and another $25 for the host family), regardless of the number or people living in the house; others provide support of $10 per person per month. Given the low income of the average families, $50 is support of quite a substantial amount. However, with the highly increased demands for food and other basic supplies, in the last few months market prices have doubled or tripled. Baby milk formula, for instance, costs 50 U.S. cents per can to feed a baby for four to five days. Moreover, the financial support is limited and the fund is allocated only for six months, starting in April. Therefore, not all families receive the support. To tackle food problem for infants, the Women's Center, a nongovernment organization in Tirana, promotes breast feeding to the Kosovo mothers.

To house the refugees, military forces built tent or pre-fab house camps. There are a few communal latrines for all the people, with very limited water supplies, limiting the possibility of washing and bathing. The international organizations provide food supplies, mattresses, blankets, clothes and money to buy products for personal hygiene, including baby pampers and sanitary napkins. Organizations like the UNHCR, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Red Cross and Medica Mondiale (a German women NGO), work together with the Albanian government and the local NGO's, particularly women NGO's, to provide supplies and activities for the refugees. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) also promotes the use of and provides supplies of contraceptives. For most refugees, information regarding contraceptives and reproductive health is new. All these activities require good coordination, which is not always easy to do. Problems occur in all steps of the aid assistance: determining the kind of supplies, ordering the products, packaging, transporting them to Albania and delivering them to the refugees. The existence of "Mafioso" groups and corrupt officers in Albania, wanting to profit from this calamity, complicates the problem.

The Women's Center functions as a crisis center, providing services for the refugees, financed by various international organizations. In conjunction with the Counseling Center for Abused Women and the Women's Legal Association, they provide psychosocial support for traumatized women. This psychosocial support is provided by teams of female professionals: gynecologists, lawyers, psychologists, social workers and nurses from Albania and Kosovo. The teams regularly visit the camps and shelters in a mobile clinic. Beside delivering services and therapeutic support (including abortion for rape victims), the teams also collect information to be documented and sent to The Hague as testimonies at the International War Crimes Tribunal. As a result of intensive contact and a trusting relationship with the team members, a number of women were willing to testify in the Tribunal. The Women's Center also supplies baby bottles, pampers, toys, soap, toothpaste, sanitary napkins and kitchen utensils to the refugees, as well as monthly financial aid to host families.

Notwithstanding all the efforts and energies spent in helping the refugees, it seems that there are not enough activities provided for them. Children are sent to schools (joining public schools or going to schools especially set up nearby the camps), but the adults have very little to do. Occasionally groups of volunteers come to conduct group discussions, health education or to provide activities for the refugees. Other times, they play football or volleyball. But it is not enough. This lack of activity makes the people feel lonely, useless and hopeless. To kill time they often walk miles away to the nearby city. The local people are not very pleased with this inundation, since their city becomes crowded and they fear a rise in crime.

In spite of the hospitality of Albanian families, many of them were not able to continue hosting the refugees. Their limited water and food supplies have quickly been used up in the past few weeks. This has forced them to return refugees to the camps. Moreover, conflicts arise between the refugees and their host families. Some of the Kosovo families are used to better living conditions. So they expected to wash their clothes in a washing machine, an item only a few affluent Albanian families have. Conflicts also arise between children. Kosovo children play together with the Albanians. Communication is not a problem because they all speak Albanian, although with different dialects. But the Kosovo children do not know the rules of the games. So they argue and spoil the fun. Albanians are beginning to feel disturbed by the presence of the Kosovo refugees. They do not know what their country is going to look like in one or two year's time, should the refugees stay on. So they are relieved to hear that the war is ended.

To most refugees, the stay in Albania, Macedonia and other countries is a temporary measure. They hope to go home soon, although they are aware that they have no money and that their homes and their land is destroyed. They will have to begin their life again from scratch. But it is still their homeland. Besides, in the country where they are staying now there is no future, no jobs. So they want to go home. That is why thousands of refugees have immediately returned to Kosovo despite the NATO and UNHCR warnings. People were very eager to go home without considering the consequences of the action. To return refugees to the homeland the UNHCR requires a guarantee of safety (free from mines, weapons and threats or punishment from the local authorities) and access to basic supplies such as water, food and shelter. No government can force refugees to go home when these conditions are not met and when the refugees refuse. That is why the international organizations, in collaboration with the military forces, want to prepare a reasonable living condition in Kosovo before letting the refugees return home. The spontaneous homecoming rush naturally disturbs this plan and creates chaos in Kosovo.

Not everybody, however, wants to go home. Many Kosovo children refugees prefer to stay where they are. Although the condition in the camps is far from good, it is still better than what they have experienced back home. Those children traumatized by the brutality and the painful journey to come all the way to Albania, particularly refuse to go home. Winter is coming soon and living in the tents will become unbearable. Kosovo Albanians still have enormous problems to solve in the coming years.

The writer is a psychologist, sociologist and gender specialist, assigned by a Dutch organization to provide gender training for trainers in Albania in May and June.