Agence France Presse, March 21
Agence France Presse; Section: International News; Headline: Smouldering Serb village in Kosovo gutted in sight of NATO peacekeepers; Byline: Jean-Eudes Barbier; Dateline: Svinjare, Serbia, March 21
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Houses in the Serb village of Svinjare in northern Kosovo continue to smoulder days after an attack by ethnic Albanians in plain view of a NATO peacekeeping base.
Smoke rises from the ruins of the village -- situated between two ethnic Albanian towns three kilometres (two miles) south of Kosovska Mitrovica -- where not one of the 130 houses was spared by Albanian extremists in the attack on Thursday afternoon.
It was destroyed in a matter of hours. The Albanian flag flaps above some of the soot-blackened houses in a sign of defiance by the arsonists.
On some walls graffitti had been scrawled: the word "Drenica", the central Kosovan region where the Albanian separatist movement was born.
The carcass of a pig lies in the middle of the street, another in a grass ditch.
Ethnic Albanian men and children continued to pick through the carnage and loot what they can. The animals have already gone.
One boy wheeled off a wheelbarrow loaded up with plastic bags, another a satellite dish.
Less than one kilometre away is a base housing a French contingent of the NATO peacekeepers that have been deployed in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-99 war.
Yesterday hailed by the 600 or so Serb villagers for their kindness and geniality, the soldiers are today the target of scathing criticism.
"It's a shame for France!" screams one Svinjare resident, Ilinka Simic, who was out shopping in Kosovska Mitrovica when the village came under attack.
Simic, seething with anger, accused the French soldiers of "doing nothing to stop the Albanians from setting fire to everything... It's unbelievable."
As the violence escalated, Simic said the French troops evacuated his son, daughter and her two small children "at the last minute" to their camp.
"They saw everything from the hill, the destruction of all our worldly goods," Simic said.
"We were friends," he said of the French troops. "We knew they were there to protect us. Unfortunately, when the biggest problem arose, they turned their backs on us."
"We survived for five years but were chased out in 30 minutes," lamented Simic, one of 80,000 Serbs living in UN-adminsitered Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian population of 1.8 million.
"All I ask is that they give me a tent which I can pitch in my garden, that they allow me to rebuild my house, that they protect me. Svinjare is where I belong and I'm not going anywhere," he said.
Father German, an Orthodox priest whose monastery in southern Kosovo was burnt to the ground, thinks only of returning there as quickly as possible.
"I'm going back to Prizren at the first chance," Father German told AFP, adding that the church had taught him "not to hate its enemies."
"I would maybe have been able to live one day in an independent and truly democratic Kosovo, but after all that's happened over these last few days, that's no longer possible," he said in reference to the inter-ethnic clashes that have left at least 28 dead and more than 600 injured.
"From now, I will fight all my life against this province's independence from Serbia," he said.
The seven monks in the monastery were evacuated by NATO peacekeepers just before the attack late Wednesday, said the priest, currently in Kosovska Mitrovica, which has a 15,000-strong Serb population.
Father German said that 22 Orthodox churches and monasteries have been reduced to rubble since Wednesday and 19 Serb villages have been forcibly evicted.
The priest said NATO peacekeepers have never been in a position to stop the actions of extremist Albanians, whom he accused of having either partially or totally destroyed some 130 religious buildings since 1999, not including the latest wave of violence.
"Five years on, nothing is normalised. Quite the contrary," he said. "If neither NATO nor the UN can defend us, they must allow forces from Belgrade to return."
