[This part of the interview was conducted on May 17]
Part Three
Aurela Kadriu: Can you tell us a little about the nature of the activities of Post-pessimists?
Garentina Kraja: The activities expanded. First, they were more modest, I mean they mainly consisted of our meetings to consolidate the group. There are various ways in which the group was formed. Mainly we were all engaged, I mentioned Petrit, in bringing in other people we thought were leaders of their communities, good students or people who were active or engaged in school activities, be it from Sami Frashëri and Xhevdet Doda in that case.
First, we had group activities, meetings which we held within Post-pessimists as an organization. Then one of the first things we did was publishing a leaflet which then took the shape of a monthly newspaper, I mean we tried to issue Postpesimistat once a month, I guess. We had other activities. We often organized dance parties [English], but they weren’t simply dance parties, it was a way to gather – a band of that time would play, people who played music, people from our generation who played music -, to gather and listen to them. And we organized activities about that.
Later, when things at Post-pessimists started becoming formal, when we started having a coordinator…we selected the coordinator who in fact coordinated various aspects of the organization. That is when we began to be more formal in organizing these activities and offering them beyond the framework of members of Post-pessimists. A consistent activity were travels abroad, in the shape of various meetings which we did within Post-pessimists, who came from other countries of former Yugoslavia. And these shaped our activity within Kosovo and abroad, always preparing to share our experiences with our peers from Bosnia, I remember them because they were in war at that time…
Then with our peers in Serbia, often not a pleasant experience for me. I don’t remember having had anyone from Macedonia. Maybe. But the main thing is that these were two main groups and of course the group of Post-pessimists in Croatia who were also well-organized. When we travelled abroad, I mean, we had various workshops with people who sponsored our travels. They often were behind us as an organization, Norwegians, Norwegian organizations supported us financially, I mean, not the state…but humanitarian associations of activists who saw a value in the inter-ethnic dialogue within Yugoslavia. And these activities that took place abroad, they were, except the dialogue among groups, there were various trainings that attempted to create trust among different communities, among Post-pessimists of different countries.
Aurela Kadriu: Can you describe for us, were you part of any travel? These…
Garentina Kraja: Yes. I remember that I was in Austria, I was in Norway within the travels of Post-pessimists. We participated, after the program extended, we began to attend summer schools. We went, I guess together with Jehona, we went to Crete within that summer school. There were three-four trips, that I remember clearly. They were, you know, seminars. I don’t remember the details, there were many social aspects among the people, which made it possible for us to break…
Besides the fact that we talked about the reality in which we were living in Kosovo, these activities made it possible for us to see people beyond, to see people as humans…beyond the burden we all had for being Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks at that time. I don’t specifically remember what they were, except the debates that often ended up in tears…I don’t remember other activities.
Aurela Kadriu: Do you remember the trips from Kosovo to another place?
Garentina Kraja: Yes, I remember, sometimes when we travelled, I mean very often, I guess we travelled by bus, but also by plane. When we travelled by plane, as far as I remember, we travelled through Belgrade. It was never a good experience. I mean, they often asked you, you know, we were afraid that they would interrogate us… “Why? Who are you? Why are you going? What is the aim of the visa?” And it always remains…I, the war was over 17 years ago and I still refuse to go to Belgrade and I don’t ask for opportunities to go to Belgrade because I have bad experiences in Serbia when traveling, the fear, not that something specific happened to us, but I was mainly afraid.
Aurela Kadriu: What happened to you right after Post-pessimists?
Garentina Kraja: Post-pessimists…I mean, I don’t remember myself divorcing from them, I don’t know how I divorced from Post-pessimists, because maybe formally we weren’t part of an organization anymore. We left room for the younger generation. But what I remember is that in 1996 when the communication with Albania was opened, my family saw it as an opportunity, I mean, my parents saw it as an opportunity for the family to reunite and go to live in Albania. This happened in 1996.
