Albanian elder, 86, flees Serbs a second time

BAJRAM CURRI, Albania (Reuters) - Born in 1912, the year Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire, Xhaferr Mazrekaj is a refugee from Serbian guns for the second time in his life.

One of about 10,000 refugees to flee the fighting inside Kosovo over the past two weeks, Mazrekaj rode a mule for two days over the mountains to make good his escape.

Feeble from age and exhausted from the trip, he seems indifferent to the cancer consuming his body.

Instead, the 86-year-old refugee nurses a fierce passion for the undeclared war inside Kosovo that forced him to flee his home village of Voksa and for past injustices at the hands of the Serbs.

"I had to flee. The Serbs leveled my house with cannon. This is the second time for me. They drove 70,000 ethnic Albanians out in 1954," Mazrekaj recounted from his bed in the decrepit hospital that serves the northern Albanian town of Bajram Curri. "Back in 1954 they caught by brother and he spent seven years in prison. I managed to hide out in northern Albania for a time. The Serbs have persecuted my family for a long time."

Ninety percent of the 1.8 million people in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo are ethnic Albanians, most of whom want independence.

Yugoslavia, comprised of Serbia and Montenegro, has compiled the worst human rights record in Europe this decade with its harsh rule of Kosovo.

In response, an insurgent ethnic Albanian force known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) stepped up its attacks against Serbian security forces this year.

Serb police and military units have reacted by pounding Kosovar villages like Voksa along the Albanian border, over which the KLA carries arms and ammunition.

Mazrekaj's 61-year-old nephew Rexhep, who made the trip from Voksa to Bajram Curri with his ailing uncle, says there is no longer any prospect for a negotiated settlement with the Serbs and that war is now the only answer. "There's no more dialogue with Belgrade because they can't be trusted," he said.

"They invite you to talks and then they hit you with their heavy guns. There's only one way to settle this now and that's by hitting them back."

When Albania declared its independence in November 1912, ethnic Albanians in the Balkans envisioned creating a unified nation-state that included Kosovo.

But in 1913, when major European powers formally recognized Albania as a new state, they drew its borders in such a way that more than half of all ethnic Albanians were left outside.

Kosovo was given to Serbia, which after World War I became a part of Yugoslavia.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority were still tied to their kin over the mountains by language and culture, including a clan structure that spanned the border, and by religion. Albanians are mostly Muslims and Roman Catholics while Serbs are Orthodox. Like many Kosovars, Mazrekaj fought in an Albanian partisan unit during World War II, not a Yugoslav one, with the goal of at last unifying Kosovo with Albania.

When fighting against the Germans finally subsided, the great Yugoslav partisan leader Tito had sent units into Kosovo to subdue the ethnic Albanians there and secured the region as a part of post-war Yugoslavia.

Asked if he viewed himself as an Albanian or a Yugoslav after swimming against the tide of history for the better part of a century, Mazrekaj rose from his bed, threw his hands up in indignation.

"Shqiptar! Shqiptar! (Albanian! Albanian!)," he croaked. "That's why we've been fighting all these centuries, to be recognized as Albanians. Otherwise, our grandfathers would have become Serbs long ago."