U.S. Army Firepower Escorts Kosovo Serbs Into Exile

By Mark Heinrich

RADIVOJCE, Serbia (Reuters) - U.S. army helicopters roared overhead and troops lined a Kosovo roadside Sunday to keep ethnic Albanians from attacking a wretched convoy of Serb villagers rolling into exile.

As the last few hundred Serbs from the village of Zitinje set off in cars and tractors loaded down with household goods, U.S. peacekeepers confined ethnic Albanian neighbors to their homes to ensure the convoy departed safely.

Turning onto the main road east toward the provincial border with the rest of Serbia, the Serbs picked up an escort that deterred the gauntlet of Albanians awaiting them from doing anything more than hurl abuse and the odd stone.

Kosovo's southeast, the quietest sector during a 16-month conflict between ethnic Albanian separatists and Yugoslav Serb security forces, has been busier than the U.S. troops assigned to control it by NATO might have bargained for.

With a number of ethnically mixed villages and scattered Serb enclaves, the southeast has had no shortage of abductions, murders and house burnings.

Sunday, the U.S. army went to elaborate lengths to preempt any incident that might furnish more grist to Belgrade's propaganda mill which has accused NATO of abjectly failing to protect Kosovo's dwindling Serb community.

Two Blackhawk helicopters clattered back and forth and a U.S. platoon with tanks, tracked armored combat vehicles and Humvee all-terrain jeeps mounted with heavy machineguns deployed along the road taken by the Serbs.

Helmeted soldiers with automatic weapons kept back scruffy villagers who had collected on the roadside through the village of Radivojce from daybreak after receiving word of the convoy.

``We're waiting here to see if the things they looted from our homes after we were kicked out by paramilitary thugs during the war will pass by our very eyes,'' said Daut Devaja, 40, a farmer, an hour before the convoy appeared.

``If I see my tractor or my car, or the computer they threw down my well, going by, I will stop the convoy and grab them,'' he told Reuters with bravado.

Most in the crowd knew that the Americans were there to make sure nothing of the sort transpired. But that did not put the locals off the Americans.

They chanted ``USA, USA'' and ``NATO, NATO'' throughout the morning as bucolic Radivojce swiftly transformed into an American armed camp.

Americans are idolized by Kosovo Albanians for having led NATO bombings that hammered the Yugoslav military machine into halting a bloody rampage against the 90 percent majority population and evacuating the province six weeks ago.

When the convoy of around 150 cars and tractors interspersed with Humvees rolled in, the mood darkened.

``UCK, UCK!'' bellowed the crowd, using the Albanian acronym of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. Others shouted, ``Yeah, go to Serbia, now. It's where you belong!''

They reserved their fiercest curses for a driver they identified as the former district chief of the Serbian security police.

U.S. soldiers caught several boys throwing stones that glanced harmlessly off the doors of a few cars and hustled them well away from the dusty, potholed road.

Crammed into sagging, clapped-out cars or perched on mounds of worldly possessions on tractor carts, the Serbs -- many of them grizzled, elderly farmers with black-clad wives -- bore the invective impassively for the most part.

They usually stared straight ahead or behind. A few younger ones reciprocated when flashed the obscene middle finger by ethnic Albanian teenagers, but remained silent.

``I didn't expect we'd have to act like riot police here. But we have to, since although the Albanians are really nice people, when Serbs show up, they go crazy. They forget that Serbs are people too. It's really sad here,'' said U.S. Second Lieutenant Robert Kimmel, from Gail, Texas, as he stood guard.

The ethnic Albanian villagers said that while the passing Serbs may not necessarily have been involved in wartime killing and expulsions, they believed many had pillaged their homes after they were driven out by Serb paramilitaries.

But no one could be sure once the convoy had passed. ``They covered their goods with plastic sheeting, and we couldn't see what was underneath,'' complained 21-year-old Faik Lutfiu.

``We're a bit bitter that the Americans allow these Serbs to leave with their whole households whereas we had to flee with only the clothes on our backs,'' said Afrim Jakupi, 34.

``But the Serbs were able to do a deal with the Americans to get out unscathed. That's the biggest surprise of peacetime.''

More than half Kosovo's Serbs have fled for fear of reprisal since NATO-led peacekeepers took over the province in June.