Part Four
Kaltrina Krasniqi: What did you study? What did you study?
Fisnik Ismaili: In the meantime, I discovered the computer and I liked it, I fell in love with computer animation, that was a new field back then, very new. And actually there was only one university in England that offered that course, and I just was doing something at home, I bought… I got some money to buy a computer, I would do things at home. And I sent my documents to Portsmouth and I was convinced I will get registered there. There is no one who can change my profession. Because in England you could apply to six places, and one of them… I didn’t, only wrote one, because there only one like that, I didn’t want something similar.
And I managed to go meet with them beforehand and when they saw my work, they said, “We will definitely call you to the interview.” From 350 people that would apply, only 70 would be called to the interview, they put me on that list of 70 people, from which 30 would be accepted to study. In the meantime, I don’t know what happened… because the equipment was very expensive, and the art schools decided that the other courses like painting, sculpting should start using computers, so it meant that computer animation would be closed, and that field didn’t exist anymore, suddenly. While I was expecting to get accepted there, to start in October, it was a hard moment for me, I took it very hard because, at one moment when I started seeing my future, I started seeing myself doing special effects on Hollywood and working on star project movies, it was over.
And then I don’t want to go to university, I wanted to be autodidact, to learn computer animation by myself, you know. But try doing that with a person like Muharrem who called you everyday pressuring you, “Come on apply anywhere, just apply somewhere.” My good luck there was a course, before starting, now I had to see what sports were free, there was a magazine where everybody had registered, but they would take people for the free spots left. There were some lamer courses, I see there 25 free spots in multimedia, they all had two, three free sports, “Why 25, no one went, why didn’t I see this last year when I applied?”
And I find out that it is a just accredited field, which couldn’t get accredited earlier, like it was served to me. And it was similar to what I did earlier and I applied there, and my whole life changed. I went into multimedia and it was a combination of graphic design and computers that I always wanted to do.
In the meantime, we worked a lot, especially me during university, I worked security in bars at night, I would sell clothes during the weekend, so during the holidays I would sell shoes with my friends. Then we started, before finishing university, we started translating. Translating was paid well. As translators we had to travel a lot, but you would also earn money. Both of us started translating, clean job, you wouldn’t annoy anyone, you would only deal with Albanians.
That, when a bigger flow of people, we’re talking about when we started studying ‘95, in ‘98, in ‘98, we both finished it. Actually I almost failed the last year because then, when it happened in March, when Adem Jashari was killed, I didn’t go to school, I didn’t go until the summer to lectures at all. I was trying to come here and fight.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: How were you trying to come?
Fisnik Ismaili: I was thinking.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Aha, you were thinking.
Fisnik Ismaili: Yes, because, during the war in Bosnia, I was very angry that Serbia took me out of here, I was very angry. And when I saw what was happening in Bosnia, you know I would say, “I should go, I should go!” Laura would say, “Stay, when it happens in Kosovo, you can go.” You know, hoping that it will never happen. “Yes, yes,” you know, “We’ll wait when it happens in Kosovo. When it happened in ‘98, then my [maternal] uncle who was in Ljubljana, he was a military. After a few months he disappeared, we knew he went to the KLA,[1] but no one knew where he was. And I was very anxious, I wanted to know where he is, I wanted to join him. And from March, I took it very hard. But I had a very good mentor for my diploma thesis, who, when I went to university around May, he said, “Fis,” he said, “Look, because you’re close. Just get it over with. Finish your diploma thesis,” he said, “And the other exams, I’ll postpone them,” he said, “For summer,” he said, “Just finish your diploma thesis.”
I finish the diploma thesis, for eleven days, I sat and worked, I finished it in eleven days. Then during the summer, he postponed some exams not in June, but sometime in August, I finished those exams, and I finished university. And life changed dramatically for us because now Laura became a pharmacologist, and I became a multimedia specialist, and we made quite a lot of money as translators, now to start from zero… Our career started from zero, because as just graduated students, from the salary we got as translators, it could be one hundred euros, hundred pounds, we ended up with 800-pound-a-month salaries (laughs), just to get into our professions.
