June 24, 1999
THE FRENCH MARINES
Albanians Loot and Burn, Aiming Wrath at Gypsies
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By CARLOTTA GALL
ITROVICA, Yugoslavia -- French troops are barely keeping the lid
on violence here, in the main city of their sector of Kosovo.
The French on Wednesday deployed armored vehicles and foot
patrols down the narrow streets of the Gypsy quarter, to stop
Albanian looters, who ransacked houses and set fire to two of them.
And earlier Wednesday, the French came under fire from a Serb
gunman, who had forced his way into an Albanian house. They
returned the fire and quickly apprehended the gunman, without
injury, but the incident added to the tense atmosphere.
With only 2,400 troops so far in their zone in northern Kosovo,
the French soldiers admit that they do not have the manpower to
guarantee safety on every street. "I cannot position a soldier
every few yards," explained one officer.
Albanians were the ones looting and burning this time, acting
out grudges against Gypsies.
Young men and boys ran away across wasteland from the Gypsy
quarter. One was carrying a rolled-up carpet on his head, another
was weighed down with bulging bags. Behind them a house was
smoldering still from a blaze that had taken hold an hour before.
French troops blocked the streets and checked the houses, but
their action was late. The houses spilled open with abandoned
goods, furniture, cookers and fridges. Clothes were strewn across
courtyards and into the street, broken glass from smashed windows
littered the ground.
"It's been going on for two days here," a French officer said
of the looting. "They are largely Gypsy homes and it is Albanians
doing it."
The Gypsy community seemed to have left the area. One old man
was fetching his dog and talking to the French soldiers, but
otherwise the district was abandoned. Serbs, too, were pulling out
of town, their belongings packed into cars and trailers.
There are some 5,000 Serbs still in Mitrovica, and they are
making an aggressive bid to retain control of one section of the
town and turn it into a Serb-dominated quarter. Over the last few
days they have prevented Albanians from entering the area and are
providing living space to Serbs who have fled from elsewhere in
Kosovo.
The Serbs' anger is palpable. They accuse Albanians of trying to
penetrate their part of town and threatening them or forcing them
to leave Kosovo. They have for several days gathered in numbers at
the main bridge to stop any Albanians they do not know, and most
Albanian men, from crossing over.
They are scared, and with some reason. The previous day two
Serbs were killed and one was wounded in a shooting on one of the
bridges, French troops confirmed.
"The Serbs feel threatened, and they are rejecting the
Albanians more and more," said a French marine, Capt. Jean-Michel
Huet. "They say they are standing there because they are scared
and need to defend themselves. But there is a lot of paranoia."
The French are allowing the effective division of the town into
ethnic districts, figuring that offers the easiest way to protect
one ethnic group from another. "We do not advise anyone to leave,
but if someone leaves, we try to help," Huet said.
"It is easier to protect a block of people, rather than family
by family," Huet said. "We cannot accompany everybody." The
French have come in for criticism that they are encouraging ethnic
divisions, but Huet insisted they were trying to be neutral. He
said other NATO forces were allowing the Serbs to be pushed out
because that made keeping the peace easier, but he did not want to
allow that.
Mitrovica remains in a strange state of limbo. The French are
the only force in town. There has been no police force since the
Serb police pulled out at the weekend. The Albanian guerrilla
force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, does not appear to be present,
except for a lone man wearing the KLA insignia on his sleeve
chatting to friends on the street.
The Serb mayor is still working in his office, and is guarded by
big, forceful plainclothesmen on the door. The French said they
expect him to leave soon and to be replaced by an Albanian, but it
is not clear when and how.
It will be the job of the United Nations to form a police force
and to run everything from refuse collection to prisons. But for
the moment. the French troops are to keep the order by themselves.
But since they have no prisons, courts and police, when they
rounded up a group of looters Wednesday, they searched them for
weapons and let them go.
To encourage the Serbs and Albanians, and the hapless Gypsies,
to live together will take a long time, maybe decades, Huet said.
Meanwhile, the balance is still changing. As more Albanians
return home, they will vastly outnumber the Serbs here. Their
growing presence is unnerving the remaining Serbs.
Branko Barovic, 47, a Serb, said that 20 years ago, the Serb
community numbered 33,000 in Mitrovica, a town of 120,000 people.
Now it had dwindled to 5,000 and is falling further. Despite
their efforts to form a Serb quarter, it does not seem to be
holding.
"There will be Albanian schools, Albanian language, Albanian
shops, complete "Albanisation," Barovic said. "There will be
eight Albanians for one Serb in the administration. Everyone will
go for sure."
As he was speaking, shots rang out behind some high rise
apartment buildings. "Someone is revolted. They are leaving and
are shooting in the air. They are angry," he said.
Albanians across the river were also anxious. One family was
washing obscene Serb graffiti off their living room walls. They
said they had a Serb policeman still living in an apartment below
theirs. He was now wearing civilian clothes, they said.
"We could live with Serbs who did not commit any massacres.
Like one Serb friend we have who did nothing bad. But this man
downstairs, I cannot stand him," said Raif Cuna, 33, an Albanian
who owns a jewelry store.
