June 14, 1999
THE RUBBLE
Kosovo Insurgents Retake a Wrecked Stronghold
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By STEVEN ERLANGER
UVA REKA, Kosovo -- This is the most ruined town in Kosovo, a
city of Albanians where, before this war began in late March, the
separatist Kosovo Liberation Army was strong and Serbian police
rarely entered.
Armed troops of the Kosovo Liberation Army were back in Suva
Reka Sunday, in their uniforms, watching the mass exodus of Serbs
and the entrance of Italian NATO troops who are supposed to
demilitarize the Kosovar force.
But the town itself, which once had 12,000 inhabitants, is
empty. Nearly every building has been looted and burned; few panes
of glass are unbroken. Brick walls have holes from artillery and
anti-aircraft shells. The bus station is a ruin, the buses
vandalized and pocked with bullet holes. Wrecked and burned cars
line the side of the road, along with spent rifle cartridges.
There has been sniping in Suva Reka throughout the war, where
the rebels resisted the Serbian army and police and held out in the
steep hills around here and Jezerce nearby. Few civilian cars have
passed this way during the war, and in this interim period when
Yugoslav authority is rapidly receding and NATO peacekeeping troops
have not yet established theirs, Suva Reka remains a dangerous
place.
There was a report that snipers fired on fleeing Serbs in Suva
Reka Sunday, but that report could not be confirmed. Two German
journalists were shot, one killed and one badly wounded, on this
same road, near Stimlje.
When a foreign reporter pulled his car off the road in the
center of town, a group of Kosovo Liberation Army troops emerged
from a building 200 yards away and watched, their guns ready.
Then an Albanian man in dirty clothes and broken shoes ran
toward the car. Musli Kuci, 49, said he had just returned Saturday
night to Suva Reka after hiding from the Serbs for three months in
the surrounding hills.
"There are only a few of us here," he said nervously, "maybe
200 civilians have come." Many fled abroad, he said. "It will be
horrible for them to see when they return."
"Most of those in Suva Reka now are very old or sick," Kuci
said.
"The KLA is all around," he said. "They took the town and
they came to protect what is left." There is not much, in truth,
to protect.
Asked about the Serbs who are leaving, Kuci said he wanted the
innocent to stay. "I came out to the road to tell the Serbs to
stay," he said. "But they did not want to stop and talk to me.
They just kept going. They were afraid, I know they were afraid of
the KLA."
Kuci looked around again, toward the Kosovar troops. "They have
been careful of the Serbs passing by this road," he said. "I know
they are afraid. But we're not that kind of people."
