Articles and Related Media

A Life-Changing Experience in Kosovo

By Bill Rankin, Communications Officer, Communications and Consultation Sector
Photos: Fraser McVie
(December 2001)

Amid the wreckage of a war that had ended only months prior to his arrival in Kosovo, Fraser McVie (Director General, Security Branch, Correctional Operations and Programs Sector) was tasked with developing policy and a strategic plan of action. He was scheduled to fly from Ottawa to London, England, where he would make a connection to Skopje in Macedonia, a staging ground for humanitarian missions in the Balkans. From there, the plan was to rendezvous with United Nations officials and together they would make the overland journey by bus into Kosovo.

The Skopje airport, guarded by grim-looking border police armed with automatic weapons, was grey and cheerless when he arrived. There were no friendly faces waiting to greet McVie, only an immigration official who motioned him and other passengers towards a counter where they were required to hand over their passports and purchase visas before entering Kosovo. Most of the passengers didn't have the Macedonian currency.

"We were all looking around like lemmings, searching for someone to follow," said McVie. "Eventually a door opened down a hallway and a guy was there, ready to exchange money."

Outside, an official with a roster in his hands was waiting patiently beside a long white bus with "United Nations" (UN) stenciled on its side. Much to McVie's relief, his name was on the list of passengers. He climbed aboard and settled in for the final leg of his journey. For three hours, the bus laboured over rugged mountain terrain, around unguarded hairpin curves overlooking sheer vertical drops, until finally they neared the Kosovo border and joined a 20-kilometre line of transport trucks waiting to cross. On foot beside them trudged a weary column of Albanian refugees, streaming back into their country after the war, belongings piled high in carts and wheelbarrows or on their backs.

Finally, the UN bus made it past the border. As darkness fell, they rolled towards the capital city, Pristina, passing through fields and villages along the way. McVie got his first glimpse of the country that would be his host for the next few months. It reminded him of movie scenes of Allied-occupied Germany in the final days of World War II - crumbling brick walls pockmarked with bullet holes; jagged chunks of masonry ripped away by explosives; mounds of rubble dotting the streets; entire villages leveled; and more military vehicles than civilian traffic on the roads.

"'Boy-oh-boy, am I out of my league here' - that was my first reaction," commented McVie. "I'd done a little bit of travelling before in Lithuania but nothing prepared me for this. I tried to understand the kind of hatred that could result in this much destruction, but it was difficult to imagine." The fact that it was no weekend excursion began to sink in; it was clear to McVie that the coming months would require some steely resolve. Once the bus reached the capital city, McVie checked into the UN Hotel, an establishment with no affiliation to its namesake. It was cold, dirty and, as he soon discovered, infested with bugs. But with lodgings at a premium and with nowhere else to go, the hotel became McVie's home for almost his entire stay in Kosovo.

The first days were a surrealistic experience. As McVie dodged through early morning traffic on the way to his cramped office quarters, surveillance helicopters circled overhead and armoured personnel carriers rumbled by, kicking up soot that had rained down steadily on the city from the smoke-stacks of the nearby coal-fired electrical plants. Soldiers and police from every nation thronged the sidewalk cafés, their M-16s propped against the tables while they sipped their coffee. McVie joined his colleagues - Canadian, British, a few locals and one invaluable CSC staff member from Pacific Region. Besnic Dobreci is a Canadian citizen originally from Albania, who worked as a correctional officer (CO) at Mountain Institution before taking the Kosovo assignment.

"It was great to have Besnic there," said McVie. "He knew the language and the people, their culture. And he helped us all to get our feet on the ground so we could make some decisions. He could explain to us what was going on in the country."

What was going on in the country was the quickest and biggest refugee return in modern history, and also the quickest role reversal. As Albanians came home, tens of thousands of Serbs did not wait to find out what would happen next. Many of them, soldiers and civilians alike, packed their vehicles and fled, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake. The atmosphere they left behind was rife with suspicion and hatred against the Serbs who chose to stay and against Albanians branded as Serb collaborators. The wounds of war were still raw and some thirsted for revenge.

