Reluctant refugees: Kosovars in Texas

DALLAS (CNN) -- They are ethnic Albanians who fled the fighting and, for now, live in Texas. While Agim Orana and his wife, Teuta, say they feel safe in their new home, their hearts are still in Kosovo.

"I feel guilty," says Agim, formerly a university professor in the Serb province where his family joined hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled to neighboring countries. "But, at the same time, I'm hopeful we'll be going home very soon."

Adds Teuta, who had been a dentist in their hometown of Pristina, "We want to continue our lives as before."

The Orana family -- including son Andin, 10, and daughter Dea, 5 -- were part of the first wave of Kosovars given permission to come to the United States, which has agreed to accept up to 20,000 refugees.

When NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia on March 24, Teuta fled with her children to Macedonia. Agim says he stayed behind for a week until Serb forces came to his house and gave him 15 minutes to leave.

The Oranas left behind everything and everyone, including Teuta's sister, who, they say, has vanished.

"We left to protect the kids," says Teuta, "not necessarily from being hurt but from watching the massacres with those innocent eyes."


Lucky, yes; Happy? 'No'

Taking advantage of a family reunification plan offered by the U.S. government, the Oranas are crammed into a two-bedroom apartment in the Dallas area with Teuta's other sister, a brother-in-law and their children.

If they choose, the new arrivals can become U.S. citizens. For now, their days are spent with the paperwork of American life -- obtaining identification cards and undergoing health checks.


The Orana family fills out paperwork to get identification cards
While lucky, the Oranas are also reluctant to fully accept their new life. What they really want is an end to the fighting so they can take up Washington's offer of return air fare.

When the family arrived in the United States, "someone asked me if I'm happy," Agim told CNN. "'No,' I said."

Teuta, in tears, says, "We don't talk about what we miss the most."

Correspondent Charles Zewe contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9905/18/kosovo.refugees.dallas/index.html

I like the truth, not yours.

How can anyone ever believe an idiot who calls himself "master of reality" ? The reality of the fact you are an old fart, stuck in a village in Texas lost in an underpopulated state of a country of analphabetes.

What pisses you off is that you have nothing to post.

So you just copy stuff from NATO (we hit many tanks today) and KLA sources (Serbs are using nerve gas).

Or you just behave like a spoiled brat (NATO will win).

What pisses you off is that the US have a history of disgusting governments. No wonder there is always someone to try to assasinate the leader. Hopefully this trend will continue successfully.

You also find it annoying that I am actually using media located in NATO countries (!) to report things you do not want to know, because they are against your theory that Serbs should all die and NATO-US conquer Yugoslavia, and other countries acceptable to you since you are a racist American.

I will never leave. Even if there were 100 of you arseholes on this board I would be more challenged than ever. Despite my job, I still manage to read much more than you and report what I can. You are a loser bumming around all day on your reclining seat watching Beavis & Butthead. Do you look like them ?

"I researched the information I posted."

Sure, you lifted your fat wrist and clicked your Kosova bookmark.

You are just a disgrace.

MORONick,

Protests continue
Protests of citizens demanding return of soldiers from Kosovo, as well as an end to further destruction of the country took place in Kraljevo, Raska and Baljevac. largest protest in the area was in Raska. In Baljevac, citizens carried slogan "While one Serbia is in pain, other Serbia is singing", referring to Milosevic and his party officials, who are not feeling burden of war. All citizens, led by mayor, signed petition asking for return of soldiers in next 48 hours.


Military in Montenegro
Residents near the border said on Sunday that far from removing the barriers, troops were digging new heavy machine-gun positions. Protests in Cetinje are caused by arrival of 1000 armed military reservists from other parts of country. Meanwhile, police loyal to Montenegro's pro-Western government briefly detained a correspondent for the leading Serb daily "Politika". Dragomir Becirovic was called in for an "informative chat" late on Friday after he wrote an article accusing Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic of treason.

http://aman-bre.webjump.com/e-index.html

WoD

haha, Texas cockroach, you are pathetic attempting to speak Spanish !
Leave Arturo alone, you might traumatise him.

Arturo, te envié un mensaje por email hace un ratito, no dudes en ponerte en contacto conmigo si necesitas cualquier información.

Estaré a tu disposición.

Sin otro particular, recibas un cordial saludo.

