Aid officials fear refugees in Albania far from help

The Associated Press

QAFE E PRUSHIT, Albania -- The refugees -- mostly women and children -- struggle down a path of ankle-deep mud toward the nearest village nine miles away. Of the thousands of Albanian refugees streaming out of Kosovo, those who arrive here are among the most miserable.

The rugged border area between Kosovo and Albania is virtually inaccessible to Western relief agencies, an area where those who are ill can't be easily cared for. "If we don't do something quickly, people are going to start to die," said Carit Vanasy, a field officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, walking among about 300 women and children huddled in a small meadow. About 3,000 refugees had crossed at Qafe E Prushit (pronounced CHAF-pru-she) after walking six miles from the Kosovo city of Djakovica. They said they were ordered to leave Djakovica by Yugoslav police and militiamen moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. Few were young men, who fled the city earlier this week either to escape possible Serb retribution or join the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, they said. Once at the border, the refugees were expelled with cold efficiency. As U.N. officials watched, Serb special forces gathered the ethnic Albanians at a clearing and stripped them of money and identification. Then the refugees were taken under armed escort through a mine field to within a few yards of a ramshackle Albanian customs post. "Now go home to Albania," the refugees were told, though many have never been outside the Serbian province of Kosovo. Once over the border, they are on their own. A bag of sugar, some shirts and bread was all 74-year-old Hazir Hajredini managed to stuff into a small sack, which dangled from the end of an umbrella resting on his shoulder. He stared hard at the Yugoslav soldiers. "I won't go back unless Kosovo is free," he spat. A young woman walked past carrying her two-week-old daughter covered completely by a blue blanket. A toddler, sucking hungrily on an empty bottle, brushed past the old man. A young boy playfully mimicked the order he apparently heard from Serb authorities: "Documents, documents." Most of the other 130,000 Kosovo refugees in Albania have arrived along a road, difficult but passable, that leads to the northern town of Kukes. Kukes is just 18 miles southeast of Qafe E Prushit, but it is a three-hour drive from here on a twisting unpaved road that looks more like a path. Just why the refugees were expelled here was unclear. U.N. officials feared the isolation might be a deliberate effort by Serbs to make life harder for the refugees. "If so, it's working," Vanasy said. He said aid officials are considering air drops of relief supplies to the mountain areas if the refugee flow continues.

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