And at the end of the school year, we went there. To me this is really the separation from Post-pessimists. Why it didn’t seem to me as a formal separation is because more or less Post-pessimists set my circle of friends, people I had and continue to have very close to me. It doesn’t mean that we agree with each other, because we have chosen different paths, but however, they are the people with whom I continue being in touch, I continue being part of their happiness and sadness. So, I never felt like I separated…I separated from the activities of Post-pessimists, but not from such network.
And we went to Albania with our parents, with my brother and three of my sisters. We started living in Tirana. We started going to school. I was in secondary school. I mean, I began the fourth year in September in Tirana, with a big concern, with difficulties of integration in Albania. I have…The Albania we found in ‘96 was totally different from the one I had heard from my parents, maternal uncles and especially my mother. It was a totally different Albania. I remember the first contact was with Durrës, near Rinas. When we woke up, I mean, my father came and picked us up at the border with Macedonia, and when I woke and saw Durrës, there was nothing around it. It was like a desert.
And it was totally different from how we had imagined Albania, or how we saw Albania through the illegal antennas built in order to catch the signal of TVSH during the New Year’s Eve program. It was totally different and that was very disappointing. Then Tirana, of course there was a small group of Kosovars who were already in Tirana at the time, one of the people who was in Tirana at the same time with me was Zana Nixha, I mean, she was part of Post-pessimists in Pristina.
And we both ended up going to Sami Frashëri, to continue the fourth year of school in Tirana. We didn’t happen to be in the same classroom. She was in another classroom but at the same school. To me, the integration in Albania was a little…because I went there with the idea that we are the same society, the same people, it was a big disappointment. The first semester was…it was difficult for me to make new friends even though the students were really good, but of course there were stereotypes among teachers. Of course, I had my own stereotypes as well, which I projected on them.
To me it didn’t make sense that my Sociology teacher explained the situation in Kosovo as a situation of terrorism. That was the time when the clandestine and guerrilla activities in Kosovo had already started. And at the same time, I saw another aspect of Albania which I wasn’t exposed to before. That was my Albanian language teacher who asked me to bring her books each time I came to Kosovo. The Rilindja’s translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez for example, literature of foreign authors which had been forbidden in Albania. And in ‘96 they were thirsty for such international literature.
And I used my father’s library in Pristina each time I moved between Pristina and Tirana, to take books, the Rilindja’s translations and send them to my Albanian language teacher. Of course, there were difficult moments, especially about language, the way I spoke and the way they spoke, it often happened that we didn’t understand each other. And in general, this situation made me feel that I didn’t want to be in Tirana. And I asked my father to return. II mean, we came for the New Year’s, and I asked them [permission] to return to live in Pristina together with my sister, with Arzana.
We came, our parents allowed it. I…The situation in Pristina and Tirana was really the same, it was a chaotic situation. In Albania, the fall of the pyramid scheme had already begun at that time. Troubles were expected there too. Of course, nobody expected them to turn into a civil war in Albania. While in Kosovo it was clear. Attacks had just begun, bombs. Attacks, there was the attack against the Serbian rector of the University of Pristina.
Then there was a bomb that was thrown against the refugees coming from Knin, from Croatia, to Kosovo. But there were no victims, however these small guerrilla activities began in Pristina and other parts of Kosovo. Murders at the borders began, as well as arm confiscation. I mean we saw that something was about to happen. I mean, something was happening in both countries.
Back then, Koha Javore, where I had started working while still part of Post-pessimists, begun. I mean they started discussing for it to turn into a daily newspaper. This is the beginning, the end of ‘96, beginning of ‘97. Trainings of new journalists who would do the newspaper had begun. And considering that I was born in a family where my father was a journalist, I guess it was encouraging. I mean the fact that I saw the importance of media, but also the fact that I was growing up in a place that was going toward the war, I recognized the importance of the news. And, I followed it, I remember myself listening to the news since ‘89.
