Kosovo: One in a Million

SERRA AKCAN / NARPHOTOS FOR TIME

PROMISE: Ramadan Ilazi has pledged to shore up his splintered homeland, starting at home in his town of Ferizaj

Back in the spring of 1999, Ramadan Ilazi was among the nearly 1 million ethnic Albanians forced to flee Serb ruler Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to "cleanse" them from Kosovo. It was amid the endless lines of U.N.-issued tents in the Senokos camp in Macedonia that I first met this boy, known to his friends as Dani. As a reporter covering the Albanian exodus, I would talk to scores of refugees. But Dani, who was then 14 years old and looked no more than 10, would prove to be a one-in-a-million encounter.

The same mix of passion and purpose...

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