Guarding Fear

The inhabitants of Obilic - workers, clerks, shopkeepers and merchants, have been on the alert for months. They have taken weapons and organized night watch themselves, in the absence of regular police troops and territorial defense units. This has happened in every Serb-populated village. The weekly Vreme's team tried to organize a trip to Preoce and Sucic, two villages south of Pristina. It tuned out that Preoce, also known as "Kosovo's democracy oasis" (the only village where the 1996-97 winter protests in Belgrade had any effect), was fed up with publicity. The village of Sucic is evenly populated by both sides to the Kosovo conflict. The Serbs there have organized secret night watch, which is why we gave up on the idea of visiting them. We were told that taking photographs and mentioning names was out of the question as soon as we said we were going to Obilic. "When they kidnap Serbs, the UCK knows who they are looking for. That's why the people believe that ethnic Albanians have lists with their names on them. If Serb police officers are targets, why shouldn't night guards be",  our Obilic connection said.

That evening, we drove through Obilic to a nearby village. As we approached it, a man stopped us and said we couldn't go on without the commander's permission, adding he wasn't available until the morning. "No one is allowed to approach the positions we have taken", he said. So we spoke to him instead. He told us the village was armed and organized and that the inhabitants would fight fiercely if they were attacked. He added that Slobodan Milosevic was a great statesman, one of a kind. Only one armed villager stopped us on our way back, but another ten crept out of the nearby ditches when they saw who we were. They weren't willing to talk either, so they told us to go to the village headquarters. A passenger train came along as we waited at the checkpoint. It was completely empty.

We returned to Obilic shortly before midnight and found a group of twenty people at the central square. Some of them wore uniforms, but all carried semi-automatic rifles. All pubs and restaurants were closed. "Everything closes at 11 p.m. and people go home", a guard told us later. "THEIR curfew begins at six o'clock in the afternoon. The Serbs go home around midnight", he said. It was quite obvious that strangers weren't too popular in Kosovo these days, but reporters were more unpopular than others. The Kosovo Serbs resent the media. The first thing they want to know is who you work for, as all of them have one or two "favorite" newspapers. After the police invited the press to see the Belacevac coal mine following an attack by ethnic Albanians, all reporters had to return to Pristina because they came under a hail of stones in Obilic. They managed to get through the next day.

We asked them what they thought of the rest of Serbia's attitude towards  their problem. A young man carrying a rifle asked whether it was true people in Serbia didn't give a toss about Kosovo and refused to fight for it. Many people reiterated the question and confirmed that's the impression they had. The most widespread qualification was that the rest of Serbia "doesn't give a fuck about Kosovo". An old man said: "As you go north from Kraljevo, you get the impression that we are not the same nation. They all think it's not worth fighting for until the fighting comes to their doorstep. That was the general attitude here until fighting started in the nearby villages".

Even in Pristina life appears to be normal as we speak, as if there is nothing going on in Obilic. "The thing people are really afraid of hearing is  betrayal. If the man in power signed something that could seal our fate,  we shall seal his", several Obilic inhabitants said. "We will fight until the end. If we go down, Belgrade is coming down with us", one of them warned. The villagers are angry at their own local authorities too. They showed us an unfinished kiosk next to a gas station, erected by an ethnic Albanian. Across the road lies a small, old house. They say two Serb brothers live in it because they haven't been able to obtain permission from the authorities to build another one, so that they could live separately and get married. Most of them leave to their checkpoints as darkness falls, while two friendly guards agreed to take us to other locations where night guards take their positions.

All checkpoints are different. Some people have erected barricades, while  others are either lying in ditches and backyards or just standing in the  middle of the road. Since night watch is organized on a voluntary basis,  we are not sure if there will be anybody at the next checkpoint. The two guards brought us two old armchairs from a backyard so that we could rest. The guards are different too. Their age ranges from 17 to 60. They all discuss who took watch and how many times. They say there are people who come out twenty nights in a row although they have to go to work in the morning, while some have never taken watch. They asked us if people in Serbia knew what armed Kosovo Serbs were capable of. "The Yugoslav Army gave us weapons and told us we could use them in self-defense. We are receiving no assistance from the police or the army. They only come by sometimes. They told us we weren't allowed to stop vehicles and question people, but we find that strange as there aren't enough police units to secure the roads", one of the guards said.

