Dispatches From the Kosovo Front
Carnegie, Marc
DISPATCHES FROM THE MARC CARNEGIE American intervention has done wonders for the Albanian economy, the KLA, and the public image of the U.S. Marines. But, reports our man on the scene, for...
...I put on a helmet and flak jacket as required and piled into the Blackhawk along with a cameraman, producer, and photographer, as well as a detail of snipers assigned to protect the general...
...Yes sir," the press guy said quietly, his face slowly turning as red as his Coke can...
...The problem was the timing...
...America," he said over and over in disbelief, "you make everything beeg...
...The well-disciplined translator— a former university student who spoke Serbo-Croatian, Russian, English, and German, as well as Albanian—prefaced every response to our questions with "The colonel says...
...The colonel says he is not connected to the extremist faction opposed to peace, like some KLA forces...
...A German newspaper reported that the chopper had been shot down by Serb rocket fire, a claim vigorously denied by the Pentagon...
...It just flew over a mountain," he said, "and exploded...
...And maybe they were...
...Naturally there was some ill feeling that the British—in an effort to make KFOR look truly international, or at least not wholly American —were being allowed to enter Kosovo first...
...The Army was well ahead of the Marines in the convoy and was going to be first across the line...
...He too was a stout, beefy figure, with ice-blue Scandinavian eyes that kept twitching madly, incessantly, as if they'd just been splashed with battery acid, or had seen too many horrible things and were now trying, futilely, to blink them out of memory...
...Intraforce rivalry is strong, despite all claims to the contrary, and when we were awakened to fly into Skopje at 5 a.m...
...but he repeatedly expressed amazement at the new Rinas...
...I gave it one more try, but it was doomed...
...And you know what the announcer said...
...As long lines formed to get the afternoon food ration—it was a pot of soup with bread—dozens of children crowded around the kitchen to get a glimpse of the day's meal, acting like normally curious and energetic kids rather than starving waifs...
...Meanwhile the Marines and their amphibious vehicles were getting set to rumble into Kosovo...
...VI - [ inally Milosevic had had enough...
...Moments later I looked up startled when, almost in unison, the snipers clicked the butts of their rifles on the floor of the chopper, then snapped their clips into place...
...So this was the plan, to be carried out unbeknownst to the NATO allies and, perhaps especially, to the Marines: Two Apaches and a Blackhawk helicopter would fly into Kosovo, avoiding the back-up of slow-moving tank convoys on the one serviceable road in from Macedonia...
...Before the war—that is, before the Americans got there—Tirana's Rinas Airport was the most decrepit of any European capital, a muddy and forlorn hovel, its tiny runway cracked and crumbled and flecked with weeds...
...Zero human feeling...
...The guerrillas were well armed and well supplied...
...I try not to be too hard," he said, his eyes batting wildly...
...the cameraman said...
...The colonel says no, we did not get any help from the United States and we expected to...
...The simplistic moralizing of the television reports, with their insatiable need for bathos, had repeatedly played up obvious facts —these poor souls had been purged from their homeland by a nasty dictator, "ethnically cleansed" in the empty jargon of the day—and missed the still more obvious one...
...I was so overcome, so stunned by the scene, that I completely forgot why I was there until Craddock returned from his chat with the aide...
...With no war to participate in or prepare for, there were plenty of soldiers around for me to talk with and get to know...
...Ordinarily it takes at least three or four months of rigorous training to prepare a special-ops force, and Hansen led us to believe that he might have preferred to stay longer if only the rebels had had a bit more money...
...Most every social activity they arranged for the refugees —from classes for the children to "therapeutic" sessions for the adults —was aimed at bringing them back to the despair they had just escaped, getting them to relive the horrors they had seen or undergone...
...The United States had flown more than 8o percent of the sorties during the u-week air campaign, and there were more than a few soldiers who thought Uncle Sam should have been the first one in...
...Albania is indeed beautiful—the hills, small red-roofed houses, and rolling fields give the impression of Switzerland —but Hansen kept repeating the phrase, almost like a prayer...
