Sir, - Last week I returned from Albania, having spent two-and-a-half years living there as a development worker. For the past year, all of us there have lived with the threat of an imminent war in Kosovo.
I worked in a counselling centre for women and girls. Three months ago we started plans to work with Kosovar women refugees who were living in Albania at that time. My Albanian colleagues and I would frequently talk about Kosovo. When would it blow up? How would it happen? Would our husbands be conscripted? Would Albania be drawn in? When was NATO going to strike? Why was the West allowing Milosovic away with this?
We watched the bulletins with increasing frustration at the West's attempts at diplomacy. And every week our sisters in Kosovo sent us emails about the horror, the persecution and the fear endured by them. The months went by, the tension became worse, and we all know what happened next.
My contract finished last week and so I came home. I can barely manage to contain my anger at those in Ireland who condemn the air strikes. People who had probably never heard of Kosovo four weeks ago are spouting the most outrageous cant about negotiations, sanctions and other such nonsense. The people of Kosovo have been trying to negotiate with Milosovic and his thugs for years. Judge Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, has said: "No decent political leader in the West could possibly propose negotiations with Milosovic after all that has happened. "This, of course, goes unheeded by the smug, Irish "Look-at-us-we're-neutral-aren't-we-great" lobby.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is: NATO aren't dismembering children in front of their parents, mutilating Kosovar women and torturing the men to death. The Serbs are. Any refugees I spoke to support the air strikes. The Women's NGOs in Tirana support the air strikes. My elderly mother- and father-in-law in Tirana support the air strikes. But they of course, are only "Third Worlders" who don't know what's good for them. Never mind; I suppose the blessed Irish intellectuals will put them right about it.
Ireland is apparently accepting 1,000 Kosovar refugees. I fear for their mental health if they are to be faced with such ignorant discourse about their situation. - Yours, etc.,
Janet Colgan Shaqiri, Claremont Court, Glasnevin, Dublin 11.