And then we continued. I know an agency, I was very lucky that I was accepted, I was very lucky. There was an agency that took students like this, gave them horrible salaries, but they had very good clients, you know, Apple Europe, British Airways, and they saw… They wanted an employee, they had two good candidates, they didn’t know who to pick, me or a girl who was a good illustrator. Now I was a good designer, but he had designers and that girl was a good illustrator. And they wanted her too and… when they say how excited I was to start and all that, they decided to take us both. They decided to hire both of us. Okay! And from there then I got into my profession and I worked very hard, I worked 16 hours a day. I loved and I still love this profession extremely. And in England, they give you… when you want to work, they can misuse you, but they also know how to value you. But you have to jump from job to job sometimes.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: So you had a child…
Fisnik Ismaili: Yes, until… Yes, wait because still, this job that I started, three months later I went to war (laughs). I started working in December. I started working in December in ‘98, I was very active at that time and I co-founded the Albanian Students’ Association, while we were studying, we were around 250 people, a lot of us studied. And we were quite active, we would, we would organize demonstrations in favor of NATO attacks in Serbia, and when they would come, they would meet with heads of different states, we were protesting there. I did the NATO Air Just Do It, I don’t know if you remember that slogan, it was on CNN.
But those protests were over, I started working, NATO intervened, one day when I was in my office, I saw the news about a four-year-old kid that they found, they attacked him, a family. There were witnesses that they took a family, they killed them, and they took a little kid, and the next day, because they used to put Albanian’s bodies in front of the houses, and the next day, they see the kid with the other bodies. They examined the kid, he was burned with cigarettes in his body, they took and tortured the kid all night, then they dropped him with the other bodies.
And, when I started reading about that child, and I know that Vigan was four years old, the same age… I started crying, I started crying out loud in the office, I couldn’t hold back anymore, you know, knowing, “Why does my child have the luck of being here safe, while another kid of the same age that doesn’t know anything…” You know, I just imagined, what did he know, thinking, “Why is this man burning me with a cigarette… with this thing.” And I was terrified, I just told them, “I’m going to war!”
Kaltrina Krasniqi: How did you make that decision? How did you do it?
Fisnik Ismaili: Look, I always had in the back of my mind that I will go. I just told the people at my office, they saw me crying, “I want to go to war.” “What do you mean you want to go?” “No, I’m going to go.” “Go home,” they said, “Stay home, it’s Friday tomorrow, calm your head over the weekend, don’t do anything stupid. You can contribute from here.” They always said this, “You’ll contribute more by sending money,” by sending money while I was making 800 pounds a months. With 800 pounds, we barely made it through the month. We saved a little, you know, we got better, but not much. And okay, they told me, “Go home, think about it, calm down.” “Okay!” I went home and told Laura, “I’m going.” She said, “I knew you’d say that.” She knew me, I really I am headstrong, when I say something, you need to kill me to change it. When I say something that has to do with me, I can’t change my mind, maybe move my principles, but when I say I’m going to do something, I finish it.
There were moments when I slapped myself saying, “Why did I talk?” You know, “Why did I rush?” Because then I started thinking, I was 25 years old, “Where am I going, where am I leaving my son, Laura? What if I don’t come back, how are they going to live, what are they going to do?” I called work the next day, I said, “I’m coming to say goodbye and I’m leaving.” We said goodbye, they bought me a gift. The way they said goodbye after working at the agency for three months, they promised I’ll have a job when I come back, and the way they said goodbye and everything made me love them ten thousand times more and realize that they’re so understanding, so cool. They handled it so well, they made going there easier. The moment they said, “You’ll have a job when you come back.” My biggest worry went away. I would say, “I’m not going there to die. I’m going to fight and come back.” I left thinking that. The moment I knew I would have a job when I come back, I was relieved and had no worries.
And nothing. I actually called my [maternal] uncle in Ljubljana, to see if he talked to his wife, and where he is, because it had been months that we didn’t know where he is. Luckily he was in Ljubljana those days, because it was known something is going to happen in Koshare, the border. And he came back to see his family before going back to action. I said, “Uncle, where are you? What’s happening?” I said, “Why did you come to Ljubljana?” He said, “Just because I wanted to see my family. I’ll go back to Tirana.” I said, “I want to come!” “Are you sure?” “Yes!” “Are you sure?” Yes!” He didn’t say, “Don’t come!” Or, “There’s no need to!” Nothing.