...Craddock unleashed a torrent of acronyms that not one viewer in 100,000 would have understood —KFOR, SACEUR, UXOs...
...Army troops was going in with the British convoy, but nobody was supposed to notice them...
...We were waiting to see what was wrong...
...The announcer said it was the goddamn Marines...
...One of them took a knife from his pocket, cut open an empty water bottle to use as a spittoon, and inserted an enormous wad of chewing tobacco into this mouth...
...Everyone was obviously a little bit pumped...
...In, urn, Kosovo...
...military—or more accuMARC CARNEGIE, our correspondent-at-large, is a reporter and editor for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency...
...Really, the colonel is disappointed...
...With the brilliant morning sun reflecting off the green fields, the effect was eerie, scary, unforgettable: There were no people...
...He looked around to make sure no one else was listening...
...All around us there were troops, dressed only in black, finishing up an escape-and-evade exercise...
...Somebody—I guess it was the MPs—sicced the dogs on 'em to try to keep things under control," he said in his friendly Southern twang...
...Maturity dates may vary...
...The Albanian government, too, was quick to seize the opportunity...
...Shacochis is something of a special-ops expert, having spent 18 months with the U.S...
...You know, general," I said as the cameraman changed batteries, "we were sort of hoping for, um, more of a human-reaction kind of thing...
...If you want us to save Kosovo," a U.S...
...Let's do it...
...He was a career soldier and had been through similar "humanitarian operations" in Somalia and Bosnia, and he was frustrated at having become little more than an international relief worker with a rifle and a flak jacket, or as he put it "a fix-it man for the Third World...
...KFOR contingent...
...One day when I had to stay behind in Tirana, two co-workers went up to Barjam Curri and were indeed pulled over at gunpoint by some mafiosi...
...Craddock would metaphorically "plant the flag"—make some quick but stirring remarks for the TV camera we were bringing with us, and establish the U.S...
...As one io-year-old girl told me: "I feel happy now, as long as I don't think about what happened...
...They spent time watching videos (many of the tents had TVs and VCRs) or listening to compact discs...
...Even the air raid bunkers were unserious, above-ground metal containers in the middle of a field that Serb pilots could have identified in a second...
...They were filthy, hungry, and tired...
...Nobody died...
...Hoo boy—that was some funny stuff...
...They were not kissing but merely sitting close, like something out of a 1940's movie...
...Whoever was on the other end was a superior officer, and he was yelling...
...The camp was both less and more horrifying than I had been led to expect from the pictures on TV: less, because a surprising number of the people I spoke with, particularly the children, were actually happy...
...Yes I seem to have failed, sir...
...The Russians had scampered on and occupied the airport in Pristina, fouling up all plans of spinning the end of the war as an unqualified Western success...
...The complete installation, with 5,000 U.S...
...Now they were cramped in foul, hot tents under grim conditions, with what they could carry of their belongings — tablecloths, rusted pots, cherished photographs—roped in sad, unsteady bundles...
...than most took home from their jobs in a month...
...He called himself Hansen, and said he was a former special-ops man from the The American Spectator • August 1999 35 Norwegian army who now made his living as a mercenary...
...What was truly horrifying about the camp was that the relief workers could or would not understand this...
...I found them...
...He was a thick-fingered, weather-beaten man in his late forties, with skin like an old briefcase and a belly extended way beyond the limits of his camouflage pants...
...it looked like a holiday spa...
...You come in, you break your ass helping these people, you build 'em all kinds of stuff...
...Them Albanians didn't know which way to run, and I guess some of 'em got bit trying to get out of each other's way...
...There was (reasonable) doubt about whether any of it was helping the Kosovars, who continued to be expelled and slaughtered throughout the war, but there was no doubt it was helping the Albanians...
...MON V NOM s the weeks wore on it became clear that there would be no use of ground troops, or certainly not the 5,000 U.S...
...All in all it was a triumph of logistics if not logic...
...the beach, after all...
...He lives in Cyprus...
...He was ready for the TV interview, which 38 August 1999 • The American Spectator the producer had decided I would conduct...
