This page originates from:  

The articles collected by: Mr. Benjamin Crocker Works, Director
SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute
www.siri-us.com
E-mail: BenWorks@aol.Com
The original page is at: Sirius Kosovo Archive ***

ARCHIVE: The KLA, Serb Police, Women, Children & Elderly

March 22, 1999

NOTE: This archive, intended for research purposes, contains copyrighted material included "for fair use only."

1. NY Times, Nov. 1, 1987; In Yugo, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict
2. The Independent; Oct. 25, 1998; in KLA "Kosovo Girls Want to Kill"
3. The Sunday Times Dec. 27, 1998; Warrior women of Kosovo die in action
4. AP Jan. 24, 1999; Nine KLA Prisoners Released; 16-year-old Merita Ramadani
5. Reuter Jan. 24, 1999; Freed Kosovo Serbs Say They Generally Well Treated
6. AP(?): Jan 23, 1999; Serbs, Kosovo Rebels Free Hostages On Both Sides
7. The Sunday Times, Nov. 26, 1998; Fundamentalist Mujaheddin joining KLA
8. The Guardian, Sept. 30, 1998; Kanun Vendetta and Children Hiding
9. Reuter; Jan.18, 1999; Serb Police let Refugees Evacuate
10. AP, Feb. 5, 1999; Devic: A Christian Orthodox Monastery Robbed In Kosovo

Introduction:

This set of articles covers some of the experiences of Albanians and Serbs in the current struggle in Kosovo and also attempts to see how elderly are mistreated.

Most troubling, as with most reportage from Kosovo, is the misleading way articles are written by pro-Albanian reporters with Reuters and AP in particular. In AP's account of the imprisonment of Merita Ramadani, there are several contradictions: how does she know Serbs are cursing at her if she doesn't speak Serb? Most Albanian allegations are uncontested by reporters and rarely is an opposing view presented.

In a Reuter article of Jan. 24, 1999, the experience of 5 elderly Serbs is characterized as "generally well treated" despite their assertions that they were beaten, threatened with knives, robbed and told by their KLA kidnappers not to tell what had been done to them. A companion article chooses to take off from the hostage release and divert the reader away to `spin' other "heroic" actions of KLA guerrillas having nothing to do with the hostage release.

In each of the major Police actions against fortified KLA stronghold villages, reporters and, recently, OSCE observers have seen the police freely allow the real civilians to evacuate these villages. But an article here describes one such evacuation as if it were entirely the idea of OSCE observers seeking to prevent another event of police brutality-human rights abuse.

In general, I am impressed with how bloodthirsty these Albanian-girl KLA volunteers sound in these reports. One does not read the same sorts of things coming out of the mouths of Serbs in their press.

The nuns of Devic Monastery have been harassed for decades and a Feb. 5, 1999 is just the most recent indignity Sister Anastasija and her sisters have been subjected to by their Albanian neighbors.

More articles will likely be added to this file in the spirit of fair and full disclosure. Judge for yourself.

Benjamin C. Works.

November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1; Foreign Desk

HEADLINE: In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict

BYLINE: By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times

DATELINE: BELGRADE, Yugoslavia

Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.

The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

. The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.

There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.

The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.

The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.''

Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.

Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.

''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.

In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.

As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.

Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.

Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''

The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''

Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.

Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.

He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.

Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Region's Slavs Lack Strength

While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.

Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.

But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''

''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.

Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.

Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''

But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.

Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.

The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.

2.  The Independent, October 25 1998

From Emma Daly in Kosovo

SHOTE wears the uniform of any modern 14-year-old girl: black combat pants, boots, leather jacket, baseball cap. But instead of a backpack or a handbag, she has a Kalashnikov, its yellow wooden stock carved with an intricate pattern, slung over her right shoulder - for Shote is a fighting member of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, known by its Albanian acronym, UCK.

"When you see your home town at war, burning, you have to come with your brothers to fight," she says when asked why she has become a soldier, one of a significant number of women fighting with the UCK.

Hamide, 21, is another soldier from the village of Obrinje, which sprung to notoriety last month when more than 20 members of the Deliu family were massacred by unknown hands. "We feel so sorry about that family. But this is war," she says, standing by the charred ruins of her family's house. "We are going to avenge them."

