Kosovo veteran recalls war experience

Members of the Saipan Rotary Club got a preview of what life was like in war-torn Kosovo last Tuesday when they listened to Joseph Race, chief of the investigation unit of the Office of the Attorney General.

Mr. Race was part of a 26-man team of police trainers sent to the Balkan state to set-up the genesis of a police academy in the area.

Kosovo, or Kosava as its people call it, was the site of ethnic cleansing a few years ago, which saw Serbs oppress the minority Albanians.

It was not uncommon to dig up graves two to four bodies deep and see three or four generations of Albanian families dead and rotting, Mr. Race said.

Aside from the horrific ordeal of witnessing first hand the oppression man can wreak against fellow man, the AGO investigation unit chief, together with his colleagues police training staff, also had to endure living conditions straight out of the Middle Ages.

“In our apartment there was no water and power, so all of us would rather work and go to the office rather than stay in the house where we only have lighted candles to entertain us,” Mr. Race said.

Mr. Race and his colleagues ended up working 13 hours a day, seven days a week in their entire stay in the former republic of Yugoslavia.

He also lamented despite that UN troops bringing a semblance of sanity and civility in the region, Kosovars still are suffering from the dislocation strife has brought to their nation.

Because of the absence of industry and a virtual collapse of government, people in Kosovo have turned to desperate measures, some of them criminal in nature, to make ends meet.

Mr. Race said the biggest casualty in the region has been the Kosovar youth, specifically young women. It was not unusual for girls in their early teens to resort to prostitution as an escape to their pitiful existence.

Some girls would work as prostitutes in as far away as Hungary and Poland, Mr. Race said.

He said the trafficking of children has also become a concern in the region. However, a more sinister kind of kidnapping is being practices in Kosovo, as children are known to have been killed and their body parts sold to Italian syndicates.

“There was a week were a total of seven children just disappeared and their mothers don’t want to go to police because they have feared them all their lives.”

According to Mr. Race the population of Kosovo have long distrusted policemen because since the time of Yugoslav leader, Marshall Tito, secret police have been known to be oppressors.

He hopes that with the institution of a democratic police force in Kosovo, the people’s trust in authority would return and Kosovars eventually pick up the pieces of their war-ravaged homeland.

Mr. Race was the featured guest speaker during the weekly luncheon meeting of the Saipan Rotary held at Giovanni’s in Hyatt Regency Saipan.