[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 50 (Tuesday, April 13, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1902-H1903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page H1902]]
KOSOVO REFUGEES: AN EXODUS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Everett). Under a previous order of the
House, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, an exodus from Kosovo of biblical proportions
is taking place. Thousands upon thousands of refugees stream across the
border 24 hours a day.
There was a newspaper headline in Europe that said ``Europe's turn in
the killing fields.'' That writer must have seen what I saw, a
catastrophe that should have been anticipated. Ethnic Albanian refugees
from Kosovo are now paying a heavy price for this poor judgment.
I just returned from a 4-day visit to the Balkans. I went to focus on
humanitarian conditions and the massive numbers of refugees flooding
out of Kosovo each day. I traveled to Kukes and Morina on the Kosovo-
Albania border. And when I left, an estimated 270,000 to 300,000
refugees had crossed the border.
The scene there is heart-wrenching. Our first introduction was the
stench, the overpowering smell of urine and feces from refugees with no
place to go to the bathroom. In many places the ground was covered with
feces. It will not be long before disease breaks out, especially among
the people who are already dehydrated, malnourished, and sick. Four
cases of measles had been confirmed as of last Tuesday.
Refugees are everywhere, camped on hillsides, along the road, in
parks and plazas, and in parking lots. Most arrive as an extended
family in carts and trailers being pulled by farm tractors or, in some
cases, by horses. Some arrive in cars, but many are on foot, an
unending procession of people who had been threatened; and many have
been separated from their families.
Everyone had a bad story. There is no need to document the reports,
but every report was different: ``I lost my husband.'' ``I lost my
wife.'' ``I lost my son.'' ``I lost my daughter.'' And we should now
have people documenting that for a war crimes trial but also for
history.
The country of Albania has responded admirably to this entire crisis.
It is a poor country but it has opened up its heart and its homes.
Still, in spite of the tremendous effort of people on the scene, the
refugee situation is still a disaster. The Clinton administration, the
international community, and NATO were ill prepared to deal with this
crisis they should have anticipated. The information was there, but
those who decided the course of events, particularly the Clinton
administration, did not listen.
People on the ground in Kosovo before the bombing campaign began
warned that the Serbs could begin to brutalize ethnic Albanians.
Some comments and suggestions:
The brutality has been taking place for too long. Serbian President
Milosevic is the father of the Kosovo tragedy, as he was in Bosnia and
even before. Beginning in the fall of 1991, when Serbs shelled and
bombed and laid siege to Vukovar, he has continued this pattern of
destruction. This is just another chapter.
Two, Milosevic is an evil man who has directly caused nearly a decade
of terror and killing. Nine Serb generals have just been warned that
they may be named as war criminals. Should Milosevic head the list? And
the answer is ``yes.''
Three, there is a life-and-death crisis in Albania. President Clinton
should immediately send a high-level delegation of NSC, State
Department, and Defense to go on the scene, people who can
make decisions.
Four, massive amounts of infrastructure supplies and communications
equipment are needed at the border, along with people to assemble and
operate.
Five, there is a huge shortage of food and people are starving today.
But once the influx of refugees ends, the problem of sustaining them
for a longer period is no less critical.
Six, refugees report that a vast number of houses and buildings and
infrastructures have been destroyed. Every family said, ``My house had
been burned.'' ``My house had been destroyed.'' We need to help them
rebuild, and that will take a long time for them to return.
Seven, it is doubtful that Kosovo can ever again be part of the
Yugoslav Federation. It will take a long time to implement workable
solutions. In time, Albanians will tire of having to deal with the
refugees who infringe upon their normal life. Most Kosovo refugees have
no documentation, no identity cards, no medical history, no records.
This will take a long time to reconstruct. And everyone I spoke to said
they want to go home.
