Publication Date: Wednesday May 5, 1999

STANFORD: Albanian, Yugoslavian students experience war firsthand

Three days before NATO began air strikes against Yugoslavia, Sonila Hysi, 21, learned what had happened to her Albanian relatives in Kosovo.

Serb paramilitaries invaded the home of her father's cousin, where he lived with his wife and two daughters, ages 20 and four. Soldiers raped the older daughter twice in front of her parents, then slit the parents' throats. The daughters escaped alive and are now living in Hysi's home city of Tirana, Albania.

Hysi is part of a small but active community of Stanford University students from the former Yugoslavia and surrounding region. For these students--from Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania and other countries--the outbreak of violence between Serbians and Albanian Kosovars is but the latest chapter in a horrifying regional conflict.

Now, however, with NATO forces bombing Yugoslavia, they're also seeing greater interest among their fellow students in the conflict.

"Other students don't know (about the conflict in Kosovo), but they want to learn," said Orhan Niksic, 25, a graduate student in engineering, economic systems and operations research at Stanford. Niksic, a native of Bosnia, managed relief operations for 80,000 people in southern Bosnia for the International Rescue Committee from 1992 to 1994, during the height of the war in that country.

Niksic is used to telling people about the destruction he witnessed in his homeland. After he came to Stanford in 1995, Niksic was often interviewed by reporters and was invited to speak at high schools in the Bay Area.

The town of Konjic, where Niksic was raised, was shelled by the Serbian military every day for four years. His family went without electricity for seven months while the town was under siege. Niksic's younger brother served in the Bosnian army throughout the war, and his father supported the family by selling souvenirs to NATO soldiers.

For students like Niksic and Hysi, the growing U.S. involvement in the conflict in Kosovo provokes a bittersweet mixture of emotions, from relief to sadness. Some students welcome the bombings as the only way to stop Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from continuing to oppress Albanian Kosovars. But these students also worry that continued bombing will increase long-term economic and political instability in the region.

"It is very difficult to have one clear opinion on (the air strikes)," Niksic said. "All options open to the United States were hard. This was the best of all bad options."

Ten students make up the core membership of Stanford's Students Against Genocide, an on-campus group that organizes both educational panels on the crisis in Yugoslavia and humanitarian aid projects. Started during the war in Bosnia, the group was inactive after peace was declared there in December 1995. The group reawakened when it appeared that little was being done on campus to call attention to the Kosovo crisis.

"I was appalled that the campus was so quiet," Hysi said. "I went to the (Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies), the history department, the political science department and the international relations department and asked why aren't there any meetings, panels or information sessions on this crisis?" Hysi said.

"Why doesn't an institution like Stanford even have an information session on this? They told me either that all their Balkan or Eastern European scholars were on leave or that academics would need at least a couple of years to analyze the crisis."

SAGE held a conference in 1997 on "American Policies in Southeastern Europe" featuring Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice, who is a specialist in Eastern Europe, and former Defense Secretary William Perry, among others. Ten people showed up.

"At that time, only a few people were interested--people don't see things early enough," said SAGE member Borut Grgic, a 21-year-old Stanford junior from Slovenia. "They are swayed by the pictures they see in the paper, and if they don't see dead bodies in the paper, then they don't care."

More interest was expressed on April 26, when 30 people crowded into a room at the Bechtel International Center at Stanford for a screening of the BBC-produced film "Yugoslavia-- Death of a Nation" and an ensuing discussion held by SAGE. The group is primarily concerned with humanitarian issues, but it also serves a political and social function for its members, who now meet often for debates and informal discussions.

SAGE now is especially worried by the number of refugees streaming from Kosovo into neighboring countries, estimated at 619,000, and the effect these refugees will have on countries still recovering from their own crises.

"I'd like to see the current humanitarian disaster taken care of," Grgic said. "Refugees are problematic to unstable regions that can't even take care of their own people." He believes the international community must do more to share the burden, including providing aid to countries receiving refugees.

"The economic burden will be very difficult for Albania to bear, considering the civil war that almost occurred," Hysi said, referring to violence that broke out in Albania in 1997.

Hysi, Niksic and Grgic emphasized that it is Milosevic, not the Serbian people or the international community, who they blame for reviving violence in Yugoslavia.

"Milosevic is a modern Hitler. He has done damage to all south Slavic people, including his own," Niksic said.

"The only person responsible for everything that is happening is Milosevic," Hysi said. "He has broken every international agreement he has signed. He is not a diplomat or a politician. He does not believe in the force of argument, but only the argument of force."

In the long run, Niksic and Grgic hope the Milosevic government will be replaced by one that is more democratic and that Kosovo will be given autonomy within Yugoslavia. They also hope that the entire region will be brought back to economic and political stability, in order to avoid future conflict.

"Once it is all over, the Serbs and the Albanians will either live in the same country or as neighbors, whether they like it or not," Hysi said. "Strengthening the relationship between them and peace should be the rule in the region."

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