wfn.org | ACT relief reaches Kosovo refugees

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Activities include awareness building among opinion makers, refugees

KUKES,Albania/GENEVA, April 14 1999 (lwi)   Enver Sllamniku leans
against the small red tractor that has just ferried him out of
Kosovo. "Serb soldiers ..Boom, boom, boom!" the broad and bearded 50-
year-old man mimics the fire from an automatic rifle. Standing next
to him, his jeans-clad teenage daughter breaks into laughter at her
father's gestures and childish sounds. Abruptly she stops, takes a
bewildered look around her and sits down next to the small wooden
tractor-trailer containing what is left of their worldly possessions.
It is a pile of a few mattresses and blankets, bundles of clothes,
scattered suitcases and sports bags, on top of which her
five-year-old brother and their grandmother are sleeping.

Along with some 1,500 other people, the Sllamnikus crossed into
Albania overnight on April 10 and made their first stop at the
outskirts of the small town of Kukes. More than a hundred tractors,
trailers and small cars are parked on a littered field below a snow
clad mountain slope.

People sit in small groups or rest on top of their remaining
possessions. Little is being said, most seem to be lost in their own
thoughts. A few mothers are feeding their children from some early
hand-outs of bread or from food they had carried with them. A good
number of journalists, photographers and TV-crews are drifting among
the tractors, vehicles and refugees, looking for people to interview
and photograph. A few hundred meters to the left of the field, the
ruins of a defunct Albanian industrial site add to the absurdity of
the moment.

All the refugees come from the small village of Vragoli, a few
kilometers outside Kosovo's provincial capital Pristina. Avdyl
Orllati, in his 30s was a teacher there. "The Serb military came
yesterday morning, threatening and shooting in the air. They told us
to leave right away," he explains.  He continues:"First they said,
that we should walk but then changed their minds and told us to take
our tractors and cars. They gave us half an hour to get going. Go to
Albania, they said, that is where you belong. Kosovo is for Serbs.
You should go to NATO now - they'll take care of you, that's what the
Serbs told us! Before we left the village, they confiscated all our
identity papers and took the licence plates from our cars. From some
they took money but not from all."

On the 14-hour drive through Kosovo and up to the border Orllati who
is accompanied by his wife, their two sons and three other relatives,
says he saw burnt down houses, dead horses, abandoned cows and
wrecked cars - but no other people apart from Serbian soldiers with
their tanks and trucks. In contrast to some of the refugees who
arrived here a few days ago, nobody in this group of refugees said
they had been beaten, wounded or seen their relatives shot before
getting out of Kosovo.

The narrow and pot-holed road leading up to Kukes is busier than ever
before. Trucks carrying relief food and tents are slowly working
their way up the more than eight hours drive from the capital Tirana.
Down the same spiraling mountain road goes an even steadier stream of
tractors and cars from Kosovo stripped off their licence plates and
lots of buses and Albanian army trucks. All are carrying refugees
toward Tirana and other parts of central and southern Albania, where
they are either received by host families or accommodated in transit
centers in stadiums, schools and other institutions. Some go to the
refugee camps, which are being set up in many parts of the low lying
and relatively more affluent parts of Albania near the Mediterranean
coast.

In response to the crisis in Kosovo, the Action by Churches Together
(ACT) network is carrying out large scale humanitarian relief
operations in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. In Bosnia
and Herzegovina, ACT members including the LWF, Church World Service
(CWS) and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) are
assessing the most critical needs of Kosovar refugees. The network
and related agencies had by the first week of April provided over USD
2.9 million for emergency relief operations in countries and regions
affected by the conflict in Kosovo.

Organizationally based in the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the
World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, ACT is worldwide network
of churches and their related agencies meeting human need through
coordinated emergency response.

By early April, ACT had  airlifted enough tents and blankets to
shelter 900 families (some 7,000 individuals) in Albania. Work on a
first camp for 2,000 refugees had also begun. More than 60 tons of
food was distributed in the initial stage of the emergency.
Approximately 20 tons were distributed in Kukes on April 5. On April
7, some 40 tons were sent to the southern Albanian town of Corsa to
be distributed among refugees who had arrived from neighboring
Macedonia. Another 20 tons of food stuff and basic hygiene items such
as soap and tooth paste will be distributed in the coming days. Apart
from setting up refugee camps and
continuing food distributions, ACT plans to assist thousands of
refugees and host families throughout Albania.

Under the leadership of the "Diaconia Agapes" (DA), the diaconial
wing of the Albanian Orthodox Church, the ACT response is being
assisted and strengthened by emergency staff of various members of
the network including the LWF, Norwegian Church Aid, Dan Church Aid,
Dutch Interchurch Aid and Christian Aid.

In Macedonia, the ACT response is being implemented under the
leadership of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation
(MCIC), which represents a consortium of churches, religious
communities and local non-governmental organizations. Various ACT
members including DanChurchAid, Norwegian ChurchAid and Diakonisches
Werk, Germany are assisting in the ACT/MCIC activities.

Like all others involved in providing humanitarian aid to the
refugees from Kosovo, ACT members in the region are plagued with at
least one big uncertainty: What will happen next?
Do families such as the Orllatis and Sllamnikus mark the end of the
exodus that began in late March? Or do they represent the beginning
of another overwhelming wave of people expelled from Kosovo?

The mood among aid workers and journalists in Kukes is as grim as the
chaos among the newly arrived refugees. Meanwhile, there are numerous
refugees queuing at food distribution points or in front of  public
phone booths in an attempt to locate relatives, with whom they have
lost contact.

According to Jacques Franquin from the Kukes office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were about
70,000 refugees in the town by April 10.  He told this writer that
the majority of the estimated 310,000 refugees who entered Albania
over the last few weeks came through Kukes. Among the new comers in
the town are  those who have just arrived or those who have decided
that they want to stay close to the border for the time being.

( The analysis of the refugees' situation in this article was
provided by Nils Carstensen, the Communications Officer with ACT,
during a recent visit to Albania.)

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Lutheran World Information
Assistant Editor, English: Pauline Mumia
E-mail: pmu@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/