Lastly, we must do everything possible to help the suffering
refugees. These victims of war have lost their homes, their
livelihoods, and in many cases their identities. Additionally, having
witnessed firsthand their struggle to survive and having seen their
fear and their tears, I believe our country, the United States of
America, and NATO's resolve with our partners must be to stop once and
for all the brutality of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following report of our
visit to Albania:
Report by U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, Visit to
Albania: Refugees--An Exodus of Biblical Proportions, April 4-7, 1999
This report provides details of my trip to Albania on April
4-7, 1999. I met briefly with Albanian leaders in Tirana and
spent the bulk of my time at the Kosovo-Albanian border near
Morina and the nearby town of Kukes. Thousands upon thousands
of refugees streamed across the border, 24 hours a day. They
desperately need lifesaving care now and will require
sustaining aid for a long time until all the problems
resolving around Kosovo are solved, and they can once again
return home.
An exodus from Kosovo of biblical proportions is taking
place, I saw a newspaper headline yesterday, ``Europe's turn
in the killing fields.'' That writer must have seen what I
saw, a catastrophe that should have been anticipated. Ethnic
Albanian refugees from Kosovo are now paying a heavy price
for this poor judgment.
I just returned from a four-day visit to Albania--my second
since mid-February. I went this time to focus on humanitarian
conditions and needs with tens of thousands of refugees
streaming across the border from Kosovo each day.
By the time we left on Wednesday, an estimated 270,000-
300,000 refugees had cross the border from Kosovo. They have
added about 10 percent to the Albanian population in a matter
of only a few days.
We arrived in Tirana on Eastern Sunday courtesy of
Americares--one of the many non-governmental organizations
(NGO's) saving lives, delivering food, water, blankets,
medicine and other items desperately needed in large
quantities.
Our airplane, a Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules, seconded
to Americares, was loaded with baby food, flour, and other
emergency supplies. About 20 passengers were on board, mostly
print and TV journalists and Americares staff and volunteers.
A few NBC people from the TODAY show were there. We crowded
in amid relief supplies, wherever there was room to sit.
The Tirana airport is just beginning to come alive with
relief supplies and equipment arriving from many nations.
U.S. Air Force personnel, with their positive attitude and
``can do'' spirit, have set up a tent city to get the planes
off-loaded and the goods dispersed. They are doing a great
job, and planes do not linger on the ground.
We left Tirana very early the next morning for Kukes, a
northern Albania town nearest the border crossing. It is a
drive of six to nine hours or more, depending on traffic,
weather and luck. We travelled with USAID's Disaster Response
Team (DART) which was going to assess and coordinate relief
efforts.
It is the only road to Kukes. It is the only road available
to transport relief supplies to Kukes. It is the only road
for newly arriving refugees to travel out of Kukes to the
villages, towns and cities throughout Albania where they will
stay, or be moved to other countries.
It is a treacherous road--a dangerous road through
mountains and valleys with steep drop-offs of hundreds of
feet. It is barely two lanes wide with no barriers to prevent
going over the edge. The roadway is dotted with flower
adorned memorials to earlier accidents and fatalities.
We bounced from pothole to pothole around tight S curves,
dodging traffic going in both directions. Worse, the roadbed
in a number of places is being undercut by the passage of
heavy trucks. Chunks of road are just falling off. As more
and more relief trucks make the trip, the roadway may
deteriorate to the point where it is impassable.
Officials are looking at creating an airstrip near Kukes
capable of handling up to C-130 Hercules aircraft. They need
to hurry.
In Kukes we joined with Catholic Relief Services (CRS).
Like other NGO's, CRS is doing a remarkable job with what
they have to work with. The overall relief effort was late in
getting started, is slow in coming up to speed and, thus far,
is overwhelmed by the vast number of refugees.
Our first introduction to the area was the stench--the
overpowering smell of urine and feces from the enormous
numbers of refugees with no place to go to the bathroom. In
[[Page H1903]]
many places, the ground was covered with feces. It won't be
long before disease breaks out under these conditions,
especially among people who are already dehydrated,
malnourished and sick. Four cases of measles had been
confirmed by Tuesday and the NGO's were trying to arrange
a massive inoculation program.