There have been no incidents in Obilic so far. The main object of night watch is to monitor the town's ethnic Albanians, who account for 30 percent of its population. In every street they showed us which house was first sold to an ethnic Albanian. They remember ethnic Albanian shopkeepers and know exactly where each one of them came from. They showed us houses with tall brick-made fences, each having several tiny holes. "They did that to put guns there, not a single Serb-owned house was built like that", says our guide. The villagers are afraid that Obilic will be attacked from the east, namely an ethnic-Albanian populated village called Mazgit. Shooting can now be heard only from the southwest, where the villages of Janjine Vode, Leskovcic and Dobri Dub are located.  Rumors have it in Obilic that ethnic Albanian rebels and the Serbian authorities have struck a deal to make the Sitnica river a demarcation line separating the two warring sides. The river flows right through Obilic. Most people think that the state should take decisive action and resolve the situation in 24 hours, but they stop for a minute when we mention NATO. They don't know what "those Germans and Americans want", but most fear that the 1974 constitution giving ethnic Albanians complete autonomy will come back into effect.  "That's no good at all. While the police force was ethnic Albanian, they always humiliated and harassed us. We couldn't obtain identification documents, their bullies used to wait for our children in schools and beat them, and nine out of ten jobs were reserved them", our guide said.

"When they decide to do something, they do it. They never talk much, unlike Serbs who like to go bragging around so that everybody can hear them", adds one of the guards.
It was a calm night in Obilic. We met only a few young people who went to have a good time in spite of the circumstances. The most exciting moment was when a guard fired a few rounds into the air. Most of the other got angry with him. They say there are several irresponsible young men with guns and an elderly gentleman who fired a whole clip into the air in broad daylight thinking it was fun. "They just won't understand that they mustn't do that", our guide said. This frequent occurrence is probably one of the greatest dangers of night watch. But, on the other hand, who can say that this village and its population don't need protection. The UCK doesn't exactly treat Kosovo's Serbs as citizens with equal rights in their self-declared "Republic of Kosovo". It kidnaps them, kills them and torches their homes. The fighting is now only a few kilometers away from Obilic. The Yugoslav state first handed out weapons to these people and then left hem on their own. Police and the army have too much on their hands anyway. The people are threatened by ethnic Albanians on the ground, NATO in the air and a few loose cannons in their own ranks. All night guards in Obilic work during the day and spend cold nights with guns in their hands guarding their loved ones. Many of them have moved their families out of the troubled province. Their lives are virtually falling apart. Others have nowhere to go. It's freezing here at the break of dawn, so people taking night watch go home at five o'clock in the morning. They all want to get as much sleep as they can, so that they are ready when the living nightmare continues the next day.

Confusion in Belacevac

Most people in Obilic work in the Kosovo "A" and "B" power plants or the Belacevac and Dobro Selo pits supplying the plants with coal. Ethnic Albanian sources in Pristina say that Serbian police actually failed to drive the KLA out of the Belacevac coal mine. Workers of the Serbian power industry in Obilic, who patrol the streets at night, say the police controls the pits but couldn't confirm that when and if it will start operating a gain. None of the workers want to go into the pits because they would be trapped and completely exposed in case of a KLA attack. It is very likely that no one would get out alive and their fear is galvanized by continuous shooting in the nearby villages. Their story is probably valid as the Power Industry Syndicate is looking for 250 volunteers to put the Belacevac pit back into operation. The power plants are now receiving supplies only from Dobro Selo, a much smaller pit near Belacevac. Most plants are spending their last reserves, meaning that there could be a complete black out in Kosovo very soon.