Nicolas

Wednesday, May 19th, 1999


Milosevic's repression on the opposition continues
Democratic party Information Committee, Announcement, May 19th, 1999 - This morning around 10:50, organized by JUL (the party of Mira Markovic – wife of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic) began the assault on the headquaters of the Democratic party in Belgrade. The attack started as a group of thugs, wearing black leather jackets emerged from their BMW’s and Mercedeses and started to throw stones and eggs on the Democratic party’s headquaters building. Several minutes later a group of around 50 JUL activists, whose arrival was organized, emerged from a bus. The assault ended by noon, when several hundred members and activists of the Democratic party arrived. Only then the police dispersed the JUL activists. The Democratic party feels that today’s assault is the introduction to an attempt to start a civil war in Yugoslavia. The Democratic party beleives that Milosevic is getting ready to forcefully ensure his power in Serbia, once he withdraws his troops from Kosovo.


Dissatisfied soldiers' relatives organize demonstrations
From our Krusevac correspondent On May 17th group of 2,000 citizens of Krusevac, parents and relatives of soldiers situated in Kosovo at the moment, protested on streets of the town. The reason of citizen dissatisfaction is total absence of official information on soldiers' destiny. Unofficial information coming from Kosovo and number of funerals in Krusevac area speak about great casualties. Anxious citizens demanded reception at municipal and army officials. None of the demands were met. The same day demonstrators have beaten the Mayor of Aleksandrovac, town some 20 kilometres (12 miles) Southwest from Krusevac. The Mayor tried to hide from the raged crowd in toilet of one TRAYAL shop.
On May 18th protest was repeated in Krusevac, but the number of demonstrators rose to 5,000. This time, as a response on the fact of not meeting their demands from officials, citizens smashed windows of commune and army department building with eggs and stones. Also, the citizens broke into the rooms and studio of local television. Local police didn't intervene. Krusevac Yugoslav Army post published an announcement in which it accused demonstrators for treason, and all future protests will look as a depraving of operational preparedness.

http://aman-bre.webjump.com/e-index.html

Bad Citizen of Texas,

go back to your archives and you will see that Zoja and Emina said they do not live together, connard.

Nice try explaining computer matters to me, I train people in using them.

Loser.

HERE'S A PARADIGMATIC IMAGE of the NATO
effort to date, thanks to Fox TV News. A U.S.
transport helicopter lands somewhere in Albania, and a
Marine, in full combat gear, leaps out. Assuming the
ritual half-crouching position, he duly points his
automatic weapon in various directions, although there
is no one around, not even a shrub. His form is
admirable, his mien menacing. And his mission,
according to the voice-over? He has come to build
houses for the Kosovar refugees.

NATO's mission in the Balkans started with the
noblest of aims. Faced with scenes of mass misery
afflicting telegenic white people by the hundreds of
thousands, European socialists, social democrats, even
the formerly pacifistic Greens dropped all their
customary objections to heavy-handed, U.S.-led
military interventions. So what if NATO is a zombie
kept alive largely as a market for U.S.-made
weapons? If your spouse is being molested and
screaming for help, you intervene with whatever tools
lie at hand, rusty and imperfect as they may be, and
leave the debates over Lenin's theory of imperialism for
later. As for the argument that intervention in a civil war
constitutes a gross violation of "national sovereignty,"
tell that to the Rwandan Tutsis, if you can find any of
them around to listen.

But this mission of mercy--heralded by Tony Blair as a "progressive war"--quickly took a nasty
turn. NATO bombs have already killed about 500 Serbian civilians, including children and, no
doubt, a few anti-Milosevic peaceniks as well. Innocent people do, regrettably, die in wars, as
the NATO spokesmen continually remind us. But since when was Operation Allied Force a
"war"? In a war, it may be all right to kill the enemy and anyone who looks like him, but in a
mission of mercy, the most urgent priority is to rescue the enemy's victims. To go back to the
case where that intruder is menacing your spouse, would your first reaction be to run over to the
intruder's house and strangle his wife and child? If so, you might as well blow your own spouse a
last, fervent kiss goodbye.

What is happening with NATO is known technically as "mission creep": You start out doing--or
claiming to do--one thing and end up doing quite another. While the bombs rain down on Serbia,
the humanitarian crisis that originally inspired the whole operation has been relegated to a purely
propagandistic role. The United States, for example, has budgeted only $58.5 million for
humanitarian aid, less than the cost of a single day's bombing sorties, says Marc Weisbrot of the
Preamble Center, writing on Z magazine's web page.