The number of people in Kukes was startling. This is a town
of 23,000 inhabitants which is growing by tens of thousands
each day. About 30,000 refugees are estimated to cross the
border every day, 24 hours a day. Only about 15,000 to 20,000
refugees are transported from Kukes daily to other places.
The population continues to swell. The most common estimates
are that about 80,000 refugees were in Kukes on Tuesday and
Wednesday.
They are everywhere, camped on hillsides, along the road,
in parks and plazas, and in parking lots. Most arrive as an
extended family in trailers being pulled along by tractors,
or in some cases, by horse. Some arrive in cars, but many are
on foot. Their only possessions are carried on their back.
Our time at the Morina border crossing was an overpowering,
emotional experience. We saw an unending procession of people
and families, each with a horrific story to tell. Many had
been travelling for days under constant threat of being
harmed or killed by Serb militia.
Perhaps just reaching the border was an emotional release
for them. There were many more women, children and elderly
than younger men. Tears were streaming down their faces--many
sobbed uncontrollably. We had an interpreter and the tales
they told were chilling.
An 18-year-old boy from the village of Blac was randomly
pulled out of line and shot to death--in front of his mother
and family. They wouldn't even let his mother kiss him
goodbye.
An elderly paralyzed woman was given 10 minutes to leave
her home. There wasn't even time to get her medicine. As they
moved away, the family home was set afire--blazing behind
them.
Everyone has a story. Most have had their homes destroyed.
There is a need to document these reports while they are
still fresh, not only for war crimes, but for history as
well.
The refugees have little food, water, shelter, sanitation
or medical care. We went with a CRS feeding mission on Monday
night. It was scheduled after dark to keep the hungry people
from seeing what was going on and getting out of hand at food
distribution points. But it didn't work. As soon as the
distributors showed up, starving people began clamoring and
struggling for food. The trucks were overwhelmed and had to
speed away to keep people from being injured. Police were
helping as much as they could but they are too few. We saw
individual policemen on duty for 24 hours straight. Many
Albanian families, and especially some in Kukes, were warm,
welcoming and generous. Many opened their homes to refugees
they did not know and had no earlier connection with.
I visited two apartments in Kukes to see for myself. In
one, the residents vacated their two-room apartment so that a
Kosovar family of 17 could have a place to stay. The
grandfather was blind and just sat facing a wall. There was a
baby girl, just weeks or perhaps a few months old. They had
been a thriving family in Kosovo, but now have nothing, not
even an idea of what the future holds.
In the next two-room flat, 10 refugees stayed in one room
and 17 in the other. The host Kukes residents stayed with
them, all sleeping on the floor.
Albania is a poor country in wealth, but rich in
generosity.
We also sat in on a coordinating meeting of NGO's who are
struggling to cope, many themselves on the edge of exhaustion
and sickness. The room was filled with coughing and
sneezing--respiratory cases about to happen.
The talk was of how to provide the most help. Who could do
what? Who could best ease the shortfall of supplies? The
overall conclusion was one of inadequacy, of being
overwhelmed, of having too little to share among too many.
And the talk was especially about poor logistics and
communications.
The refugees situation in Albania, in spite of the
tremendous effort of people on the scene, is a disaster. I
think the Clinton administration, the international community
and NATO were ill-prepared to deal with this crisis they
should have anticipated. The information was there, but those
who decided the course of events, particularly the Clinton
administration, did not listen.
Satellite imagery could detect the large lines of refugees
forming along the way to the borders, but this information
has not been available to the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with overall coordinating
responsibility.
