Re: Kosovars on NATO
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 16:37:41 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Re: Kosovars on NATO
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Joost van Beek <[email protected]>
Re: Kosovars on NATO
Guillaume Siemienski <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would like to know what the feeling
> is among the victims of Kossovo. Do the Albanians of Kossovo feel
> that the NATO bombings are a mistake or do they support them.
Good question. But a hard one to get any general answer on, as only
one western journalist is said to still report from Kosovo itself, and
no Kosovar media can function when journalists and editors (like the
editor-in-chief of the main Kosovo Albanian newspaper Koha Ditore)
have been murdered, and most others have gone in hiding.
(Although you should check out the reports of the Institute for War
and Peace Reporting - http://www.iwpr.net - they still received
reports from their Kosovar reporter-in-hiding from Pristina the last
few days, and the other reports they carry stem from local, and both
Serbian and Albanian, sources. Check the main page for the latest or
the Balkan Crisis Reports Back Issues for all).
We're dependent on the refugee's stories now to get an idea of what is
going on, and what is felt, in Kosovo. The newspapers are full of
those stories, eye-witnesses' accounts. In between telling of the
murder, deportation, terror and rape, that chased them out of their
country, some say what they think of the NATO attacks. In case it is
really true that such examples are hard to find in the media across
the Atlantic I've translated a few below. Perhaps we should make a
collection of such reactions, in order to amplify what the Kosovars
have to say themselves and thus counter any general claim made on
their behalf from outside.
Just wondering about media coverage though: how is the war (or rather,
the two simultaneous wars of NATO vs Yugoslavia and Serbia vs Kosovo)
covered in the US (or Canada) as compared to in Europe? CNN excels in
news flashes and updates but offers not much in-depth reporting on the
war's human dimension; I'm sure the New York Times or the Washington
Post give much more background but their readership doesn't extend far
Westwards in the States. What is the impression the American
reader/viewer from the MidWest, West or South gets about this war, and
about the underlying contexts of the violence in the former
Yugoslavia?
The Dutch media, for one, focus primarily on the human misery shown by
the tv images of thousands of refugees on the borders of Kosovo, the
stories of terror they tell. Military issues and 'results'; debates
about the moral and strategical right- or wrongness of the NATO-war
and the way it is done; and 'our' soldiers and the chances of Kosovar
refugees coming to the Netherlands are other, though less prominent
issues. Footage is not exclusively western: the tv news includes
footage from Yugoslav television practically everyday as well. Almost
all the politicians and mainstream-media are in support of the NATO
attacks - even the former pacifists of the 'Green Left' - but judging
from letters to the editors and what I hear the people as a whole
remains sceptical and apprehensive. Yet for 'common opinion' there may
be doubt about the way the NATO attacks have for now exacerbated the
violence on the ground, but Milosevic remains the bad guy and the
Kosovar refugees are not considered as victims of NATO.
I write about this seemingly irrelevant sideline because in the few
e-lists/fora in which discussions on Kosovo have erupted, the mood
seems to be much more anti-NATO than in newspapers here. Also, on a
more fundamental level, because what basic images of the peoples
involved are projected in the media will greatly determine future
political action. In the Croat and Bosnian wars, the initial
definition of the war parties as Western democrats vs Eastern
bolsheviks was quickly overtaken by the image of incessantly fighting,
fanatical nationalist 'Balkanians', violent by nature and living in
history - and the successfull 'rooting' of that basic image, among
opinion makers, among politicians or among the voters imagined by
them, has decisively determined Western policy vis-a-vis the Yugoslav
wars. So the use of categories of description of the war parties might
be something we should monitor week-by-week.
Here's the few examples of Kosovars-on-NATO-attacks I could find, from
the last few days' reporting from the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad
(outlook: liberal-conservative; profile: rather intellectual, compare
Frankfuerter Allgemeine, le Figaro). (Realising of course that such
snippets, lifted out of the context of longer stories of desperation
and desolation, might appear trivial)
From: WE PACKED OUR BAGS AND WENT OUT INTO THE DUSK, 29/3:
The mood in Tetovo is tense. And when a number of German NATO-vehicles
pass by the most important crossroads of the city, they are booed by a
group of youngsters. "My family lives in Belgrade and Kraljevo. Maybe
they're already dead because of those damned NATO-bombs", bawls a
young guy, dressed in a black leather jacket. He is a Serb. Among the
refugee ethnic Albanians [at the border] there is more understanding
for the NATO-actions. "Ist gut! Ist gut! Ist gut", mumbles the peasant
Adem, while he turns his back on his cows [which he can see on the
Kosovo side of the border] to drive back to Tetovo. He was a cook in a
Greek restaurant in Berlin for three years. "I don't want to be a
refugee for ever. If it lasts long, I'll go back to Berlin with my
wife and children"
From: FIGHTING FOR A PLACE IN THE TRAIN TO SAFETY, 1/4
The two sisters Elrame (30) and Sejtin (36) fled across the border
with eight children. They have been on the run in south-west Kosovo
for seven months now. Their men have stayed behind in the mountains;
they are fighters in the Kosova Liberation Army. Elrame, ravenblack
hair and a sunken face, sits on a blue bag saying 'New York'. "When
the bombardments began, the Serbians in our village Oplik became
besides themselves with rage. I saw a truck loaded with corpses, which
drove through the village hooting loudly. People buried their deads in
the garden because the road to the cemetery was not safe."
The two women say they support the NATO attacks, but they don't
understand why no ground troops have been mobilised. "We have been on
the run for seven months, but after the bombardments everything
escalated. Why did the NATO stay in the air. Why weren't they on the
ground?"
from LAST REPORTER IN KOSOVO TRAPPED, 31/3
The last Western journalist in Pristina is called Antonio Russo, of
the Italian station Radio Radicale. He manages to contact his home
base once in a while on a crackling phone line. His conversations are
dramatic, when Russo tells how his friends, his ALbanian colleagues,
the writers and photographers with whom he worked, have all
disappeared. Dead or on the run? Russo doesn't know. [..]
"I find it absurd that, while the Serbs are bombing us here, there is
still diplomatic consultation in Belgrade". he said yesterday. "I
cannot understand how it is possible that the diplomacy has been blind
for over a year now for the insincerity of Milosevic".
I already mentioned the IWPR reporter in Pristina. A relevant snippets
from his reporting:
from THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR, 30/3
We wanted these NATO attacks so badly. We protested for them last
year. I never dreamt that the sound of the incoming jets could horrify
me so much. But it's not the air strikes that scare me. What I fear is
their consequences on the ground and that there will be more killings.
I felt happy last night for the first time as I watched the Ministry
of Interior building in the centre of town be completely destroyed. I
proudly stood at the window, watching. There are only ashes now where
before the huge armoured police vehicles would begin their daily
tours. At least something of "theirs" has been destroyed and people
can finally see it.
The big mushroom of flames that lit the night looked so beautiful.
When we saw that huge, ugly building burning, we didn't care so much
about the consequences of the attacks. At last, something good was
coming from this tragedy, that shows no sign of ending. So what if the
windows in the nearby apartments were blown out by the blast? We just
hope that the attacks continue and that NATO planes fly even lower
tonight.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Joost van Beek
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