When the family found out started calling him, “Why did you tell Fis to come, you know he’s the only boy in the family, you know this…” “More,” he says… you know, my other uncle’s pressuring him, telling him, “Are you crazy, tell Fis not to come.” “He wants to come,” he was telling them, he is a person of principle, military, “He wants to come, he decided to come. Why don’t you come too? They said, “Mmmmmhm.” And nothing! We met at my sister Vali’s in Italy, Vali is like our meeting point. From there on a train to Bari, Bari-Durrës.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: It seems very interesting to me that you took such a dramatic turn in your life because you went to another city, finished your studies. You started that career that you dreamed of and then you decided to go to war. Very weirdly motivated.
Fisnik Ismaili: It was some sort of rancor, I am very resentful, I admit. And I admit another thing that justifies it saying that, “I am persistent rather than headstrong.” Because there are resentful people that even if, even if they know they’re wrong, they’re headstrong and don’t admit it. I am persistent up to the point where I see I am wrong and I admit it, but I’m persistent until I try what I want to do. And, I don’t know, the resentfulness of having to leave Kosovo, I could never settle in England, I never had a home in England. Sometime in ‘97, the state gave us an apartment, I fixed it a little and told myself, “Settle!” But I knew I’m coming back, the day will come to be back, and a lot of compatriots that went there at the time didn’t… they advanced in school and everything, but they didn’t settle.
And we talked often, the moment you plant roots somewhere you can’t put them somewhere else, and you’re stuck as a global citizen, wherever you go it becomes home. I was like that in a way, because I also traveled while I was in America, I was in some places and I saw that you can take me anywhere and I would settle, I could work, I could live. And I saw that no place felt like, like home. Not even now, there are moments when I don’t feel at home even here. Tomorrow go somewhere else to feel comfortable. But I say here again because I’m headstrong, persistent and from resentment.
I’ll tell you how it went. I was so resentful that they took me out of Kosovo, that brought me back to war.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: You had no military experience…
Fisnik Ismaili: Zero, at all, never!
Kaltrina Krasniqi: What did you think you’re going to do when you came?
Fisnik Ismaili: I don’t know. And the story of how I ended up where I did is interesting.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Describe that moment to us, you probably weren’t in Albania before, or were you?
Fisnik Ismaili: No, no. In Albania, I imagined, when I arrive in Albania, I’m going to kiss the ground, you know, aaa, you know…
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Incomp. (18:58).
Fisnik Ismaili: Yes, first on the ship, we threw up because it was a fast and light ship and there were waves, and my uncle was the only one who didn’t throw up. All the people on the ship got on the floor, he would just look at us, we were dying. All the people on the ship wanted to die, we were like 150 people, he would just look at us, laugh at us. To die! I was resentful. And he made it seem so bad to me, I was an idealist, “I will kiss the ground and…” “O,” he said, “When we get there, put your head down and come behind me!” Because, at that time, I didn’t know the friction amongst, amongst the two battalions of the KLA, frictions, not frictions, but the movements of Serbian espionage were there on the borders to see how they come in, because now they would find out someone is coming from abroad to fight, they found out then that I came and they started looking for my parents in Pristina because they stayed here during the bombing. And they went to their house to kill them, but they went to my aunt’s. So, information was leaked.
My uncle was very, very careful from these, but there was no way to be safe, there was no privacy. And we got off somewhere in Durrës, and he said, “Put your head down, don’t talk to anyone.” There were some beggars all over, almost sticking to our feet. We got into a van, went to Tirana.
In Tirana he took me to, I didn’t even know where I am, I didn’t know about the frictions, or the commanders, nothing at all, zero, idea… I came to fight. We went to Lapraha, there were the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense back then, so it was from the government of Bujar Bukoshi.[2] I didn’t have any idea, now that they say that was FARK, [3]or if it wasn’t. When I went, it was never mentioned, I had no idea. I went there, I had no idea how it works, I didn’t know there were other headquarters, the general headquarters. I didn’t know there were frictions, zero, at all. Before entering my uncle told me, “From this moment, you’re not my nephew, I am not your uncle. It is safer for you and for me if they don’t know we’re family!”
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Why?
