Inside Kosovo: A VISIT TO A DEVASTATED LAND

Poor Kosovo. This place of exquisite beauty, of red poppy fields and lush green forests, of medieval fortresses atop majestic mountains, seems doomed to be saddled with the epithet “war-torn Kosovo.” It has been turned into a battlefield, a place where distinctions between civil and military life have been erased, first by Serb troops and then by NATO bombs. Kosovo last week was a place of constant machine-gun fire, of thundering NATO jets and of an awareness that each step could be your last.

If there was any doubt that Slobodan Milosevic was at the heart of this transformation of terror, it ended last week when a U.N. war-crimes tribunal announced it had indicted him and his subordinates on four counts for Serbian actions in Kosovo. It was the first time such a tribunal had ever indicted a sitting head of state, but the monstrosity of what has happened in Kosovo, the tribunal explained, demanded dramatic action. The evidence is easy to see, both inside Kosovo and outside its borders. Kosovars in the refugee camps of Macedonia and Albania have few comforts other than a respite from life on a battlefield. Inside Kosovo, there is no distinction between combatants and noncombatants. It is a place of total war.

Serbian troops have demolished block after block in Pristina, the provincial capital. Beauty shops and bookstores are burned; cafes, stationery stores, pharmacies, a baby shop with infant supplies and toddler toys, accountants’ offices–all are a shambles. Desks and office chairs are overturned; drawers with papers are strewn about. Glass storefronts are shattered, window blinds protruding onto the street like broken ribs. There is no evidence of bombs or missiles: almost every roof is intact. The signs of rage and destruction–before the war, this was a city of 250,000 people, mostly Albanians, and the devastation is city-wide–evoke tornadoes and hurricanes.

Outside the city, in villages from Glogovac to Mitrovica to Gnjilane, the scenes are even eerier. Perhaps 19 of every 20 homes along the road have been burned. The majority of the red brick houses have obviously not been hit with bombs from overhead. The exterior walls are blackened from fires that roared from within. If the Serbs torched only dwellings that sheltered K.L.A. members, it was not apparent to neighbors. Gypsies who live in Vucitrn, for example, spray-painted ROMI on their homes to identify themselves as non-Albanians; it has succeeded for at least the dozen still standing.

There are many signs of NATO at work as well. Office buildings, bridges and other large structures have been exploded, leaving ragged craters. Farms, houses and even some villages are pockmarked with the concussive signatures of a war conducted from the air, not always with perfect aim.

On the ground, the exodus continues. At a bus station in Pristina, about 100 Albanians, mostly old women, waited last Tuesday to board for the 60-mile drive to Skopje in Macedonia. An Albanian woman whispered that the trip cost 20 deutsche marks (almost $11) and took about four hours. With a Serbian army escort urging visitors to clear the area because “it is too dangerous,” the woman was asked why she was leaving. The escort interjected, “Because of NATO bombs, right?” The Albanian woman glared. “No! The police!”

Last week reporters were taken to a Pristina suburb to view the site of a NATO cluster-bomb attack. The bombs had missed the intended target, a welding factory, Serbian officials said, and hit an adjacent Albanian village, destroying 10 homes and injuring seven people. That did appear to be the case; the distinctive craters left by cluster bombs marked a vegetable and herb garden, releasing an incongruous aroma of onions and chives amid the debris. Roofs were shattered, and one bomb had landed in the center of a family’s living room. Why bomb here?

As I wandered away from the Yugoslav escorts, a little boy recognized a Western accent and ran to get his father. The man waved me inside. In a furtive whisper, speaking in Albanian with a few words of English, he said two Yugoslav tanks had been hidden in the village. Why bomb here? Because military police had been living in the Albanian houses. At night they stood outside those homes and fired rockets at the planes. Showing pictures of his children, the man said his family had left for Macedonia. He would join them soon. In Kosovo you are a potential target all the time. The only question is whose cross hairs you are in.