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Patriarch Pavle and the Serb Orthodox Church remained true to their faith. They stood up against Milosevic early on and helped who they could in Kosovo.

Monastic refuge for Kosovars

by Steven Erlanger / The New York Times

DECANI, June 16 -- As Serb forces withdrew from western Kosovo, some of them burning and looting as they retreated, Father Iguman and Father Sava moved among them, asking them to spare the houses of their neighbors and bringing terrified Albanians here, to this revered Serbian Orthodox monastery near Pec.

"They are the best people you can ever see," said Venera Lokaj. "They are people of God. They heard Decani was burning, and they came to search for people. They found us there in the open, with everything burning, and they told us, 'We are blessed to see you alive. Please come with us. Please come to the monastery."' Miss Lokaj is an Albanian, one of the 200 or so who have taken refuge in this monastery, under cooling trees, retrieved from misery by the fathers here.

She had lived in nearby Pec, which was destroyed by Serb forces and paramilitaries in their rampage of revenge when NATO began bombing Yugoslavia in March. She moved with her father, Nimon, to Decani, because it had already been destroyed by Serbs the previous summer. "I thought it would be safer," she said.

They were ordered to remain inside by the Serbs, and had little chance to buy food in the destroyed town. But they were otherwise left alone. "We stayed inside for two and a half months," she said. "Until two days ago."

But after Belgrade capitulated and the Serb forces were given six days to pull out of this region, "they got mad at everything," Miss Lokaj said, "and they began to burn again." The Serbs "took anything they wanted, and they started driving people out of the center."

The Serbs arrived at their apartment building about 9 p.m. on Saturday and set fire to the first floor, Miss Lokaj said. "We were terrified and screamed at them from the balcony, 'We're here!' They looked up, but didn't say anything."

They ran downstairs, leaving the canvasses of her father, a well-known painter, to the flames. One Serb neighbor became angry, but was ordered to be quiet, she said. So the the Lokajs and two other families hid outside in the dark, fearing the Serbs would be back to kill them.

Early the next morning, Father Iguman and Father Sava found them and brought them to Decani. Father Sava, a tall man of 33 with a curly tan beard and eyeglasses, said he had only done what anyone would do. "We offered them hospitality and I am very pleased they accepted." Last year, he said, the monastery was host to 50 Serb refugees expelled from surrounding villages by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and they remained here through the bombing by NATO, whose forces here are known as KFOR. "But now, all of them became afraid and left," Father Sava said sadly. "We begged them to stay and told them that KFOR would protect them, but they said there was a vacuum and they couldn't stay."

Of the 2,000 Serbs of Decani, he said, only about 10 remain. "This is a biblical catastrophe, with the flight first of the Albanian population and then the Serb population," Father Sava said as he offered the monastery's home-made brandy, thick bread and pepper spread.

Father Sava is not an overtly political person, but his views are sharply expressed. "National traditions were misused by irreligious and immoral people who don't care about God or tradition at all," he said. "And people were pushed and forced to believe in things that were wrong." The church, he said, took a clear position against violence, ethnic purging and for the democratization of both Serbia and Albania, which was not the policy of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.

In his view, NATO's bombing campaign, which the church opposed, set off the very humanitarian disaster it was intended to prevent. Father Sava had himself warned Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright in Washington in February what would happen to the Kosovo Albanians if NATO bombed, he said. "I told her clearly what would happen."

Bishop Artemije of Rasca and Prizren, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, published an open letter calling the bombing a mistake. "The bombs gave the pretext to the expulsion of a great number of Albanians and gave the pretext to the exodus of the Serbs," he said. "And democratic forces in Serbia are now almost nonexistent, and President Milosevic is triumphant in his phantom victory, and there is a lot of anti-Western feeling among Serbs that will stop democratic processes in this area for a long time to come."

Sincere diplomacy could have solved the problem without war, Father Sava said, and if the unarmed monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had remained in Kosovo, but in larger numbers, "nothing like this would have happened." The problems here "would not have been easy to resolve," Father Sava said. "But it could have been done. And now we've ethnically cleansed Kosovo and destroyed it and produced enormous suffering on all sides."

Miss Lokaj had worked for the security organization in Pec. She speaks fluent English/ She, too, is very angry. "When the OSCE left, they told us they would be back in two weeks and everything would be the way we wanted it," she said bitterly. "We hoped so, but after three days, everything changed. When NATO started bombing, the police and the paramilitaries started destroying everything that was Albanian."

The Serbs "made a war against civilians, against people with empty hands," she said. "There was no KLA in Decani or in Pec, and they had no right to do what they did. This is a catastrophe. And the world saw this, it saw everything, and the world is too late. I know the world felt it had the best intentions, but there is a fatality about good intentions, and they always come too late." She turned away, brushing her brown hair from blazing eyes. "I hate the words, 'I'm sorry,"' she said. "The world always says, 'I'm sorry,' and it's always too late. The British said, 'Be patient. You have the sympathy of the world.' Well, the ground burned under our feet, and the world says we have its sympathy."

Miss Lokaj stopped again, and then said, keeping her voice slow and even: "Don't ever be sorry about the people who are still alive. Just be sorry for the dead."