What follows has nothing (directly) to do with 9/11 testimony, John Kerry, polls or elections. It is, instead, the story of a few soldiers currently on patrol in the abyss known as
I've decided to continue my focus on Kosovo. It seems that the events in Iraq and Afghanistan today are paralleled by the events that occurred in Kosovo starting in 1998.
Also, in conjunction with my goal to translate one article per day, I present the following article. As always, translation errors are entirely mine.
At The Gates of Hell With One Finger on the Trigger
Kosovo, the powderkeg of the Balkans. A country of dreams, where no one works, half the cars are stolen and half the drivers have no license. Every family has a gun hidden in the barn. When not looking for a Serb to shoot, the Albanians shoot each other. Monstruous crimes are committed in the name of religion. This is the place guarded by the Romanian gendarmes and their colleagues from approximately 20 other countries.
The Road to Hell Passes Through the Gates of Paradise
Any traveler in this so called "country", ungoverned and ungovernable, is a true adventurer. To survive, you have to adapt to the rapidly changing situation. You have to improvise when you're often under fire.
In Kosovo, the dogs of war have again been unleashed. It was expected because it was always just buried under the surface of things. The bloodthirsty hand of war has effortlessly stirred up the dust and blotted out the light just when nobody was expecting it. In just two days of violence, 30 people have been killed, 600 have been injured and hundreds of houses and churches have been burned. Today, Kosovo has flanned the flames of hate that threaten to spill over the fragile borders of the former Yugoslav province. It will take the steady hand of men with guns from every corner of the world to maintain the peace. Only in the smoking ruins of Peja have I begun to understand the task set for our compatriots in keeping the peace in the Balkan powderkeg.
Signs of Poverty
As you enter into Kosovo from Serbia, descending down from the mountains in the south, one sees the signs of poverty everywhere. It's everywhere. So are the scars of war. So many ruins, houses, all destroyed. On the edge of the highway are crosses surrounded by shrubbery. Police patrols. Efficient, especially when the patrol is using its radar. It's a portable radar, which is why they call it "tulumba". It's a nuisance for anyone traveling in a hurry, who can't understand that the speed limit is 50 kilometers per hour [30mph] on highways, the outskirts of cities and, more justly so on winding roads through the mountains.
KFOR's good advice
The radar is also a good source of income for the Republic of Serbia's budget which this National Journal reporter contributed to personally. They should spend the money taken from the drivers on the roads but the roads are in terrifying shape, seemingly constructed for tanks. We sped through Pristina and Kosovska Mitrovita, the cities marred by the recent street riots, when we stumbled upon the province border maintained by the American KFOR soldiers. We tried every possible way to convince them diplomatically to let us cross into Kosovo. They couldn't have made things worse than they already were. They only let us pass to "the other side" when they were convinced we were little more than hired mules. They advised us, "Boy, stay on the right side of the road, drive 120 kilometers per hour [72mph], don't look right or left and don't stop for anyone whatsoever".
A Barrel of Poems And a Lot of Worry
The first impression one has of Kosovo is that of a beautiful wilderness. The river winding through the earth lets you forget for a moment what a sticky situation you've gotten yourself in. It makes you want to let go of all the concerns, grab a fishing rod and fish from the bank of the giant lake. The trees are bare as though it were autumn. Ruby sunlight filters through the dead leaves, the snow capped mountains in the distance, while the poetic, buckled road leads us over a formerly bombed out bridge (the first we've seen) and to the other side. Immediately we encounter other vehicles: Opels, Mercedes, BMWs, most of which have no license plate. Inside each one are three or four strapping young men. We notice them looking at our own ugly vehicle.
Driving through the villages, which we realize we don't know the name of a single one. There are no pleasant signs to inform us. To confuse confuse any enemies, I shaved my face. It isn't that we have enemies but to keep from angering the young men who stand in tight bunches of 5-8 gathered on the edge of the highway. It was a Friday, a few nights after the deaths, and yet the flames from the burning houses continued to illuminate this country and now we begin to understand the unrest.
Some cars filled with young men began to follow us but left us alone when we got in line behind a column of United Nation jeeps. It was difficult for our driver to keep up with our little old car, but it was worth it. We went through Mitrovita, where the streets were filled with old men who openly scowled at us, the convoy probably stirring up memories. They didn't look exactly happy but more like young men do who are aching for a fight, not saying with whom, not saying why, but just because they have nothing to do.
Phantom Economy
This could be an explanation for the war of misunderstandings for an educated mind, for whom Albanian separatists are waging non-stop. In Kosovo, with few exceptions, nobody had anything to do. You could ask yourself what anyone ever does. Demographically, this so called "republic" has two million people, of whom 90% are Albanians. The rest are a handful of Serbs, Turks and pardon the expression, Gypsies. This listing of ethnicities is rather non-helpful because to many observers it seems that there are strong distinctions within the ethnic majority.
Out of the two million people, only 102,000 have a job. The rest are idle. Half the population received unemployment, the other half nothing. To someone looking in from the outside, how people make a living, often not such a bad living, seems like a secret. You can see expensive foreign cars "crawling" on the highway. Why do we say "they crawl" when we are talking about the latest generation of luxury cars? But there are also car parts and gasoline for these vehicles. The cellular phones the people milling around are always talking on aren't free either. A Romanian wage earner could not afford the houses they are all building all over the damn place here yet Kosovo is full of unemployed people. Each family however has someone working abroad in the West. Just like in Romania, the "fugitive" sends money to those left behind. Probably so much that any passer-by can easily observe that the Kosovo economy truly is in the toilet.
