By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 11, 1999; Page A01
VITINA, Yugoslavia—The dogs of 82nd Airborne Alpha Company
2-505 meet the night with rifles in hand and boots dangling over the skids
of a speeding UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Peacekeepers patrolling
southeastern Kosovo with the latest toys of war, the GIs have night vision
goggles on their helmets, a pair of AH-64 Apache gunships on their flank
and great big grins on their faces.
"Hanging out of a helicopter in the night, piling out and chasing bad guys
is
pretty much why you join the Army," said Capt. Matt McFarlane.
But come morning, McFarlane's troops go from being all they can be to
being something they never imagined.
Pfc. Steven Hemmer marches into Vitina's town hall, takes off his armored
vest, hangs his helmet on a hatrack and takes a seat behind a desk. He
will
spend the next six hours listening to ethnic Albanians complaining about
Serbs, listening to Serbs complaining about ethnic Albanians, filling out
reports and wondering how day can be so different from night.
"I mean, we're infantrymen," Hemmer said. "I'm 11 Charlie. My job's to
drop mortar rounds down a tube and defend our country. This is . . . "
He
did not know quite what "this" was. "I guess when I came here I thought
I'd be doing something more infantry-like."
Not in today's Army, and not in the current assignment in Kosovo, the
latest mission in which U.S. armed forces confront the daunting task of
keeping the peace. The world's policeman has to do paperwork, too. And
if that means double duty as dogs of war and hounded bureaucrats, it
comes with the territory the U.S. military has carved out for itself in
the
wake of the Cold War: walking the beat, projecting power and, when
asked, restoring order in every sense of the word.
"We're involved in peace enforcement," said Brig. Gen. John Craddock,
commander of the 7,000-member U.S. peacekeeping force here in eastern
Kosovo. "If you look where we're engaged around the world, that's what
we're doing."
"Maybe," he added, "if you do this right, you shape the future to avoid
the
big war."
Almost a month after entering Kosovo, NATO forces remain the only
legitimate authority in the province, and Americans have been among the
most active of the occupying armies to acknowledge that the situation will
be on the long side of temporary.
Virtually abandoned by the Serbs who administered the overwhelmingly
ethnic Albanian population like a colony, Kosovo remains perhaps six
months away from the still-unformed United Nations administration
assigned to run things under the peace agreement.
"I didn't have barracks filled with administrators, lawyers and engineers
waiting in Macedonia to be deployed in Kosovo," said Sergio Vieira de
Mello, interim head of the U.N. mission. "It's going to be an incremental
process. But I agree we are very, very thin on the ground right now."
In the meantime, McFarlane's 82nd Airborne troops call him "the mayor of
Vitina." It sounds like a nickname in the anticipatory ease of early evening
at the Serbian special police office that Alpha Company has made its
headquarters. On the steps outside, a puppy gnaws an epaulet on a blue
camouflage Serbian special police uniform. Officers savor cigars;
infantrymen, the prospect of the patrol ahead. Albanian phrases are
practiced: "Shut up." "Shut up now." Then it's onto the back of a Humvee
and into the summer night.
It might not be obvious from the overland patrol that follows, but the
Americans are waging peace much as they waged the 78-day air war
against Yugoslavia: with the highest possible technology.
Patrolling the sky above the U.S. sector in eastern Kosovo on any clear
night is Hunter, a propeller-driven drone plane. It carries a video camera
that once hunted Yugoslav armor and now feeds live images of a
countryside still dotted with columns of smoke. Although shootings and
other violence have abated in the past two weeks, arson remains at least
an hourly occurrence.
When Hunter spots smoke, a commander in an Apache sends in the
troops. The Apache gunships -- deployed to Albania with such fanfare
during the war, but never allowed into combat -- provide cover plus two
more cameras. On one occasion, an Apache gun-sight camera caught an
ethnic Albanian man lugging a 50-pound gas tank from a Serbian home.
In Vitina, however, an 8:30 p.m. curfew has proved so effective that the
GIs have not been shot at in more than 10 days. Alpha Company stops
this night at a pair of homes. The elderly Serbs in both have been visited
by
young ethnic Albanians threatening to kill them if they did not leave within
hours. Serbs, who during the war cast the Americans as villains, in
peacetime view them as saviors. In Urosevac 11 miles west of Vitina,
elderly Serbs are so frightened they're camping on the sidewalk beside
a
U.S. command post.
But here an ethnic Albanian neighbor had been staying over to protect the
couple. McFarlane shook his hand. If he had to say "two wrongs don't
make a right" one more time, he said, he might have screamed.
Back in the Humvee, Spec. Jason Sivells has a question. "Why can't all
these people stop spending all their money on guns so they can off each
other, just build a Disneyland and be happy?"
At 10:30 the next morning, McFarlane is seated at the head of a table in
the town hall, chewing gum as if it is his enemy. On one side of the table
sit
officials of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian rebel group
that fought for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant
republic. Opposite them is Vesko Piric, whom the troops call "the man
formerly known as the mayor," and other Serbs who until recently ran the
town.
McFarlane has made his daily report on fires and robberies. He has
thanked both sides for the baked goods sent to the Fourth of July
celebration that only ethnic Albanian residents attended. Now it's time
to
listen, but not forever. Both sides will be timed.
"The Albanians went first last time. The Serbs go first this time," McFarlane
said, and glanced at a sergeant. "You ready with that stopwatch? Ready.
Go."
The former mayor read a list of Serbian houses burned, wells poisoned,
people living in fear. "They will for sure stay there if you provide security,"
Piric said. "Otherwise they will flee."
"We can't be everywhere at once," McFarlane replied. He looked at the
sergeant. "How much time?"
"Ten minutes."
A slender man in a leather vest spoke for the ethnic Albanians. Agron
Hoxha, 24, is the KLA brigade commander. He has an office down the
hall decorated with NATO and Albanian flags.
"We have problems," he told McFarlane, although he was looking across
the table at Piric. "Tell him the roads are not Serb property. They are
public property."
It's all a terrific headache. Downstairs, people lined up to rail at the
receptionist, Spec. Brandt Gehrke, 20, a sweet-faced Washington state
native wearing wraparound sunglasses and body armor and carrying a
machine gun.
"There's not a nail that is left of my house!" shouts Arif Audi, an ethnic
Albanian who recently returned from Macedonia. Audi, who was a post
office employee until Serbs took all the good jobs -- including every one
here in the town hall -- wants permission to move into the apartment his
former Serbian boss fled. Gehrke sighs.
"In the worst case I can just come and bring my children here to live with
you," Audi snapped, and stormed into the hallway, where he was asked:
What did you expect?
"Nothing," the ethnic Albanian replied. But when Serbs occupied these
offices, he said, he dared not even enter the building.
"I just wanted to come in and let them know," Audi said. "I feel a kind
of
relief coming and telling them what my issue is. Because they are after
all
the people who brought us liberty."