And I…I had no goal to become a journalist, that wasn’t my professional call, I loved writing and news. It followed me all the time during my process of growing up. And I saw it as a good opportunity. A good opportunity to know, to report, to write, to continue writing, to continue interviewing people. First Koha Ditore [Daily Time] began with… we returned to Pristina. Koha Ditore began with…I continued the second semester of my fourth year at the Xhevdet Doda gymnasium, I returned to my classroom after one semester.
It was a difficult return because they didn’t recognize the semester that I had finished in Tirana, but because of the rigor of Xhevdet Doda I had to learn everything that they had done in the first semester. I had to learn, so that I would take the exams in the second semester. It was a difficult semester, considering that I had already begun my engagement with Koha Ditore. I didn’t miss classes, no matter that I found a job, which was a rare thing in Kosovo at that time. I didn’t…I continued, I went to school. And I gave the maximum to be, to continue being a good student.
I remember that Mikel Demaj was our math teacher at the time, and no matter the conditions, Mikel was a committed professor to make us all mathematicians. I remember myself with all the problems we had, with an unstable situation and you know…Mikel, I went to math class and tried to solve the problems in the book of Bogosloven, we had to solve problems. And this is how the fourth year finished.
I am telling you that I started working for Koha Ditore on April 1, ‘97. It was a similar environment, as a graduation from Post-pessimists, at Koha, I mean if a graduation from Post-pessimists ever happened, it did so at Koha. At Koha Ditore I was surrounded by more or less the same people who were at Post-pessimists, Fis [Abrashi], Ylber [Bajraktari], especially these two. Then I met Beni, Nebi Qena. And from [April] 1, in fact in the summer ‘97, he returned from England. I was already working, covering cultural events until late, until October of ‘97.
In October ‘97, or September, September-October, together with Beni, we started going to the field. This was to me…I, I am a child who grew up in Pristina, but I never, it is not that I didn’t have a clue of how the other part of Kosovo lived, because my maternal uncles lived in the village. But they lived in a village of Dukagjin, people whose lands were very rich. I explained it earlier how they were persecuted, I mean…I had an idea of what happens in our villages. But, however, at my grandfather’s, my maternal uncles’, I didn’t face the poverty that I did in September, ‘99 when I went to…
I mean September, ‘97 or October ‘97…in fact my editors at that time, the way Koha was structured, our editors were people whom we knew earlier. I mean from the same generation, Veton, Veton Surroi[1] was the editor-in-chief of Koha. Our editors were Ylber Hysa, Baton Haxhiu, Dukagjin Gorani, Agron Bajrami. And a big part of making a newspaper was translating a lot. That is where we learned because it was learning by doing [English], I mean, we didn’t have formal education.
I enrolled in the Faculty of Law with the hope that I would finish it. I went, the Faculty of Law at that time was a home-school in Velania. Yes, the structure, first it was a newspaper that took translations…it didn’t have field journalists, it was being established. I mean, there were many correspondents in various villages and cities of Kosovo. And a group of youth who worked here in Pristina, untrained and politically unaffiliated journalists, people aiming to break the status quo. Now, I was talking about Stari Trg.[2]
In September ‘97, it was the first time, I mean around that time, when we took the courage to go to the field and see how people of Kosovo live. And the first stop as I told you, was Stari Trg. I don’t even know why we went there. Maybe we were attracted to know, because of the need to see how people live in a place that before…or that at least in our imagination it had economic importance, such as Trepça.[3] And when we went there, as people who didn’t know much about international literature at that time, but as people who identified poverty with Migjen[4] and his letters…Migjen helped us describe the situation we witnessed.
We went to Stari Trg in ‘97 and met families who measured their existence by the amount of flour and oil they had available. This to me was a reality that I didn’t get to see in Pristina and that wasn’t reflected in the back then newspaper, Bujku,[5] or wasn’t part of the discussions in Kosovo…at least not those in which I was present. It seemed that in Pristina we lived with the idea that we were all living in the same way, it was difficult for all of us.
