From a Kosovo diary

• Published in: Canadian Medical Association journal (CMAJ) Vol. 163; no. 3; pp. 314 - 316
• Main Author: Venugopal, Raghu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa CMA Impact, Inc 08-08-2000
• Series: Room for a view
• Subjects: Emergency medical care; Health care; The Left Atrium; Kosovo Yugoslavia; Europe
• ISSN: 0820-3946; 1488-2329

When the NATO-Serb peace plan was forged our camp emptied, even though Kosovo was riddled with mines. For what it was worth, I mediated heated meetings between Kosovar elders and the UN staff who oversaw the repatriation. Refugees asked me why they should wait to go home. I told them they might lose their TV in Kosovo to looters if they stayed longer, but that would be better than losing a child or a limb to a landmine. Nevertheless, some refugees used their last 100 Deutschmarks to rent lorries to trundle home in. After all they'd been through, I found it hard to blame them. As they drove away from the camp we could hear their melancholy songs of home even from two miles away. In late July, Kosovo was swept with euphoria and violence. Around our lavish but cheap accommodations, Serb and Gypsy homes went alight daily. The billowing smoke was so thick it was hard to breathe or to see down the narrow cobblestone streets. Any Serbs left in Prizren sought refuge in the stillstanding Orthodox monastery. About two murders occurred daily, and Serbs were killed if they so much as left the monastery for cigarettes. The horror and rage of the ethnic Albanians was palpable. Mothers cooking our hearty meals and fathers driving our cars had lost relatives brutally in the recent violence, but they took pains to remind us of the years of atrocities that had occurred before the world had heard of Kosovo. It made them angry to hear naive foreigners dispassionately preaching tolerance and forgiveness. And we, too, became witness to this violent history, stumbling over the rotting bodies of children as we entered ruined clinics and burned-out schools. By mid-August, many of us were burned out. Yet we felt we had achieved tangible results. With two other students I had obtained approval for US$450 000 in private and UN grants. With NATO's help, we had established a safehouse for Serbs who were too trusting, too sick or too slow to leave Kosovo. We had started to rebuild and refurbish four clinics in villages near Prizren. We had trucked dozens of shipments of food and essential goods to Kosovo and distributed them in villages. We had worked successfully with over 20 agencies and governments. We had been part of the formation of a new nation of sorts.