UNMIK on AIR
January 30th 2004

Grabac

(By Andrea Saula)

 

SLUG:  Some 28 families, for more then a year, live in the isolated village of Grabac/Grabec in Klina Municipality of Kosovo.   Their living conditions are improving, but the question of their integration remains open.

 

Hello and welcome. This is UNMIK on AIR program.

 

A road through the oak forest leads to the little village Grabac. This village in Klina Municipality is situated on top of a hill and geographically is separate from the rest of the surroundings.

This reporter met Cedomir in front of the village grocery shop. Cedomir surveys the landscape:

 

Cedomir: Forest used to be here. We had some fruit trees as well. Now there’s nothing.

 

The Village of Grabac/ Grabec was totally demolished and all of its inhabitants left by June 1999.  Most of the inhabitants spent four years in various Internally Displaced People settlements in Serbia. But approximately one year ago, Cedomir’s family and 27 others came back to their village.

Cedomir’s neighbor Nadica is 75-years old and was among the returnees.

 

Nadica: It was terrible when we came back for the first time after the conflict. There was nothing, houses were demolished but soon afterwards the houses have been rebuilt.

 

Mainly older people and those with working ability returned to Grabac/Grabec. With the support of a German NGO, “Technics Hilfswerk” THW, her house and all the houses of the other 27 families have since been rebuilt.  Ten more houses are expected to be rebuilt this spring for other returnees yet to come.   A number of NGOs have been working in this village since 2002 supporting returnees with housing reconstruction, rehabilitating the infrastructure, supporting agricultural activities.

 

For most of returnees, completing the reconstruction of their homes brought comfort.  Some of the villagers of Grabac/Grabec share the destiny of countless people of former Yugoslavia. Many used to live in different parts of the country and when the wars started in 1992 they were forced to flee for their lives.  Cedomir, who is originally from Grabac/Grabec, is one of them. Cedomir describes how he already moved from the town of Rijeka in Croatia 12 years ago where he worked as a sailor, for fear of his life.

 

Cedomir: then from Kragujevac to Mitrovica and from Mitrovica to Grabac. Now, I’m here. I made a house and I hope for the best.

 

Even as families are returning and rebuilding homes, the villagers of Grabac/Grabec are still receiving humanitarian aid from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and a number of other donors. Every month the village receives packaged food. 

In the past, villagers in Grabac/Grabec grew their own food.  NGOs have worked with the villagers to create an agricultural cooperative and to provide income-generation support, so that the villagers will become more self-sufficient.  Unfortunately, the villagers do not have access to most of their agricultural land, so the success of these projects has been limited.  Villagers have received livestock (cows, sheep, chickens and pigs) and agricultural tools (including a tractor) but still need the help of the international community to have access to more of their property. Nadica and her husband have a few fields around the village and they recently planted brewers yeast.

 

Nadica: Of course things changed since we came back. Until now it has not been that bad. If it’ s going to be peaceful we can live but if not then we have nothing.

 

 

 

 

When this reporter came to Grabac/Grabac, a few days ago, the village was nearly empty.  Most of the villagers were in Mitrovica to do some shopping.  The returnees travel some 60 kilometers to Mitrovica once a week in a humanitarian bus run with KFOR protection. Grabac is not the only village that has this kind of bus connection. Besides links between Grabac and nearby places like Bica and Osojane with Zubin Potok and Mitrovica, there are two main networks, Pristina and Gnjilan, describes Freddy Bob Jones, Movement Control officer.  According to Bob Jones, over 450000 minority community members use these services annually.

 

Freddy Bob Jones: The Gnjilan network, the area between Gnjilan, kamenica, Strpce and other locations around there. There’s Pristina, the Gracanica right up to Zvecan and Mitrovica North. Let’s say it covers a good cross section of Kosovo. In all buses are always on the move, Monday to Friday. The currant operator is Serbian Company “Kolasin prevoz” of Zubin Potok. “Kolasin prevoz” won the contract through an international competitive biding process, sometime late last year. Actually they’ve started operating the service on the behalf of UNMIK Civil administration in September 2003.  

 

As security remains the biggest issue for the people in Grabac/Grabec, Cedomir says the returnees rarely travel without a KFOR escort.  Besides organized trips to Mitrovica, Cedomir says he now sometimes travels to the nearby village of Bica, without an escort: 

 

Bica: Most often we’re going to the nearby Bica, sometimes with an escort, sometimes without it, now, generally without it. We’re going through the woods.

 

Inter-community relations in Kosovo are improving but the situation differs in various regions of Kosovo.  The neighboroing Municipality to Grabac is Srbica/Skenderaj, an area where Serbian forces committed atrocities against ethnic Albanians. That left the majority population of ethnic Albanians with bad memories. The process of reconciliation among the population moves more slowly here than in other parts of Kosovo.   But there is improvement according to Cedomir.  Cedomir says even as he hasn’t established a strong relationship with his Albanian neighbors, some contacts have happened.     

 

Cedomir: Well, not entirely but some Albanians were coming to us. They talked with us and we had a coffee.

 

Returns is the most crucial standard to laid out for a multi-ethnic Kosovo; slowly but surely returns are happening and slated to continue.

 

And that was this week’s program of UNMIK online, thank you for listening.