Spread out by a gurgling river, surrounded by mountains and green fields, the village of Belanica is described by those who dwelt there as a place where orchards flourished, the earth was rich, and time passed unhurried among neighbors who had known each other all their lives.
It existed that way for centuries. And then, in a day, it was gone.
Over the course of 24 terrifying hours, up to 500 Serbian soldiers and police invaded, sacked and laid waste their placid farm community in south-central Kosovo.
Even before they swooped in on April 1, the Yugoslav army had shelled dozens of nearby towns and villages, systematically herding an estimated 80,000 ethnic Albanians into the center of Belanica. Trapped there with their cars, tractors, wagons and few remaining possessions, they became defenseless prey for a pitiless gang that was as intent on robbery and humiliation as it was on obliterating centuries of ethnic Albanian history in the province.
This account of the life and death of Belanica has, until now, been lost in the general mayhem and brutality of the "ethnic cleansing" sweeping Kosovo. The story of one extended family--Idriz Zogaj, his son, daughters, nephews and grandchildren--adds detail on the sad and cynical displacement of most of the province's 1.8 million ethnic Albanians and the destruction of more than 400 Albanian towns and villages. The tales of killings, robberies, rapes and burning in one small village provides a clue to the scale of the crimes that have been committed, and continue to be committed, across Kosovo.
On the bridge at Morine, a remote Albanian border post, one can see what Belanica has become: another part of the overwhelming tide of human suffering that has been pouring out of Kosovo during the past month.
Watching the refugees arrive, disheveled, dirty, unshaven, rumpled and red-eyed, children clinging to mothers or staring blankly ahead, people lying in piles of pathetic mattresses and soiled blankets, coats and sweaters, is disturbing--not only for what it shows about the capacity for human cruelty. It is also disturbing because of what it does not show: who these people really are, where they came from, what they have endured and what they have lost.
Belanica is not unique, and people like the Zogajs have no special claim on the world's conscience. But if an entire people can be stripped of their possessions, if individuals can be murdered with impunity, raped at will and tossed away to satisfy someone else's vision of history, then it appears that the lessons of this century have not yet been learned.
