Crimes Of War

By Johanna McGeary/Pec

The horror stays locked in Gentiana Gashi's mind. Her eyes are red-ringed holes in a pinched, exhausted face. She came home safely to Cuska last week, but she is still harrowed by the unspeakable memories of May 14, the day she left. Back then, she stood beside her weeping mother, too terrified to cry out, as she watched the Serbs march her father away with the other men, hands clasped behind his neck. He looked back once, tears streaming down his face. Gentiana's mother wept silently too as she watched her husband's retreating figure until laughing Serbs herded the women out of the village, elbowing them with sly smirks, singing obscene songs. That night when the women slipped back into Cuska, it was Gentiana who picked through the charred pieces of bodies inside three smoldering houses to find the remains of her father. She used to give him massages, she said. Ten men had died in that house, but when her fingers touched a familiar torso, "I knew his back, so he was my dad."

To save her mother from the hideous sight, Gentiana helped three women gather up the human debris of her father and 34 relatives and neighbors into little bags. They tagged each with a name and buried them in two communal graves. Then all those who had survived fled, some to the hills above the town of Pec, some to Albania, anywhere away from the Serbian brutality.

Gentiana Gashi is 11 years old.

Under a hot sun broken by violent summer showers, Kosovo is waking to a midsummer's nightmare. The sickly sweet smell of decaying flesh hangs in invisible clouds across the province, and the ground offers up body parts. Bits of ashen bone--a thigh, a rib cage--and chunks of roasted flesh litter the floors of burned-out houses. Corpses, left where they fell, putrefy in fields and farmyards amid the buzzing of flies and the howling of stray dogs. As the first of Kosovo's Albanian refugees stream back across the borders or down from hiding in the hills, they are discovering just how pitiless a charnel house Serbian forces made of Kosovo.

But new life is blossoming. As the peacekeepers of KFOR steadily pushed their heavy tanks and APCs into the province last week, refugees from Albania and Macedonia followed right behind, heading home from rapidly emptying camps in cars crammed with family members, in tractor-drawn carts sagging under their loads, on foot, pushing wheelbarrows laden with bedding and babies. Uprooted Kosovars who had lived rough in the woods crept back to their villages through fields of blood-red poppies. Gun-toting soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army, smart in pressed camouflage, swaggered into cities and towns, posting guards along roads, securing villages house by house. And straggling before them along the roads leading north went the convoys of frightened Kosovar Serbs. They were heading into a bitter, unpromising exile along with the defiant Yugoslav troops in green or blue or black uniforms who had treated Kosovo to their savagery. Despite NATO promises of impartial safety, few Serbs wanted to test KFOR's protection against the reprisals they expected from vengeful Albanians.

What matters in Kosovo now is an accounting of what happened during the 78 days when Serbs rampaged through the province while NATO bombs were falling. Everyone has a tale of brutality to tell. The stories numb with their awful sameness. Yet as individual tales multiply, they form the shameful mosaic of a season of slaughter that spread across all Kosovo. The evidence before our own eyes is damning. So many Albanians have lost husbands, brothers, wives or children. Nearly everyone has lost his or her home and most possessions. The scale of the terror that is emerging--possibly 10,000 killed, as many as 100 mass grave sites at latest NATO count--leaves little room right now for any emotion but horror.

The striking similarity of the accounts reinforces their credibility and confirms the calculated nature of the atrocities. And last week, as a team of TIME reporters spent days in and around Pec (prewar pop. 100,000), it was possible to discern method in the Serbs' awful madness. Kosovo, the evidence suggests, was razed by a killing machine on orders that stretched directly from Yugoslavia's commander in chief Slobodan Milosevic to the armed thug on the streets. The stories of Pec reveal in miniature how the entire plan worked.

One might be tempted to write off Kosovo as just another Balkan bloodletting. But if the U.S. is to take seriously its credo of humanitarian intervention, politicians and the public need to understand how and why people in the supposedly civilized world fall prey to animal violence. Kosovo has bred fresh hatreds that will lie unresolved beneath every political and social change the West tries to make in this corner of Europe. And we are faced once again this century with the tasks of assigning individual blame for horrors committed in the name of national policy, and determining how best to bring the guilty to justice.

