Kosovo: an anniversary remembered

18/06/2010

It has been 11 years since NATO forces entered Kosovo as the conflict with Serb forces came to an end. Two who experienced that time -- an Albanian and a Serb -- share their recollections.

By Linda Karadaku for Southeast European Times in Pristina -- 18/06/10

An ethnic Albanian in a refugee camp during the Kosovo conflict. [Photo courtesy of Emine Berisha]

"Imagine, suddenly you lose everything: your home, your town, your family, even your identity papers," Emine Berisha says. She is remembering the situation 11 years ago, when thousands of ethnic Albanians were expelled from Kosovo by the forces of Slobodan Milosevic.

Berisha, 42, was among them. As a journalist writing for Bujku, the only Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo at the time, she had been reporting on the swelling number of refugees. And then she became one herself.

"I brought their stories to the public, up to the moment when a police unit expelled me and my family to the no-man's land between Kosovo and Macedonia. We stayed there for seven days, in an open field, before we could enter Macedonia," she recalls.

She describes the emotions she felt at the time: "pain, fear, anxiety over family and friends, weakness and humiliation, injustice and lack of trust". Being displaced from your home, she says, makes you feel like someone with no past and no future.

On June 10th 1999, NATO forces took control as Milosevic capitulated. The date brings back strong memories among those who experienced the conflict.

"The [peace agreement] signing gave me a ray of hope, but I was not euphoric," recalls Berisha. "Belgrade had signed many agreements before and violated them later. I waited to see the Serb Army and police get out of Kosovo and NATO troops come in, to be able to believe this agreement was going to be real."

While in a refugee camp, Berisha watched TV reports showing NATO troops entering Kosovo. She finally began to feel safe. Today, she works in the same office as Branimir Kostic, a 44-year-old Serb. History has knitted their individual stories together, but their memories and perspectives are different.

"I was confused. When the first NATO planes flew over Gjakova … the old complex of Charshia [was burned]. All my life plans were related to Gjakova. Watching a whole neighbourhood aflame, I was scared," says Kostic.

He served in the reserve unit of the Serbia and Montenegro Army for 80 days. He says he did nothing wrong and feels no guilt.

"But I feel sorry for what I have seen. I am convinced that if the official Belgrade policy would have been different, the bombing would not have happened. As any other Kosovo Serb, I still stress out at times over the fact that Kosovo is not Serbia anymore," Kostic says.

"On the other hand, if that means that there will be no more violence and murders in Kosovo, everything seems easier," he adds.

Kostic now lives in Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo. Since the end of the conflict, he feels like a foreigner, a refugee. "Wherever I go, I will feel I am from Gjakova."