Soldier, Handyman and Nanny
The Daily Life British Troops in Kosovo
by Sarah Oliver
The Mail on Sunday
January 6, 2002

Without a trace of irony, British Forces Radio is playing "You're In The Army Now" by Status Quo in the operations room of Zulu 25, a rather unlovely block of flats in the north Pristina suburb of Ulpiana.

A call comes in from the sentry box and Private Adam Hawkins, of the Royal Regiment of Wales, grabs his rifle and sets off at a run.

He is to escort Jordan Marovic, a Serb, to an Albanian baker's shop 50 yards away. Three minutes later they are back, mission accomplished.

All across Kosovo, three years ago a theatre of war, such small tragicomedies are being enacted. The British troops may have arrived here as peacekeepers but today they are nothing more than a curious mix of policeman, plumber, park keeper, parent and padre to the local populace. Our soldiers take them shopping, pay their phone bills, unblock their lavatories and settle neighbourhood feuds. And we, of course, pay. We pay to tax and insure community minibuses, fund school computers and stop the inhabitants stealing cows and torching churches.

We weatherproof houses, grit roads, protect trees and watch over their old folk. In the capital, Pristina, we've even taken to organising a farmers' market twice a month.

As Captain Dave Henderson of The Highlanders says: "We're not exactly sitting in Kosovo with bayonets between our teeth these days." This morning, 3,500 British soldiers awoke to spend another day in the marrow cold of a Balkan winter, coping with what have been called "the small nuisances of peacetime."

That's a lot of manpower, weaponry and expense just to see that someone who has no connection with Britain in a country that has no links with us can buy a loaf of bread.

On New Year's Day, with Capt Henderson and his men, we set out from their bleak base in the town of Podujevo in two armoured Land Rovers.

Within minutes we pull over a car which is patently unroadworthy, a quick check revealing mismatched documents.

It's a police matter so the fledgling Kosovo police service is summoned.

Two young officers arrive bristling with intent, their boss, meanwhile, hugs the brother of the car driver – an old friend. Capt Henderson remarks:

"The minute we're gone he'll be let off. I sometimes think we're the harbinger of our own doom here. We provide a framework for them to be nefarious and to not help themselves. We try and try to get them back on their feet – it's what we want – but there's a lot of laziness on their part.

"The villages in the hills around here are only three miles distant but they might as well be 500 years away. We went up to help prepare their houses for winter and we're up in the rafters sweating. There's a dead cat in the corner and back downstairs there's four burly blokes sitting sipping coffee saying, 'Yeah, thanks.' They'd love to sit back and let the Army do everything."

He reflects:

"I settled a dispute between neighbours about a sewage tunnel – they've just let it run past their front doors for the last 100 years – I took them the piping and showed them where to dig. That was weeks ago – it's still lying there for the sake of a couple of hours' work. They want the Army to do it.

"The other day a bloke turned up at out gate and said his electricity had gone off and what were we going to do about it. I explained it wasn't a military matter but, in trying to teach independence, we seem to be encouraging dependence. There's an exit strategy in place but I don't see how they can extract us any time soon."

From the vehicle stop we move into an upland area where Capt Henderson's men are searching haystacks for illegal weapons. New Year, and many other occasions, are celebrated here with what's known as the Beirut upload, a volley of AK47 shots into the sky. It's grim work in subzero conditions and the stacks turn out to be empty, so we return to base.

Back in the officers' mess I meet Major Tim Henry of the Hussars.

His pet project is the Batlava Lake, a popular recreation area as well as the main water supply for Pristina and Podujevo, routinely contaminated by Kosovans washing their cars and cattle in it.

"It was turning into a huge environmental issue so we decided to turn it into a country park," he says. "One night we sank twenty 6-foot posts into the ground to keep traffic out and by the next morning nineteen had disappeared."

Major Huw Lloyd-Jones, who commands the company caring for the Serbs in Ulpiana is blunt. With a masters degree in international relations, he points out that he's "entirely comfortable" with the Army's presence here but adds:

"It is boring and monotonous in parts. Guarding the Serbian church, for example, is a job we've been trying to shift on to the police or a security firm but we can't, so there are two British soldiers on duty 24 hours a day."

The church to which he refers, a hulking, unfinished shell, is where 17-year-old Private James Rogers of the Royal Regiment of Wales was killed by a bullet from his own gun last month. His death brought the 2001 toll to four – in April Britain lost two military fliers when a Puma helicopter crashed, and days later a young private died when his patrol vehicle hit an antitank mine.

I head out of the capital, over a crossroads known fondly by the troops as malfunction junction, to Zulu 45, the patrol house in the village of Devet Jugovia, a Serbian enclave.

Major Ed Brain of the Royal Regiment of Wales is the commanding officer. Is he, too, troubled by demands for help which do not fall within the Army's remit? "Only all the time," he grimaces.