Fisnik Ismaili: Because someone can, so he was an officer in the Agim Ramadani Brigade in Koshare, of which I still didn’t know anything, nothing, we wouldn’t tell me anything. They could misuse me to get to him, do you understand, to compromise him or blackmail him, and the other way around, they could you use him to do something to me. But he said, “Don’t open up!” He didn’t trust anyone. And later I realized that he had a lot of reasons not to trust people, the injustice done to us by the people who lead this country today, which I can’t say anything about, because I wasn’t in that chain of command where I saw, I heard the talk, I can tell you what I heard and I heard a lot, but I don’t have the complete picture to say who did what exactly, I hope the day comes and those cards open, but I can’t say anything because I was just a soldier, but with a very sensitive duty.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: What did you do?
Fisnik Ismaili: I’ll just explain how we got there. There was a procedure: when you went to Tirana headquarters, they took in one of the, there were two villages where they would train for two weeks, Babina, it was… I forgot the other two villages. There was another one with the letter B, I forgot. There were three villages, when they took me to Babina, they turned the village school into a small cantonment. So the facility, that’s where the soldiers slept, they surrounded the building with barbed wire so the residents couldn’t get in, and they couldn’t get out. And there was another facility there outside in which there were some beds, not much space. And I come, they appointed me to a group of five people to launch mortars, 82 millimeters, you know that you put in the group, you put the projectile and puup {shows with his hands}, and it launchsf like four kilometers away I think, and we trained for two days, I had never touched a mortar, I didn’t know how…
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Did you know any kinds of weapons?
Fisnik Ismaili: No. But my father had a gun which I would take and play sometimes, but I never shot it. There we shot rifles, we would train with rifles. I trained for two days, the groups would train together for two weeks then they would take them to the front line. The like had just started, the Battle of Koshare had just started, I don’t remember the dates exactly, but sometime around April 9. So I know that, okay, April 8, 9 I went to Babina. I trained for two days. With those 82s, we learned the different parts, how to learn, how to take aim, we learned everything. I was there with four other guys, I had never seen them before, they were learning without experience, like me. And we were trying to figure out who will go in which position, the one who was more clever should aim, when they gave you the coordinates, you had to xxxx {onomatopoeia} change it in five seconds, to put those to know where…
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Where to go…
Fisnik Ismaili:… where to aim the mortar. And for that you had to be clever. But the pipe and a tile that were there, were heavy, you needed big people who could lift heavy things, now they assigned me to lifting things, but when we were training, I did it the fastest. He would say, “How should we give you…” Who held the aim had a bag this small {shows with his hands}, “How should we give you this small bag when it should be you who holds a plate which places 25 kilograms on your back.” Like this, not knowing what kind of duty I’ll have. And one night, but all of these are some moments that have changed my life.
One night we came back from training, we went to eat, I left the school, I was sleeping in the facility outside of school. As I was going into the facility, maybe three steps behind me, I had gone inside the facility, and the person who went out of the school I had not seen maybe until the end of war. He was Gani, a former Yugoslav Army soldier who lived in London and worked in Sllatina as a liaison, and came to war. Now he came to war that day and met with the commander and said, “I’m the liaison officer.” They said, “Kuku[4], there are no liaisons in the front line.”
The war started there, at the border, they were having trouble communicating. And they say to Gani, “Go there immediately, here are the soldiers, choose the soldiers to form the liaison department,” and goes in the yard and sees me entering the object, “Fis!” “Gani!” “Where are you? This and that,” he said, “They ordered me to create the liaison department because we are…” I said, “Okay, congratulations! Did you find soldiers?” He said, “No, I want to take you.” I said, “But I am with the 82s, I can’t come just like that.” He said, “I’m going,” he said, “I’ll make the request to the commander.” Because Musë Dragaj was the commander of that school, that mini cantonment. He went to Musa, said, “I found a soldier, I want to take him.” I would say, “I don’t know anything about liaisons. What do I know about radio connections?” But I was in some radio contests, he knew that I switched frequencies, he said, “Oh, you know more than these I see here.”