In Pristina it was very difficult because however, the state apparatus was here, I mean, it was in Pristina, keeping the society under pressure. But economy wise, and in the sense of isolation, what I saw in Stari Trg was hard to explain. I mean, we sat with Beni, we returned. I remember that we didn’t say a word on the way. We returned, he sat at the computer, I sat in front of him and we both wrote our versions of what we had seen in Stari Trg, and it was published under the title Skamja e malit t’art [The Poverty of the Golden Mountain].
You know, it was a cover story. It was the cover of Koha Ditore. That was my first article that went beyond cultural issues or interviews with various people of arts and culture in Pristina. And in that story, we tried to tell things the way we had seen them. To describe and bring to Pristina a hardly known reality at that time. There were, I mean, I wasn’t aware of the importance that such an explanation would have in various cities of Kosovo.
I was surprised by how many people came to ask me after that story, “Do people really live like that?” Not that in Pristina, because I have to give you the context, not that things were better in Pristina, they weren’t…but Pristina wasn’t as isolated as the other parts of Kosovo. After this trip to Stari Trg with Beni, it sounds as if we went to another country, I mean the whole trip seemed like that because we had to go through many checkpoints in order to arrive there with one hundred fears. We returned with one hundred fears.
After that we continued with the idea, I mean to go and see what was happening. What was happening in the villages of Kosovo. What…are we aware of the situation Kosovo is in today? Because however, I must say, we were children, or at least I was a child who didn’t want to stay loyal to the status quo created at that time. Without many ideas, maybe a little cynical about the situation in which we were living, waiting for change or a concrete action. Of course, the LDK took action with the peaceful movement in order to raise awareness, but after Dayton it was clear that we weren’t even part of the international agenda, nor the American one, nor part of the agenda of any powerful country.
However, in Bujku and Qendra Informative e Kosovës you always had news about recognitions and big decisions that were ahead of Kosovo, that Kosovo was in fact part of the international agenda. This was different from the reality we faced in Stari Trg, and later in Drenica, [the reality] of people who, in my opinion, had lost everything and didn’t have anything left to lose. I mean, the only thing that had remained was surviving and their own life. That’s it. I mean they had lost everything, they had no food and no dignity in many cases.
Where…Stari Trg was the first episode. The second episode was in Drenica. In the late ‘97 we went to Obri e Madhe, Obri e Madhe and Obri e Vogël. We went together with Beni and our colleague from Koha at that time, Visar Kryeziu, a photographer. We went to a clay-built house. Seeing clay-built houses wasn’t something new in Kosovo. A big part of the houses in Kosovo were built like that before the war. But this house was…the first snow had fallen and this house was…it looked so dramatic. A house without light, I mean with a very weak light inside, with a half-destroyed roof.
And we went inside. We asked the owner of the house whether we could go inside and talk to him. He allowed us to get in. But when we entered, what we saw was only one room. A room with bare walls…with a carpet, or with a very thin blanket on the floor. The floor was cold ground. And I remember a weak light, a weak lamp in that room. I mean, they had electricity. I remember a closet in the corner of the room, some pillows to sit on and a wood stove in the middle of the room.
And I…for the owner of the house, the father, I mean the head of the family it was very difficult to talk about the situation which we were already witnessing. From my experience in Stari Trg, I knew that it was easier for women to talk about the problems and the needs to survive, the barriers which they faced… especially to provide food for the family. And I asked, “Can you please tell me where your wife is? Can, does the mother of the children know, can we talk to her?” And he told me, “She went to the neighbor’s, to my brother’s.” Because they were living in a family community, within the same property.
And he told the children. “Go call your mother.” And instead of going out the door, they returned to the closet and opened it (cries). At that moment, their mother came out of the closet…she came and shook hands with me, Visar and Beni. We weren’t able to ask her anything. We didn’t know how to behave (cries) in those moments. Maybe the most difficult story. I mean, during the war we saw many things, but to me this remains one of the most difficult stories to tell, because that’s where I saw, for me the loss of dignity and everything was reflected in that woman and her gesture.
I mean she didn’t get inside the closet because she was afraid of us, she didn’t get inside the closet because she had…I mean, the only reason, I still think about that woman, and I believe that one of the reasons why she hid there was connected to the situation in which we found them. I mean, the complete loss of human dignity. She was embarrassed about the situation, the poverty. And this for me was the warning that in Kosovo there is no turning back.