"We have alarm buttons in some houses which are meant to be for something major such as a murder – we had one man on the line saying, 'I've hit myself in the face with my spade – can you come?' Or you get Serbs on the phone saying an Albanian has cut down one of their trees and insisting the Army sorts it out."

Colour Sergeant Mick Hall adds: "I spend my time doing stuff I never dreamed of when I was told I'd be doing a tour of duty in Kosovo." He has taken – as many of the men have – a personal interest in a member of the community, in this case widow Stoja Grahovac. She's only 65 but desperately frail. Sergeant Hall knows she has no family and took responsibility for her welfare. "Like the social services at home I suppose," he said. Having found her on the floor unable to get up on the last three occasions when he visited, he sought a long-term place for her in a Serb hospital in nearby Mitrovica.

On Thursday morning, he spent more than an hour helping her pack. Then he carried her into an Army Land Rover and escorted her to the ward.

Tucked inside his uniform were the keys to her house and the deeds which she had entrusted to him.

This elicited joshing about it being his pension plan (from me) or even next year's defence budget (from an officer) but there can be no doubt that if not for his kindness and willingness to operate in a humanitarian as well as a military capacity, she would have died alone, and soon.

That men from the Royal Regiment of Wales, the Hussars and the Highlanders are free to undertake such humanitarian work is only because the British Army has, during its two-and-a-half-year "peacekeeping" in Kosovo, done such a first-class job in buttoning down the security of both the ethnic Albanian majority and their hated minority countrymen, the Serbs.

Jordan Marovic nods at Private Hawkins as he escorts him to the baker's and tells me: "You must understand he holds my life in his hands." It was a sentiment repeated by every Serb I encountered and graphically illustrated by the British patrols which blanket Pristina city centre; the 24-hour presence outside targets such as Serbian churches; the constant weapon confiscations and vehicle checkpoints and, above all, the escorts offered between Serbian enclaves such as historic Gracinica and the rural north. And therein lies the problem. Today there is a tenuous peace and those who uphold it – the British Army – have proved themselves capable of providing both comfort and civilisation: power and water, a police service and legal system, medical help and education.

Is it any wonder the Kosovans simply march to the gates of the nearest Army camp when anything goes wrong? But is this really what the Army and "peacekeeping" is about?

In Pristina the latest mobile phone ring tone is the theme from Miami Vice and the rough local beer has been christened Stroke by the Army because of its paralysing aftereffects. In short, it's about 20 years behind the West but, with the British in town, there are jobs, money and a hitherto unknown buzz.

We arrived as part of KFOR, the United Nations' multinational security force numbering 42,500 and staffed by countries ranging from Britain and America to Ghana and the Philippines, and we did have metaphorical bayonets between our teeth in the beginning. But now we are soldier, handyman and nanny. The British Army is taking on a similar role in Kabul as part of another multinational peacekeeping force. Will the same situation develop? From my experience in Pristina, it is hard to see how it can be avoided.

Brigadier David Rutherford-Jones is in command of British troops at Multinational Brigade Centre. He is also in charge of the Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish and Czech contingents. A youthful career soldier with a stern reputation earned during his command in Bosnia, he told me:

"We are here primarily to ensure a safe and secure environment for economic and social progress. But where there are sad cases we have a moral responsibility to help where other organisations are failing.

"People have an image of the Army as a great rufty-tufty organisation – and there is no doubt we will be tough when it is required – but the British soldier has a sensitive and human side, too. We do get involved in projects which improve the lives of people when we have time but the value of the trust that this engenders in the local population far outstrips the risk of them becoming dependent on us."

There is, as yet, no specific exit strategy for the British from Kosovo.

The Army has settled in to the point where the Highlanders were to be found enjoying Hogmanay by playing hockey with a flaming ball in the icy wastes of an old Podujevo airstrip and the Royal Regiment of Wales has rented a local goat to act as its mascot on St David's Day.

And despite a self-imposed "no going-out policy" which bans fraternising with local girls and drinking in local bars or even a trip to a cinema, "our boys" have grown close to the locals. They visit old folk, distribute toys and sweets sent across from their home bases to children and have undertaken, voluntarily, the refurbishment of a wrecked mental home.

I ask the Brigadier what he thinks of those who ask what we are doing in Kosovo when we have other, bloodier conflicts, to settle, such as Afghanistan. He replies:

"I appreciate that but if we left tomorrow, it would be too early and the huge investment of the international community would be lost.

"The Balkans are Europe's backyard, we could not sit in England and watch them sink into war, with the threat of that spilling out across the region, but I can assure you we are keen to unfix ourselves, get ourselves out of unnecessary tasks."

However, the debate over what constitutes an "unnecessary task" continues. As one non-commissioned officer shortly to undertake a tour here told me:

"My family live in Folkestone. When I told my mum I was coming out she was spitting with anger. She said, 'Why the hell are you going there when we're awash with illegal Kosovans here? The Ministry of Defence would be better off deploying you lot around the Channel Tunnel to stop them coming in.'"