Both women received a month's military training in single sex groups, but both now work in mixed units. Shote is a military policewoman, which makes her more than an ordinary fighter. Hamide, who is dressed in a camouflage T-shirt - again for practical rather than fashion purposes - and black jeans, says she has done five tours on the front line. Shote claims to have taken part in all the big battles around the Drenica region, and yes, she has killed. "That's normal, we're in a war," she says. "When we know who we are killing, it's not difficult."

Neither woman will admit to fear. "With every battle I become stronger," Shote says. "I'm not afraid. We are prepared to fight. We don't do the cooking here, we fight with our friends," she adds, with a laugh - this last comment because I told her that when I asked an Albanian man if there were women in the UCK, he replied that they did the cooking.

Despite Balkan men's reputation for machismo, the women say they are treated with absolute respect by their male comrades, and as equals. As Hamide puts it: "They treat us like their sisters." And any man attempting to patronise or harass either would be, one feels, on dangerous ground.

Shote especially, despite her dark roots and dyed blonde hair, is a tough prospect - she trained in karate as a kid. "Yes I played with dolls," she says. "But I always played with toy guns. I liked them." She never had much time for discos or the movies. "We have our cinema here: this film is for real. When my friends talk about boys, I just look at them."

Neither she nor Hamide has a boyfriend now, though Hamide plans to marry at some point. "I want to have children in freedom, so they can go to school and have fun. Our only plan is to bring peace here."

Hamide admits she has considered the prospect of being wounded or killed. "I have thought about it, but I don't feel fear when I think about my people, and when I see how my friends fight." She finished high school but was unable to go on to university so she stayed at home for two years. One of her cousins was killed last month in action, on the same day as the Obrinje massacre. "Now we are much stronger, we are going to fight and we are going to avenge our dead, because the Serbs treated us not as human beings, but as fodder. They cut our people up like meat."

Shote, whose nom de guerre comes from Shote Galica, a famous Kosovar partisan killed in the Second World War, has also suffered losses. "Mentor was a student, he was killed fighting in Balacev. When you lose a friend, that is the hardest part."

Both women live with their comrades, sharing the chores. "I never imagined I would be a soldier," says Hamide. "I wanted to study music, I play qistelia [a traditional instrument]. We don't have the time to play now, nor the desire."

For Shote, living with her family in Germany when Kosovar rebels went to war with Serbian forces, the choice was easy. "My father is a soldier here - he came first, then I came to join him," she says, as if going to war with one's father was an everyday thing to do, as if most teenage girls fought alongside their parents.

"My mother is happy that I'm a soldier, but she's frightened when I go out on the front line," she explains. Her father is her best friend and her comrade in arms, but they do not allow themselves to be distracted by worry for one another during battles: "You just focus on the enemy. He cares about me, but he can't think about me when he's fighting. In the last offensive, in those hills, we were in a dangerous situation, so when we saw each other after, we were really happy."

It seems that Kosovar parents are proud of the children - Hamide says her family support her and her two soldier brothers in their work. As we are talking to Shote, two middle-aged soldiers stop to chat. Is Shote a typical teenager? I ask. "I can say with all my heart that she's different," says Adem Kiqina wryly. "He has a daughter and she's a fighter," Shote retorts, pointing at Osman Elshani, who adds: "She is 15 years old." Are you proud of her, or worried about her, or both, I ask.

"Just proud," he says. "I'm a soldier, my son is a soldier, my daughter is a soldier, and all my 11 children are going to be soldiers. We will continue this until we win our freedom."

3. The Sunday Times December 27 1998

by Juliette Terzieff

Poljance -- THE women crouched around an electric heater, shaking their heads and crying softly as Nausa Shalya remembered the courage of her daughter. "You would never find another like her. She was fearless," she said. "My biggest consolation is that Lyuleta died among her friends, doing what she had to. It was an honorable death."

It was also a horrific one. Lyuleta Shalya, 21, pictured, was shot dead with 32 fellow Albanian guerrillas in a border ambush - one of an increasing number of young women sucked into the bloody conflict between Yugoslav forces and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which is threatening to plunge the province back into full-scale war.