I mean, from this point on, in fact in that trip, if I am not mistaken it was around that time when we went to Drenica again. On our second time there, we slept in a mill, again in Obri, Beni, Visar and I. We went to look for the UÇK.[6] Now, it was clear that the UÇK existed. We were told that from other people in the villages of Drenica, I mean they spoke in codes, with many difficulties. But, I mean, in our search for them we decided to sleep in order to build trust with people from Drenica, with people around which we didn’t have, in fact this wasn’t a random adventure for us, but we really wanted to know who they were and ask people from these villages.
Who was really the UÇK? Because if the UÇK only showed…this was the time when there were rumors that there were masked people in various villages, especially those in Drenica, who stopped people and asked them…They asked them, “Where are you going?” They were legitimate and would take their ID cards to show who they were. If I mean, they operated in that territory, the idea was to talk to ordinary people who have an idea about who they are and what are their goals.
So, in order to build trust, we slept that night in Obri. And of course, we met people, whom we later found out were part of the UÇK. They met us without masks. But at the same time, returning from another village and going to the other village, in Obri they stopped us in front of the mill. They stopped us, they were in a car and they came out of it. In uniforms, without masks, a group of people. And we were in the car with Adem Meta, Beni, Visar and I. And they came closer. We opened the window. They talked to us, “Who do you think you are?” How can we? Of course, in Albanian. They were dressed… I mean, the person who talked to us was wearing pants and camouflage on top.
And, “Who are you? Where are you going? How dare you? You are spies. You this and that…” We told them that we were journalists of Koha Ditore. Anyway, you know, with the explanation of who we were, of course, the local correspondent of Koha was with us, and he was a kind of reference because they knew him. He was from Drenica, Skënderaj. They started shouting at us, they started telling us that…their language got harsh. And in one moment, I turned to them and said, “You cannot talk to us like that. We have come here. How dare you? We passed the checkpoints. We did this. How do you know who I am? How do you know the sacrifices of my family?”
And for a moment, he stopped and listened to me (laughs). Beni and Visar didn’t say a word, Adem neither. They listened to me and told me, “Okay. You can go” (laughs). And I mean, this was the first confrontation with the UÇK. Later I found out that the person who stopped us, his nickname was Sandokan.[7] After the war, I went to interview his wife, I mean, the wife of the deceased, because he died during the war, he was killed during the war. And other people who were around didn’t react, they let just him talk. After the exchange of words between me and him ended , we were free to go wherever we wanted in Drenica.
They no longer stopped us. The next day I went to Prekaz, together with Beni, Visar and Adem Meta. In Prekaz we were welcomed by Hamëz Jashari, I believed this is after the first attack.[8] He was waiting for us in front of the door. We entered and he told us how the first attack had happened. He told us, he pointed to the tower, the water tower of the ammunition factory, it is still there, as a point where the attack came from. Then he told us, more or less we walked around the houses, and he told us what had happened that night. How the attack came, how there was no warning for it, how they were injured, I guess two girls from the family were injured in that attack.
And when he told me about the girls of the family, I asked him if I could go and talk to them. He followed me. I mean, I went without Beni and Visar, we went to the ground floor, where all the women of the family were. I stayed a little with them, so that I could ask them about that night. And when I went out of there, they invited us to go to the oda.[9] When we went upstairs to the oda, the oda of Jasharaj, I don’t know, maybe memory cheats on us sometimes, but I have a visual memory of that moment, there were around one hundred pairs of shoes in front of the door. Maybe there were less, but to me it seemed like there were one hundred pairs of shoes.
And he invited us in. He said, “Get in the oda.” I was the only one hesitating. Beni and Visar didn’t hesitate at all. They wanted to go in. I said, “Can we not go in at all. Let’s return to Pristina.” Partly because on our way back we had to go through police checkpoints and I don’t know, maybe… (cries). We didn’t know what would really happen, what would be the size of the future attack in Prekaz. We were afraid, I personally was very afraid, maybe it was…as a journalist I wasn’t supposed to have such self censorship, but considering the circumstances, I didn’t want to know more than what I needed to know.
