Rebuttal to Nathan

[Seth Ackerman]

> Seth Ackerman wrote:
> 
> >(WSJ 12/31/99:    "We were all hamstrung," a NATO official
> >says. As the war dragged on, he says, NATO saw a fatigued press corps
> >drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO's
> >bombs. NATO stepped up its claims about Serb "killing fields.")
> >
> >And it worked. The front pages of every newspaper carried the 500,000
> >figure, along with grim pictures of huddled refugees.
> 
---

New York Times
April  8, 1999
Page 01 (above the fold)

REFUGEE FLOW HALTS ABRUPTLY: THOUSANDS VANISH

By JOHN KIFNER 

DATELINE: MORINI, Albania, April 7

 BODY:
   Tens of thousands of refugees from  Kosovo  waiting to cross the border
here 
vanished in the middle of the night, ordered out of a column stretching 20
miles
or more by Serbian forces and sent walking to an unknown fate.

   This shabby little border crossing, swamped for more than a week with
ragged,
weeping ethnic Albanians driven from their homes, was eerily empty today.

    At 3:30 this morning, Serbian forces walked up to a jumble of six
chest-high
concrete pyramids that marks the midpoint of the no man's land between the
two
customs posts, according to observers at the border from the Organization
for
Security and Cooperation in Europe. Those on the Albanian side could keep on
going; those still in the Serbian zone were ordered to turn around.

   No one here knows what happened to them.

   "We have no idea," said Jacques Franquin, a spokesman for the United
Nations 
High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are very worried. There is reason to be
worried."

   From observation posts in the surrounding hills, the road into  Kosovo 
appeared to be empty of any vehicles for two miles or so north, Mr. Franquin
said, up to the next village, Szure, which the Serbs have been using as a
drop-off place for refugees being transported in bus and truck convoys after
being rounded up farther inside  Kosovo. 

   Beyond that, he added, there were lines of abandoned farm tractors and
cars. 
When the column was turned back on Tuesday night, the refugees were backed
up to
the city of Prizren, about 22 miles away, he said.

   Stunned aid officials here could only speculate on the latest twist in
the
tactics of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic.

   "Whatever is happening, you can rest assured it is not to the benefit of
these refugees," said Eugene O'Sullivan, the chief of the observer team from
the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe based in nearby Kukes.

   The speculation included the possibility of a new propaganda ploy by Mr.
Milosevic in which he would maintain that the ethnic Albanians were not
being
systematically hounded out after all, but were being allowed to return to
their 
homes voluntarily. It was also possible that the refugees were being herded
back
to some collection center, either as some form of hostages or even human
shields
against NATO bombing attacks or attacks by Apache helicopters, which, unlike
the
bombers, can fly close to the ground and take aim at concentrations of
troops.

   During the "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Bosnia, Serbs used captured
United 
Nations soldiers as shields.

   "This is a pretty sinister turn of events," said Doran Vienneau, an
observer 
on the border. He predicted the border would be closed for an extended
period.

   Relief officials estimated that roughly 80,000 refugees were in the line
when
it was turned back, based at the rate at which refugees have been flowing
through here and the length of time the last group this morning had been on
the 
road. NATO has estimated there are some 300,000 people who have been
uprooted
from their homes but are still displaced inside  Kosovo. 

   From midnight until the refugees were turned back at 3:30, some 2,850
people 
made it out of  Kosovo,  making a total of 238,415 who have crossed the
border
here since the Serbian campaign of depopulating the province began. In
addition,
51,850 have crossed the even more remote and primitive mountains of the Hass
District to the northwest of here, most of them on a track over the
mountains
that can only be traveled on foot because the Serbs have mined it. That
border
crossing was sealed on Tuesday; the day before some 14,000 people crossed
over.

   And, incredibly, one more man somehow wandered over the border at midday.
The
man, Ismet Hoxha, said he had encountered only one Serbian police patrol as
he
walked from his remote village, Gjonas. He said the police let him go after
inspecting his hands, apparently to see if he looked tough enough to have
been
digging trenches for the  Kosovo  Liberation Army. He said he had passed a
line 
of empty, abandoned tractors more than a mile long on his way. "He's the
luckiest Albanian in the world," Mr. Vienneau said.

   For a week and a half, this border post, with its peeling paint, chipped
concrete and broken iron gate, has been a scene of chaos as the refugees
have
poured across at the rate of 20,000 to 50,000 a day with only what they can
carry. Often it is a wooden cradle, decorated with folk patterns that is a
particularly valued family heirloom among the Albanians strapped to the back
of 
their farm carts. Some people have been walking for days, carrying only a
blanket or a few clothes.

   All have harrowing -- and strikingly similar -- accounts of being ordered
out
of their houses by Serbian policemen, soldiers and ultra-nationalist
irregulars,
many wearing masks or headbands. They are robbed at gunpoint, herded to
collection centers in the larger towns, and robbed again along the way.

   Many say they have witnessed the Serbs killing people, sometimes
apparently
at random, but often in what appears to be a systematic manner, targeting,
for
instance, people who housed, worked for or otherwise aided the Organization
for 
Security and Cooperation observer teams.

   And there have been accounts of mass killings. While the acounts cannot
be
independently verified because foreign journalists and relief workers,
including the observers, have been expelled from  Kosovo,  they are being
given 
credence here because of their striking similarity, the specific details
provided by the refugees and the past behavior of Serbian forces during the
ethnic cleansing of Bosnia.

   But today the crossing was empty and silent, save for a few listless
Albanian
policemen and mystified aid workers. There were only a few refugees sprawled
on 
the hillside.

   Across the empty patch of no man's land the Serbian and Yugoslav flags
flap
from their poles. The Serbian forces were digging trenches with pickaxes and
laying mines.

   "The refugees have been in a state of complete shock and terror when they
arrive here," Mr. Vienneau, the observer at the border post, said this
morning. 
"They are in an absolutely deplorable state, with just the possessions they
have
on their backs. They have been witness to very horrific crimes. We've had
multiple reports of people being rounded up and executed en masse. We've had
reports of constant brutalization throughout the journey here."

   "I feel almost sick to my stomach because I have no idea what happened to
these people," he said, speaking of the  missing  tens of thousands of
refugees,
adding:

   "Can you imagine being the guy on the first tractor when the Serbs said,
'Go 
back,' and they were so close to the border. I would say the state of terror
of 
these people is probably absolutely indescribable, wondering what is going
to
happen to them."
 

   http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: A mother handing her baby down from a wagon in Kukes,
Albania,
after crossing from  Kosovo.  Other fleeing refugees yesterday were told by
Serbian forces at the Albanian border town of Morini to turn back. (Edward
Keating/The New York Times)(pg. A14)
 
Map of  Kosovo  highlighting Serbian military and paramilitary operating
areas
from March 31 through yesterday: Thousands of  Kosovo  refugees waiting to
cross
into Albania vanished during the night; why they left and where they went is
not
known. (pg. A14)      

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: April 8, 1999