I didn’t tell you, some guys had issues with aim, now I don’t want to brag, but they had issues with, completely inexperienced. He said, “At least you know computers and stuff,” I had taken scanners, a digital camera from London, the digital camera camera had just come out, I bought it, 600 pounds. I had these kinds of equipment, mouse, I didn’t have a laptop. But I brought these kinds of things they might need. For example, when I gave them the scanner, they really needed it, they didn’t know they might need it, and it was very helpful. Anyway, Gani was persistent, and I said, “Whatever the commander says.” I was a soldier, I didn’t know anything. And he went, he says to Musa, “This, his.” Musa had no idea who I was. “I found a soldier!” The moment they found out in the front that… Babina is a village near Bajram Curri, so there’s some road until there. The moment they found out that the liaison department was formed, we immediately got the order to go there.
So, without finishing the two weeks of training, because the liaison department doesn’t face the frontal war, the liaison department gets into a hole and it communicates there. But you have to find ways of communicating. Now what had happened in Koshare, the front line had widened. Now, when the front line widens, those little radio connections you have started not hearing each other. And we went up there with Gani, I remember it as if it were today, Agim Ramadani was killed that night. I didn’t know who he was, I had never heard of him, when you’re completely disconnected in another place.
We got in, we went up there after a, because at first we started going with a car, but Serbs would shoot, even inside the Albanian territory, they started throwing grenades in that road, we had to get out of the car, and go up the mountain, there I had a walk, I was quite fat even back then, I don’t know how I handled walking with a 40-kilogram backpack on my back. And we arrived in Padesht, Padesht is a village, it had a home which was the base… a village in Albania which is like, you could see the Kosovo border from there, so very near. Now when the war blew up, it spread inside Albania, now we had the military area three-four kilometers behind, because Serbs would come this way, they tried to explain to us from behind {explains with his hands}, and this was in the middle. And there was the base of everything that was happening.
Anton Qudi, Rrustem Berisha, who today are parliament members, used to sleep there, Sali Çeku who is a hero, Agim Ramadani, Abaz Thaçi. And we went inside, they looked horrible, we didn’t know what was happening. They looked at us, Gani was this short {shows with his hands}, older than me, bald with a beard. I was tall, fat. Rrusta looks at us, “Who are you?” Gani said, “I am,” he said, “ The military liaison. The liaison department leader.” He was immediately superior, because the moment you had military experience in former Yugoslavia, you would be superior. He said, “I’m the superior of the liaison department, he is my soldier.” Rrusta looks at me and says, “You, get out!” He made me go out. I was stuck in the hallway, I was cold, until they talked for about two hours. I met a guy there, he was telling me a little about how things were, I had no idea, Sefer, Sefer Berisha was telling, trying to tell me what is happening.
The border had just been broken, no one knew what was happening. Gani and Rrusta came out, and Rrusta opened, there was a two-story house, a big room upstairs, two smaller rooms and a hallway. It was a house, a stone tower, the door was up to here {shows with his hands} I had to go in like this {lowers his head showing how he had to bend to get inside}. And downstairs there, two bigger areas, two bigger rooms. The ones upstairs were separated, two small rooms.
And upstairs were the headquarters where the commanders would sleep, these two rooms were used as warehouses, some soldiers slept there, and some other commanders. And two rooms, one was not used, which they gave to us, small. And they said, “Connect the device here, because we had to connect it…” Did you notice when taxi drivers talk, sometimes you can’t hear other taxi drivers, but you can always wire the base, so the base talks to a taxi driver, but you can’t hear their response. So we wire the base for when two radio connections couldn’t communicate with one another, they communicated through us.
So it is very important because he says, “Attack from here, or be careful there,” you have to interpret word by word to the other person, and you have to know who to call and tell them. And this duty that I had, for the first time, but Gani didn’t deal with radio connections in war either, he did it in Sllatina at the airport, but not in war. And we found the frequences, we hooked everything up. We fixed it.
Now I can connect wires too, so we connected the wires, then the house didn’t have power, so we found a generator, we needed that generator to charge the batteries of the radio connections of those on the front line, when they came, we had to charge them somewhere. There was no power there. We made a system, because we had a kitchen, the kitchen was built later, the kitchen was even further. And while we were going, he took the batteries, went to the front line, gave them food and batteries and took the empty ones, gave them to us, we would charge them.