And I was afraid to go to that room, because of the people I would see and the chance to be stopped by the police on my way back to Pristina and be forced to give information about them. It didn’t happen. I didn’t enter the oda, but they also didn’t stop us. We returned to the office. And when we returned to the office, we had another difficulty, how to tell about what we had seen? And we sat and tried to write in a way that wouldn’t put them in danger, that wouldn’t put the people we had met in Drenica in danger, but at the same time that makes it very clear that we met the UÇK.
And I remember it as if it was today, a photograph, because Visar…they didn’t allow Visar to take many photographs in the beginning…but I know that Visar stopped and took a photograph in the snow. There was UÇK written on the snow. I mean, somebody had written UÇK on the snow. And that was more or less our way of telling our readers. Because of course, we always thought about the wellbeing, the personal wellbeing, the wellbeing of people whom we interviewed, but also the wellbeing of the newspaper, because we didn’t want to the newspaper to be shut down. We wanted to keep it as an information tool, not to risk its closing. And the only way for us to tell the presence of the UÇK was through that photograph, where someone had written UÇK as a slogan on the snow. I mean, this was the first part.
On February 28, a little after that visit, Qirez took place.[10] The murders in Qirez. We tried…I don’t remember whether I was part of the team that went to Qirez. I wasn’t in Qirez, but I was waiting for the photographs that came, that Visar brought to the news desk. Very terrible, I mean, photographs of executed people, mainly men, but there was also a pregnant woman. Then Prekaz took place one week after Qirez, on March 5, 1998.
On March 5, in fact we had mobile phones back then, I guess we had them. They were very exclusive…or I don’t know whether we had mobile phones those days or Baton called us at Beni’s home phone. Our editors had our phone numbers. It was very early in the morning, around five in the morning. And he told Beni, I mean, he told Beni, “I guess an attack has begun in Prekaz. Can you come to the office?” Beni called me. We went to the office and the others came as well. Fis and Ylber came.
For the whole day we tried to get closer to Prekaz to see what was happening, we tried various ways, be it using phone numbers we had, or international journalists. We couldn’t manage. For three days during the siege of Prekaz, we didn’t manage to get closer. They came…Koha at that time, Koha Ditore was like the foundation for everyone, an informative center in itself. Every foreign journalist would come there first, before starting their day, they would come to Koha Ditore to see what we had, what was happening in Kosovo. This because Koha’s employees in the field were very credible and people who constantly kept the news desk updated with what was happening.
So, maybe we had the information before everyone else of where there were fights or where there were attacks in this case. So, at the same time, many of us as journalists, despite being journalists, it started becoming impossible for us to go to the field. So, we often went there with international teams of foreign televisions’ journalists to serve as their translators. And when we returned, after being finished serving as translators, of course we were paid for that job, but we didn’t do it because of the pay, when we returned to the newsdesk, we tried to write our stories.
I mean, that was the only way because as Koha Ditore we didn’t have the resources that we needed in order to save ourselves. We didn’t have bulletproof vests nor bulletproof cars, you know, and going to the field became dangerous for us as Koha Ditore. At that time, I mean, it was the time when the police started to come and take our editors in for informational conversations,[11] they started asking them about the articles that were published in newspapers. And, I mean, we constantly had an idea…
We thought that thanks to the prominence that Koha had achieved for a short time, we would be a, how to say, using an English word, a hub [English] for the international media, we thought, at least I thought that it was the armor that saved us from the back then ruling power. An armor that saved us from Serbia. They didn’t touch us, because the moment they would touch us, we would become the headline [English]. I mean, if one of our editors or editor-in-chiefs were beaten by the police, that would make an international headline. And we believed that it was our protective armor.
