(6 of 7)
"They came to kill,"said Sadir Gashi as he comforted his cousin Gentiana and her grieving mother Mexhide. The widow's eyes were red with weeping as she showed us the photographic remnants of a happy marriage. "I will always be happy to have these good images in my mind," she said softly, running her hand over Gentiana's hair, "and not his body in that horrible condition." She stopped a moment, then smiled sadly. "I hardly manage to sleep, and when I do, I dream of him. But not of what happened--of the good days we had together."
Other Albanians could not avoid the sight of Serb brutality. "I cannot tell you what it was like to see my father with bullets ripping him from head to toe," said Jusuf Tafili, who saw the corpse of his father 41 hours after he was executed by unknown Serbs. Among the killers, Jusuf believes, were some local Serbs. "I hope the Serbs who did that won't stay here," said Jusuf, "because I know who they are. If I find them, I will kill them."
Men like Jusuf Tafili scare the Serbs left in Kosovo. As tens of thousands of outraged Albanians rush home, tens of thousands of frantic Serbian civilians plod out. Standing on Thursday morning inside a ring of KFOR tanks idling in front of Pec's Hotel Metohija, Sasa Deletic eyed the empty streets and muttered, "If the Albanians control the city, then I will leave. They are animals." At least 50,000 Kosovar Serbs have joined the 40,000 troops trekking north to Serbia. Says Stojanka Markovic, piling her entire household on a rusty red Yugo: "This is it. We're in a state of panic." Markovic, her husband and her 76-year-old mother were the last Serbs to leave Podujevo, a metropolis in northern Kosovo, as their former Albanian neighbors moved back in. "They watched us leave," she said, shaking with fear, "as we watched them leave months ago."
A NEW POWER IN KOSOVO
And as the Serbs go, the power vacuum in Kosovo is being filled not only by NATO but also by the K.L.A. So far, the rebels have left the retreating Serbs alone--though NATO commanders fear that won't last. But an armed K.L.A. certainly makes the province less friendly for any Serbs who dare remain. Under the military agreement, the K.L.A. is supposed to "demilitarize" and turn over its heavy weapons, but no piece of paper will make it give up its AK-47s. Or its dreams of independence--and revenge.
The K.L.A. forces immediately exploited NATO's victory to make themselves heroes to the refugees and grab a share of KFOR's authority. For an entire day, despite heavy cloudbursts, rebel units staged a massive victory parade that jammed downtown Prizren. They deployed everywhere around Pec, setting up checkpoints, patrolling the empty streets. "Tell KFOR the 131st Brigade of the [K.L.A.] is based at the publishing house," announced Commander Et'hem Ceku as he pulled up with troops in a minivan. "I am responsible for the civil and administrative matters of Pec." In the hills, K.L.A. units looked anything but ready to disperse. At an encampment near Ruhot, 30 fresh recruits in brand-new camouflage, some carrying expensive supersniper rifles, were being mustered into the unit.