...And then, as if out of a movie, people started emerging...
...But in general the sense that nothing was happening or would happen, the warlessness of the war, gave the camp (codename: Task Force Hawk) the feel of a great and expensive military theme park...
...had helped put an end to the killing and make the ground he was standing on safe again...
...officer told a reporter with tremendous self-importance, "you'd better not report that we were here...
...The officers were practically beside themselves with joy, talking about how great those CNN pictures of the U.S...
...They were going to secure a small field so that the U.S...
...But as we drove away from the camp into the afternoon sunlight, I kept thinking about a 50-yearold rebel fighter I had talked with briefly over lunch...
...He carried an immaculate leather pouch on his shoulder, for his maps, and seated us on a rough bench outside the barracks, positioning himself at a right angle to us to exude the proper air of a military man in charge...
...As we made our way uphill we looked down on the heart of the camp, a tent city that held about 200-300 KLA fighters...
...The Craddock plan was delayed a day, and then another, as the various NATO forces haggled over what to do about Moscow's surprise move...
...They had simply, and smartly, sized up the situation and moved on: There was no use waiting around for the Serbs to kick them out when there was no guarantee the Serbs would let them get away in one piece...
...And just then, as if on cue, we heard an American voice crackle from a walkie-talkie up on the second floor of the barracks above us—"Roger, base Tango two," or something like that...
...It was virtually the only time he turned to look at us directly, the only time any real emotion crept into his voice as he spoke...
...troops up there giving you assistance, we know they have been seen with the KLA up north...
...Several were laughing and pushing each other playfully...
...The colonel says that of course he will disarm whenever he is ordered to do so...
...This ploy was alternately ridiculed and admired by the Army, which quickly enough had a counterplan of its own...
...And then, suddenly, the chopper lifted off...
...But armed men jumping into the water looked more heroic...
...More than 400 flights were now coming m and a_it of Rinas around the clock: cargo helicopters of the international aid agencies, Royal Danish Air Force jets carrying the likes of Elie Wiesel for media-friendly visits to the Kosovar refugee camps, enormous U.S...
...Then he lowered his voice and said: "Frankly, I don't know what the hell we're doin' here...
...But, reports our man on the scene, for Kosovar refugees the blessings have been decidedly mixed...
...Another grimace, then more of the same: "force protection" and "security parameters...
...In fact a small advance reconnaissance contingent of U.S...
...Most had stayed locked in their cellars, but three people had decided to walk up and down the main village street in a show of defiance...
...I quickly made arrangements to visit a small camp in Tirana, located in what had been the city's swimming pool center...
...Craddock looked at me as if I had just beamed in from Planet Zorgtron...
...Hansen gazed down the steep precipice at his charges and beamed: "It's a beautiful country, heh...
...And just then, as if on cue, we heard an American voice crackle from a walkie-talkie in the barracks above us—"Roger, base Tango two," or something like that...
...S.E.P...
...Then the cameraman announced his battery had died...
...Not the slightest...
...Those Albanians who could took their vacation time from work: There was more money to be made driving a hack around for a day—the going rate was $ioo33 The KLA colonel says no, we did not get any help from the United States and we expected to...
...Yes sir...
...Behind him the villagers were now singing and holding hands...
...It was just then that I noticed a UNICEF banner hanging nearby with the grand announcement: "THIS IS AN OFFICIAL CHILD-FRIENDLY SPACE...
...I will keep fighting until there's no one left standing...
...Later I witnessed another episode that summed up the lunatic inappropriateness of the therapeutic attitude...
...Instead of remaining in the capital I wanted to go up to Mamoras, a village north of Tirana where the KLA had its special forces training camp, to see what the U.S...
...No people in their yards, no people on the roads, no people anywhere —just mile after mile of desolate, empty villages...
...The guerrillas there were miraculously getting hold of relief shipments of food and supplies intended for the Kosovar refugees...
...But surely, we said, pointing to the hills all around us for emphasis, there must be some U.S...
...s we sat in the baking sun with our meat stew and bread, we heard another voice speaking English, and this one definitely not an American...