As for the ethnic Albanians still playing hide and seek with the Serb ethnic cleansers within
Kosovo, NATO has nothing to offer them but shrapnel. Asked why NATO doesn't airlift these
desperate people food and other supplies, the answer is always that the requisite low-flying
transport planes would be too vulnerable to Serb anti-aircraft fire. Although unable to drop food
and medicine from its planes, NATO will, of course, continue to drop bombs wherever possible,
as weather permits, the spokesmen assure us.

In the week of April 12th, the mission had crept so far that it began to look as if NATO and
Milosevic were undergoing some weird kind of role reversal. First, NATO demonstrated its
efficiency at Milosevic's old job of ethnic cleansing by killing approximately 100 ethnic Albanian
civilians in a bombing raid. Then, NATO commander General Wesley Clark hinted that
Milosevic will be expected to take over NATO's former mission of succoring the ethnic
Albanians remaining within Kosovo. At least, when asked by a New York Times reporter
whether NATO might be able to aid these people with air-dropped relief supplies, he referred
the problem to Milosevic: "Our view on this is that, frankly, this is a problem that's caused by
President Milosevic. He needs to address this problem."

So the mission of mercy morphs into ever-escalating mayhem, which is perhaps what should be
expected whenever one sends an air force out to do an angel's job. Remember Somalia, where
the starving victims were treated to tens of thousands of well-fed--though no doubt potentially
tasty--Marines. There is a problem with all these efforts to contain our species' genocidal
tendencies. When we want to make peace, we send the weapons of war. Where we want to
save lives, we deploy trained killers. Which is, from a purely logical perspective, a little like
recruiting your local arsonists into the volunteer fire department.

Warmaking, as opposed to peacekeeping or rescue missions, operates according to a simple
binary logic: There are good guys and bad guys, and the latter have to die or be otherwise
subdued.

But the logic of ethnic conflict is not so simple. Instead of good people and evil people, think of a
chain of atrocity and revenge, with each act of vengeance constituting a fresh atrocity. As the
great literary scholar Rene Girard has written, the chain of violence-and-revenge propagates itself
as if it were a living thing. Over time, the chain grows, entangling millions and stretching on for
generations. The Serbs may be the most atrocious of the Balkan lot, but they are caught in the
chain themselves, reacting to thousands of ancient and newly inflicted hurts, including now the
NATO bombs. When you use violence in the attempt to end a chain of violence, Girard
explained in Violence and the Sacred, "the real victor is always violence itself."

Clearly, the "international community"--meaning the United States and its allies du jour--needs a
whole new technology of intervention. Former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
once proposed the creation of a special U.N. army--restrained, self-sacrificing, and trained (one
would hope) for just this kind of work.

Absent that, the only thing to do is to stop the bombing and concentrate all resources on helping
the victims of ethnic cleansing, living now in terror and mud.

Airlift supplies into Kosovo, using fighter jets to protect the transport planes.

Dry out Yeltsin and flatter him with a major peacemaking role.

As a last resort, bring in an armed U.N. force to carve out safe havens within Kosovo.

And when you send someone to build houses, remember to give him a hammer as well as a gun.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War"
(Henry Holt), is a columnist for The Progressive.

Emina, there never was a war in Slovenia. More like a ten days fight for JNA weapons. Only 8 civilians were killed, most of the foreighn truck drivers who caught themselves in the confusing situation and in panic somebody fired at them. Only one civilian building was damaged, a small church up on some hill. You call this a war? People that call this a war say that what is happening in Yugoslavia is a strike or conflict. What a hypocracy!!!

MORONick,
I sure hope you don't charge people money for teaching them about computers, because you couldn't find your ass with both hands. You are so f'ing stupid, you can't even read. I didn't say Emina and Zoja lived together, I said they work together. I have plenty to post MORONick, I just wanted to leave room for your propaganda, I like comedy. The government of the United States is the oldest one in existance MORONick, and a lot less corrupt than you frogs have. Also I am not a racist, the only people I don't like are MORONick people like you. (Stupid people like you should be neutered, you screw up the gene pool) I am a working person(54)hours per week, I work with Mexican Americans, AND they are my friends. I bet you don't even have a friend MORONick. I will admit you guessed two things right though. I am fat(and happy)and I set in a recliner in front of my computer because I spend a lot of time putting up with MORONick people on it, and want to be comfortable.
(Spelled c-o-m-f-o-r-t-a-b-l-e)

WoD and MORONick people.

What a MORONick person you are. I hope you don't charge people to teach them about computers. You couldn't find your ass with both hands. I didn't say they live together, I said they work together. Crap dude you can't even read. NATO HAS WON!

Sorry, thought I lost the first posting.

"The tragedy is not the brutality of evil but the silence of good people."