People on the ground in Kosovo before the bombing began
warned of the possibility that Serbs would begin to brutalize
ethnic Albanians. I visited Kosovo in February, a few days
before Rambouillet talks broke down ending hope for a truce
with NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo. Many Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), UNHCR and NGO
representatives and diplomats predicted then that ethnic
Albanians would be attacked before NATO troops could arrive.
In Kosovo, nearly every Serb family is armed, not with
Saturday-night specials, but with Kalishnakov automatic
rifles. The Serbs Army and Police are heavily armed, too.
Real concern existed that, hidden from western observers,
helpless and unprotected ethnic Albanians would be
brutalized. That is exactly what happened. Had this been
anticipated by decision-makers, measures to provide relief
and the basis for survival of refugees could have been put in
motion. Shiploads, and caches of relief supplies then could
have been positioned nearby.
Even now, when it is clear that enormous problems exist,
too little is being done. There is much talk of providing for
the long run. But people are dying today. Massive amounts of
life-giving supplies are needed now.
I would like to close with a few comments and
recommendations.
1. This brutality has been taking place for too long.
Serbian President Milosevic is the father of the Kosovo
tragedy as he was in Bosnia and even before. Beginning in the
fall of 1991 when Serbs shelled, bombed and laid siege to
Vukovar, Croatia, Milosevic has continued a pattern of
destruction. Kosovo is just the latest chapter.
2. Milosevic is an evil man who has directly caused nearly
a decade of terror, killing and destruction. Nine Serb
generals have just been warned that they may be named as war
criminals for their actions in Kosovo. Shouldn't Milosevic
head the list?
3. There is a life and death crisis in Albania. President
Clinton should immediately send high level people from the
National Security Council, State and defense department--
people who can make decisions on the scene--to the border
crossings in Kukes. A decision-maker/policy person has yet to
visit there. And that's where you have to go to see what is
really happening. Too many visitors stop briefly in Tirana
and quickly move on, thinking they know what is taking place.
They don't. Today, the refugee problem is hemorrhaging at the
border. That's where the compress now needs to be applied.
Once the influx of refugees ends, and they are placed
throughout Albania, the same amounts of massive help and
support must be re-targeted to provide long-term assistance.
4. Massive amounts of infrastructure supplies and
communications equipment are needed at the border along with
people to assemble and operate them. It is not enough to ship
a load of tents. People to erect them, dig toilets and purify
water must be there as well. Equipment alone is insufficient.
Operators and technicians must be there, too. When refugees
stop coming to the border, these needs will continue
throughout Albania where massive numbers of refugees will be
housed.
5. There is a huge shortage of food, and people are
starving today. Once the influx of refugees ends, the problem
of sustaining them for a longer period will be no less
critical. Albania can't feed itself. Food is the country's
largest component of imports. Albania is going to need help.
6. Albania also has difficulty maintaining law and order,
even in Tirana. In many remote areas, police protection is
non-existent. Unemployment is very high, and there is no
capacity to provide work and economic sufficiency for
refugees. The Albanian government will need to be propped up
and the economy improved.
7. Refugees report that a vast number of houses, buildings
and infrastructure have been destroyed in Kosovo. Rebuilding
will take a long time and care for refugees must be worked
out while this take place.
8. Little is known about the refugee situation in
Montenegro, but it will undoubtedly add to the overall
problem.
9. It is doubtful that Kosovo can ever again be a pat of
the Yugoslav federation. It will take a long time to
implement workable solution. In time, Albanians will tire of
having Kosovo refugees to deal with and infringe upon normal
life. Most Kosovo refugees have not documentation, no
identity cards, medical histories or necessary records. Even
the license plates were ripped from cars as they crossed the
border. This, too, will take time to reconstruct.
10. And lastly, let me say a word about the press. Without
their coverage as refugees began to pile up, it would have
taken even longer to recognize the crisis at hand. The press
has done a good job of telling the world what is happening
and in mobilizing people to come to the aid of hundreds of
thousands of the neediest people. Members of the press should
be proud of their work.
____________________