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MIJAK, YUGOSLAVIA
High on the rugged border between
Kosovo and Macedonia, US Army Sgt.
Donald Lindley sits in a clump of scrub
oaks, peering through binoculars down
onto the red-tile roofs of an abandoned
village. He and his partner, Spc. Brendan
Hagan, are spending the afternoon
perched on this hillside, overlooking some
of the most difficult terrain in Kosovo,
watching for anything that moves.
The soldiers are part of a platoon of 27
paratroopers from the Army's 82nd
Airborne Division. The Army moved them
here 2-1/2 weeks ago as part of an effort
to stop ethnic-Albanian fighters, and mules
carrying munitions and food, from crossing
into Macedonia.
The Macedonian government has criticized
the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo
for failing to close off the border sooner.
The success - or failure - of platoons like
this one to cut off supplies and rebel
reinforcements could determine how long
the unrest around Tetovo, Macedonia,
goes on.
Lt. Paul Grant, the tall,
bespectacled platoon leader here, says
his unit and the others stationed in these hills
are equipped to stop almost anyone that
tries to pass through.
In addition to this platoon, the US is
supplying unmanned drones to fly over the
hills of Macedonia, where government
troops launched an offensive on Sunday.
Rebels and hundreds of civilians fled
villages around Tetovo. Some refugees, on
arrival in Kosovo, claim they were fired on
by Macedonian helicopter gunships.
The soldiers at OP Bravo man lookout
posts 24-hours a day. They conduct
frequent patrols across the ridges and into
the wooded valleys. Often, Grant says,
they respond to radio reports from other
outposts and from helicopters that hover
over the border region looking for
suspicious activity. "We have night vision.
We have thermal imaging. We have
soldiers out in the country day and night,"
he says. "We see people all the time...
We're quite adept at finding people out
here."
The American outpost lies dozens of miles
from the main fighting in Macedonia. But it
is close to where the unrest started last
month, in the remote mountain village of
Tanusevci. There, Macedonian special
forces confronted a small group of rebels
and drove them out, together with the
entire civilian population.
Even now, the Americans occasionally
hear the distant boom of artillery, or see
the flash of a rocket launcher on a nearby
hill, a sign that sporadic fighting continues
in northern Macedonia.
The Macedonian Army is close
by. On a rock outcrop a third of a mile away,
Macedonian snipers look down into Tanusevci
- with orders, the Americans say, to
shoot anything that moves inside Macedonia.
The Americans often talk to the
Macedonians over the radio, telling them
when and where they are sending patrols,
so they don't get shot at.
Three weeks ago, American soldiers
engaged in a brief gunfight with five or six
ethnic-Albanian rebels, who were using
the school the Americans now occupy as a
base. All but one, who was injured, got
away.
Since then, the Americans believe, their
presence has for the most part
discouraged ethnic-Albanian fighters from
using this section of the border.
But they may be trying elsewhere. Last
Wednesday night, American soldiers
intercepted a group of about 30 men
working their way up a small valley a few
miles east, according to Col. Bryan
Owens, who led the patrol. The fighters
scattered, but the Americans captured
their equipment: five horses loaded with a
variety of weapons, including bolt action
rifles, AK-47s, sniper rifles, antitank
mines, rocket-propelled grenades, and
thousands of rounds of ammunition.
"That was a large operation for them,"
Colonel Owens says. "I think we set them
back."
Owens says the rebels came from the
town of Kacanik, about 10 miles away,
and worked their way along the border
region, picking up recruits. Some of the
men were from Kosovo, Owens says,
others from Macedonia.
Tough terrain
Army officials and soldiers in the field say
they can't completely stop border traffic
here, where there is a long history of
smuggling. The valleys are steep and
wooded, and interlaced with dirt tracks.
But Army officials say that what they can't
stop, they can at least disrupt.
"I don't think we can shut it
down," says Col. Gene Kamena, deputy
commander for maneuvers with American
peacekeepers in Kosovo. "But by
interdicting them, I think we're changing
their patterns. They know we're out there.
They're not very comfortable right now. I
want to make their lives miserable."
A Macedonian official, who asked not to
be named, said the government was
pleased with the efforts of the Americans
and other units in the American sector. But
he said fighters were still crossing the
border in the German sector of southern
Kosovo. The Germans are responsible for
the part of Kosovo that borders the high
mountains above the city of Tetovo, where
most of the fighting has been centered. He
said that 500 fighters had crossed the
border in the past two weeks.
The US Army is responsible for about 100
miles of border, almost equally divided
between Serbia and Macedonia.
It began to position soldiers along the
Serbian border last spring, when an armed
ethnic-Albanian group emerged in the
Presevo Valley, just east of the American
sector in Serbia proper.
The new president of Yugoslavia, Vojislav
Kostunica, has criticized NATO for not
doing more to prevent ethnic-Albanian
fighters from crossing that border.
NATO responds
In response, NATO has agreed to allow
the Yugoslav Army into a three-mile zone
along the border from which it was
previously barred. Yugoslav units began to
move into the zone last week.
In Debelde, a village on the Kosovo side
about half a mile back from the border, a
teenager named Faik, who says he had
fled from the Macedonian side of the
border, pointed to a forested ridge about a
half mile away. He says that until recently,
ethnic Albanians used horses to take food
and weapons through the forest into
Macedonia. "It's hard now to get food to
the fighters," he says.
Until the border troubles began, the
Americans had their hands full inside
Kosovo. The American sector of the
province still contains a large number of
Serbs, who live under a continuing threat
of violence. One of the biggest problems is
the destruction of Serb houses, perhaps by
ethnic Albanians who want to keep Serbs
who have left Kosovo from ever returning.
The US recently refuseda NATO request to
send more troops to Kosovo. Army officials
say they have plenty to seal off the border and
to keep peace within the province. But a Western
diplomat in Macedonia says, "They don't
have the numbers that would allow them to
do everything they would like to do."
Recently, NATO moved peacekeeping
units from the British sector of Kosovo to
help the Americans along the border. In
the area of OP Bravo, between 100 and
150 soldiers keep watch on just nine miles
of border, making it one of the
better-watched segments. But sometime
the terrain still defeats the Americans.
One night last week, a squad was out
patrolling when a helicopter radioed that it
had spotted people moving along a valley
more than a mile away. The soldiers
hurried to intercept them. They never
found them. "You've got to be down there
in the weeds and bushes," Lieutenant
Grant says. "But it's hard to move around
at night."
Almost all the people they stop turn out to
be civilians. Last Wednesday, Sergeant
Lindley says, soldiers spotted people in
Mijak from the lookout on the hill. He led
a squad down the hill at a jog to confront
them. By the time the soldiers got there,
everyone was gone but one old man. "It
turned out it was just some people getting
potatoes."