Last week, as the fragile ceasefire which took effect in October began to unravel, Lyuleta was buried alongside her fallen comrades in the village of Poljance, on a hilltop christened Heroes' Hill in their honour. Several thousand mourners, including about 500 armed KLA fighters, packed the cemetery, as the Albanian flag flew at half mast.

A keen singer who used to give concerts in the nearby town of Glogovats, Lyuleta joined the KLA after the Serbs' bruising summer offensives against the ethnic Albanians, who make up 90% of the population of Kosovo, killed thousands of people and displaced another 250,000.

"She made herself an army-style hat and marched right up to the central command," said her mother. "There was no stopping her. She was always singing happy songs, love songs, but it all changed when the fighting began. Her songs changed to those of fighting, war, and a victory she believed would be ours."

Lyuleta's military career was destined to last only a few months, however. On December 14, she and her comrades walked into a Serbian ambush while trying to cross the border from Albania, where they had been training.

Lyuleta, who was injured, watched as her fiancé, Hussan Bujupi, whom she had intended to marry as soon as they returned, died in front of her. "She was half-dragging and carrying Hussan along, telling us he was dying," said Commandant Drini, who was leading part of the group. "We could all hear her screaming." Then, in the next burst of Serbian fire, Lyuleta herself was killed.

Lyuleta was the first woman in her area to join the KLA, but many others have since followed. What started as a ragtag band of men with guns when fighting first broke out in Kosovo almost a year ago has since been transformed into a fully fledged army.

"It's got to the point where we have more people than guns," said Adem Demachi, a KLA spokesman. "The KLA is truly an army of the people. Anyone is welcome, we make no distinctions based on sex, only on skill."

Women, once confined to supportive roles such as nursing and administrative duties, now serve on the front line. Brothers and sisters, or husbands and wives, often fight alongside one another.

"I came back with my brother from Germany to join," said Shota, a young ethnic Albanian woman, cradling a Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle. "Our people have got to be free and so we will die if necessary for the others."

There were other women in black KLA uniform, too, at the funeral, among them Lyuleta's elder sister, Sevahar, 22, who is a nurse. "You were the best of all of us, why did it have to be you?" she wailed, as her comrades tried to relax her grip on the coffin.

More recruits look likely to flow to the KLA after a resurgence in violence last week, which flared after Serbian tanks and artillery launched a Christmas Eve crackdown against Albanian villages west of the northern town of Podujevo.

The Serbs claimed their action was in response to the killing of a policeman earlier in the week. "The terrorists attacked us, and we responded in an adequate manner, liquidating a number of them," said Bozidar Filic, spokesman for Serbian police in Kosovo. Albanian sources said nine people, including a 17-year-old student, were killed and many wounded in the attack. Hundreds more fled to the snow-covered hills. Yesterday Serb forces fired on the village of Obranca, near Podujevo, after a 62-year old Serb man was shot dead in his front garden, allegedly by the KLA.

Intensive diplomatic efforts were under way last night to prevent the clashes from threatening the October ceasefire.

 "This is the tensest period since the agreement was signed," said William Walker, the American diplomat who heads an unarmed force from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe charged with monitoring the accord. "More verifiers are the answer to violence."

Walker said the 600-strong force, which includes a substantial British contingent, would still be increased to 2,000, despite concern about its safety. A carload of western monitors trying to reach the area of fighting last week was threatened by Serbian forces. Diplomats said a so-called Nato "extraction force" of 1,800 men, based in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo, may have to be called in to protect the monitors as soon as it is ready in a few weeks.

Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, condemned the clashes last week, calling on the KLA "to renounce violence and engage in the political process. They will not achieve anything through fighting except increasing the misery of their own people".

A permanent political solution is still complicated: although Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president, is offering limited autonomy, ethnic Albanians remain divided on how much would be enough. The KLA, for its part, continues to insist on outright independence. "We've lived under the abuse of Milosevic's regime for too long. We are a majority ruled and ridiculed by a minority," said Besim, a KLA fighter.