THE KILLING MACHINE AT WORK

The hunters drove out of Kosovo as the people they once hunted drove in. Stuck in a 12-mile-long convoy, Marinko sat atop his army tank surveying the exodus with the cold, dead eyes of a four-year veteran of the Yugoslav army. Marinko is a Kosovar Serb, and he concedes no defeat. "I will take my parents to Belgrade, relieve myself of military duties and return to my home in Pec," he said. "This is all I have. And if the Albanians want to come and take it from me, then let them make my day. I'll kill them. It will be guerrilla war." A ranking commander of the MUP--the Serbian special police--he seemed almost proud as he watched his men pack up for their inglorious retreat. "We worked closely here in March to clean up the terrorists [K.L.A.]," he bragged. And then he explained the awful tactics of destruction: "The paramilitary would go in first, the MUP would mop, and the VJ [Yugoslav army] would stand as the rear guard of the operation." There were different orders for all commands, he said as he took a pull on a cool orange Fanta. "We all worked in synchronicity. I alone killed 500 [alleged K.L.A. soldiers]." As for the killing of civilians, he added, "there are wacky members in every unit. And you just don't have the time to control them."

Pec revealed their handiwork. Except for a few shuttered apartment blocks and the main square around the Hotel Metohija, the city lay in silent ruin. Whole neighborhoods had been reduced to knee-deep rubble. Not a soul walked the streets. In Kapasnica, the section known as Little Albania, house after house, down every street in every direction, was a vacant husk, broken-walled and covered in soot. The only sound was the screech of jackdaws, the distant scurrying of a mangy dog and the drip, drip, drip of broken water pipes.

A gaunt figure stood outside No. 180 staring at what used to be the home of the 11-member Hasani family. Astrit, 21, one of five known survivors, had braved the empty city to find out how the family compound had fared. Scorch marks scarred the fresh white walls, renovated a year ago, that now rose only head high around debris. "Catastrophe," he said, afraid to enter for fear of booby traps.

Booby-trapping ruins. This was the nature of the Serbian killing machine, where one violent pass was not enough, where bodies could be found with 150 bullets in them. The cleansing of rich, urban centers like Pec was intended to rid the province permanently of large numbers of Kosovars and to destroy the Albanian intellectual and political culture. But Pec was also subject to a special fury. Going far beyond the brutal demands of military tactics or ethnic cleansing. Serbian forces swept through three times, wreaking destruction and expelling Albanians, including a final useless spasm of fury two weeks ago that razed most of the city and surrounding villages when Milosevic was about to surrender. "In Pec," said Astrit Hasani, "it was total vengeance."

The evidence is visible at house No. 19. The house spills its contents across the front porch, out the windows, across the garden. Broken glass mingles with an X ray, torn curtains and a pile of feces in the front hall. Across the long wall in the main room, letters are scrawled, 1 ft. high, in what appears to be blood: NATO AND KILLERS OF SERB BLOOD AND YOU KILL SERB KIDS. The opposite wall is sprayed with blood, and dried puddles stain the floor beneath. Next to the lettering are bloody hand prints.

Serbs took over the neighborhood of Kapasnica as bases for the Yugoslav army and the dreaded paramilitary units known as the "Frenkijevci," or Frenki's Boys, after their reputed leader Franko Simatovic. The shadowy group, say numerous sources, operates under Belgrade's direct control, a kind of special-ops unit run by the secret police. Rumor has it most members are recruited from criminal circles. Frenki's Boys like to dress in black without formal insignia but with a preference for cowboy hats, pigtails and painted faces. In Pec, as in the rest of Kosovo, paramilitary units like Frenki's worked in concert with the VJ and the special-police units, as well as local Serbian civilians who joined in the savagery. All lines led straight back to Belgrade, and this time, unlike in Bosnia, there is no wiggle room for Milosevic to pin the blame for atrocities on "uncontrolled elements" and independent paramilitaries. Here's how Western diplomatic and Serbian sources say it worked:

Operation Horseshoe was a military plan designed and run under the auspices of Belgrade's general staff--as if the Joint Chiefs of Staff had planned and executed an operation to cleanse some ethnic population out of Texas. The job of actually bending the horseshoe fell to a special coordinating team that drew on both the MUP special police and Serbian paramilitaries. Many of these killers were visible in parts of Kosovo last week--sometimes stripped to the waist, heads shaved, making threatening gestures to anyone who challenged them.

The man charged with implementing these ideas in Kosovo was General Sreten Lukic, a high-ranking member of the state-security apparat and a personal friend of Milosevic's. Lukic boldly described Horseshoe last fall to Western diplomats as a massive clockwise sweep that would finally crush the K.L.A. Lukic told his visitors he hoped to finish the mission by mid-October. But that plan collapsed when it became apparent that the K.L.A., which had become expert at hiding and fighting in Kosovo's rough hills, wasn't going to cave in easily.

