Life in Pristina
an interview with Paul Watson
The following is a transcript of Paul Watson's
interview with the
Canadian CBC radio program As It Happens, on April 13.
PAUL WATSON (Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
working for LA TImes, has been in Pristina since bombing started,
interviewed 4/13)
[Music]
Interviewer: In the midst of a war there's
more than one version of the truth. The NATO allies say hundreds
of thousands of Kosovars have been driven from their homes by
Slobodon Milosevich. That his troops have been practicing ethnic
cleansing and genocide on a scale rarely seen. That's why,
we're told, NATO will continue its assault. But Serbians claim
that what's really driving Albanians from their homes are NATO's
bombs. That there are no mass killings, no mass graves. Paul
Watson is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from Canada who
has been living in Kosovo since the bombing began. He now writes
for The Los Angeles Times and we reached him in Pristina.
Q: Paul, I don't know, are you being bombed
tonight?
A: Things are quiet at the moment. That's
mostly because there's heavy cloud cover right now and there's
a light rain. But we had some bombing in the daylight hours
this morning up until noon and slightly past that.
Q: Has the shelling or bombing of Pristina,
has that been going on pretty much since day one? Or has it
been stepped up in recent days?
A: The daylight attacks have increased in
the last few days. But there has been pretty constant nighttime
bombing. Those who see the steady diet of NATO briefings on
CNN or other networks wouldn't see a lot of what's happening
in Pristina or elsewhere. There's a very select number of slow
motion videos which are shown in those. Some of the targets
that were hit last night here around 1:40 in the morning, most
of which I saw from my window. It's quite easy to count the
explosions. They're loud and heavy. And in the mornings I
simply go out and look to see what is left. Those that were
hit last night included a graveyard, a children's basketball
court outside an apartment complex, and the main bus station.
Q: Were these all mistakes, too?
A: The cemetery is one that was hit. It's
the second time it's been hit with large craters where there
used to be graves. Those two detonations, the first one on
April 7th and this one in the early hours this morning, are
maybe 100 yards at most from fuel storage tanks. The children's
basketball court I am still trying to figure out. There is
no sign of tire marks or track marks from armored vehicles or
anything to suggest that there was a military target in the
sort of something that might have been hidden in among apartment
buildings.
Q: Also, how much damage has been inflicted
on Pristina altogether?
A: The very center of the city is devastated.
The government buildings have been hit. The main special police
or ministry of interior police headquarters has been hit. A
residential area, the oldest street, in fact, in Pristina which
was ethically mixed. In years past it had Jewish residents
next to Serbian residents, next to ethnic Albanians, next to
ethnic Turks. That took a direct hit. The post office was
hit, etc.
Q: Who is left living there?
A: I join pretty regularly every day like
anyone else food lineups. And I can hear Serbs talking on one
side and ethnic Albanians talking on another. I from time to
time have lunch or chat with more liberal Serbs in the city
and they tell me about friends who they deliver food to each
day who are ethnic Albanians. There are a lot of people on
the streets. Even this morning at 10 o'clock in the morning
as large explosions were rocking highrise buildings in the center
of the city there were people strolling up and down and oohing
and aahing as if they were watching a fireworks demonstration.
Q: Because we've heard that there is imminent
starvation in some pockets of Kosovo, do you know--
A: My movements outside of Pristina itself,
the capital, are not restricted by government order. I have
been able to get out. I got out yesterday, for instance, on
a 70 mile drive down to the southwest, the city of [Jackavitsa]
which is right on the Albanian border. In driving through that
territory which took us straight through the central part of
Kosovo most of the villages are deserted. It's a very eerie
feeling to drive through them. You don't see soldiers. You
don't see anybody. There were refugees moving in a large convoy
of about 150 vehicles in one section, about 50 more in another.
As for seeing refugees living out in the open without food
I have not seen that myself. I can't say whether it exists
or it doesn't.
Q: The people who are still leaving, are
they being chased out by Serbs? Or are they, in fact, fleeing
the bombing?
A: I am certain that it's a mixture of both.
I have spoken personally to people who said that they were
ordered to leave their homes by police in black masks. I've
also spoken to people who are simply terrified. One should
also remember that there are many Serbs who have left this city.
There are many--there was a convoy of ethnic Turks who left
the city. Sometimes the police I think are sincerely trying
to give some sort of protection so that as they leave at least
to a point their belongings are safe. But one unfortunate fact
with the NATO air strikes is that they have stirred a pot, in
a sense. And we shouldn't be surprised that it has spilled
over. And in spilling over it has created anarchy in the countryside.
There was anarchy in this city for several days. And in that
anarchy there are people, civilians, people in uniform who are
carrying out very unfortunate acts.
Q: Well, we are--I mean the stories we're
hearing from the refugees coming into Albania and Macedonia
are simply terrible, as you probably know. They are talking
about having guns put to their heads, having everything taken
from them, including their identity papers. Their houses are
torched. Their sons and fathers are shot in front of their
eyes. None of that happened in Pristina?
A: I'm not saying it didn't happen but I've
been up and down ethnic Albanian neighborhoods several times
at tremendous risk when some of that firing was going on. I've
looked in the streets. There are no corpses. There were none
then. There are no--there's no obvious evidence that you would
expect. I, for instance, have been in countries where there
were massacres, Rwanda being one of them, Somalia being another.
It's very hard to hide anarchic, wholesale slaughter of people.
There is no evidence that such a thing happened in Pristina.
That's not to say that it didn't happen in other villages.