Police Who Do No One Any Good
In this country we see three or four factories, the rest are suffering from the country's ills. There is a single electrical power station but all the Albanians have electricity; it spills into the streets at night. To really see what's going on in this place you have to spend some time to understand its needs. We were given valuable information and had other items confirmed by Captain Tiberiu Filipas, an officer in the Pec (or Peia) detachment of Gendarmes. Captain Filipas is a devilishly clever and mature officer of 28 years, wise not just in military knowledge but also about the wider impact of what goes on here.
To be sure, we are amazed that Kosovo drivers can navigate this wretched place. At 40 kilometers per hour [24mph], sometimes they stop in the middle of the road to chit-chat with someone standing in a doorway, but when they're on the main road without anyone to talk to they'll stop and park and sit for a while. They call it "improving" the paint. Why not stop and look around for a while? Half the cars meandering through the area are stolen. They're probably sent from those who "work" abroad. A German police officer working on a case came to Pristina and found a car that had been stolen a year earlier, our gendarmes told us.
During this transitional phase, half the drivers here do not meet the requirements to pass a driver's license test, nor do they want one. On Saturday we grew frustrated and passed an old man who was driving 25 kilometers per hour [15mph] down the middle of the road in a BMW sports car which he was struggling to control. Through the zoom lens we saw a driver wearing a turban; he looked like he probably got his license during the time of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. The local police came by in a jeep without any western police officers inside. In fact, we never meet any, just their jeeps. We understand the circumstances for them, they have families with many relatives, some of them quite poor, to support. You can't "spoil" these officers, as they say here, in public. They are representatives of a corrupt government and it goes all the way down to small bribes. But who is the government here? We'll give you a few examples to show you.
Even Law Enforcement Breaks The Law
Practically speaking, in Kosovo there are no laws. If the police catch a man walking down the street with a gun, what are they going to do? They'll take it, give him a verbal warning or at most, a ticket. Anything else? The soldiers of the 191st Battalion told us about one terribly cold night when they had to wait at a checkpoint like some unwanted visitors. "It was last year and I had caught someone. We have photographs of him on the wall there. He was an Albanian whom we had caught "spying". I called the local authorities to turn him over to them. They came, they spoke with him for a moment and let him go. Why did we catch him sneaking around if not that he was spying on us?" But an even crazier thing here concerns fiscal management laws. Captain Filipas told us about it, "Kosovo has absolutely no governmental economic oversight such as the Department of Revenue. Products here are not regulated and require no stamp so long as the inspector is bribed. Because of this, life for a business person is easy. They don't have to keep accounting records; in fact it is better if they don't write anything down at all. Nobody is keeping track of goods entering or leaving the country. Because of this, it's impossible to measure the economy. You would be surprised how many Romanian business people are here, attracted by the unlimited opportunities".
Mystery of the Pink Houses
Sometimes however we find instances of the laws being enforced in this region. Three fourths of the houses here are "undressed". Built out of brick with one or two floors, they are unplastered like the Gypsy houses in Bolintin [Romania]. Kosovars don't leave their houses unplastered so the horse can stay in the living room but to avoid the law which imposes taxes on all finished houses. Because of this, three fourths of the families in this region escape the tax on finished houses. The majority of these "pink" houses do not have windows; they simply cannot be found. Nobody has any. What then are they to do? Our mischevious Captain Filipas explained the situation to us, "When the war was over, the families who had lost people were given a compensation equivalent to 30,000 Euros. But there was one condition. The money was not given in cash but in construction materials, concrete and bricks. I know a business man who goes around selling bricks for 5 cents apiece. These are true bricks, big ones, not like our kind. Can you imagine how many [Romanian] bricks you could buy for 30,000 Euros? They want to build nice houses here but they don't have any money. You know what kind of houses they have? Look at this room here (the room which we were in had two standard NATO containers for furniture). In the corner they have a stove, on this side some beds and then a toilet."
Lieutenant Cocos jumps in, "Some built walls with their bricks. The other day during a search we had to climb over a brick wall that was 2 meters [6 feet] high." Then the alarm suddenly goes off. Everyone is ready at their posts. It will be a long, stressful night and everyone has their finger on the trigger.
Serbs Are Thankful for Romanian Gendarmes
"In the name of the Serbian people, on behalf of Interior Minister Dragan Jocic, as well as on my personal behalf, I would like to thank with all of my heart the members of the Romanian Gendarmes stationed in Kosovo for their courage and for their heroic conduct". This is a portion of the letter that the Serbian Gendarmes commander, Goran Radosavlievici, sent to his Romanian counterpart, Tudor Cearapin, according to Mediafax. Radosavlievici's letter to Cearapin stated that the Romanian Gendarmes had demonstrated "true courage and exceptional bravery in their defense of the Serbs, churches and monastaries." "For all of these reasons you should be very proud of this unit" added the Serbian commander.
I realize I should add here that when I use the word "gendarme" I am referring to something akin to Military Police. They are trained to use weapons and military tactics and armored vehicles but are used primarily for law enforcement and civil order.
A lot of countries around the world use them. In Italian they're called the "carabinieri".
Anyway, that's a little slice of what the day-to-day life in Kosovo looks to a few Romanian journalists and gendarmes.