...With the crowd jumping up and down and cheering behind him, I asked how he felt to be here in Kosovo, how it felt as a soldier to perhaps have saved the lives of these grateful villagers...
...special forces in Haiti researching his book, The Immaculate Invasion, and his knowledge won Hansen's confidence...
...But they were alive...
...This went on for more than 3o minutes, the poor fellow gradually abasing himself further and further...
...And I'm gonna grab one of you jokers and pull you on top of me...
...But almost overnight the U.S...
...The joy lasted about an hour, when the phone rang...
...Whose orders is he following...
...He fixed me with a stony glare and nodded his head...
...We knew right away—no way those guys could have come out alive...
...Then he launched into a windy, jargon-filled speech about "objectives" and "target dates" and "operational effectiveness...
...So I re-phrased the question: How did it feel to finally set foot in Kosovo, to know the U.S...
...Even when we parted company at the end of the day he reiterated it: "You know, these are really good people...
...What would a decline in the stock market do to your stocks, mutual funds and retirement accounts...
...Craddock disappeared with an aide and I went to talk to the villagers...
...Yes I understand, sir...
...The vehicles could have gone directly up onto 37 The Marines leapt into the waist-high sea and marched onto shore...
...Over and over he repeated how beautiful Albania was, and then how fundamentally just the KLA cause was, and then how true and good its fighters were...
...It was the end of the interview...
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...Moreover, two of the Apaches had crashed on training missions early on, one during a nighttime exercise in the mountains that had left both pilots dead...
...There were so many vehicles roaming around that the bus was often late: It frequently got stuck in traffic...
...In the shabby one-room building at Rinas that served as arrivals hall, customs, and baggage claim—it seemed weirdly out of place next to that immense runway— a hastily printed sheet announced new fees for an Albanian visa: $45 for Americans, $57 for the Brits, an inexplicable bargain price of S5 for lucky New Zealanders...
...I asked him if he thought the Army was doing the right thing, if it was the military's proper role to be, in effect, a high-tech humanitarian agency...
...They had just heisted a satphone and politely requested a quick tutorial in how to use it...
...IV - ith press access to Kosovo limited to a just a few hardy souls in the rear guard with the KLA, the "story" of the moment was the refugees, and I still hadn't seen them...
...Did you know that if your funds are in the stock market, your principle is at risk...
...We piled into a small troop truck and began climbing a narrow rock road uphill...
...Their vehicles could have gone directly up onto the beach, of course...
...Army troops (and their unused Apache attack helicopters) camped on one side of the runway and thousands more humanThe American Spectator • August 1999 itarian soldiers on the other, grew so large and unwieldy that a shuttle bus made the rounds to ferry people to and fro...
...But Marines jumping into the water looked more heroic...
...vu ack at headquarters in Skopje, the press officers were in an ebullient mood...
...The Marines, it turned out, had had some help...
...They were there essentially to support the two-dozen Apache attack helicopters that had been dispatched to Albania, a show of muscle that probably no one, Slobodan Milosevic included, ever thought would be used...
...was doing in Albania, despite frequent and • regular denials from the Pentagon, was working with the guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a fact one intelligence officer happily confirmed for me off the record...
...was up to...
...He said he had been in the air that night on the same exercise and that the crash was "unexplainable...
...The career soldiers—most of them officers in their late thirties and older—were accustomed to the "hurry up and wait" rhythm of Army life and approached even mundane tasks like filling up ice buckets with a certain gusto...
...The translator asked if we would like to meet him and brought him over...
...And on it went for about 45 minutes in the blazing midday sun, the colonel dispassionately but courteously answering (or at leastsaying something in response to) our every query...
...I'm tired of comin' to places like this...
...But Shacochis insisted, and as the car inched its way north—Albania's roads are everywhere pockmarked with deep potholes, forcing you to swerve so much and go so slowly you feel as if you are driving on Swiss cheese—the driver warmed to us and began telling stories about the old days under the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha...
...was preparing its contingent of KFOR, the international Kosovo peacekeeping force...
