Word: albanians
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...obviously the minds behind Operation Allied Force didn't really think it would be as bad as this. After more than a week of NATO air raids, Kosovo was still hemorrhaging victims of horror. Ordered out of their homes at gunpoint, often separated from husbands and sons, ethnic Albanian women, children and old people were marched, bused, packed into trains. As the long columns stumbled into neighboring states, Serb soldiers stripped the refugees of passports, identity papers, even license plates to eradicate any trace of their claim to the province. No one knows how many have died or been killed...
...predicted Milosevic would be so ferocious so fast. The CIA knew as far back as last autumn that Belgrade was planning Operation Horseshoe: when spring melted the snows, the Serbs would move in their tanks and artillery to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army and drive many ethnic Albanians over the southern and western borders. At a village a day--the rate Milosevic calculated the West would tolerate--Serbia could methodically eliminate the Kosovar population over a number of months. Analysts knew Milosevic would intensify his purge if bombing started. But they believed his intent was to crush the K.L.A...
...task before NATO is not simple. It must intensify its warfare without tallying high Serb or ethnic Albanian civilian casualties, worsening the refugee flight or shaking jittery public support. Yet it is unthinkable that the alliance should not finish the job it embarked on. NATO would fail history if it left Milosevic in place and the ethnic Albanians in exile...
...nearly his entire life, Dervis Audaja, 54, lived on the same block in the Kosovo city of Pec, developing close friendships with his neighbors, a mix of ethnic Albanians and Serbs. Now all that is gone forever. Early last week Serb paramilitary units drove into his neighborhood, went to the door of every Albanian home and gave the residents 10 minutes to pack their belongings and go to the Korza, the city's main square. From there most of the crowd of 15,000 were herded into the local sports stadium, where they spent the night in silent fear, half...
...next morning, the Serb police told the Albanians they could go home safely. But by then most of their houses were in flames. Audaja's home was already ashes; still, he was determined to stay in Pec. He moved in with relatives next door and asked his Serb neighbors for protection. "I asked them, 'What have I ever done in 50 years that would make you burn my house?' They told me it was outsiders." But by Tuesday, more Albanian homes were burning, and Serb soldiers lined the hills surrounding the neighborhood. Audaja, his trust shattered and his possessions gone...