But also, the fact that we went as translators for international media, CBS, ABC, BBC, Reuters gave us, me personally, an armor behind which we could do our job. I mean we were there and we played two roles. We were fixers [English] and interpreters, I am not using the word translators because it was in fact an interpretation because we also had to give the context of what we were witnessing, and [we were] journalists. I mean there were two roles that we played during that period of time. Professionally, for me it was a school in itself. A journalist, I call myself an accidental journalist, in the sense that I loved the news, I loved writing, but I wasn’t educated to do that job.
In our work in the field, in ‘98, ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, we got to work with the best journalists. International journalism, foreign correspondents had already an experience at that time which they had obtained in Bosnia, while reporting the war in Bosnia, so when they came to Kosovo, they were prepared for what was waiting for them. We were less prepared for what was ahead of us. In fact, what we saw in Drenica in ‘97, ‘98, for me was the beginning, or I’d rather say, the warning of what the war in Kosovo would look like.
It was…when we saw Prekaz and the ruins, the corpses in Qirez, it was obvious for us that this would be the flow of events in the upcoming year in Kosovo. The upcoming year, the year that was unfolding itself. Of course, reality was harsher than we had imagined it. Maybe this also… reality, between Pristina where life continued in a situation of repression and the countryside, where there were constantly attacks, and there were confrontations between the UÇK and Serbian forces, or there were guerrilla attacks, then the disproportionate revenge which didn’t discriminate anyone, of Serbia against Albanian villages….
It was difficult to bring these two realities together in our heads and we often saw ourselves as the messengers of what was happening, almost the messengers of what was happening. We knew that maybe that was our last night with friends in a coffee shop in Santea. Maybe this is our last night with these people at Hani i Dy Robertëve. Maybe not many people were thinking the same thing, but because during the day we saw everything that was happening in the field, we returned to Pristina and people asked, “What is happening?” It was difficult to sit and tell them what was happening. Of course, we told them the newspaper, it wasn’t a secret, but it was difficult to give people the news that what was actually coming looked very terrible.
Aurela Kadriu: How was your communication with the family during the time you were here?
Garentina Kraja: We talked a lot. I mean our mother often visited us. She tried to come every month to visit Arzana and me. Arzana continued school, while our mother came to meet us, she came and spent time with us. She travelled. We travelled too. We went to visit our parents as well as our sisters, two of our sisters and brother. This period, I mean ‘98, I remember the summer of ‘98, a big part of the summer of ‘98 when the offensive took place in Rahovec. At that time, I was in Albania and I couldn’t wait to return to Kosovo because I wanted, I mean, I wanted to be here when these things happened, I wanted to report them.
I forgot to mention a very important aspect. Before the international media came to Kosovo, Koha established an information network in the shape of a newsletter [English], a digital newsletter in English, and a big part of our work was done there. I mean all the news we received from the field and the photographs were used to create a kind of digest [English] in the evening, which we shared, and then it continued. I mean, consider that here we are talking about ‘98, when internet was deeply limited. Very few people had email addresses, but we tried to share the news of what was happening in Kosovo with our capacities.
After ‘98, March ‘98, it was almost unnecessary because the main international media established their presence in Kosovo and Kosovo was never removed from the headlines, until June 12, ‘99.
Aurela Kadriu: How was, I mean, ‘99 for you?
Garentina Kraja: I mean, ‘98 was, ‘98 was constantly field – Pristina, field – Pristina and a little Albania. It was in October, October, ‘98 when the situation got better because the cease-fire began. But the cease-fire was actually a preparation for war from both sides. It was a preparation for war for the UÇK. It was a preparation for war for Serbia. Of course, at that time, there were the monitors of the OSCE in Kosovo, of the OSCE Verification Mission in Kosovo. And now, often, I mean until ‘90 [no], January 15, ‘99 we often saw our saviors in them. I mean, nothing big can happen here because the verifiers of the OSCE mission are present in the field.
