All human misery is here. Ten thousand men, women and children. Some have not eaten bread in three days, none has washed for over two weeks, all want to go home to Kosovo.
All crave many things. Family, home, country, razor blades, cigarettes. They have been stripped of everything, even human dignity.
Yesterday, they queued for blankets. They had already queued for three hours and there had been no movement, but they queued anyway. They are tired of sleeping on bare ground. They are just tired.
The queue stretched until it disappeared behind one of the many hills which are characteristic of Stankovic. At the head of the queue, a contingent of German soldiers lolled under the hot sun, some stretched out on their lorry's canvas covering.
A crowd congregated on a mound near the camp entrance, filling plastic containers with water. It flows through plastic pipes from tanks at the top of a hill. A boy held a tap while an old man crouched and cupped his hands beneath the flow. He splashed it over his face. To be old here must be very hell. To be young is hardly heaven.
Nearby, a line of women wash clothes in large, plastic basins full of soapy water. Some wear scarves. Their hands are big and red as they rub cakes of soap on the garments and knead them into the basin. A half-dug trench in front of them is already full of stagnant grey water. An old woman weeps alone.
Lines of clothes are hung between the tents. Some of the tents are no more than USAID plastic covers spread over brambles. A little boy emerges from one wrapped in what looks like 40 coats. He may be sick. It may be because it is cold at night.
Another queue nearby waits for French soldiers to distribute bottles of water. "What do you do all day?" is the question put to Ahmet Mema in the blanket queue. "We queue, waiting for something," was the reply.
Ahmet is with a group from Vuciturn, in Kosovo. It had a population of 35,000, 80 per cent Albanian. The whole place had been destroyed by the Serbs, he said. Police and civilians wearing masks ransacked the houses, took all their money, ripped up all their identity documents, took their cars, then burned their houses. "A lot were killed," said Ahmet.
Then they were put on trains - "like cattle" - and waited one week at Blace before being allowed into Macedonia. They are at Stankovic three days. There is not a lot of food at the camp and very few toilets. They have not washed since leaving Vuciturn.
A friend of Ahmet's said he was afraid disease would break out.
Some refugees do not know where their families are. One man said he had 40 relatives in Vuciturn but did not know where any of them were.
Ahmet also spoke of the Serb neighbour he had lived beside for 30 years who had helped ransack his house.
The men want NATO to continue the bombing of Serbia. All of them want to go home "with the help of NATO, the EU and the UN". All of them would like cigarettes and blades.
Ahrim Abazi was near the head of the queue. Ahrim and the people with him were from Pristina. The by-now familiar tale unfolded. Serb police, Serb civilians wearing masks, even the Serb mafia, Ahrim insisted, stole everything from them, ransacked their homes, took their possessions, their cars, tore up their documents.
"They would come in your house and say: `Money or be killed'," he said in faltering English. Then they were banished to bus and train. To hell or to Macedonia.
All of them had come through Blace - 35,000 Kosovans who had been there for six days. It is in a valley in the mountainous border between Macedonia and Kosovo. A road, rail line and river run through it. People were using the river for drinking while others used it to urinate in. It is like a rubbish tip.
Yesterday, the area was being cleared by lorries and JCBs. Fires burned old clothes, plastic covering and all the refuse left by the Kosovan refugees on Monday night/Tuesday morning. The air stank of the debris of human desperation.
Yards across the border, the red tiled roofs of the town of Blace climbed up the mountain, the silver dome of its mosque gleaming in the sun. Macedonian police lorries arrived at the border crossing carrying rolls of black barbed wire.
When he was leaving Pristina, Ahrim Abazi saw "lots of people dead in cars burning". And everything the Serbs took from them they distributed among their own people. It had been very difficult with the police in Pristina this past two years for Albanians.
"But the last two weeks were hell," he said. He fled Pristina, just before the others were put on trains and buses. He took the train to the Macedonian border. It was a case of "to be or not to be".
It was a "big risk, the luck, take chances to get out". He was a tourist guide in Pristina but now he worries only about his family. He could not believe people (the Serbs) could be so cruel and described Slobodan Milosevic as "the biggest animal about killing".
