As Winter Arrives in Kosovo, Relief Groups Struggle to Fulfill Their Missions

Anna Young, a British staff member of Catholic Relief Services, looks dismayed as she drives by the burned-out buildings of this town in central Kosovo. A day earlier, the streets were teeming with townspeople who had returned to assess the damage to their homes and had talked about moving back. Now the townspeople are nowhere to be found. There are no clues as to why they left, where they went, or when they might return.

“We have to find the population,” says Ms. Young, who manages the charity’s work here. Clearly frustrated by the situation, she adds: “You can’t help people you can’t find.”

While much of the world’s attention this fall has been focused on aiding the survivors of Hurricane Mitch in Central America, voluntary organizations continue to enter Kosovo, which this year has been a major battleground between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90 per cent of its residents. During nine months of fighting, Serbian military forces razed villages, burned homes, and destroyed food and medical supplies in their effort to subdue the Kosovo Liberation Army, a guerrilla group that seeks independence for the province. At least 1,000 people died, and more than 200,000 were forced to flee from their homes.

Since a fragile cease-fire agreement was signed in mid-October, charities have been racing to shelter thousands of people and equip them with stoves and other supplies before winter arrives in earnest. Already, the region’s first heavy snowfall has hampered the movement of people and supplies.

Because the cease-fire has made it easier for voluntary groups to provide relief, the number of charities working in the province has jumped from five just a few months ago to about 35 now.

But assessing the needs of local residents remains difficult, as Ms. Young can attest, because many people displaced by the fighting move from village to village searching for food, shelter, and family members.

The relief work is further complicated by the presence of land mines, by continuing concerns over aid workers’ personal safety, by competition and spotty communication between charities, and by the Serbian government’s deep suspicion of private aid organizations.

In March, Kosovo made headlines when Serbian forces killed about 100 civilians while searching for members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Government forces surrounded the region, which they believed to be a guerrilla stronghold, and denied access to the few aid organizations that sought to bring food to those trapped inside.

Catholic Relief Services had its goods confiscated once, and humanitarian workers were threatened regularly by Serbian police guarding checkpoints. The situation became so untenable that Catholic Relief Services suspended operations for much of September.

“There was just nothing we could do,” says James Weatherill, an American worker for Catholic Relief Services in Kosovo. “We were prevented from working.”

Amid the worsening humanitarian situation, however, political pressure from around the world — including the threat of NATO air strikes — forced President Slobodan Milosevic to ease restrictions on outside aid. But the bloodshed continued. Rising body counts, and television and newspaper images of people living out in the open because their villages had been destroyed, prompted more humanitarian groups to set up relief efforts in Kosovo.

“There was no new money for this place until August,” says David Wightwick, a British citizen who is field coordinator here for the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles charity that provides emergency medical relief and health-care training.

Access to the most-affected regions is much easier now, and aid supplies are more plentiful. Still, problems abound. Many of the difficulties stem from the lack of a humanitarian-aid law in Yugoslavia. Charities are in a sort of legal limbo, which has led to all kinds of complications. The government does not register charities, so importing goods can be a nightmare for humanitarian groups. The charity Doctors Without Borders, for instance, has been waiting for two months for permission for four trucks with vital supplies to cross the border.

Because the organizations lack official status, it is illegal for them to have two-way radios. That presents a security concern, since cellular phones do not work outside of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The police, the guerrillas, and Serbian civilians are all armed, and at one time or another each group has harassed aid workers.

Land mines are quickly becoming another threat as aid workers gain more access to the war-torn region of central Kosovo. In late September, a doctor for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed after the truck he was riding in hit a mine.

At this point, no voluntary organization is actively searching for land mines. There are currently five known minefields in Kosovo. Some humanitarian-aid workers are galled that they are restricted from disabling the mines, even when they have the expertise to do so. Removing mines is considered a military action and therefore outside the jurisdiction of humanitarian organizations.