 Any promise of a negotiated solution has a hollow ring for Nausa Shalya, four of whose 10 surviving children are actively involved with the rebels. "I will support them to the end," she promised last week. "It is difficult, knowing that your babies could die at any time, but I can be strong and pray that their bravery will be rewarded."

By Melissa Eddy Associated Press Writer

Sunday, January 24, 1999; 3:20 p.m. EST

LIKOVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The day after she was freed from a month in a Yugoslav military prison, 16-year-old Merita Ramadani said Sunday she wants to take up a rifle and avenge the deaths of her ethnic Albanian comrades killed by the Serbs.

 ``Today I'm with my family,'' she told The Associated Press, surrounded by her three sisters and youngest brother. ``Tomorrow, I'm going to put on an army uniform and take a gun and go to the front line.''

 Merita was among nine rebels freed Saturday under a secret deal negotiated by U.S. and European diplomats to secure the release two weeks ago of eight Yugoslav soldiers. The Yugoslav government, which denied that there was any such deal, has not acknowledged the release.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe hailed the latest release as ``an act of good will'' that could help ``create an atmosphere conducive'' to a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia.

About 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanians, and the vast majority of them want independence.

Peace with the Serbs was not on the minds of Merita and two other newly released prisoners Sunday, a day after they were brought to a regional headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army in Likovac, 25 miles west of Pristina.

Last month, Merita, a nursing assistant for the KLA, had just crossed back into Kosovo from neighboring Albania, where she had accompanied a group of wounded KLA fighters for medical treatment in the Albanian capital, Tirana. They and another group of rebels were ambushed Dec. 14 by government forces seven miles north of the border, she said.

Government troops killed 36 ethnic Albanians and captured nine, including Merita. They were taken to a prison in nearby Prizren,40 miles south of the Kosovo capital Pristina. After two days, they were transferred outside of Kosovo to a military prison in Nis in central Serbia.

The first two days were the worst, said another of the freed prisoners, Azem Suma.

``They beat us badly for 48 hours, using wooden and rubber sticks,'' said Suma, 26. ``Even the girl. I can't explain in words how they mistreated her.''

Merita appeared generally in good health. But the vacant, distant stare behind her glasses gave an indication of what she had experienced.

``They were beating us every day and swearing and calling us every bad name,'' Merita said in a clear, monotone voice. ``It was horrible -- I can't explain it to you in words.''

For more than a month, each of the nine was kept in a dark, 30-square-foot cell, shared with a Serb prisoner.

``It was terrible, especially for those of us who didn't speak Serbian,'' Merita said.

On Jan. 8, the KLA seized eight Yugoslav soldiers and offered to exchange them for Merita and the eight others. After five days of intensive negotiations, the rebels released the Yugoslav soldiers in what the government said was an unconditional move.

But the KLA insisted it had received assurances from U.S. and European mediators that the nine would be quietly released within 10 days. The deadline was Friday.

The ethnic Albanian prisoners knew nothing of the arrangement. The only hint was that in the past two weeks, OSCE monitors visited them in prison once every couple of days.

When the visits began, they said, the beatings stopped.

On Friday, the nine rebels were loaded into a prison bus and driven to Prizren. The guards never told them why.

``We were expecting to be punished for 10, 20 years, or that they would just kill us,'' Suma said. ``They took us to Prizren, and we thought we were going back to jail.''

In Prizren, they were handed over to international monitors Saturday and driven to Likovac.

As far as Merita is concerned, the conflict with the Serbs has just begun.

``For me this is my `second birth,''' she said. ``My friends, they are gone. But we are not going to betray their blood. I believe I'm going to take revenge for them.''

Serbs were "generally well treated" by the terrorists?

Reuters 24-JAN-99

NEVOLJANE, Serbia Jan 24 (Reuters) - Reunited with their families, two Serb hostages were happy but still visibly shaken on Sunday just hours after their release by ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo, saying they were generally well treated.

"We don't know where we were. They wouldn't say where they kept us," Zivka Milickovic, 68, told reporters in her home in this village in northwestern Kosovo where ethnic Serbs once had a majority, but now represent a tiny minority.

She, her husband, his brother and his wife, along with their neighbour, were kidnapped by guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) on Thursday.