So Belgrade's military chiefs went back to the planning board. Instead of the massive "sweep" of the original attack, they developed a wickedly clever alternative: a series of smaller sweeps against the K.L.A. that would be combined with a wholesale assault on the civilian population. This two-punch would have the double purpose of depriving the K.L.A. of ground support and permanently altering Kosovo's demographics. Cities and towns would be emptied to depopulate the province. The VJ would shell villages so the police and paramilitaries could move in to put the population to flight, torch their houses and kill any residents who refused to go. While the West was trying to negotiate a diplomatic settlement at Rambouillet, Milosevic was positioning his forces. By the time NATO started bombing in late March, the VJ, police and paramilitaries were operating in concert across Kosovo--in Pec, Pristina, Podujevo. The tactics were always the same, and slaughtering civilians was the essential prod to the exodus.

It worked. After the first offensive in late March, Serbian forces rarely needed more than a corpse or two to force people from their homes. Idriz Xhemojli was one of the villagers from Ljesane, a few miles east of Pec, who ran to the hills two months ago when Serbian forces stormed in and gave residents an hour to leave. "The whole village went," he said, and they watched from the shelter of a hilly wood as the Serbs torched their houses. Two people who refused to turn over cash were shot; two others taken away. The rest, some 300 men, women and children, roamed the woods for two months.

Only Haxhi Kadria, 80, and his wife Rukije managed to stay behind. They survived a second attack on April 27, when every Albanian house was burned. But the Serbs came a third time, just two weeks ago, in a focused fury to obliterate the whole of Ljesane. In the yard of their shattered house last week lay Rukije's body; her skull was crushed, and maggots had made swift work of her body, leaving only bones, rags and hair. The brown, rotting corpse of Haxhi lay nearby in the garden.

In the hamlet of Ruhot, Istref Berisha, 43, found 10 bodies and buried them in a grave near a brook. The victims had been shot, knifed or burned. On a nearby gate, someone has spray-painted in Cyrillic WHITE EAGLES, the name of the paramilitaries associated with Serbian ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj. Nearly two miles away at Staradran, K.L.A. fighters are investigating a long stretch of freshly turned dirt, 8 ft. by 65 ft., believed to contain as many as 100 bodies. A leg clad in a black sock pokes out of one hole; a jawbone lies in another.

GENTIANA GASHI'S STORY

Death came to Cuska--a town about three miles east of Pec--fairly late in the war. Its villagers were especially peaceable, hoping to get along with two predominantly Serbian hamlets on either side. They had voluntarily given up their weapons, they say, on previous visits by the police. Residents were going about their normal business on the morning of May 14 when 30 or 40 men in masks appeared. Lirie Gashi, 28, was one of the women packed into a courtyard where police and VJ troops sat down to drink raki--a local form of grappa--from little black glasses before lining up the women to demand money. One soldier told Lirie to unfurl her bun to check if she had hidden cash in her hair. As they ordered the women to strip off their jewelry, they casually fired bullets at their feet. When they discovered the senile Aimone Gashi among the women, the Serbs pumped an automatic round into his back, killing him.

Over the next hour, 33 men were ordered into three separate houses by paramilitaries in red scarves and cowboy hats. Ahmet Gashi, the father of Gentiana, was one of them. Rexhe Kelmendi, 49, was another. "I was taken with the second group down here," he says, pointing to a low, wood-and-brick two-story house. "I was together with eight others. When we entered the hallway of the house, one of the VJ gave us a lighter and told us to burn down the house. When I bent down to take the lighter, the shooting started. I started crawling, not lifting my head." He reached a window and tumbled out.

Others were less lucky; lined up against the walls in other houses, they died as one or two Serbs fired from left to right, execution style, then fired a second fusillade to make sure. The raiders forced Syle Gashi, 48 (the Gashis are a large extended family), to translate their commands into Albanian, promising to spare his life. When he jumped onto a tractor to leave with the women, a Serb grabbed him and thrust him alive inside a burning house. Caush Lushi, 52, was one of the wealthier men in Cuska. A Serb holding his son said he would free the youth if Lushi brought them all his cash. When he returned with the money, his son was already dead. The Serb frog-marched Lushi to the nearest outhouse, stuffed him in and carved the Serbian national symbol of a cross with four Cs into his living chest. Then he kicked the door closed and fired round after round through the door.

"They came to kill,"said Sadir Gashi as he comforted his cousin Gentiana and her grieving mother Mexhide. The widow's eyes were red with weeping as she showed us the photographic remnants of a happy marriage. "I will always be happy to have these good images in my mind," she said softly, running her hand over Gentiana's hair, "and not his body in that horrible condition." She stopped a moment, then smiled sadly. "I hardly manage to sleep, and when I do, I dream of him. But not of what happened--of the good days we had together."

