The Ashes of Belanica

BELANICA, Yugoslavia — Ghosts hang over this village. One can almost hear the screams and the echo of gunfire where, in a spasm of violence on the first day of April, tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were herded together, robbed, and in some cases raped or killed. The survivors were sent off--never, their tormentors believed, to return.

As the family Zogaj--whose saga was chronicled by The Times in a special section April 25--trundled back to Belanica exactly 77 days after that brutal eviction, they had tears to shed and fears to face.

The tears came first. Idriz Zogaj, patriarch of the family, broke down as their two heavily laden tractors and wagons passed the Yugoslav military headquarters in Prizren, the main city in southern Kosovo. The compound had symbolized Serbian dominance of his majority ethnic Albanian province.

Now he looked up and saw two Albanian flags flying at the entrance. That unsought joy was too much for the 74-year-old man, who had endured so much anxiety and suffering leading his large family through two years of civil war.

“I cried,” he said. “I cried the rest of the way home.”

But fear crept along the road with the Zogajs--fear realized a few hours later when they arrived at the entrance to the village. All their pleasant daydreams about how they would pick up their lives again came crashing down around the clan when they saw the reality of Belanica.

It was a panorama of war.

At the cemetery on the edge of the village, there was a large and foreboding unmarked grave, apparently dug with an earthmover. Fearful of booby traps, no one has dared yet to dig into it.

In the field that forms the heart of Belanica: dozens of burned-out cars, buses and trucks, and overgrown grass barely covering rotting animal carcasses. And along the streets and lanes of the bucolic village: nearly every home destroyed, wells poisoned, furniture and appliances looted or burned.

The Zogajs’ sense of dread worsened when they reached their own home at the end of a dirt lane. The clay tiles of their barn’s burned-out roof had tumbled across the entrance to their farmyard, preventing them from driving through the gate. They had to trip over the rubble in the dark to get inside. The house’s stone walls were standing, but it was gutted. Rusty bedsprings hanging forlornly over a charred ceiling beam were all that remained of the second story.

After 2 1/2 months as refugees, they would be sleeping rough for a long time to come. The children, who had been so hopeful about returning home, began to whimper.

Idriz Zogaj counts his blessings. He and all 20 members of his family have survived. The terror is finished, in his mind, as long as U.S. and other NATO troops remain in Kosovo.

But he is afraid for the future. There are no crops to harvest this year and no seeds to plant for next year. He has no food stores, no money or materials to rebuild his house, and his savings are gone. He doesn’t even have any gasoline to burn the dead animals he found on his property.

Family Insisted on Staying Near Border

The Zogajs spent their days as refugees in Kukes, Albania, near the border with Kosovo. They were among about 100,000 Kosovars who clung to the border region and stubbornly resisted all official pleas to move to places of greater security deeper inside Albania.

As a result, they were among the first refugees to reenter Kosovo, on June 17, barely five days after NATO troops began arriving in the province. They returned before international agencies such as the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had declared it was safe.

They relied instead on the word of Idriz’s grandson Muhamet.

On the night before the Zogajs were expelled from Kosovo, Muhamet, 26, along with hundreds of other young men from the village, climbed into the mountains above Belanica to escape Serbian forces and link up with fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

They watched helplessly as their village was being put to the torch by the invaders.

“The smoke was so thick we could not see anything,” Muhamet recalled.

Muhamet’s experience helps explain what happened to the missing men among the Kosovo refugee population. There were thousands with him in the mountains, he said. They engaged in running gun battles with the Serbs and survived by foraging for food--sneaking down at night into empty villages and going through houses for anything to eat. Those who were caught were killed, but most managed to survive.

The Serbs who invaded Belanica on April 1 and evicted the inhabitants of the village remained until their commanders signed a peace agreement June 9. But during those months, KLA fighters began shooting down at the Serbs from the mountain and eventually managed to reoccupy the upper end of the village.

Muhamet said there was pitched fighting, with the sides at one point only 50 yards apart. Milaim Zogaj, a KLA member from the village, claims that the rebels killed “not less than 30” Serbian troops in Belanica.