And like that, we made sure that through logistics, we had this brigade, had nonstop communication with no problems with radio communications. In the meantime a guy goes, Burimi… When Rrusta came in that small room after three days, when he saw what did, all lit up, he said, “What are you guys?” It was all high-tech. And Burimi came, a young boy, and he said he was a carrier, he carried wounded people, that was his duty. These soldiers’ duty was to go when someone gets wounded, give them first aid, and carry them up to the road where a car would come to get them and heal them.
Carriers were very strong, and they were fast. Burimi was a legend, very clever, student of electronics, very clever. He came one day and said, “Look, this is not my job, but in Karauta, Koshare where we took the military facility,” he said, “There are some radio connections of Serbians that they threw in the basement,” he said, “And they want to ruin them,” he said, “I studied electronics, I fix these kind of things,” he said, “It’s a shame to ruin those, we can use them.” I said, “Bring them here immediately. Those are the Serbian army centers.”
So you turn one on, and you can hear what they are saying. He found a donkey, put those things on him and he brought them, connected them, I turned them on and listened to what Serbian are talking about. When Burim had free time, he came and fixed equipment that would break, the radio connection, he started fixing them, and Gani made a request, “We want him on our team!” And we were too many people for that small room, so they gave us one of the rooms downstairs, and we became high-tech, the room was as big as this one, this area {shows with his hands}, maybe smaller, smaller, it was quite smaller.
And we got in and put those things there, the radio connection of Serbians in a corner, the radio connection of Albanians in another corner. And I mostly dealt with listening to them because the knowledge I got from comics, movies in Serbian I watched, and it all helped me in this profession I didn’t know I was going to have, that I got. I started listening to them and find out where, we looked at the map, and we looked for where our people were fighting, for example, our people had nicknames, how would I know, 326 was Hysen Berisha, The Beard, this, that.
Now you know 327 were fighting and we started listening to them, where Serbs are fighting. Where the activity was. And there was one called Džavo, džavo in Serbian means “the devil,” and Džavo, when Džavo would attack, I would hear Hysen’s soldiers communicating, and you knew Džavo was fighting with them. And more or less I found out their positions and their nicknames, and the, how do I say, Serbian garrisons. And I know which nickname faced who, I learned it all for a week. And then based on that information, when a spotter that wanted to attack us would appear, spotters are one or two people who go deep into our territory, they don’t kill people, they just observe and tell artillery that, “Six-seven kilometers behind, shoot here, here, here, kill this one.” Now I started to learn the coordinates, when he would give the coordinates, I would call them and say, “Where did the projectile fall?” They would tell me, “Here!” And we more or less knew which spotter, where he is going to attack, with what are they going to attack. So sometimes, after two weeks, I knew 99 percent exactly when a spotter talked, where they’re going to attack, I knew whom they will shoot.
Now until he gave him the coordinates, until he aimed, until he armed the barrel of the mortar, until he launched it, until it went off, it took around 45 seconds until it hit you. Now within that minute, you had to find who, who is being shot, and say, “Get out of there!” And they went away, and the missile would fall onto an empty place. Now the spotter would maybe see them go away or not, but if he said, “You didn’t kill anyone!” They would say, “Stay there, give us coordinates until we kill someone!” The spotter would say, “Aaaa, you blew up seven people.” I would call, “Are you okay?” They would say, “We’re okay! We’re super!” He would say, “Aaa, you blew up five people.” He would overstate the number like, “You were successful.” They on the other side, “No we’re okay, you told us on time and we went away.”
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Were people dying?
Fisnik Ismaili: Who?
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Albanians.
Fisnik Ismaili: Yes, 114 were fallen martyrs. But this was in cases, now you couldn’t, there were confrontations bullet-to-bullet, you couldn’t. I am talking about the ones we could stop, usually artillery communications, which included people with radio communications, we intercepted those almost every time and we cut them and got the best out of them. There were cases when there were soldiers on the front line or there were cases where NATO hit us and killed 15 people, and another time, NATO hit us twice.
