Aslanis are one of the 600 families who have taken shelter in Northeast Albania within the last six months. The gradual increase in the refugee populace has forced local administration with guidance from UNHCR to place the recent arrivals with host families. When space in Kukes and Kruma has become scarce, and Albanian families no longer able to host their guests, an emergency relocation program has been launched. Some refugee families have already been transported to safer areas in Southern and Central Albania. Currently Kukes hosts 42, and adjoining Has region 172 refugee families. According to the latest counts UNHCR reports the total refugee population in Albania proper as 1,500 people.
Infrastructural challenges are a way of life in mountanious Northern Albania, but the most serious, hindering aid efforts, is lack of roads, or the condition the existing ones are in. UNHCR is the main organization to channel aid to the refugee families as well as their hosts. Xhemil Shahu is the field coordinator for UNHCR office in Kukes, and a local. On the winding road to Kruma he tells how they cannot even reach some families during winter time: "Roads close from snow, and some villages don't even have roads, so we have to wait until snow melts to monitor and report the refugee movements."
According to Brian Watt, an aid worker with the region's well known Humanitarian Cargo Carriers (HCC) Northern Albania is a time bomb ready to explode. The crime rate has doubled with the arrival of refugees and the aid organizations that have come into the area. The region, stricken with unemployent and poverty, and a culture that takes pride in their possession of fire arms, armed robberies and looting of warehouses which aid agencies rent from locals are everyday occurances.
Tropoje is approximately 6 hours to the west of Kukes. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the monitoring entity, has declared it out of bounds for international aid agencies operating in the region. UNHCR has emptied their offices in Bajram Curri three months ago, after being the only aid agency left there following months of armed attacks and looting of aid convoys by bandits. OSCE currently operates out of the small town's only hotel, confined to their quarters with the last of their vehicles stolen.
Alexandra Morelli, a 35 year old Italian woman responsible for UNHCR's Kukes operation allows me to accompany them during their operation to Bajram Curri. She also reminds me that once there I will be on my own, in other words, there are no guarantees. Since Bajram Curri has been declared off-bounds the refugee families trapped in the area have been left without food and clothing. The few convoys set off from Kukes have had a faith similar to their predecessors. UNHCR has stopped further convoys from embarking two months ago.
We meet in front of the UNHCR headquarters in Kukes. Albana, the Shkodra coordinator for the agency is also accompanying us. Alexandra, with Albana's help will try to relocate 30 refugee families. Around 200 people have to be contacted seperately to inform them of the plan and to find out their choice for a safe heaven.
Alexandra is furious. She has asked for an armed escort a few weeks ago, but all they got is a car which looks it is ready to retire and an unarmed driver. From the moment we set out in Kuke, until we arrive in Bajram Curri hardly anyone speaks. The car pulls to a halt, 6 hours later in front of the hotel building. A receptionist holding an AK-47 rushes us inside. We mount the stairs to find armed presidential guard watching the entrance to the room which OSCE has converted into an office.
Bill Foxton, head of OSCE's delegation to Tropoje and a former soldier with one arm lost in combat is in his mid-fifties. Waving the metal hook that completes his arm from elbow down, he quickly lifts the gloom off us with his bright personality and quick witted British humor. As he is giving us a quick overview of the recent shootings in town as well as border refugee movements, Sally Baker of teh British aid agency, Operation Angel enters into the room.
Sally, also known as "The Angel of Mostar" the woman who saved the children trapped in Mostar, Bosnia from Serbian cross fire by evoking an unusual UNHCR evacuation plan, now is trapped in the hotel with us, furiously nursing a bullet wound in her leg. She refuses to get treatment until the refugee children that need special medical care are transported from Bajram Curri to a safer area. The wound by now is a week old and is forcing her on a painful limp. She says the two men who attacked her knew who she was. She tells us that after shooting her they called her a terrorist. "Terrorist" is a term the Serbian forces have been using in Bosnia while addressing the opposition.