When the Serbs finally withdrew, Muhamet was among the first KLA men back. He stayed in his yard two days; then he heard that the road to Albania was free of Serbs. He borrowed a car and raced to Kukes to find his family.

“I never in my life had as great a feeling,” he recalled. “It was the first time we have ever had an open, safe road to go on.”

In Kukes, he found his wife, Sahadete, 23, their 1-year-old daughter, Arbnore, and the rest of his family.

“I was speechless. I couldn’t speak at all, and I just hugged them,” he said. “Then we all settled down and heard each other’s stories.”

The next day, the whole Zogaj family packed up to return.

Land Mines, Rubble, Hate-Filled Graffiti

The first ones back to Belanica were the KLA fighters and civilians who had waited out the war in the mountains. They began looking for land mines and booby traps and burying the dead they could find. Nearly every house suffered at least some damage, and most were in ruins from fire or explosions. Many also bore hate-filled graffiti left by the Serbs.

“Kill, kill, kill Albanians,” read the doorpost on one house.

The Zogajs reached their homestead at 11 p.m. Thursday, June 17. There was no electricity. They slept in their wagons and in the yard, and it was only in daylight the next morning that they could assess the damage.

Unlike at other homes nearby, there seemed to be no dead animals or people in their well, so they decided the water was safe to drink. The outdoor oven where the women make the bread was also intact. Idriz’s stone-block house was a total ruin, but one or two rooms in the home of his nephew Ali weren’t burned. The house of his second nephew, Habib, 60, was untouched except for a few bullet holes.

“They did not dare touch mine,” Habib joked to the others.

Friday was spent clearing away debris blocking the entrance gate so that the tractors could be driven into the yard. The women cleared out a former stable and covered the floor with old carpets and pillows. It makes for a dark, dank room, but at least it has a roof. Until the house is rebuilt, it has to serve as the sleeping area and living room for Idriz’s family.

The family was in a happier frame of mind by the time a reporter and photographer from The Times arrived Friday evening. Cooking outside, the Zogaj women immediately put together a celebratory traditional dish for visitors, flija, a kind of Kosovo pizza made with cheese and yogurt.

Idriz’s daughter-in-law Megjide smiled proudly as she set it down--the first hot meal back home.

“We are worried a lot about food. Right now, we have a little food, and when it finishes we are going to have to go into town to buy more. But how? We don’t have money,” Idriz said.

“If we don’t get any help, we will starve.”

A Grisly Mission: Uncovering a Corpse

On the Zogajs’ second day back home, their neighbors up the hill were on a grisly mission.

The house that had belonged to Ibrahim Sertolli had been dynamited by the Serbs. Near the front gate, KLA fighters had placed three bodies from the household: two old women and a middle-aged man. One of the women, found in a shed, had been mutilated, her head and one leg cut off.

But Sertolli himself hadn’t been found. Neighbors knew he could not be far. Eighty years old, blind and an invalid, he seldom left his bedroom in life, and they were certain they would find him there in death.

“We have to take these bodies and bury them, because there is a bad smell,” said Osman Hoxha, a neighbor.

So with a steady chink, chink, chink of his shovel, well-digger Avdi Sertolli dug into the rubble of his grandfather’s house where the bedroom had been. After digging down about 6 feet, he realized that a thick concrete ceiling had collapsed into the room. He broke the ceiling with a sledgehammer, cut away the reinforcing steel rods and, bit by bit, lifted up the chunks. Through a pale haze of dust, the shape of a head slowly emerged, skin partially torn away exposing the skull, all accompanied by a sickening odor.

“After so many years of war, the nightmare and fear of bodies has gone away,” Sertolli said grimly.

He donned a military gas mask, and his helpers wrapped his hands in heavy plastic secured just below his elbows with rope. He lifted up the remains of Ibrahim Sertolli, laid them on a blanket, then wrapped and tied everything in a plastic sheet. A tractor carried the corpse to the graveyard.