...C-17 transport planes disgorging 1\4-1 Abrams tanks from their fat bellies...
...I got Outside a tent I overheard a rape counselor complaining that she could not get the Kosovar women to talk about their ordeals at the hands of Serb soldiers...
...the morning after the agreement was finally signed, there was widespread dismay when we turned on CNN and saw the Marines leaping into the waist-high sea from their amphibious vehicles and marching up to the beach with the red-gold sunrise behind them...
...No more than six or eight planes arrived each day, nearly all of them as antique as the wheezing Soviet-made Antonov-4o that brought me in from Athens...
...We saw at least half a dozen troop transports, a couple of gun emplacements, and two generators—each about the size of a big-screen television—that supplied the camp's elec34 Au gus t 1999 • The American Spectator tricity...
...The sex bit was news to our young translator, who wore his hair almost in a pony tail and sported a baseball cap from the University of North Carolina, from which he had just graduated...
...No sir, I'm not going to tell you I didn't fail, because I obviously failed, sir...
...There was some resentment that the Marines—who had earlier been refused permission to land in Macedonia and were still waiting at sea—might beat the Army to Kosovo...
...The younger troops, who included a great number of women, were relaxed, bored, and even lackadaisical...
...The Apaches were going to fly immediately to Macedonia, where the U.S...
...I looked down again, and the change was unmistakable...
...Hundreds of Kosovar Albanians began pouring out of their houses, bringing us flowers and cheering as we stood beside the choppers taking pictures of the general...
...he yelled...
...It was militarily ridiculous, but better television...
...Before long we were invited up into the mountains for a tour...
...ne thing the U.S...
...The Serbs agreed to the terms of the peace, and the war was suddenly over, unleashing a quick military scramble to put the best face on the "victory...
...32 August 1999 • The American Spectator ratch- Brown & Root, the Houston firm which handles such projects for the LS...
...Those who could speak something other than Albanian—fractured German, some who knew French, some who had a few words of English —began telling me their stories...
...It was militarily ridiculous, but better television...
...In a math 36 August 1999 • The American Spectator classroom I saw a list of "emotions" a teacher had written on the blackboard: The only one circled, in red, was "HATRED OF YOUR ENEMY" And outside a tent I overheard a rape counselor complaining that she could not get the Kosovar women to talk about their ordeals at the hands of (often several) Serb soldiers...
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...We thought NATO would help us more, we thought the United States would help train us to fight Milosevic...
...He shook his head in disbelief...
...He talked about the repression, the omnipresence of the dreaded secret service (the Sigurimi), how children were recruited to spy on their parents, how getting caught having sex outside marriage would lead to unhelpful black marks in your Communist Party file...
...But it was the first time in military history that a "deep attack" force like the Apaches had been deployed without their full complement of supporting divisions on the ground, and it was hard to believe—especially in a war primarily devoted to minimizing U.S...
...He said none of the pilots had any radar indication of hostile fire below, nor did the chopper appear to clip a wire or hit any other obstacle...
...Oh," he said with a calm, straightforward smile...
...There were classrooms, there was food, there was above all safety...
...I will keep fighting until every refugee is back in Kosovo...
...As we were ambling toward them one afternoon during one of the infrequent air-raid drills, I asked a captain how useful they would be in an actual bombardment...
...The airport remained the chief attraction...
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...They need to get past being ashamed...
...Armed bandits there had ripped off both Newsweek and the Associated Press, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in satellite phones, cameras, and computers, as well as their fourwheel-drive vehicles...
...After an hour we arrived at the camp, tucked away in the hills at a former Albanian army barracks, and our translator quickly got the gate guards to summon the camp commander and welcome us in for a chat...
...Goddamn it...
...Afraid...
...militan —had turned Rinas into a miniature LaGuardia...
...I asked him if he was afraid for her...
...And that's when, finally, we were over Kosovo...
...This provoked a sharp, untranslated exchange...
...If those guys come and bomb us," he said, "I'm not running to any bunker above ground, I'm going face down in my tent...
...We get them on the black market," one of the rebels said...