On January 15, this situation changed. Of course, in this period people talked about an international conference on Kosovo. Kosovo was now separated, on one hand there were the activities of the LDK and those of the UÇK on the other. Both… there were tension between both of them. There were tensions at the local level. There were verbal tensions at the central level. There were figures who tried to achieve reconciliation between the two parties. But to us, I mean, as journalists, our eyes were in the field. What is happening in Kishnarekë? What is happening in Llap? In Llap, I am especially mentioning Llap because at that time, if there was a place where we saw the signs of a conventional war in Kosovo, it was Llap.
Because during the time of…the Verification Mission in Kosovo, their presence here, the UÇK had begun to open very deep istikame.[12] Serbia continued bringing cars, I mean more sophisticated vehicles, armored vehicles. In fact, they started to slowly bring their army to war, to start a more conventional war. Let me tell you, no matter the fights in the field which continued being reported, for us this period, October-January, ‘98… {phone rings} sorry…which continued being reported, the priority was the international diplomacy around Kosovo..
I mean, if we go back to the covers of Koha Ditore, they tell that at that time we were dealing more with “What did Chris Hill say, as the American representative for Kosovo? What did Milošević say? What did the UÇK say? What did the LDK say?” I mean, political events were more followed, without letting aside the…mainly the correspondents who followed events which we covered depending on the sporadic fights that…I am saying sporadic, because however the cease-fire was respected in this period.
I mean, this gave us the chance to move a little from the field and return to the political narrative of this whole thing. The questions which aimed to understand who the UÇK was continued during this period. “Who are these people? Where do they come from?” At that time, we started interviewing some of the UÇK commanders. And they started being more open to the media. I mean, we are talking about summer ‘98 until early ‘99, when we started finding out the names of their political representatives who started to articulate their political demands.
Then, on January 15, ‘99, the idea of the international presence was over because Raçak took place.[13] And I went to Raçak two days after the massacre, when they gathered, when a big battle happened around the corpses. Beni was among the first journalists who went to Raçak. And, I mean when he returned, he returned together with Ylber, Baton, Alban Bujari, the photographer. They were terrified by what they had seen. Murdered civilians, shot, thrown in a trough. We reported on the event, we reported, all the international media reported on it, and this was viewed as the end, in fact, the beginning of the international attempts for a conference to create, to find a political solution because the war had begun again, I mean, it would escalate in Kosovo.
[1] Veton Surroi is a Kosovo Albanian publicist, politician and former journalist. Surroi is the founder and former leader of the ORA political party, and was a member of Kosovo assembly from 2004 to 2008.
[2] The Stari Trg mine is one of the largest lead and zinc mines in Kosovo. The mine is located in Leposavić.
[3] Trepča in Serbian, large industrial and mining complex in Mitrovica, one of the largest in former Yugoslavia. It was acquired by a British company in the 1930s and nationalized by socialist Yugoslavia after the war.
[4] Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (1911-1938), known as Migjeni, a well-known poet and writer born in Shkodra.
[5] The Farmer, daily newspaper which replaced Rilindja after Serbian authority banned it, in August 1990.
[6]UÇK, Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës, Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA].
[7] Abedin Rexha (1969-1998), killed by another KLA fighter during a shoot out.
[8] In March 1998 Serbian troops surrounded the compound of the Jashari family, whose men were among the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and killed all of them, including the women and the children. This event energized the Albanian resistance and marked the beginning of the war. The speaker here is referring to a first attack that had happened in January of the same year.
[9] Men’s chamber in traditional Albanian society.
[10] Between February 28 and March 1, 1998, Serbian security forces launched a series of attacks in the villages of Likoshan and Qirez, in the region of Drenica, in response to a KLA ambush of police officers. These attacks resulted in the killing of 24 non combatants, as documented by Human Rights Watch among others in the report, A Week of Terror in Drenica: Humanitarian Law Violations in Drenica.
[11] Euphemism used in Yugoslavia, referring to police interrogations.
[12] Turkish: istikame, the position of the soldier standing as guard or preparing to attack.
[13] On January 15, 1999, Serbian forces killed 45 Albanian civilians in the village of Raçak, central Kosovo.