Pristina is one of the most unfortunate cities in Yugoslavia in which air raid alerts almost never end and in which one can see, always and on every corner, signs of destruction. It happens that the air raid alert siren will signal the beginning of the alert and will not be heard again for three or four days, when it will announce only a short break in the bombing. At twilight the streets are already quite empty and the majority of restaurants, cafes and bars will close after which the city sinks into total darkness because a blackout is mandatory. During the night only occasionally a car will pass through the streets, while all windows are carefully covered. The city is full of stray dogs. Some side streets are filled with trash. The city was without electrical power until the end of April, and the majority of residents currently do not have a telephone connection to the rest of the world.
For weeks NATO planes have been bombing areas adjacent to Albania and main roads in order to make getting supplies more difficult or impossible. By the roads one can see numerous burnt buses, abandoned cars, destroyed buildings, as well as enormous craters (probably caused by missiles which missed their targets) in the middle of fields. On the road to Pristina this reporter did not see a single destroyed military vehicle.
However, entire villages have been destroyed. Upon entering Kosovo and Metohija, at the administrative border of the region, there is a ghost town called Merdare. Almost every house in that town is destroyed, and along its muddy roads walk only chickens and abandoned, half-wild dogs. Two weeks ago, 30 people lived in Merdare in poor huts.
Immediately prior to the beginning of the bombing, representatives of international organizations left Kosovo, followed by almost all reporters. After a long pause, now we see groups of domestic and foreign reporters coming, who have of course the necessary authorization and the proper accreditation. The local authorities say that this demonstrates that the situation is gradually becoming normal.
Staying in the largest Pristina hotel, the Grand, are reporters from Turkish television, Agence France Press and the Los Angeles Times, who have been continuous guests of the hotel since the beginning of the air attacks. Staying in the Park Hotel, also since the beginning of the attacks, are photographers from Reuters and cameramen from the Associated Press.
In the city itself, the old building housing the post office and the Temporary Executive Council is destroyed, and missiles have fallen on the cemetery, the basketball courts as well as on several residential buildings and on the bus station. The glass on most of the buildings is cracked from the explosions, and side streets in the city are full of debris and metal pieces. The post office sustained the most damage. The front of the building has been replaced by a huge hole caused by a direct missile hit. The center of the city was bombed four days after the start of the air attacks on Yugoslavia, and that is when the massive exodus of the residents began.
Supplies reaching the Kosovo capital have improved much in comparison to two or three weeks ago and the reporters who spent the entire period of the bombing in Pristina, tell a story how after going for almost an entire month without any fruit, they obtained one apple and spent all night looking at it. Today in Pristina, lines form only for the purchase of bread and milk. The situation is made somewhat worse by the fact that a significant number of shops in the city have closed, and by the fact that residents of areas on the outskirts of Pristina also purchase their supplies in the city center. Cigarettes are the scarcest commodity but they are no more expensive than in other cities in the country. Obtaining supplies, however, is made considerably more difficult by the fact that the roads are exposed to constant and intense attacks by NATO planes.
"I began to run because not far from my house are some military facilities, so I was afraid that we would be hit by something," he said. Fejza believes that people left Kosovo for three reasons: because of the fighting between the KLA and the police, because of the bombing or because, simply, of the general insecurity which prompted them to join the wave of refugees. Fejza is still employed in the Belgrade company "Soko Stark" where he was told to "sit at home, pick up his salary and wait for better times." It seems that his biggest problem is the scarcity of cigarettes. He says that he and his family are supported and assisted in their intention to stay by his closest neighbors, who are Serbian and with whom he gets along well.
"When the bombing began, my husband and I went to live with our son in a building which is very close to the post office. Everyone ran to the basement, only my husband and I were on the eighth floor. When the explosion hit, the building shook so much that we decided to go home immediately," said an elderly woman, Vera, from the Pristina suburb Dragodan. She and her husband Slavko spend their days talking with their neighbors and working in the garden. She says she is terrified of the explosions and that she cannot sleep at night without sedatives. She does not venture into the city; her husband occasionally goes to purchase food and other necessities.
Some of the members of the KLA are determinedly attempting to break through to Albanian territory, while others have decided to become true guerrillas and to wait for better days to begin new missions. The problem for these groups is the lack of food and munitions. Immediately following the beginning of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, the KLA attempted to carry out a mobilization among displaced Albanians in Kosovo who had started out toward the Macedonian and Albanian borders. In Kosovo, according to Serbian sources, there are more than 150,000 soldiers and armed police who are attempting to make the KLA's position untenable.
The Albanian separatists have up to now used the so-called Ho Shi Minh method of mobilization - they would attack the police close to a village, then withdraw into the village and shoot at police from the village houses and then disappear into the forest. The police would take follow-up action and generally search the village, generally finding nothing. However, the KLA would return to the village after a few days and mobilize new people from among those angered by the police search of the village.
This type of mobilization creates conditions in which the KLA is not defending the people, but quite the contrary, the people are defending the KLA. The beginning of the bombing and the intensity of the battles have increased fear among the residents, which resulted in the departure of large groups of people from the danger zones. After this, the KLA was left without logistical support from the villages.
Serbian sources in Pristina estimate that at its peak the KLA had approximately 30,000 armed people. The number of members of this organization who are now in Kosovo is difficult to estimate. Serbian sources state, however, that their numbers do not exceed several thousand armed individuals who move around in small groups.