“We can draw attention to the problem. We can warn and mark mine sites,” says John Campbell, safety adviser for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. “You tell me why I can’t destroy them. I am supposed to be a humanitarian worker.”

As a security precaution, many aid charities send out vehicles only in pairs. Such a measure ties up staff time in a period when it is very difficult to get permission for more international staff members to enter the region. Indeed, the inordinately lengthy wait to get visas for expatriate staff members may be the greatest problem caused by the humanitarian charities’ undefined status.

The International Rescue Committee, for example, has been waiting weeks for visas to be issued to about a dozen workers who are ready to enter the country as soon as they receive them, says Barbara Smith, the charity’s vice-president for overseas programs.

Expatriate staff members are especially necessary given the ethnic nature of the Kosovo conflict. It is unsafe to send out ethnic Albanian staff members by themselves because Serbian police could stop them at any moment. Serbian staff members, similarly, are not sent into areas known to be guerrilla strongholds.

“Locals don’t go out alone,” says Mark Davidson, an American who is Catholic Relief Services’ deputy representative to Kosovo. The shortage of expatriate staff members means that the charity has not been able to monitor the distribution of the aid it has delivered to insure that it is being used appropriately. Mr. Davidson says he must use his resources for assessing the situation and distributing food. As more expatriates arrive, monitoring will take place. “For now,” he says, “we have to make choices.”

The Yugoslav authorities are not predisposed to help the humanitarian organizations: Since most of the aid recipients are ethnic Albanians, the charities are viewed as aiding the guerrillas. And indeed, aid organizations are sometimes forced into situations that appear to justify those concerns.

For example, two months ago, Doctors Without Borders set up operations in the town of Qirezi in central Kosovo in a health-care center founded and run by a medical student who belongs to the Kosovo Liberation Army. The third-year student wears army fatigues, carries a machine gun, and has a revolver tucked in his belt. An armed guard stands at the door. Uniformed guerrilla soldiers help unload and reload the trucks.

The Doctors Without Borders team carries on its work there as usual. Keith Ursel, a Canadian volunteer who has helped coordinate the charity’s program there, concedes that the scene would disturb Serbian officials, but he adds that such cooperation gives his charity an effective way to help those in need.

“Everyone here in Kosovo is connected to the Kosovo Liberation Army one way or another,” says Mr. Ursel. “There isn’t much we can do about that.” He realizes that if a Serbian official were to witness the action, the organization might get thrown out of the country. “It is a risk we have to take,” he says. “This is where the people are.”

And there are few other options. The town’s former clinic was burned in the fighting. A physician with whom Doctors Without Borders worked in a neighboring village was murdered. Local residents say the doctor was assassinated by Serb police. What’s more, if Doctors Without Borders did not supply the clinic, another organization would. In fact, a different charity was working at the guerrillas’ clinic the day before.

Relief charities have tried to avoid duplicating one another’s efforts by creating committees to deal with issues such as logistics, health care, food, and community services. Many of the aid convoys carry supplies from several groups.

But the system isn’t always effective. For example, although two separate medical teams visited Qirezi within 24 hours, local residents said no food had been delivered to the village for weeks.

While the lack of coordination is the result of multiple problems, it’s also clear that charities have some less than altruistic reasons for rushing to the same sites. The charities want to preen in front of journalists and potential donors.

“Everybody wants to be in the sexy areas,” says Mr. Ursel.

Even though charities are working to reduce the problems caused by lack of coordination, the real problem here is that most residents will spend the winter living in the roofless shells of ruined buildings, forming makeshift rooms out of donated wood and plastic sheeting, heated with small portable stoves.

Charity officials have been focusing on feeding people and treating their health problems, and only now are soliciting for reconstruction projects. “It was considered politically incorrect,” Mr. Davidson of Catholic Relief Services says, “to ask for construction aid when the main concern was keeping people from starving.”