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How close can NATO get to the KLA?
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[05/23/99]

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Whatever turn the war takes -- toward a peaceful solution, or a ground war -- NATO troops are leaving camp administration and preparing to enter Kosovo, whether as peacekeepers or combat soldiers. At camps like Cigrane, that will leave a vacuum -- to be filled by the some 20 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the camp, and by the refugees themselves. In their first foray outside Germany since the end of World War II, the Germans did a widely admired job of helping build a settlement over the past several weeks for some 31,000 people, with space for another 6,800. Orderly lines of tents march up the hillside, water pipes have been laid in 2-foot-deep trenches by husky Germans in camouflage pants and tank tops, pausing from their digging to bounce balloons and kick soccer balls with the burgeoning population of children.

The camp the Germans left behind more and more resembles a small municipality, albeit of canvas tents and dirt pathways. New refugees are brought in by the busload and are sent to fill up another letter in this sprawling metropolis in the making, where row after row of tent sections are named alphabetically. Last week they occupied A through L; the weekend's influx no doubt filled M and perhaps beyond. "It's like a small city here," says Nora Kelmendi, 26, a Kosovar Albanian who worked for CARE in Pristina and is now in charge of handling food distribution for sections G through L, while residing with a host family in nearby Gostivar.

How to run this burgeoning metropolis? Refugees are rapidly developing their own system of governance, laying the groundwork for a long haul here in the foothills of the Sar Mountains, where the snow capped peaks provide a dazzling contrast in the distance. Last week, a call was put out for teachers for a UNICEF-sponsored school at the camp. More than a dozen responded. All refused payment. A call for sign artists resulted in numerous artists offering their services; 30 professional firemen have been identified to form a volunteer fire corps.

Most notably, the Cigrane camp is evolving into a mini-democracy. According to a system devised by CARE Australia, which has primary responsibility for running the logistics of the camp, each line of tents elects a leader to represent them; in turn, those leaders elect an individual to represent the entire tent section. "It's amazing how natural leaders come out of the pack," comments Michael Emory of CARE Australia. Most are men, in their 40s, with what Emory calls demonstrated leadership abilities in their communities back home: there's a policeman, a jurist, an official of the former Yugoslav government -- and a boxer.

Bajram Hashani, 46, once one of former Yugoslavia's foremost boxing champions, is now, along with his wife, sister and two children, the inhabitant of tent number A-18/9. He is, in the faint outlines of political organization taking shape in the Cigrane camp, a "tent group leader" -- in street lexicon, a ward captain. His domain is the A section -- 146 tents, all stenciled in white lettering, "Gift of the United States of America" -- in which reside some 4,860 people. Hashani knows his constituents like a good ward captain: "I have 23 doctors, 26 engineers, and a lot of young students," he says.

At the top of the chain of command in the camp are CARE and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which work with some 20 NGOs in the camp dispensing food, assisting with housing and medical care (Medecins San Frontiere and Pharmaciens Sans Frontier, and a German and Norwegian military hospital) and facilitating family reunions (the International Committee of the Red Cross and International Organization of Migration). The German troops acted like in-house security services, logistical coordinators and construction workers -- roles which will be taken over by the refugees themselves and the NGOs.

One of the reasons that Hashani was selected to this post was his stature as one of Yugoslavia's leading boxers. He was a member of the country's national team and its top welterweight from 1968, when he was 14, to 1980. His face, unshaven now for several days, is grizzled, and his once-stocky frame is considerably slimmed down after more than three weeks in the camp. His shoulders are rigid, a professional inheritance, but strong. He has short black hair, specked with gray, and a poorly healed scar on his neck also inherited from the ring.

It's been 13 years since Hashani fought professionally in the ring. He still carries the authority of a man accustomed to being the strongest in the room, only now it comes from a calm, forceful and generous spirit, a reassuring quality in the turmoil and tragedy of the camp. He invites me to sit on a stack of blankets in the tent he shares with his sister, his wife and two children. The tent is bare except for a plastic bottle of water hanging from the cross-posts, a couple of stuffed animals for his kids, and a small butane burner in the corner, where his sister Sofia brews up some tea. He offers me a cigarette -- though cigarettes are one of the most valuable commodities in the camp, it is impossible to offer anyone here a smoke before they dig in their pocket and offer one of their own.

Hashani flips through a slim leather wallet containing photos of himself in the ring. In one, with a full head of hair and short black moustache, he is a dead ringer for Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky." Another photo shows him in a double-breasted white suit, devilishly handsome, his arm around a buxom young woman, looking like he could fit into a Don King entourage. That photo was taken in 1979, in Cleveland, where Hashani was sent by the then-Yugoslav government to a sports school (he does not remember the name) to become a boxing teacher and referee. During his two-year stay in the U.S., where he picked up a rough working knowledge of English, he fought on the welterweight circuit around Cleveland and Detroit. He also had a son, who still lives in Cleveland. (They have spoken once by cell phone since Hashani and his family's arrival at the camp). Returning to Yugoslavia, Hashani became a referee and ran a boxing school in Pristina.

But in 1987, after the death of the country's longtime leader Josef Tito (who is revered by many Kosovars for the autonomy he granted the province, and his attempt to hold together a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia), Hashani was kicked out of the Yugoslav Boxing Federation, which was conducting an early ethnic cleansing of its ranks. Like many other ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, he was blocked from holding an official or professional position, and got a job working at an electric power plant. Hashani's acclaim throughout the former Yugoslavia, however, continues. Several Macedonians in Skopje told me about having seen excerpts from a famous fight between Hashani and Tadia Kacar, another Yugoslav champ, on Macedonian television before the war.

Now, at 8:30 every morning, Hashani arrives at Rubb Hall, a vast hangar that is the repository for food and other supplies. Here, he delivers a daily report on the total number of refugees in his line of tents -- whether there have been any new arrivals or departures from the previous day. He is in charge of distributing loaves of bread, tomatoes, onions and other foodstuffs, as well as the piles of blankets and clothing that fill the CARE tent in the center of the camp, and making sure that every tent receives a copy of Fakti, the Albanian language newspaper produced in nearby Tetova that is distributed daily. He also takes requests -- for more food and blankets -- and, lately, complaints: "They say the music is too loud. " Innovative new radios distributed in the camp don't require batteries; they're powered by a crank, like an old prop plane. And now the sounds of pop and traditional Albanian music emanating from the tents clash throughout the camp.

Last week, Hashani assembled a 50-person volunteer security force to deal with a new problem: residents from nearby towns who smuggle themselves into the camp and claim they are residents in order to receive the regular food allocations to sell on the black market.

Next page | A hand grenade thrown at a bread line