There were cases where a lot of people were killed and those three, four first days before existing… I’m not saying that the liaison department saved the brigade, but it played a key role in two things: one and the most important thing was to take care of our people, take care in the sense of knowing to forestall what they had to do, which we did very well. And the other one was, when a sporadic piece of information leaked from them, we used that to hit them. And there were cases when they had huge losses from a piece of information, a single thing he would say on the radio connection. You just had to stay ready, I listened for 24 hours straight. And we had to learn what are they talking about when they talked in code, learn codes. Luckily we had officers of former Yugoslavia who knew some codes, and when I didn’t understand something, I’d say to Anton Quni, “What did he mean when he said this?” He would explain it, I would write it down, I would memorize them. And I didn’t even need a week and a half to learn everything about them.
And then, now people, people think it was easy, because you stayed in a hole and listened, and you had to very attentive all the time to get the information that you needed and to pass that information. Now you had all those separate regiments, and you gave someone two pieces of information a day, someone one, someone… we would distribute it, we would distribute to the whole brigade around 20 pieces of information a day, but for them, you know, someone got it, someone didn’t, you know, it didn’t seem like we were doing much to them, but we did a lot, because we had to manage the whole brigade, which started with 150 people, and they became 1500 people. And all the communicating and the listening was organized by us, people heard.
Then through radio connections, we connected with Suhareka in some places. We connected with Ramushi’s people in Gllogjan, with whom we hadn’t communicate for months, we had no idea what was happening, they cried on the radio connection from happiness. People knew us as Koshare’s liaisons. I can freely say that for three months in the Battle of Koshare, 144 people were killed. If I’m not wrong, in the Battle of Pashtrik, which lasted two weeks, about over 240 people were killed. Now if in a place 250 people are killed for two weeks, while here for three months only 144, that says something. Considering that the Battle of Koshare is known as the hardest battle that happened to the KLA, because it really was a confrontation that we had around, we had around twelve thousand Serbian forces in front, and it really was a harsh confrontation, and considering that that force that was sent at us, with 114 killed people, for that time in comparison with other places, says something.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Were you scared?
Fisnik Ismaili: It’s interesting, I saw cases where either you would be very scared or you weren’t scared at all. I was, I was the one who, this is interesting, the feeling of war. I tried to analyze it even later. For fear of disappearing like that, it is a very good feeling, but when I think about it today, I’m a little scared, I say, I’ll tell you how this continued for me even after the war. The most appealing part of war emotionally was the fact that you went to the most basic level of life, survival. You were there or you were going to die, so kill or be killed. You didn’t have to think.
Then your mind is so free, you don’t have to think about electricity bills, you don’t worry about going to work tomorrow, “do I have gas in the car?”, “do I have diapers for my kid?,” or even if I have a kid at all. No worries, everything disappears, and there’s this feeling, that animal instinct just to survive, you know what kind of mental freedom that gives you, you had no other worries. Eat, drink to survive, fight to survive, nothing else. To win and stay alive! To experience the win. Because from the cases I saw, whoever said “I came to die for Kosovo!” died.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Were you sad?
Fisnik Ismaili: In the beginning… and I am sensitive to blood and these things. It’s interesting how they’re cut off, you don’t have feelings. But when you would get scared, then you would understand that every loss is war is part of that process, it’s collateral damage and you would forget, you, “Okay, he died. The rest of us have to stay alive.” You had no time to be sad, you know, you would feel sorry, you would feel pain there and they had no time to think about that.
Actually, a little before the war, my [maternal] uncle was wounded. And when they told me, that’s when they found out he is my uncle, only two-three people knew, Gani and some, two-three people I was closer with. And then when they found out, they were saying, “How could you not tell?” You, “Uncle and nephew, are you crazy?” Then, “No, you know how Bashkim is. Actually yes, Bashkim is like that, very strict, military.” But when he saw he was wounded, while they were taking him to the hospital, he said, “Take all my clothes, everything you take off me, all my possessions, everything that is mine, put it in a box and take it Fis.” They asked, “Why Fis?” “Because he is my nephew.” “How is he your nephew?” Then they brought me his things, asking me, “How come you didn’t tell?” “My uncle didn’t want to tell.” Everything okay. My uncle survives, he had a wound here from a shell {shows with his hands}, nothing serious. They thought it was serious but he survived. And, why did I start talking about this because I lost it a little…
Kaltrina Krasniqi: About sadness…
Fisnik Ismaili: Yess, sadness. And I know when they were about to tell me, because now everybody found out he was wounded except me. And Gani with my best friends sat me there and say, “Fis, we want to talk to you about something.” And the first thing I thought was, “They are going to fire me.” You know, when your manager wants to talk to you, then I said, “Wait, I’m at war, he can’t fire me.” I remember that moment (smiles), in the end, “What happened?” He said, “Bashkim is wounded.” I expected to be sad, I was stuck, this was towards the end of war, I was stuck, I said, “Is he okay, is he alive?” “Yes!” You know, somehow I accepted his death as a part of that, we were used to, you know, I may be sounding cold-hearted when I say this, but I’m telling you how I felt then, I had no feelings then, zero, at all, no fear, no worries. I don’t know, an indescribable freedom. So that feeling continued for me while I was going back to my normal life, society.