Without ceremony, about 10 men dug a grave, laid planks at a 45-degree angle over the body and filled in the hole.

There was a beautiful sunset, with the day’s last rays illuminating the wildflowers in the graveyard, as the small group finished its task.

“He was my neighbor and a very fine person. All our lives we knew each other,” said Sadik Sertolli, 80, who sawed the planks. “The first of April here was our greatest tragedy.”

Computing Death Toll Still an Impossibility

The people of Belanica say they will have to wait until all the refugees return before they can figure out how many of the villagers were killed during the Serbian rampage of April 1-2.

Walking around the village, KLA fighters point out places where they have found bodies, 13 so far. There is also the large, unmarked grave in the graveyard, and another dug by a bulldozer in a field near a barn. Residents have been afraid to touch either of these graves and are waiting for NATO military experts.

The body of Izet Hoxha, an elderly man shot in his kitchen while his wife watched, was not found in their burned house. Relatives think it might have been dropped into their well. Bashem Zogaj, a young man beaten by a Serbian officer on the side of the road and last seen by his family unconscious in a ditch, has not returned, said his father, Isuf Zogaj, who is beside himself with grief.

Many of the cattle, oxen and dogs were killed, but Idriz Zogaj has recovered seven of his cows, three of which are still giving milk. Nephew Habib has been chasing two cows that have turned wild and refuse to come back to his barn. All of the family’s sheep are gone, most likely eaten either by the Serbs or by the KLA.

The minaret of the village mosque was pierced by a shell on the day the Serbs invaded Belanica. When residents returned, it had been blown up entirely and was lying on the ground. Their mosque, built in 1754 and rebuilt in 1808, and again in 1989, must be rebuilt once again.

The primary school at the center of the village was severely vandalized. The windows were broken, and bullets pierced every wall and surface. Its five overhead projectors were destroyed. A plaster bust of the Albanian national hero, Ismail Qamil, that sat in the entrance was broken in two. School director Nebih Zogaj is uncertain whether classes can begin in September and hopes foreign donors will send money for repairs.

Zimer Zogaj, a master builder who has been working abroad, in Germany, is hunting for three family members taken away by the Serbs during the exodus from Belanica: his brother Sali, 35, and cousins Sami, 21, and Icmi, 19.

Gesturing to the destruction all around him in the village, he vowed that it will all be repaired in time, promising, “Belanica will flourish and bloom and be three times more beautiful than before.”

But resettling is not going to be easy. Because of land mines, Idriz Zogaj is afraid even to send his sons into the fields to cut fodder for the cattle. And, he wonders, will there be international help in time for him to rebuild his home before winter?

Like many Kosovars, Idriz Zogaj cannot stop expressing his gratitude to the United States for their deliverance from the Serbs.

“If I had not been embarrassed, I would have hugged those NATO soldiers,” Zogaj said of the first Western troops he saw upon reentering Kosovo. “If Clinton comes here, he won’t be able to make a step on our soil because of all the flowers we’ll throw at his feet.”

As for the Serbs left in Kosovo, Zogaj is skeptical of the oft-repeated calls for tolerance. No Serbs lived in Belanica, but in villages not far away where Serbs did live, their homes are being put to the torch by embittered ethnic Albanians who lost property or family members. In Belanica, it is widely assumed that these Serbs knew about the atrocities taking place all around, did nothing to prevent them and, in many cases, actively participated as police reservists or paramilitary forces.

It might be all right for those who committed no crimes to stay in Kosovo, Zogaj said, “but those people who killed Albanians, how can they come back? The Serb who killed his neighbor’s son, how can he come back? He can never show his face here again.”

Zogaj’s wife, Feride, just wants to put the last few years behind her, for the sake of her grandchildren. Grasping her grandson Lutfi by the cheeks, she said merrily: “Now they are safe and they are alive and they will grow up slowly. . . . I hope they will have a great life in freedom.”

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Times on the Web: The previous stories chronicling Zogaj family members’ struggle since they were driven from their village of Belanica are available on The Times’ Web site: http://preview.nohib.com/belanica