Another lie uncovered...
War In the Balkans
Rajmonda
The Truth About Rajmonda
A KLA Soldier Lies for the Cause.
Nancy Durham For the past year, the CBC's Nancy Durham has been
sending dispatches from a small Kosovar Albanian village.
So in June, when NATO's Kosovo Force - KFOR - opened Kosovo to the
outside world Nancy headed straight for Shale to see how the people
there had managed during the NATO bombardment. And for the first
time, in 18 months of covering the war over Kosovo, she was able to
move freely throughout the region.
As a result, Nancy uncovered much more than she expected. Here is
the story in her own words.
I returned to Kosovo in June, three days after the arrival of NATO's
Kosovo Force, KFOR.
It was a thrilling time, and suspenseful too.
I had come to Shale, a village I haven't named until now. During the
war I was asked not to. The people wanted to protect their Kosovo
Liberation Army run hospital.
I returned to Shale not only to see who survived, and how they managed
to, but also to learn more about one person in particular.
During the war here it was impossible to move freely and therefore
difficult to get answers to all my questions.
I am looking for Rajmonda Rreci.
I met her for the first time, a year ago, in Shale's KLA hospital. I
was told she was being treated for trauma, because she witnessed the
killing of her sister, apparently by Serbs in an attack on her
village.
"And maybe I will be a part of the Kosovo liberation army because
that's the only way for us except if the world help us," she said at
the time.
The next time I saw Rajmonda - last December - it was at the KLA's
mountain headquarters in Drenica.
She was dressed for her new part, and vowing to die for Kosovo's
independence.
Ramonda with AK-47 "It's a Kalashnikov and it's just like one member
of my family. this is for me everything," she told me.
Rajmonda's story was riveting. Everyone could understand her wish to
avenge her sister's killing.
I asked her about my visiting Qendresa's grave.
"Even I don't know where it is", she said. "It's hard, too hard.
really really hard."
When we parted that winter night, I had doubts about Rajmonda's
ability to survive. Her Kalashnikov rifle was no match for the
Yugoslav army. But I had underestimated Rajmonda.
In June, I found her still on the mountain. This 19-year-old girl had
made it through war. She was staying at the KLA's logisitics house,
and still a soldier, but on her day off I stayed the night and
Rajmonda talked me through the last months of war. She showed me how
she spent her leisure time between battles.
"We sleep 12 girls, in this room, 60 in whole house," she said, "we
sleep just like sardines.
I asked what she did in her leisure time, between battles. She
unrolled a drawing of a girl on beach. Rajmonda's drawing "It's just
like my dreams," she said. "We always dreamed to finish the war and
then we can go to the beach and have a holiday far away from this
place because we saw too much and everything."
Rajmonda seemed more like a child to me than a battle hardened
soldier.
"When you see all those that we saw, all those massacres, all the
people. When you see that they don't have enough to eat. All the
burned houses [so] they stay only in the land, they don't have
nothing. ..You don't have time to think that you killed a man or
something else. You only want to kill, to kill him because you know
what he done to your family. And for me all the people from Kosovo,
not only for me but all people for Kosovo are our family."
Rajmonda Rajmonda Rajmonda
"Do you think about your sister?" I ask. "I'm thinking about her but I
told you I said one time you have to lose something that you love, you
really love to have the freedom," she replies.
Rajmonda may have won her freedom but she still belonged to the KLA.
She was both loyal soldier, and teenage girl and she had begun to open
up a little. Rajmonda admitted she hid things from me; that she
already was a member of the KLA when we first met. What else was there
to this elusive girl?
The war was over, but Rajmonda was still an obedient soldier.
Last December I had wanted to go to Rajmonda's village to learn more
about her. I wanted to gather all the details I could to understand a
young girl who had lost her innocence so tragically. Rajmonda asked me
not to go there. She said she was worried it might endanger her family
if I visited them.
It seemed a reasonable request.
It was a very tense time.
But in June with the retreat of the Yugoslav army, it was at last safe
for me to visit her home in Skenderaj.
I wasn't optimistic about finding anyone at home because Rajmonda had
told me her family was now in Albania. But this wasn't true.
Qendressa I found Rajmonda's mother, Barhije, at home along with two
other daughters. Two year old Ilirida and, to my astonishment,
Rajmonda's nine year old sister, Qendresa. The sister who was supposed
to be dead.
I was shocked, but Rajmonda's mother offered a novel explanation.
There was a murdered sister, she said, but Rajmonda got her name
wrong. It was Dafina who died.
I spent an awkward hour. We looked at the family album. I saw Rajmonda
as a toddler on a Montenegran beach holiday. There was no trace of
Dafina. I had a sinking feeling. Perhaps there never was a Dafina.
Perhaps there was no murdered sister at all. Had I been used for the
cause?