...He can be kind of a hard guy to talk to," he said...
...What would you say to: Your Principal is...
...No problem...
...Little girls hugged my legs, tiny village boys waved at me and chanted: "USA...
...These people were still around to see the sun come up another morning...
...they're amphibious...
...The CNN cameras were there, right...
...What does he think about the reportedly growing rift between the two factions...
...Not once in two weeks did my driver mention ethnic cleansing or the war, the Kosovars or the Serbs...
...Barjam Curri had the reputation among journalists as the most likely place in which to get robbed...
...the strange feeling that maybe he had lost a bit of the gun-forhire neutrality, that perhaps a sleepless month in the hot sun, amid the tireless idealism of the KLA, had made him go a bit native...
...Every morning hundreds of Albanians, including older women and children, would crowd around the airport gates, hoping to pick up a day's work shoveling gravel or digging ditches or maybe working in the well-stocked mess...
...Are you like most people...
...He beat the girl with the switch, thrashing her repeatedly on the head and shoulders until she fell backwards on the ground in tears...
...The only thing out of place were the rifles slung over their shoulders...
...Army troops camped at Rinas...
...The television cameras made it all seem too glorious to be wholly true, and indeed it was...
...The colonel says there are no differences among the Kosovo Liberation Army...
...we are all fighting for the same cause, of course...
...There was no sense of urgency, very little hint of danger, despite the fact that Serb planes based in Montenegro could have bombarded us within around ten minutes—well before NATO would have time to scramble its own jets in defense...
...Then we'd fly back, get the tapes out to the networks, and have beat the Marines into Kosovo...
...It was all going to be, as one press officer told me, "goddamn fantastic...
...nervous about the stock market...
...No, the translator insisted, we never got the slightest bit of help from the United States...
...This one was good," Hansen said...
...To be here...
...they're amphibious...
...The sight of those American helicopters descending from the sky had made them feel safe after weeks of horror...
...I saw them being hauled into the Macedonian capital on rented tractor-trailers, like those car-carriers you see on the highway...
...They need to talk," she was explaining to a journalist in a somewhat exasperated tone of voice...
...They looked just like snipers are supposed to look, with jutting jaws and cool wraparound sunglasses...
...After more than 36 hours of sitting on our thumbs, it was all systems go...
...A number of my colleagues saw SU special forces riding with the KLA along the Albanian border with Kosovo, and others had seen small U.S...
...He said through his translator that he had spent more than zo years in the Yugoslav army...
...Then we finally asked him: Is the United States helping to train you...
...One elderly woman wept as she kissed her fingertips and then touched my helmet...
...He stroked his beard gently as he contemplated his words...
...The Serbs had gunned them down...
...He had told me, with immense pride, that his i6-year-old daughter was also a KLA guerrilla and was at that moment on the front line in Kosovo...
...The mountains seemed to grow more barren, less populous...
...A new control tower had been raised, a new half-mile runway smoothed down over the mud...
...The American Spectator • August 1999 Whatever happened, the incident had understandably set a sour mood around the camp for a time, I suppose particularly—though no pilot ever said so directly—because everyone knew they weren't there for battle in the first place...
...But you have to make sure they'll never make that mistake again...
...Finally he could not take the aggravation any more (there were two long, jostling lines, with dozens of people in each) and pulled a thin switch from behind his back...
...The sub-minimal pay was a small fortune to the locals, and there was the added excitement of being close to the Americans...
...The tanks are rolling over the border, everything's beautiful, the Army's marching in...
...All things considered, they were the fortunate ones...
...Army troops were never allowed off the base, but the other soldiers and relief workers, and the phalanx of journalists that followed them, were a godsend for Albania's stuttering economy...
...He grimaced...
...He laughed with scorn...
...He looked at me in amazement...
...Shacochis asked if he physically punished the soldiers who screwed up in the exercises and got themselves "killed...
...Giant earthmovers were rumbling around everywhere, shifting and shaping an American-style efficiency out of the post-Soviet disarray...
...I wish I could bring my mother here and put her into battle, and she's 70...
