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15-April-1999 
99153 
 
    Expelled And Bewildered 
 
    by Nils Carstensen 
    World Council of Churches 
 
KUKES, Albania - Enver Sllamniku leans against the small red tractor that 
just brought him out of Kosovo. 
 
    "Serb soldiers ... boom, boom, boom," he says, mimicking automatic 
rifle fire.  Sllamniku is a broad bearded man in his early fifties.  His 
jeans-clad teenage daughter laughs at his antics, stops abruptly, looks 
round, then sits down next to the small wooden tractor-trailer containing 
what's left of their possessions - some mattresses and blankets, bundles of 
clothes, a few scattered suitcases and sports bags.  On top of the pile, 
her grandmother and five-year-old brother are sleeping. 
 
    Along with 1,500 others, they crossed into Albania overnight and 
stopped on the outskirts of the small northeastern town of Kukes.  More 
than a hundred tractors, trailers, and small cars are parked on a littered 
field just under a snow-clad mountain slope.  People sit in small groups or 
on piles of their remaining possessions.  Not much is said, and most seem 
to be gazing inwards. 
 
    Quite a few journalists, photographers and TV-crews are drifting around 
looking for people to interview.  A few hundred meters to the left of the 
field, the ruins of a decaying industrial site add to the desolation of the 
scene. 
 
    These refugees come from Vragoli, a small village a few kilometers 
outside Pristina.  Avdyl Orllati was the teacher there.  "The Serbian 
soldiers came yesterday morning, threatening us and shooting in the air. 
They told us to leave right away," he says.  "First they said we should 
walk, then they 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's where you belong.  Kosovo is for Serbs.  You should go to NATO - 
they'll take care of  you.'  Before we left, they took all our identity 
papers and car license plates.  They took some people's money, but not from 
all." 
 
    On the 14-hour drive to the border, Mr Orllati saw one destroyed 
village after the other, but no people other than Serbian soldiers.  In 
contrast to some of the refugees who arrived here a few days ago, nobody in 
this group had been beaten or wounded or seen their relatives shot before 
getting out of  Kosovo.  Orllati came with his wife, their two sons and 
three other relatives.  Right now he has no idea what will happen to them. 
 
    The narrow, spiraling, pot-holed mountain road leading up to Kukes is 
busier than ever before.  Trucks carrying relief supplies are crawling up 
from Tirana - a more than eight-hour drive. Down the same road goes an even 
steadier stream of tractors, cars from Kosovo stripped of their license 
plates, buses and Albanian army trucks.  All carry refugees to Tirana and 
other parts of  central and southern Albania. 
 
    "We've only some 70,000 refugees left up here," explains Jacques 
Franquin from the Kukes office of the United Nations High Commission for 
Refugees (UNHCR).  Most of the 310,000 refugees who entered Albania over 
the last weeks came through Kukes.  Considering that, the overall situation 
has improved a lot from the terribly overcrowded conditions of just a few 
days ago. 
 
    "The Albanian authorities have done a great job getting the refugees 
out of here," Franquin adds.  Most of the remaining 70,000 refugees in 
Kukes are either newcomers or people who want to stay close to the border 
for the time being.  Those who left went on either to Albanian host 
families or to transit centers.  Some went to the refugee camps now 
shooting up in many parts of the  relatively more affluent parts of Albania 
near the Mediterranean coast. 
 
    Over the past week ACT International (the coordinated disaster response 
agency of the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation) 
has airlifted tents and blankets for 900 families into Kukes.  Work on a 
first camp for 2,000 refugees was set to begin April 12.  More than 60 tons 
of food was distributed in the initial stage of the emergency.  Another 20 
tons of food and basic hygiene items will be distributed in the coming 
days. ACT also plans to assist thousands of refugees and host families 
throughout Albania.  The Albanian member of ACT - Diakonia Agapes, the 
Diaconal wing of the Albanian Orthodox Church -  is contributing actively 
to the work and making plans for the coming weeks and months. 
 
    Like others involved in providing humanitarian aid to the refugees from 
Kosovo, ACT is uncertain what will happen next.  Do families like those of 
Orllati and Sllamniku mark the end of the exodus that began in late March? 
Or do they represent the beginning of another huge wave? And how many more 
refugees can Albania - a country that would need decades to recover from 
the former regime even without the refugees - absorb? 
 
    The mood among aid workers and journalists in Kukes is as grim as that 
of the newly arrived refugees.  Memories of last week's "hell on earth" at 
the border are still too fresh.  Curses and fists shaken against Slobodan 
Milosevic are common currency among the refugees lining up for food, or 
waiting at the public phone booth in hopes of being able to contact lost 
relatives. 
 
    Out on the open field, Sllamniku's daughter is not alone in her shock 
and confusion. Bewilderment and a deep sense of tragedy reign in Kukes. 

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