They were released on Saturday afternoon with three other Serbs, following the intervention of international ceasefire monitors, at about the same time as the Serbian authorities freed nine KLA guerrillas captured after a clash at the Albanian border last month.

 A source close to Serbian authorities insisted the two developments were not linked.

Asked if the experience had persuaded them to leave the village, as many other Serb families have done, she replied: "If our neighbours decide to stay, we'll do the same. Where else to go?"

"One put scissors to my neck and asked about other Serbs. I said-- cut my throat, one can die only once," he said he told them.

The head of the international team verifying a shaky ceasefire brokered last October, William Walker, welcomed the hostage releases, saying: "These sorts of gestures, instances of confidence-building measures from both sides, could really help.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.All rights reserved.

4.01 p.m. ET (2102 GMT) January 23, 1999

PRISTINA, Serbia ÷ Serbian authorities were reported to have freed nine ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo Saturday, making good on an exchange deal for the release of eight Yugoslav soldiers two weeks ago.

At virtually the same time, their rebel colleagues released five elderly Serbs who were taken hostage Thursday. A source close to Serbian authorities insisted the two developments were not linked.

Ethnic Albanian sources said the nine guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were imprisoned in the southern Serbian city of Nis after a border clash last month which left 36 rebels dead, were released in western Kosovo Saturday afternoon.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which organizes a team of international observers to verify a shaky cease-fire brokered last October, confirmed the release of the Serbs, but not of the KLA rebels.

The Serbs were taken from their homes in the village of Nevoljane at gunpoint by masked men wearing the insignia of the KLA, fighting for an independent Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one.

After their release they were driven to safety in vehicles of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), the mission's press office said. There was no immediate word on their condition.

The releases were expected to go some way to easing tension in the volatile Serbian province, which rose to boiling point earlier this month with the alleged massacre of 45 ethnic Albanian villagers, raising the threat of NATO military intervention to prevent further bloodshed.

Earlier Saturday, William Walker, the American head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), had condemned the taking of the Serb hostages, saying it seriously disrupted efforts by the international community to restore order in Kosovo.

"People say I never say anything bad about the KLA but I think it was a very unwise and uncivilized thing for them to do to kidnap civilians and I want to condemn it,'' Walker said.

The KLA had been demanding the release of the KLA prisoners as in reciprocation for its freeing of the eight Yugoslav army soldiers seized earlier this month after taking a wrong turn as they attempted to recover a damaged vehicle.

The Albanian sources told Reuters that the nine KLA members were released at about 4:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) under an agreement reached by the KLA, the OSCE and the Yugoslav army.

The freed rebels were driven away in vehicles of the U.S. Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission and were taken to Likovac, west of Pristina, where they were turned over to the KLA.

The independent Belgrade-based news agency Beta earlier quoted the KLA's news agency as saying the five Serbs had been ''arrested'' because they were armed with two machine guns, three automatic weapons and 1,500 rounds of ammunition and had been harassing ethnic Albanians.

In the village of Vaganica, in northern Kosovo, some 10,000 ethnic Albanians gathered Saturday for the funeral of two separatist guerrillas killed earlier in the week by police.

A unit of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas fired a volley over the coffins of Sami Gashi, a 35-year-old father of two, and Afrim Hajrizi, 33, who had three children, after they were brought by truck from the nearby town of Mitrovica.

A local KLA commander said: "After five hours of heroic fighting between Brigade 142 and a unit of paramilitary police, we managed to evacuate most of the people. Two warriors were killed, but they didn't die because heroes don't die.

"They are an example of how the fatherland should be defended. May they rest in peace,'' he added.

The father of one of the dead said: "Even if I had 20 sons, I would give them all for the country.''

The KLA fighters died in what the rebels said was an attempt to secure the release of seven men detained by police in a sweep of several villages for KLA suspects.

7. The Sunday Times -London

November 26 1998

The arrival of Islamic fighters among the KLA augurs badly for a Balkans peace,

reports Tom Walker in Malisevo

MUJAHIDIN fighters have joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, dimming prospects of a peaceful solution to the conflict and fuelling fears of heightened violence next spring.