I would be surprised if it didn't given the nature of this
conflict. I've been here several times for some weeks over the
period of the past half year. Massacres have occurred before.
I would be surprised if they're not occurring now.
Q: But sporadic more than the norm. Is that
what you're saying?
A: Certainly more than the norm. But I think--this
is something that people should start doing now that we're into
the third, almost into the fourth week I guess. I've lost count.
I see, and this is not a justification of anything, but I see
a pretty clear pattern up until yesterday, for instance, of
refugees leaving an area after there were severe air strikes.
In the case yesterday the large number of refugees we saw were
apparently leaving from an area around the airport just outside
of Pristina. That airport had been hit very hard in the previous
two days. In hearing reports from those refugees after they
arrived across the border they told journalists in Albania and
Macedonia the police came to their houses--pardon me--that they
had fled to the hills to avoid the air strikes. Police then
came to their houses and said if you aren't going to join us
then get out. Go to Albania. None of this justifies anything.
But I don't think that NATO member countries can with a straight
face sit back and say they don't share some blame for the wholesale
depopulation of this country. If NATO had not bombed I would
be surprised if this sort of forced exodus on this enormous
scale would be taking place.
Q: NATO countries, of course, are saying
that the Serbs were massing troops along the border getting
ready to come into Kosovo and carry out just such an ethnic
cleansing. Whether NATO bombed or not.
A: Again, I don't represent any point of
view in this argument. But look at it from the Serb point of
view. Again, they saw NATO building up for air strikes and
they were warned in very great detail by Commander Wesley Clark
and others who visited Belgrade and laid out the maps and told
them what was going to be hit, they saw it as leading up to
a ground conflict which it may well be leading up to. If you
anticipated a massive air and ground attack against your country
it would make sense to lay out some defenses.
Q: When the bombing started most of the reporters
left or were forced to leave Pristina. You have not had any
trouble with Serbian authorities?
A: Threats are made. I cannot tell you that
I feel safe here. But at the same time I don't think that as
a member of a NATO country I should leave. These acts are being
carried out on behalf of ethnic Albanians against Serbs by governments
who represent us. And if we choose to flee and just leave people
to it I think that's disgraceful. If someone cares to threaten
me I say go ahead, do it.
Q: Given the passions that have been unleashed,
Paul, do you think, though, that the hundreds of thousands of
Albanians who must still be in Kosovo, who have not crossed
the borders into Montenegro or Albania, Macedonia, are they
in danger of their lives?
A: Certainly. The nights, for instance,
are still cold here. There are pregnant women giving birth,
presumably out in the open or if not out in the open in one
of the many houses here that have no roofs and haven't had roofs
since last summer. In those conditions I'm sure that there
are people in very, very desperate need of food, medical care
and clothing. But the chances of them getting that while NATO
is conducting air strikes I would say is nil.
Q: Do you think there's any chance that Serbs
and Albanians are going to live together again in Kosovo? Or
is all of that gone by the boards?
A: I spoke to a very interesting, very liberal
minded Serb gentleman the other day on this very subject. He
ran a Norwegian funded conflict resolution project. He was
representing the Serb side and an ethnic Albanian woman representing
the other side. And the project brought together teenagers
from both ethnic groups. And the point was to try to show them
that they had more in common than not because of the music they
listened to, the clothes they wore, etc. This person said to
me in tremendous despair that he couldn't see this project ever
working again. He said he had had a long distance phone call
with his Norwegian sponsors and they had pleaded with him to
try to keep an open mind. To tell him that look, this conflict
will end someday and people like you are going to have to try
to piece it together. But he shook his head and said I just
can't see how.
Q: Are there Serbs in Pristina who are opposed
to Milosevich?
A: Yes. This is one of them. There are
many people in Yugoslavia who three weeks ago were openly opposed
to Milosevich. Those people when you speak to them now and
this is not a propaganda campaign, there's no gun at their head,
they explain very frankly that the first casualty of this conflict
was the democracy movement. That nobody whether he believed
in democracy or not could possibly stand up when his country
is being attacked with the force that it's being attacked 24
hours a day and stand up and say that they're against the commander
in chief.
Q: Paul, NATO doesn't seem to have any other
plan at the moment except to keep bombing. They maintain that
eventually if they drop enough bombs, send enough cruise missiles,
Milosevich will have to capitulate. There will be no fuel,
no supplies. Do you think that will happen?
A: I wouldn't predict such a thing. But
I can tell you what people tell me every day and the morale
is still high here in the streets. You would be surprised.
People here are prepared to take a lot. And in a campaign which
they know is doing its utmost not to strike civilian targets
and is restricted to fuel dumps and that sort of thing, in this
current stage I think they're quite willing to take it for a
long time. But if NATO does start to hit as they did yesterday
at 2:45 I think it was in the afternoon, a civilian car driving
along the main street of Pristina and these incidents start
to happen more often, perhaps that would have a negative effect
on morale. But I'm old enough to remember through my parents
what happened during another famous air campaign when the Germans
tried to destroy British morale by the blitz and it didn't work.
Q: Bombing London. Did you see that car
hit?
A: I was about five to 10 minutes behind
it. I can tell you it's not a pretty sight. There was a man
in the back seat with a hole the size of a fist outside the
back of his head.
Q: All right, Paul. I hope we'll be able
to talk to you again.
A: Thank you. I hope so.
Q: Thank you very much.
A: Thank you.
Q: Bye bye.
Q: Paul Watson spoke to us from Pristina.
He is a Canadian journalist who works for The Los Angeles Times.
[Music]
End of Recording
Thanks to Jared Israel for transcribing the interview.
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