...The colonel says that he is loyal to the KLA commanders who follow Ibrahim Rugova (head of the provisional Kosovo government...
...As we kept advancing the convoy ended...
...I went with Bob Shacochis from Harper's, whose driver was not terribly keen on the idea and at first tried to fob us off with a visit to a KLA supply center in downtown Tirana instead...
...They need to get past being ashamed...
...My friends obliged—and were set free, all their gear intact...
...Below us, on the curling mountain road out of Skopje, we could see a miles-long string of tanks and troop carriers, slowly making its way north, with hundreds of curious Macedonians turned out on the side of the road to have a look...
...t he NNI 0 war on Yugoslavia was already eight weeks old by the time I got to Albania in late May, and it showed...
...He said he had a one-month contract to train the KLA's special forces and was leaving the following day...
...They said they had been in hiding, without food or water, since three weeks before, when Serb forces descended on the village...
...You know, how it feels to you...
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...One day, an Army officer told me, a small riot erupted when a hopeful laborer apparently tried to cut to the front of the line and all of them started charging the gate...
...The colonel invited us to stay for lunch...
...I know of two who sneaked off in the evenings to smoke pot...
...We sat around Skopje Airfield, hour after hour, waiting for the green light from on high—presumably from General Wesley Clark, who was both the NATO commander for the war as well as the overall head of U.S...
...After not driving their half-tracks onto the Macedonia shore, they continued not driving them up to Skopje...
...The colonel fixed his gaze...
...Army tanks rolling over the border into Kosovo would be, getting beamed around the world...
...Right...
...patrols in Barjam Curri — a tiny and lawless northern town entirely run by the Albanian mafia in conjunction with the KLA, which used it as a staging point before sending its fighters across the border...
...The adult in charge of keeping some semblance of order to the lines, himself a refugee, tried to shoo them away, but one little rascal of a girl kept pushing forward despite his best efforts...
...Sure, it's the only way," he said...
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...As it was, he said, he had been training the soldiers non-stop, 24 hours a day, barely sleeping for a month...
...They had gotten out of Kosovo while the getting was good, many even before marauding Serb troops had reached their villages...
...The U.S...
...He was a military man who spoke like a military man, and no amount of spin-doctoring or human contact, not even with the wretched Kosovars pouring out their hearts right next to him, could change that...
...As we boarded the choppers to go home, an officer who had watched the whole thing looked atme and shrugged...
...The official line was that the crash was still under investigation, and of the dozen or so pilots I spoke with only one consented to talk about the accident...
...The low-flying Apaches are fearsome beasts, used to great effect during the Gulf War, in which they destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks...
...Would he disarm if a peace agreement is signed...
...They need to talk," she was explaining to a journalist in an exasperated tone...
...But how did a bunch of Albanian rebels manage to track down an experienced mercenary all the way in Norway...
...No...
...troops in the conflict...
...It didn't look like a rebel guerrilla camp...
...Can-800-575-1566 to find out what your stock broker doesn't want you to know...
...As one young fighter tried to explain, "We help distribute...
...Really, the colonel is disappointed...
...We touched down about a half-hour later, as planned, in the field that had been secured by the advance team...
...Army) presence in Kosovo...
...They would touch down on the field secured by the advance team and there would be a brief ceremony with Brigadier General John Craddock, head of the U.S...
...There were burning houses newly set afire, houses with their windows smashed, others with their roofs blown off, still others demolished entirely...
...Finally the call ended, and he waited for whoever was on the other end to hang up so he could slam down the receiver...
...After a short wait the colonel appeared...
...I.R.A...
...could begin preparing its Kosovo headquarters near the village of Urosevac...
...They start out lovin' you, and they end up hatin' you just like everyone else...
...And one night when I went to get a late snack at the mess tent, I came upon two couples, pressed tight against each other in the darkness...
...There's not much time...
...Many of the soldiers were bathing and swimming in a kind of lagoon at the bottom of the crystal stream rushing down the mountainside...
...casualties—they would be put into the skies over Yugoslavia...
Vol. 32 • August 1999 • No. 8
