Bittersweet homecoming for forgotten victims of war

KOSOVO:Forced into exile after the Balkans war, Roma people are returning to what's left of their Kosovo homes

BEFORE 1999, Mitrovica was home to one of the biggest Roma districts in the Balkans, a bustling community of 8,000 people who moved easily among the Albanians and Serbs with whom they shared this industrial town on the Ibar river in northern Kosovo.

Most Mitrovica Roma spoke Albanian and Serbian and could find work anywhere in town, and some families grew wealthy enough on local earnings and money sent from relatives abroad to build sprawling houses with names like Villa Palermo and Villa Dynasty.

"Life was lovely here before 1999, everyone had a job and lots of our people were doing well in western Europe," recalled Qazim Gushani (38), whose family has lived here for generations. "But then the war came - we didn't start it, but we lost everything."

It is hard to imagine the Roma quarter, known as the Mahala, that Mr Gushani remembers so fondly.

Where it used to stretch along more than a kilometre of the riverbank, there now lies a moonscape of rubble, its desolation only enhanced by a few new houses that rise incongruously from the ruins of what used to be 750 family homes.

The Mahala was razed to the ground in June 1999 by Albanian mobs who accused some Roma of collaborating with Serb forces, whose reign of terror against Kosovo's Albanian majority had just been brought to an end by a Nato bombing campaign.

Fearing reprisals as Albanians displaced by the Serb onslaught returned to their homes, the Roma fled the Mahala before it was looted and destroyed in a frenzy of violence which, many Roma say, took place under the noses of watching Nato troops.

Their decision to abandon the Mahala, which was home for over a century to Mitrovica's Roma, undoubtedly saved lives. But for many of its residents, it also felt like the death of a community that had long eked out a living by bridging the gap between Serb and Albanian, but which now fell into the chasm that had opened up between them.

Albanian revenge attacks prompted about 200,000 Serbs and 120,000 Roma to flee Kosovo when it came under UN and Nato supervision in 1999.

Most Serbs moved elsewhere in Serbia, and the interests of the 100,000 or so that remained in Kosovo were, to some extent, defended by Belgrade and by western powers that pledged to maintain the region's multi-ethnic make-up.

The Roma, without a government to make their case, seemed to be considered little more than a nuisance by Kosovo's Albanian leaders, local Serb politicians, and the international forces guiding the region towards independence.

Most Kosovo Roma gathered a few belongings and headed for Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Macedonia, where many ended up in squalid shanties with no prospect of work beyond collecting rubbish for recycling; thousands also made for western Europe, where many were granted temporary protection but not refugee status.

The 30,000 or so Roma that remained in Kosovo - mostly in or near Nato-patrolled Serb areas where they felt safe from Albanian reprisals - fared no better. Thousands ended up in decrepit camps dotted around Kosovo, some of which were severely contaminated by heavy metals from a mining complex.

Dozens of Roma died from lead poisoning and scores of children were born with severe health problems.

The issue drew some attention to the plight of Kosovo's Roma, and gave impetus to plans to move them from their camps - and to rebuild Mitrovica's devastated Mahala.

The houses now rising from the rubble, and a cluster of bright new pink and white apartment blocks, are signs of life returning to the district.

Michelle Cicic, a Galway-born project manager with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), has helped co-ordinate the homecoming of about 550 Roma to the Mahala.

"We brought Roma back to visit the Mahala, and many couldn't even make out where their houses used to be, so complete was the destruction," said Ms Cicic. "We saw grown men in tears as they tried to work out where they used to live."

The returnees have mixed feelings about being home: they say they feel secure, but complain of a desperate shortage of work in newly independent Kosovo.

"Most Albanians have nothing to do, never mind us," said Hussein Mustafa (48). "We are at the back of the queue for jobs." Ms Cicic says other Roma families are interested in returning to the Mahala, but DRC may not be able to help them beyond next month, when funds for the project are expected to run out.

"If we can get jobs, then people and life will return to the Mahala," said Mr Mustafa. "But if there's no work, no one else will come back here."