The Islamic fighters created havoc in the war in Bosnia, where they were regarded as a serious threat to Western peacekeeping troops, especially Americans. Their arrival in Kosovo may force Washington to review its policy in the Serbian province and will deepen Western dismay with the KLA and its tactics.

 For the Albanians, the Mujahidin represent a public relations disaster; for President Milosevic of Serbia, they are a propaganda coup, enabling his regime to portray the struggle in Kosovo as a form of holy war in which the Serbs are Europe's bulwark against Islam.

 Although there are only a few dozen bearded young Mujahidin fighters, resplendent in new KLA uniforms, they are a startling sight in the snowbound villages of central Kosovo.

 On an icy track near a KLA command centre yesterday, they loomed out of the mist on a trailer pulled by a tractor churning through the snowdrifts with snow chains, before they vanished again towards bases the armed rebels are building near the strategic town of Malisevo.

 "Captain Dula", the local KLA commander, was clearly embarrassed at the unexpected presence of foreign journalists and said that he had little idea who was sending the Mujahidin or where they came from; only that it was neither Kosovo nor Albania. "I've got no information about them," Captain Dula said. "We don't talk about it."

His comments exposed the factionalism of a guerrilla army with little overall interest in religious issues. Captain Dula, the brother of the village imam, said that he had no idea whether he was a Shia or Sunni Muslim. "You'll have to ask my brother about it," he said, erupting in laughter.

American diplomats in the region, especially Robert Gelbard, the special envoy, have often expressed fears of an Islamic hardline infiltration into the Kosovo independence movement. But until now there has been little evidence of Mujahidin fighters. The Serbs have displayed a few passports and identity papers which they say they found after their offensives near the Albanian border in the summer, and members of an indigenous Kosovan Mujahidin group were arrested in mosques around the industrial town of Mitrovica. The Yugoslav Army also exhibited Korans it said it had found hidden among arms smuggled across the border.

 American intelligence has raised the possibility of a link between Osama bin Laden, the Saudi expatriate blamed for the bombing in August of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the KLA. Several of Bin Laden's supporters were arrested in Tirana, the Albanian capital, and deported this summer, and the chaotic conditions in the country have allowed Muslim extremists to settle there, often under the guise of humanitarian workers. In Kosovo, US diplomatic observers are living in villages harbouring the Mujahidin, seemingly a recipe for disaster.

 The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe may have to rethink its deployment of US "verifiers" over the coming months. It is thought most likely that Kosovo's Mujahidin will have come via Bosnia, where many settled in rural areas after the war. Several groups are also held in Zenica prison by the Bosnian Government, which is anxious to distance itself from accusations of radical Islamic sympathies.

 "I interviewed one guy from Saudi Arabia who said that it was his eighth jihad," a Dutch journalist said.

The Guardian 30th September Main Section page 15

Vengeance of the most direct kind is making a comeback in the wild north of Albania, Owen Bowcott in Shkoder reports

GJIN Mekshi is a school teacher and a man of "good reputation". His flat is decorated with icons of the Virgin Mary. His calling involves reconciling vendettas and bloodfeuds.

In a cramped fifth floor flat looking out on Albania's semi-lawless northern mountains, he deplores the spread of violence and the lack of respect for traditional codes of behaviour.

As a leading member of the Shkoder-based Committee for Blood Reconciliation, he works within a moral framework devised by a tribal chieftain excommunicated for his "most un-Christian code".

The 15th century kanun (code) of Lek Dukagjini which regulates revenge killings to preserve the honour of the clan, or fis has been revived in northern Albania since the demise of communism. Up to 6,000 children are said to be in hiding from blood feuds.

But the code's harsh justice is no longer being respected. "The kanun is a good way for resolving arguments, but not in the way most people interpret it as always ending in killings,'! Mr Mekshi explains.

"The code doesn't allow women to be killed, but there have been cases in Tropoje [on the Kosovo border] this year where women have been forced into hiding by death threats.

"In some families there are no men left. So far no women have been killed."

