War Diaries Part I | Kosovo
Chapter 2: Kosovo's bloody war by numbers

KUKES, Albania -- IN STARTING a war you expect an element of surprise. This one is scheduled. NBC News correspondent Fred Francis and I have to fly all night from Washington to get there. In Bari, Italy, a Navy Sea Stallion is waiting to chopper us and other media types out to the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Philippine Sea.
Flying over the dark-green Adriatic, I think jet lag will be the easy part, the big adjustment here will be making the jump from peace to war. The morning before I leave, I am riding my bike to the office. The same night I am standing on the deck of a 9,000-ton warship, 50 miles off the coast of Yugoslavia as it lobbed $1-million cruise missiles into the night.

In the officer's wardroom, we are greeted like visiting dignitaries. They offer us cookies, coffee, juice-and slickly designed press kits with photos of the ship and a certificate printed with our names making us "honorary war dogs." Captain Robert Jenkins tells us the "event" is just a few hours away.

Topside, teenage sailors are dressed for battle in helmets and flak jackets, ready with the mounted 50-caliber machine guns. Oddly, they remind me of pictures I'd seen of my father during World War II in the South Pacific. I imagine them waiting nervously for the hum of Japanese Zeros.

When the pre-launch sirens begin to wail, I wedge my legs against the ship's railing. I'm not more than 100 feet away from the bow cells [launch tubes]. The sirens stop. My body recoils with the first thunderclap, but the ship remains motionless. The entire deck is bathed in white as a wobbly flame arches over the sea to its target. Sulfur hangs thick in the air. Another launch from the bow … then two from the rear. This continues in fits and starts until 12 Tomahawks cruise missiles are fired in the course of the night.

The war has begun, but you can barely tell. It appears bloodless, no more than an exercise in rocket science. Fred writes later in his script that the targets came with, "numbers, no names the computer language of war," and that "the combat seemed distant, detached. Strangely devoid of excitement or fear."

ATLANTIS AND DODGE CITY

Because of some rethinking by NBC and because the war has closed so many regional airports, we've taken the long way to Albania (via Bari, Rome, Frankfurt, Sofia, Skopje and finally Tirana). Now we are making a treacherous eight-hour drive through narrow mountain passes -- punctuated by 300-foot drops -- to Albania's northern frontier and the city of Kukes.

The old city is underwater. Built in a lush valley, the entire town was purposely flooded in the mid-1970s for the construction of a giant hydro-electric plant. The new city, only a mile away, looks like it's been through an earthquake. It's all but tree-less, the roads are Swiss cheese, burning garbage and rubble are everywhere. Most locals live in bleak communist-era concrete apartment buildings, yet TV satellite dishes sprout like mushrooms from every window or balcony, along with crisscrossed lines of drying laundry. All this is tempered by a surrounding snow-capped mountain range, whose crown is the breathtaking Mt.Gjallica.
If old Kukes is Atlantis, then new Kukes is Dodge City -- at least since the fighting began in Kosovo. With refugees constantly pouring in and out, its population of 25,000 has at times, swelled to 100,000 or more. Along with refugees have come scads of aid workers, lots of soldiers, dozens of government functionaries, some guerillas and you can't throw a stick in any direction without hitting a journalist. Scores of them, especially if you aim at the outdoor cafe at the Bar Amerika.

These days Kukes is a place of constant motion; French choppers beat the air over-head while Land Cruisers and Mercedes 240-D's roll down crowded alleyways like bowling balls. I watch children fire pebbles at each other with bent plastic spoons and money changers flip through fist-sized wads of lekes on every street corner. Pairs of men walk through town, arm-in-arm or holding hands, which Gjerjge, our translator, tells me is a sign of respect. And there, amidst heaps of rubbish and crumbling walls, is a circle of Kukesians in American sports jerseys and track pants, dancing to taped music in preface to an Albanian wedding.

ELVIS IN ALBANIA

I need another translator, but unlike Gjerjge, someone who also knows the town. I hire a local freckle-faced 16-year-old who's bright, speaks passable English and just happens to be named Elvis. Elvis is my comic relief in the everyday misery of Albania. Like any 16-year-old he knows everything already. "Surely, surely," he says to instructions to buy a ladder, but returns two hours later with an extension cord.

Out of every 10 words I speak, Elvis probably understands three. But what he lacks in comprehension he made up in eloquence. Walking through town, I tell him he's pretty smart for his age, to which he replies, as if quoting an Albanian proverb, "Age is the proof of life."

GOING STEADY

Overnight our operation in Kukes has grown from four to fourteen. We are doubling and tripling-up in our rooms. Behind the beaded curtain, I negotiate with Ramo the landlord for the roof so we can set up our own satellite uplink dish. Our "homey" little atmosphere at the Adriani has turned into a full-blown bureau with it some of the problems that that can bring.

An NBC engineer has taken one of Ramo's cots and foam mattresses and turned it into a muffler for the diesel generator that powers our uplink. I have to admit, it's innovative and in line with our philosophy of "get on the air now, worry about incidentals later."

Unfortunately Ramo sees it as a personal insult, a sign of disrespect. He threatens to throw us all out on the street; a disaster that could kill our operation in Kukes. I tell Elvis he needs to take me to the best jewelry shop in town. "Surely, surely," he says. I tell him to stop calling me Shirley. He laughs, confused.
During Casablanca that night, I present Ramo with my humblest apologies and a 14-karat gold ring. "I can't be sure," I say to my wife later, via satellite phone. "But I think his eyes welled up when I gave it to him."

THE KIFNER HACK RATIO

Early in our deployment, after making it up to The New York Times reporter John Kifner for inadvertently forcing him out of his room and onto the floor of our office for a night, we're all sitting around having a drink, wondering how long we would be here. When would the story be over in Kukes? Kifner takes a sip of scotch and in his inimitable fashion says, "The story's over when the hacks outnumber the refugees."

There are times, especially at the Bar Amerika, where "The Kifner Hack Ratio" seemed to be in play. But while many refugees pass through Kukes quickly, more keep coming. And with them, it seems the stories get worse: rape, murder, systematic brutality on a metropolitan scale. The story's far from over.

# # #