Six weeks later, in August, I got my chance to find out. I returned to
Kosovo to confront Rajmonda. I found her still near Shale but at
another KLA base.
Rajmonda in uniform "Yeah, I lied to you," she said.
Rajmonda admits she lied about Qendresa, but claims it didn't start
out as a lie. She said she was misinformed.
"In the beginning it was a mistake," she said, "because I spoke when I
was not sure. I believed my sister was killed when I was not sure but
I believe because we are in war and in war happen everything."
But why didn't Rajmonda put the record straight on my subsequent
visits?
"I think about that and I said to myself. 'Why I have to tell her my
sister is alive when there are so many girls and mothers who lost the
childrens, the sisters, the family. they don't have the chance to give
interview.'"
Rajmonda doesn't take all the credit for her strategy.
She claims the doctors at the field hospital encouraged her to lie.
Shpetim Robaj was one of those doctors. He was killed shortly after I
met Rajmonda, when his Red Cross vehicle hit a landmine.
Selimi But Fitim Selimi, the KLA doctor who treated Rajmonda in
September and then took me up the mountain to find her in winter, did
survive the war. He appeared completely taken aback by the story, when
I found him in Pristina in his new role as director of hospitals for
all of Kosovo.
He insisted this was the first he knew of any lie.
"Maybe she thought the job she was doing was too little," he said. "So
to show Kosovo she was doing much more she said she lost her sister
and to show our suffering maybe she was even capable of saying she
lost others."
"I said to myself she is just a journalist and she lives in England
and she don't care about us," Rajmonda said. "They don't care about
us, how we live, and how we die. they are coming here just to make
interview for their career and for their interest."
Ramonda and Qendressa In August, Rajmonda returned to Skenderaj with
me to see her family. She hugs Qendresa, now with her hair cut short.
The little girl is oblivious to the story about her death. but
fascinated with the photos of her soldier sister. Pictures from our
encounter last winter on the mountain and pictures from long ago.
"I just wish to be again a little girl....only to be a happy child,
happy kid like I was," Rajmonda said.
A happy child like Qendresa, perhaps, whose supposed murder had been
the foundation of Rajmonda's story.
A story that had played around the world, and in at least a dozen
countries, and each time it was told it reported Qendresa's death.
I wondered how Rajmonda's father, Aslan Rreci, feels about his
daughter being used in propaganda.
"We didn't try to do any propaganda," he said. "But against the Serbs
you had to fight in every way, even with propaganda like this. but
this was only by accident, this wasn't a propaganda on purpose."
"I'm glad it was effective in one condition," Rajmnonda says, "if this
was not my story this story belonged to someone else here."
I have reflected on the five days I spent with Shpetim Robaj in
September 1998--the week before he died-- the week I first met
Rajmonda.
Could he have played a part in this, like Rajmonda claims?
One afternoon he and I stood right at the cemetary in Pristina, just a
few metres from where he'd soon be buried. We watched villages burn in
the distance. Kosovo was on fire but the story dominating the news was
the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. To many Kosovar Albanians, it seemed the
outside world had forgotten them.
Ilir Tolaj thought it had. He was Shpetim's close friend and
colleague. One year ago he appealed to the West to intervene. He's
never met Rajmonda - except on video tape - but he admits he's
impressed with her performance.
"If this is a lie - don't know if it's small or big," he said. "Maybe
from my point it's small, from the point of the journalist it's very
big and unacceptable. But if this small lie from my point of view made
some kind of impact in what west country did in Kosovo then it's worth
it."
The fact is that Rajmonda didn't need a story about a dead sister to
explain her motivation. She was born in Drenica in the very place
where 18 years later, the war would began. The first fires of Kosovo's
war were set in Prekaz, just a short walk from Rajmonda's home.
Grave board In March 1998, Serb forces launched an attack against what
they called Albanian terrorists.
It was the assault which alerted the world to the Kosovo conflict.
Children were among the 53 members of the Jashari clan who died.
Rajmonda walked among the Jashari graves in a meadow.
"My best friend was in the same class," she said. "and when the
Jasharis were killed...I went in Prekaz. I saw the victims and I saw
her... and when I saw her, then I said to myself now it's the moment
I'm gonna take the gun and I'm gonna became a member of KLA."
"How do i know that's story's true?" I asked.
"Oh you will find it, it's easy," she replied.
Of course finding the truth here is not at all easy. I chose to cover
the war in Kosovo by following the people I had come to know through
Shpetim Robaj. It's hard for me to believe he played any witting part
in perpetrating Rajmonda's lie. In fact often he corrected fellow
Kosovars when they told exaggerated stories of suffering. He helped me
get started on telling the story of war through the eyes of ordinary
people. It was partly because of his death that I wanted to return to
those he'd introduced me to. It's by returning repeatedly to Kosovo
that I uncovered Rajmonda's lie. But hers is just one. How many other
lies will remain buried?
|