Modern reproductions of the kanun are on sale in the Tirana's kiosks. Its author is thought to be Lek Dukagjin, Lord of Dagmo and Zadrima, who fought the Turks until 1472, then fled to Italy. His intention was to limit the cycles of bloodletting among the mountain tribps which sometimes destroyed entire communities by enabling a council of tribal elders to arrange a besa, or truce once honour had been obtained.

Enver Hoxha's regime suppressed it. But the privatisation of land, which reopened ancient disputes, and the breakdown of law and order last year, when Albania's armouries were looted, have encouraged direct retribution.

"Since the committee was set up in 1991 we have resolved 365 cases in Albania and 38 feuds abroad," Mr Mekshi records. "One feud has been running for more than 80 years.

"Sometimes the vendettas start through killings or land disputes but they also begin with a fight over a drink or a car accident. Usually it's a killing for a killing, a beating for a beating. The kanun doesn't specify how killings should be carried out, but if you mutilate a victim's face, attack him from behind or kill him after you gave your word not to, the bad blood comes back to you.

"Within the first 24 hours you may kill anyone from the clan to which the person who carried out the initial killing belonged-but not a woman. After that you can kill a member of the family. After a year, it must be only the murderer or whoever lives in his house."

The Committee of Blood Reconciliation has 3,000 members in Albania and is pressing the government to accept its arbitrations as part of the legal process.

"I have a good reputation and my father was a man of good reputation, too," says Mr Mekshi. "I am approached to arrange truces by those who are in hiding and dare not go out during the day. When we agree a deal, we sanctify the arrangement with a procession led by the local priest."

 NEAR STIMLJE, Serbia, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Ten women, two men and two boys sat on a tractor-trailer, nervously waiting for a policeman to decide on their fate.

 A dozen international monitors were standing around the vehicle. Several reporters were nearby. Only yards away, about 30 policemen, some from the traffic force, some in blue camouflage, were standing on the road, carefully watching.

 The refugees were fleeing Malo Polje, one of four villages in tense southwestern Kosovo the monitors said had been attacked by Yugoslav security forces on Monday.

 The Serbian policeman said the refugees should have their identity cards on them. One of the monitors explained they had fled fighting and had left their IDs at home.

 ``Why should they leave?'' said the policeman. ``They have nothing to fear.''

 The American monitor looked him in the eye and snapped back:

 ``They are afraid because all their men have been killed.''

 The policeman's face fell.

 ``We would have let them go anyway, you didn't have to do it this way,'' the policeman said.

 ``Mister, your job is to monitor and verify, not to escort people,'' he added, echoing accusations from the Yugoslav authorities that international observers in Kosovo, deployed in October to verify a truce, were overstepping their mandate.

 Shortly after the verifiers escorted the 14 refugees towards the nearby town of Urosevac, their boss, William Walker, head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), was ordered by the authorities to leave Yugoslavia within 48 hours.

 The government wanted him out of the country because he had accused the Serb police of massacring at least 40 ethnic Albanians in the nearby village of Racak on Friday.

 Villagers said the victims, mostly men, had been rounded up by police and executed. They appeared to have been shot dead at close range.

 Police said they had been killed after attacking them. The massacre, they said, had been staged subsequently by ethnic Albanians seeking to focus international attention on their demands for independence.

 18:10 01-18-99

Date: 99-02-05 11:48:53 EST

 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Thieves broke into an equipment shed at the farm of a Serbian Orthodox Church monastery and made off with supplies including tractor engines, furnishings, machinery and "even the front door," the Serb Media Center reported Thursday.

The incident occurred Tuesday night at the monastery of Devic about 30 kilometers (18 miles) northwest of Pristina in an area held by the ethnic Albanian rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

According to the center, the Mother Superior, known as Sister Anastasia, drove to a nearby police station the following day to report the break-in when her car collided with a vehicle containing several men armed with automatic rifles and wearing black uniforms and the black and red patch of the KLA.

No injuries were reported and the Mother Superior and two companions were not mistreated, the center said.

The monastery is home to nine Serbian Orthdox nuns who have continued to live there despite the conflict between ethnic Albanians, who are mostly Muslims, and the Serb minority.

The protection of Serbian churches and monasteries that dot Kosovo's undulating countryside is one of the primary concerns of Serbs in their conflict with the ethnic Albanians who demand independence