Soldiers commended for Kosovo action

Roisín Ingle was in Kosovo last week when 18 Irish troops received recognition for their bravery

Last month in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, a Serb man was beaten with a hammer and stabbed repeatedly in the back and neck. Trying to escape the baying ethnic Albanian mob outside his home he crawled up the five flights of stairs to his apartment.

Members of the military rescue mission found him only by following the bloody palm prints he left behind on the walls of the stairwell. He was carried down the stairs to safety on the back of an Irish soldier who had risked his own life to rescue the seriously injured man. He was taken to hospital and treated for injuries that included a fractured skull. He survived.

Stories like this haven't been heard in Kosovo since the war ended almost five years ago. Last week 18 Irish soldiers who were on duty in Kosovo during these bloody events received international recognition for their bravery.

The letters of commendation came from Brig Gen Anders Brannstrom, the Swedish head of the Multinational Brigade Centre in Kosovo. His citation praised the soldiers' "leadership and brave actions in the face of riotous crowds which contributed to the saving of lives and property of countless civilians".

Around 350 men women and children were rescued by members of the Multinational Brigade Centre and the Finnish/Irish battlegroup when, during March 17th to March 18th, ethnic Albanian mobs made up of extremists and criminals went on the rampage in Kosovo in some of the worst violence seen there since the war ended in 1999.

"Without the initiative of Irish officers I would suggest that the majority of the people saved would have been killed," Brig Gen Anders said at the centre's headquarters yesterday, making particular mention of the bravery shown by the officers and soldiers who rescued people from the YU apartment complex in Pristina.

"It's a story that the taxpayers of Ireland should be told. That was not their job, their job was to be here in camp but they took this initiative and I am very happy that they did."

It wasn't his job, but the way Chief of Civil Military Operations, Lieut Col Gerald Aherne, from the 4th Western Brigade in Athlone tells it, he and the rest of his Irish colleagues made the only decision they could.

It was late on the evening of St Patrick's Day when the first calls for help came from people trapped in apartments and homes, surrounded by ethnic Albanians armed with sticks, clubs and Molotov cocktails.

"The foot soldiers were not able to respond to the calls because at that stage every last man was deployed elsewhere and the international and local police were unwilling or unable to help these people," he recalls. "We had a choice to make. Either we responded to their calls or we let them die."

The scene they encountered at the YU apartment complex was chaotic. Residents had barricaded themselves inside and "bloodthirsty mobs" were terrorising the area.

All night the soldiers dodged sniper fire, rescuing around 120 residents and ferrying them back to the camps in armoured personnel carriers. The next morning they were called to Obilic, a Serb town where they rescued a further 200 people.

Later that afternoon they went to another Serb village where a church had been burnt out to rescue more victims of ethnic cleansing including the local priest and a woman who had been tortured, her arms and legs stretched by her captors. She was taken north to the specialist hospital in Metrovica by Irish soldiers. She did not survive.

After four unstable but relatively trouble-free years in the UN administered province, the recent violence was sparked by a drive-by shooting of a Serb man in Caglavica, on the outskirts of Pristina.

The inter-ethnic feuding escalated and Albanian mobs began to lay siege to the minority Serb population across the province, hounding them out of villages by force. It is thought to have been orchestrated by criminals and extremists.

The area is rife with illegal activity from drug trafficking to prostitution, while unemployment is currently at 60 per cent. By the end of two days of rioting they had succeeded in damaging or destroying hundreds of houses and torching 30 Serbian Orthodox churches. By the time the riots had been brought under control there were 19 dead, almost 900 injured and around 4,000 Serbs displaced.

The casualties would have been even higher if it wasn't for the efforts of the 27th Infantry Group, a part of the Finnish/Irish Brigade based in Pristina, six of whom were among those commended for their bravery last week.

The soldiers involved are now back in Ireland but Maj Gen Dermot Earley, Deputy Chief of Staff, and the Minister of State at the Department of Defence, Ms Mary Hanafin, visited their replacements, the 28th Infantry Group under the command of Lieut Col Tommy Doyle, over the weekend.

Ms Hanafin was brought to Calvagica, an area that is now heavily fortified since the Finnish/Irish Brigade held off the Albanians last month, preventing them from destroying even more Serb homes.

"After meeting political leaders here and seeing the valuable work being done by Irish soldiers what comes across most is the fragility of the situation," she said.

The region is set to become even more unsettled according to Collapse in Kosovo, the report compiled in the wake of the violence by the ICG (International Crisis Group) which criticised UN involvement in Kosovo, saying the province was "stunted" under the current rule. It found the riots were fuelled by uncertainty over Kosovo's status and the economic stagnation that had taken hold.

It also said that despite the success of some of the UN mandated forces, recent events had exposed the UN and NATO missions in Kosovo as "very weak". "If the underlying causes of the violence are not dealt with immediately and directly Kosovo risks becoming Europe's West Bank," the report said.

Those in the thick of the conflict can only agree. "The recent period of violence opened our eyes," said Brig Gen Brannstrom.

"It sends a very clear message to the politicians that either we let it happen again or we do something to stop it. We need more troops, we need to commit to staying in Kosovo for the long-term if we are to prevent a repeat of the recent violence."