THE UN TAKES CONTROL
The UN Security Council resolution that ended the bombing, ushered in the UN's presence, and set up the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

"My first job became convincing UNMIK authorities that corrections is not something you do with a handful of people," said McVie. "The prisons were in a chaotic state, being used as lockups run by an international police force. One jail was being run by the UN, the others by a civilian police force - a collection of police officers of various nationalities who had a very difficult time communicating with the prisoners due to the language barrier." "What we learned very quickly was that police officers don't make very good jailers. They don't have any experience in managing prisoners, feeding them, or handling visitors."

"A number of dramatic escapes and a rising number of newly convicted criminals put further pressure on us to speed up reform. The plan was to take over the management of their jails and turn them into a real prison system. But we didn't have the mandate or the protection or the tools we needed - no insurance, no access to UN vehicles, and a great shortage of interpreters and drivers."

"One of my proudest accomplishments was going to the UNMIK authorities with a plan and saying 'Here's what needs to be done to take over these prisons.' I told them they would have to invest more, at least two administrators for each prison. Eventually, they agreed to a two-year plan that included financing and a well-defined mandate."

FINDING RECRUITS
The second and more time-consuming problem was finding qualified people to fill these positions, people who were willing to make a six-month commitment to work in Kosovo. It took months to find the right people - from Canada, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland and Kosovo. Besnic Dobreci person-ally interviewed and selected more than 300 new correctional officer recruits for the new Kosovo Correctional Service. It was a very difficult job due to the wide cultural divide between the peacemakers and the local people.

During the past 10 years of Serb control, no Kosovar-Albanian had worked for the government in any capacity. When McVie first toured the prisons, he observed prisoners cowering in the presence of officials. "They'd grown up in a society where beating prisoners was normal punishment. It was hard to explain to them how due process should work, the concept of using only necessary force, negotiating to get at the root of problems. Concepts that we take for granted are not always familiar to people from other countries."

"It helped that we were Canadians. We have credibility as a peace-building country and the local people listened to us. They had to be shown how our principles could be applied, but once they saw them in practice, they started to adopt them."

DEALING WITH PRISONERS
Albanians have strong family ties and are used to living in communal settings with uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents, so it was natural that prisoners preferred to live in large groups, provided they were from compatible backgrounds. Much to McVie's surprise, placing a prisoner in a single cell was regarded as punishment, the equivalent of solitary confinement in Canada.

"You had to get your mind around that and you had to be careful not to put Serbs and Albanians together. That was tricky. You were never quite sure what the various rivalries were, but it was clear that the hatred ran deep. It goes back generations."

The frightening part was that in those early days after the conflict, the staff had very little recourse to respond to serious trouble. During a hostage-taking incident, they called in German soldiers from a nearby police station to defuse the situation. "We lacked the most basic security measures," said McVie. "For example, we had to find locks and keys that would work, but first we had to find a supplier of locks and keys! When I first got there, every cell door had its own lock and key so there were hundreds of keys that had to be carried by the COs!"

BACK HOME AGAIN
With so much pressing work to be done, McVie's four months passed swiftly. In no time at all, he found himself bidding his new-found comrades goodbye and boarding a plane bound for home. McVie says that despite the hardships, working in a country like Kosovo has an alluring simplicity. It reduces life to black and white and fills the days with urgency, even passion. Many returning CSC employees have expressed the fact that they miss it. They yearn for the responsibility, the camaraderie, and the lost spirit of self-sacrifice and collective striving. When these working travelers return to their desks in Canada, it's hard for them to resume the same job they left behind.

"If I hadn't gone over there," said McVie, "I wouldn't appreciate Canada as much as I do. But I came to understand that hardship is what brings people together. We had to really depend on each other - more than I would normally depend on work colleagues here in Canada - to get the job done. It created a bond between us. For me this was a life-changing experience."