REFUGEES-KOSOVO: Aid Workers Prepare For Worst

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 21 1998 (IPS) - With the approach of the harsh Balkans winter, aid workers in Serbia’s Kosovo province say they are “preparing for the worst.”

“We are planning for the worst because we have to,” Eduardo Arboleda, head of the Kosovo office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told the independent FoNet news agency. “Our main concern are those who find themselves without food, without shelter, who are living in the hills.”

His warning follows equally dire predictions by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Julia Taft and a European Union delegation.

During a recent visit to western areas of Kosovo, Taft said that the situation of the 170,000 internally displaced people – about 50,000 of whom are said by humanitarian agencies to be living in the open – should be sorted out within the next six weeks, “before weather conditions threaten their lives”.

“Hostilities on all sides must be stopped… Six weeks is the time-frame that, if we can meet it, will reduce the suffering,” Taft told journalists in Belgrade. “I was appalled by the devastation and overwhelmed by the need for urgent humanitarian assistance for the people.”

A European Union delegation also forecast “humanitarian disaster” unless there was quick action on a ceasefire and the delivery of aid.

A sign of things to come occurred when a two-month spell of hot weather suddenly ended and overnight temperatures fell to five degrees Centigrade with the onset of September.

Many refugees camped out in the hills and along rivers have only plastic sheets to ward off the cold. The old and the young are most at risk, say aid workers. People could freeze to death in the winter, said one aid worker.

“It will be impossible for us to help those people if there is no ceasefire and a political solution to the Kosovo crisis,” she warned. “Without it, we can’t move and reach all those in need.”

UNHCR statistics say up to 235,000 people have been driven from their homes this year by fighting between the Serb security forces and Yugoslav army on one side and the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK) on the other.

Almost all the displaced are ethnic Albanians, who form the overwhelming majority of the province’s 1.8 million people. The majority are women and children. Many have no homes to return to: U.N. experts say 15,000 homes have been destroyed by shelling and arson in the last six months.

Relief efforts are impeded by the continuing violence and chaotic security situation. Although the mid-July Serb offensive restored government control over most of Kosovo, according to many on the spot, moving around in the province is still dangerous.

In addition, international humanitarian workers are treated with suspicion by both sides in the conflict: the UCK says their drivers, usually Serbs, are government spies and Serb forces believe aid to civilians eventually ends up in the hands of the guerillas.

The Belgrade authorities act as if there was no conflict and no refugees. Senior officials, such as refugee commissioner Buba Morina, a Kosovo Serb, repeatedly say that “terrorists” (the UCK) are responsible for the plight of their own people who can not be treated as refugees as they are still “within the reach of their own homes.

“The UCK has simply to stop its terrorist activities and the civilians could return home,” she tells foreign delegations.

The Serbian public is generally unmoved by the humanitarian situation in Kosovo. In accordance with a widespread feeling that ethnic Albanians are responsible for their own plight, domestic aid agencies do not help the refugees.

Only the independent media report on the fate of the displaced, for which they are regularly accused of “siding with terrorists”.

On the other hand, the Serbian government is not always idle when ethnic Albanians are concerned. Justice Minister Dragoljub Jankovic said recently that “terrorist trials” involving more than 300 people would start in October.

In the meantime, civilians rather than soldiers continue to bear the brunt of war, according to a Western diplomat in Pristina.

“Serbs are not trying to defeat the UCK militarily as much as they are trying to drive a wedge between the UCK and the ethnic Albanian population,” Jankovic said. “The Serb message is blunt: this is what happens if you let the UCK into your life, that is why there is so much destruction in the province, human rights violations on both sides.

“This is a classic Balkan war where civilians pay the price.”