Martin Luther King Jr.

I refuse to be silent MORONick.

WoD

http://sg.yahoo.com/headlines/240599/world/927480540-90523172912.newsworld.html

Kosovo ex-prisoners cross border into Albania

MORINA, Albania, May 23 (AFP)

Several hundred men from Kosovo's Mitrovica prison crossed into Albania at the Morina border post Sunday, one day after 668 men arrived here.
Many of them broke down in tears at their arrival and said they had been beaten in prison and subjected to psychological torment.

Aid workers said they were struck by the poor state of health of the released ethnic Albanians.

"It is the first time that I've seen such emaciated people," said Susan Manuel of the World Food Program.

Some of the men from Sunday's group, who were taken to the northern Albanian city of Kukes, said they spent about 15 days in the prison and did not know what happened to their families.

Many recounted that they had been arrested a month ago while in a convoy of several thousand Kosovo refugees headed for Albania.

"We were given a piece of bread about every second to third day, sometimes soup, and filthy water to drink," said one of the men.

A former detainee said Serb police beat them on the feet and hands with wooden clubs while another recounted that 40 or 60 men were packed into small cells and slept on the floor.

There were many young people, aged 16 to 18, among those who arrived Sunday, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Rupert Colville.

Some of the freed men said between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners remained at Mitrovica, located northwest of Pristina, and may be released later in the day, according to some refugees.

The fate of thousands of ethnic Albanian men, separated from women and children by Yugoslav forces, has been a cause for concern since NATO launched air raids on Yugoslavia on March 24.

Meanwhile, automatic gunfire was heard Sunday from behind the hills in Kosovo as NATO warplanes flew over the area.

Kosovar refugees in Kukes were to be transfered to other locations in central and southern Albania within the next few days, said the UNHCR.

"The new camps in the south are almost ready, and the transfers should begin within the next several days," said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UNHCR.

Camps have been set up in Vlore in the south to house thousands of people, but they remain empty for now.

Kukes and its surrounding areas are housing some 100,000 refugees, about half of them in camps.

For several weeks Albanian authorities and humanitarian organizations have been trying to convince refugees to move to areas at a safer distance from the border with the war-torn Serbian province.

But refugees have often refused to budge from Kukes because they want to stay close to their home province or because they are afraid to move to another unknown camp.

When asked whether they might force refugees to evacuate the camps at Kukes, military and humanitarian officials said it was "out of the question."

Refugees say that pressure to leave the camps in Kukes is mounting, and many fear a forced evacuation. Some reported that tents are being taken down as soon as they are freed up by those who do leave.

For several days now messages have been posted by Albanian authorities and the UNHCR pushing people to "seize the opportunity to leave Kukes" and move to central Albania as soon as possible.

The message says that the camps in Kukes have reached maximum capacity.

Colville said that already 2,132 people had voluntarily left Kukes Saturday for camps in the south, and 600 more left Sunday morning.

Kukes officials said that more than 400,000 refugees have arrived in Albania through entry points at Morina and Qafe-Prushit, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Kukes, since the beginning of NATO raids in March, and about 320,000 of them have moved further into the country's interior.

---

Mountains Ground U.S. Apaches

LONDON, May 22 - "Mountains Ground US Apaches," read a headline from
today's report by the London Telegraph's defense correspondent, TiM
Butcher:

"The Apache attack helicopter, promoted as the most potent weapon in
America's airborne arsenal, will never fly on combat missions in Kosovo
because it cannot cope with the region's mountains, defense sources said
yesterday.

The aircraft, deployed to Albania by the Pentagon with great fanfare as
the 'silver bullet' to end to the Kosovo crisis, is militarily redundant
because of the 10,000ft mountains. Only by fitting additional fuel pods
could it negotiate such obstacles, and that would reduce its weapons
payload and its capability to defend itself."

---

TiM Ed.: What an irony! Not only because the Pentagon's "pride and joy"
helicopter fleet has turned out to be a paper tiger (which we've already
told you - see "Flying Coffins," S99-81, Day 55, Item 1, May 17). But
also because anyone who has seen where the real Apaches live (in
northeastern Arizona) knows that they are mountain people.

It is all reminiscent of a famous line uttered in opposition to the U.S.
involvement in Bosnia by Gen. Colin Powell, when he was running the U.S.
military: "We don't do mountains." Well, if anyone knows how to "do
mountains," the real Apaches do. Which means that the Pentagon's paper
tigers, besides being militarily impotent in the mountains, were also
badly misnamed.

http://www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/day60.html

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