Once sad, today in awe: Kosovo in the eyes of war photoreporters

He's gone, 1998. Some Kosovo Albanians, displaced by the war, were about to bury a 5-week baby who had died in the mountain.

Witness of this event in Drenica ) the central part of Kosovo was American war photographer Ron Haviv, who documented it through the photograph.

Same year, same region. Albanian civilians executed between them and children.

A boy in shock watching the slain, who could also be his family.

Sitting next to Wade Goddard as well as a foreign photoreporter.

I was shocked. I didn't work as usual... I took some pictures, but it was one of the most shocking things I had ever seen... Children executed in the forest”, today Goddard remembers Free Europe Radio.

The two colleagues reported the 1998/99 war in Kosovo -- the first for Newsweek newspaper, the second for the New York Times and then Newsweek.

A quarter century later, the road took them back to Kosovo, to events honouring the country's 25th anniversary of its liberation.

Both express happiness in what they see today.

Understanding the mentality of Kosovars, their sustainability, their desire for home success... [I am not surprised today]”, Haviv tells Radio Free Europe.

A very large number of displaced people returned to Kosovo [after the war] as soon as they could, did not stay in Canada, or the US, or Europe... Their return home showed that this would be an inevitable success story”, he says.

On the streets of Pristina, it shows that he had noticed a pan with the inscription “Ukraine Free” a message from Kosovo to Russia's occupied country.

He says he hopes that even Ukrainians, one day, will be successful “in transition, as has Kosovo”.

“impressed” with, as it says, “The country's dramatic” transformation is expressed in Goddard.

When I was 1999, the centre of Kosovo [Pristina] was a provincial city, now it is a metropolis, it is beautiful”, he says.

“Children's funerals, women, civilians...”

Before Kosovo, Haviv and Goddard had reported on the wars of the '90s as well as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

They knew that similar brutality awaited them in Kosovo.

It was sometimes very brutal, sometimes very peaceful, depending on which place you were physically”, says Haviv, then mid-30s.

You could drive on the main road and see left villages burning... you could drive for another ten minutes and watch children play outside”, he recalls.

Through his many photographs, the world learned about the violence of then Serb forces against Kosovo Albanians murders, deportations, property destruction...

But, in Haviv's memory, special locations occupy the <x0 funerals of children, women, civilians...”.

I've talked to many, many people, many soldiers, many children, families, their dreams, their hopes, their wishes... People were shocked by what was happening to”, 59-year-old says today.

I didn't know I photographed Adam Jasharin”

Speaking of war years, his colleague, Goddard, inevitably recalls a stay in Drenica, where he says he met the founder of the then Kosovo Liberation Army, Adem Jashari.

“... but, during the interview, he said he was Adam Jashar's brother, and I think he did it for security purposes”.

I learned later that it was Adam Jashar, because I knew him [and photographed] his body after he was killed months later”, says Goddard.

At the time in his early 30s, he also recorded events throughout Kosovo from student protests in Pristina, civilians killed in the Drenica area, hungry children, soldiers on the front line, destroyed properties to refugee camps.

When I remember Kosovo, I have children killed in mind and images of people suffering”, says New Zealand-born photo.

The memories of that pain and suffering that Kosovars went through, [are unforgettable]...”, he says.

From that time at war, Goddard and Haviv left in late March 99, when NATO launched shelling of Serb Army targets, with the goal of halting violence in Kosovo.

Two photoreporters moved across borders to document Kosovo refugees in Albania and then Macedonia.

There were hundreds of thousands placed in camps and private homes.

Haviv recalls that some children at a camp in Kukes, Albania, were visited a few miles from the Kosovo border often.

“They and their families were trying to survive”, he says.

Joy, happiness...

NATO stopped shelling June 10th of 99 after Serbia agreed to withdraw its forces from Kosovo.

Two days later, a NATO-led peacekeeping mission was launched.

As foreign soldiers arrived, refugees returned. And with them two foreign photoreporters.

I remember the Day of Deliverance when the troops passed... There was joy and happiness. It was diametrically contrary to the time when I photographed Kukes, when people were leaving [from Kosovo]...”, Haviv says.

I don't know how I felt, I don't remember... just collecting information...”, says on the other side of Goddard.

Everyone took to the streets to greet and meet the German [soldiers] as they passed through Prizren. I'm sure all the borders were the same. I remember people's happiness... I remember seeing Serbian military forces [leaving from Kosovo]... We passed them”, says Goddard.

Haviv expresses today that the reporting made by journalists -- be they local or international -- during the war in Kosovo -- affected the speed of major powers' actions to stop the war.

I think that Kosovo is actually one of the most clear examples of the power of journalism”, he says.

Kosovo came out of the war with over 13,000 people killed; thousands missing, over 1,600 of whom are still undiscovered; thousands violated; thousands injured...

Photos of these and other events are summed up in Haviv's book “A Balkan war magazine”, published in 2000.

Haviv, who lives in the United States, also heads a foundation that has a visual journalism transformation mission.

The true democracy must have a free and educated press, a press working with integrity, so the photos can be believed, so that the audience can believe in the news you're watching”, says Haviv.

 

Goddard today lives in Croatia, where he has an open photo museum.

The sufferings of Kosovo Albanians over 25 years ago, he recorded in his book “The Kosovo war”, which was published in 2018.

“Gentiana 7 and Donjeta Deliu 5 were executed with their mother on the morning of September 26th in the village of Aberi... Serbian forces shot women and children closely, while they were trying to escape”, is part of the description Goddard put on one of the photos that documents a 1998 event. / REL