Other Albanians could not avoid the sight of Serb brutality. "I cannot tell you what it was like to see my father with bullets ripping him from head to toe," said Jusuf Tafili, who saw the corpse of his father 41 hours after he was executed by unknown Serbs. Among the killers, Jusuf believes, were some local Serbs. "I hope the Serbs who did that won't stay here," said Jusuf, "because I know who they are. If I find them, I will kill them."

Men like Jusuf Tafili scare the Serbs left in Kosovo. As tens of thousands of outraged Albanians rush home, tens of thousands of frantic Serbian civilians plod out. Standing on Thursday morning inside a ring of KFOR tanks idling in front of Pec's Hotel Metohija, Sasa Deletic eyed the empty streets and muttered, "If the Albanians control the city, then I will leave. They are animals." At least 50,000 Kosovar Serbs have joined the 40,000 troops trekking north to Serbia. Says Stojanka Markovic, piling her entire household on a rusty red Yugo: "This is it. We're in a state of panic." Markovic, her husband and her 76-year-old mother were the last Serbs to leave Podujevo, a metropolis in northern Kosovo, as their former Albanian neighbors moved back in. "They watched us leave," she said, shaking with fear, "as we watched them leave months ago."

A NEW POWER IN KOSOVO

And as the Serbs go, the power vacuum in Kosovo is being filled not only by NATO but also by the K.L.A. So far, the rebels have left the retreating Serbs alone--though NATO commanders fear that won't last. But an armed K.L.A. certainly makes the province less friendly for any Serbs who dare remain. Under the military agreement, the K.L.A. is supposed to "demilitarize" and turn over its heavy weapons, but no piece of paper will make it give up its AK-47s. Or its dreams of independence--and revenge.

The K.L.A. forces immediately exploited NATO's victory to make themselves heroes to the refugees and grab a share of KFOR's authority. For an entire day, despite heavy cloudbursts, rebel units staged a massive victory parade that jammed downtown Prizren. They deployed everywhere around Pec, setting up checkpoints, patrolling the empty streets. "Tell KFOR the 131st Brigade of the [K.L.A.] is based at the publishing house," announced Commander Et'hem Ceku as he pulled up with troops in a minivan. "I am responsible for the civil and administrative matters of Pec." In the hills, K.L.A. units looked anything but ready to disperse. At an encampment near Ruhot, 30 fresh recruits in brand-new camouflage, some carrying expensive supersniper rifles, were being mustered into the unit.

Kosovo's Albanians set out from their refuges last week with such high hopes but arrived to such horror. The impact of those pit graves and decomposing bodies, incinerated villages and pulverized cities will haunt the Balkans for generations. In Washington the White House is busy searching for a leader to replace Milosevic if the defeated strongman falls. Clinton is expected this week to meet Milo Djukanovic, Montenegro's useful pro-Western President, and U.S. diplomats met secretly last week with Belgrade political opponents in hopes of promoting a homegrown challenge to Milosevic. Washington refuses to cooperate with Yugoslavia as long as he stays in power, but Clinton repeatedly emphasizes, "The U.S. and our European allies have no quarrel with the Serbian people."

The demise of Slobodan Milosevic alone would not suffice for Jusuf Tafili as he stood mourning his murdered father and the seven others buried together beneath simple wooden stakes reading A.T., S.T., R.T., I.A...."All Serbian men had their hands in blood," he said. "If they were not directly involved in crimes, they helped the criminals. They deserve no space in Kosovo anymore." Nor, he says, did Albanians "give all this blood to stay under Serbian hands." To repay their sacrifice and to exact justice, he says, the Kosovars deserve independence.

The horror in Kosovo has radicalized even those in the province who once considered themselves liberal. After a day in the ruins of Pec, his hometown, Dukagjin Gorani, a Kosovar journalist, said, "We have had enough of moderation here. The Serbs must go. Serbian will never be spoken here again."

For the Serbs and the Albanians, the fighting has stopped, but this war is not over. As his ancient, weathered face streamed with tears last week, Azem Mucaj placed roses on a dried puddle of blood at the entrance to Pec. The 72-year-old Albanian farmer had brought his 14-year-old son Gzim safely down from the hills after two months in hiding from the Serbs, reuniting the family of seven. On Wednesday, Gzim raced joyfully to the main road to cheer the KFOR tanks as they growled by. A car stopped in front of him. Five Serbs in black masks jumped out and, without saying a word, shot Gzim dead.

--With reporting by Dejan Anastasijevic/Vienna, Dusanka Anastasijevic/Podujevo, Massimo Calabresi/Cuska, Anthee Carassava/Pristina and Jan Stojaspal/Ljubenica

With reporting by Dejan Anastasijevic/Vienna, Dusanka Anastasijevic/Podujevo, Massimo Calabresi/Cuska, Anthee Carassava/Pristina and Jan Stojaspal/Ljubenica