Following a night filled with sounds of constant shelling and automatic weapons, I make an early start the next morning. Prenda Ismaili, a translator for UNHCR, is my guide as I try to find the Kosovar families and interview them. In her mid-thirties, she is a local to Bajram Curri. Prior to the refugee crisis she has been a teacher of English in Bajram Curri. Going around town on foot she clings to my arm, cautioning me to be careful at each step. When we reach the first refugee shelter, the ground trembles with an explosion. Children who have been playing outside the building rush inside, cheering, as if this is part of a game. "It was a hand grenade," says Prenda, "it was close, must have fallen ten meters away."
Haxhi Lokai, with his weather-worn face and lean body, looks like a men who makes a living working outdoors. He says he had a small farm back in Kosovo. He sounds like any other farmer, proud of his land and his work, until he starts talking about his escape from Kosovo. Lokai was one of the few men that joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) while he still resided in Kosovo. But it was that one day at the border crossing which turned him from a soldier into a refugee. As he recalls the day when he along with his cousin Florim and twenty others they were ambushed by the Yugoslav army, his voice falls into a routine, mechanical tone. It almost seems unreal the way he tells the story, as if he has memorized it and now recites the words which unconditionally follow one another. He has told the story so many times that he says the words have lost all meaning for him.
Lokai had never been in close combat before. Prior to joining the KLA he knew how to use a rifle, but he had never had any reason to use it on a human being. They have been receiving news from neighbouring villages that the Yugoslav Army was advancing with bulldozers towards their village. By now it was systematic. They would raze the houses, kill and burn the livestock while looting the remainders. As villagers were informed by those fleeing the destruction, or by the KLA, most would flee to the mountains. Lokai decides to send his pregnant wife and three children from Batuj to Gjakova, "I thought they would be safer there. As long as I knew they were safe I would be able to fight for the UCK." Following his family's departure Lokai joins in clashes around Unique between KLA and the Serbian forces. KLA cannot hold for too long against the better organized Yugoslav army. Seeing his friends captured during the ambush, Lokai flees across the border into Albania. Groups of refugees he meets in Tropoje tells him of a refugee group that fled Gjakova for relative safety in Tropoje. He cannot find his wife among them, nor anyone who has heard of her. He decides to cross the border back into Kosovo. Gjakova is in ruins, and there is no trace of his family. He follows a refugee convoy into the mountains where he continues to inquire after his wife. Noone has seen her, noone has heard of her where abouts.
Lokai's story is similar to many other refugees that have to leave their villages in haste while escaping the Yugoslav army. Stories like this also pose an additional challenge to UNHCR's relocation programs as they run the risk of families being further seperated. Foxton tells us a story on our last night at Bajram Curri. It is a drill he uses as a way of describing his children what it is to be a refugee. He says he gathers them in the living room and gives everyone exactly five minutes to gather their belongings. Everyone is handed a plastic bag. Later they compare what they have been able to salvage, to take with them on their journey. "Pathetic," he says, "we had a can of Tuna and a hair dryer in one bag. Noone had taken our passports or our birth certificates. We weren't even sure where they were in the house!"
There were twelve of them, old men, women and children, holding hands. They had to cross the mountains to leave Kosovo. As they crossed the no man's land into Albania Father Ismaili's weak heart could no longer stand the hunger and exhaustion. They buried his dead body to a nearby Albanian village. They then advanced onto Bajram Curri and from there they came to Kukes. In the small room where they wait for the day to return Kosovo, Mother Mire Jasiqi asks from her teenage daughter her only posession she could bring with her from Kosovo. It is an old notebook that Alberta takes out from under her wool sweater. She turns on a page and starts reading:
"Despite the war, it was a beautiful day in my village in Kosovo. In every corner where men breathes there is life and joy, just like that day in all the villages. Everyone was proud for the direction that Kosovo was taking..."
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