Kaltrina Krasniqi: Until when were you at war?
Fisnik Ismaili: Until it was over, 11… Yes, yes, 11 [June], in the meantime, on the last day, a good friend of mine was killed, there was a team who baked burek. They were, I don’t know, the legends of the brigade for me. They made 250 burek a day, which meant once a week someone would eat burek, until it was their turn. But the day we had burek was the happiest day of a soldier, there were three people who made them. The last day, a day after the Agreement was signed, June 12, Serbs hit that house. That house was hit, launched, the shell fell on that house’s yard during the whole war, during the whole period of Koshta because they knew there was that with triangulation, that’s the method, they knew the waves were coming out of there, but it’s like a valley, so they didn’t know exactly, but there were shells in the yard all the time. But on the last day, when we let our guard down, they got up on top, saw where we were and launched two shells.
But I was in Tirana that day, because my uncle was wounded, and I went to see my uncle, and they killed Aziz that day. Aziz was one of those soldiers that made people happy once a week. There, you know, it went… I want to show the importance of the logistics and the part that… I’m telling you during the whole war I never shot a bullet, except when we trained, I didn’t need to shoot, that was our job. The kitchen’s job was to make potatoes. The carriers job was to carry the wounded, and he knows that job, he did that job, without them, we would have had even bigger losses. I believe that without the liaison department, the Battle of Koshare would have ended differently. I’m not saying that we would have lost, the outcome would not be what it is, maybe we would have had more martyrs, we would have places where we were more vulnerable where they could have hit us, which we found in time. Everybody had their own role to play that battle how it was. And when I came back to England…
Kaltrina Krasniqi: I’m curious to know those first moments when you heard big news, I suppose it was a very important news when the Agreement was signed.
Fisnik Ismaili: The last three days of war, my uncle was wounded sometime ten days before, before the end of the war, maybe longer. Correlating again, in the meantime, my parents left Pristina and ended up at my sister’s in Italy (laughs), I’m telling you, Vali, my sister in Italy is like this… And time, after some time, a journalist would come to interview us, and I was one of the few who could speak English, and I would charm the journalist, and they were happy someone could speak English, and when I would tell them I studied in London, they would feel sorry for me, they would say, “Use my satellite phone.”
Most of them had satellite phones, so I would call them time after time, talk to Laura in London, to my son, my sister in Italy. And nothing, I found out they were in Italy, when my [maternal] uncle got wounded, I told them, “This and this, he is wounded, in Tirana.” And my mother goes from Italy to Tirana to her brother, and I found out she is going, so I asked for permission to go to Tirana for two days, three. Because beforehand, they had to send me on duty to Tirana to take some equipment, they sent us a laptop from England, for me and Gani, my friends in London got their money together and sent us the laptop. I am telling you we were high-tech, laptop, scanner, digital camera. We started multiplying maps, tell NATO Serbia’s positions and stuff, all of that happened in our office. A lot of things happened there. In the beginning, it was just a liaison, then it became spying, charging batteries, farm, anything electronic you need you would find there, we started taking pictures of everything, give it to the spotters, they knew, they took pictures, we would process the information, we would take it to NATO. Everything happened there, it became very high-tech.
[1] Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës – Kosovo Liberation Army, was an Albanian guerrilla paramilitary organization that sought the separation of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia during the 1990s. .
[2] Bujar Bukoshi served as Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosova from 1991 to 2000. He is one of the founders of the Democratic League of Kosovo.
[3] Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo.
[4] Colloquial, expresses disbelief, distress, or wonder, depending on the context.