Most of the houses in Mitrovica have been systematically destroyed. The centuries-old antagonism between Serbs and Albanians has caused so much suffering and created so much bad karma. Refugees on both sides now yearn to return to a normal life.

It is said that the beating of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can cause a hurricane in Japan. This shows that nowadays we human beings and all things in the world are closely intertwined with one another. A small thing that happens in the Western Hemisphere may directly affect people living in the Eastern Hemisphere.

I had never realized how true this theory of cause and effect was until Wang Tuan-cheng, vice president of the Tzu Chi Foundation, instructed me on June 29 to go on a fact-finding trip to Kosovo within a week. A brutal campaign of "ethnic cleansing" orchestrated by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had not only launched an eleven-week NATO bombing of Belgrade and other places in Serbia, but led me, an editor in Taiwan, to travel to a place that I would otherwise never think of paying a visit to. I definitely regarded the journey as a rare chance for me to personally witness the atrocities in this small region in the Balkans.

I have to admit that had someone asked me six months ago where Kosovo was located, I would probably have said that it was somewhere in the Middle East or in Russia. As tensions between Albanians and Serbs grew in Kosovo, a region south of Serbia in the former republic of Yugoslavia, we could hardly watch the local TV news without learning about the missile attack on the Chinese embassy, discoveries of horrible mass graves, gang rapes and other atrocities.

Although Milosevic finally gave in and signed a peace agreement with NATO, the massive flow of returning refugees, some 450,000 to date, has created many more problems. Furthermore, tens of thousands of Serbs have taken to the streets over the past week to call for democratic change and Milosevic's resignation. All of these incidents made Vice President Wang and me aware of the turbulence in the area.

In order to collect first-hand information regarding the refugees and war-torn Kosovo, Taiwanese nongovernmental organizations--including World Vision Taiwan, the ROC Red Cross, the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) and our Tzu Chi Foundation--decided to form a fact-finding team by sending one representative from each organization. Since World Vision already had a well-organized team in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, Virginia Woodward, the communication manager for the Pristina office, was assigned to act as the coordinator for our team.

Distribution

Since I went on a fact-finding trip to Papua New Guinea in July 1998 to aid victims of three enormous tidal waves, I knew how important it was to establish a good distribution channel to ensure that all relief items are delivered safely and quickly to the needy. Tzu Chi, however, does not have any liaison office in the Balkans. It bothered me a little when I thought about how great the obstacles to relief distribution were, even if we did want to offer our help to the Kosovar people.

Miraculously, this problem was quickly resolved by a visit by Ellsworth Culver, senior vice president of the Portland-based Mercy Corps International (MCI). Culver came to our Taipei office on July 2, five days prior to my departure for Kosovo, to learn more about our relief program in North Korea. When he found out that I would soon go to Kosovo, he told me that his colleague Terry Heselius, a 66-year-old great-grandfather, has worked in Kosovo for MCI since 1993. "He should be able to help you with the distribution if you really decide to do something," said Culver.

"Great! You must be an angel sent by the Buddha or the Lord to help me pave the road of relief in Kosovo," I said.

"I agree that the Buddha and the Lord conspired to arrange this meeting for us, but I am reluctant to accept that I am an angel," he laughed. "My wife perhaps, but not me."

War zone

The four of us left Taipei on July 7, and after brief stopovers in Hong Kong and Zurich, we finally arrived at Skopje Airport in Macedonia the next afternoon. We took a taxi to the border and walked past the checkpoint into Kosovo. I saw Albanian refugees waiting in line to get in and out of Kosovo. The presence of NATO soldiers armed with automatic rifles and green armored vehicles not only showed that a war had been going on in this place, but also made the atmosphere a bit tense. Red-haired Virginia Woodward came to meet us at the checkpoint. "I've been waiting for you for more than three hours," she complained. "The Macedonian officers wouldn't allow me to drive across the border today. Otherwise, I would have gone to pick you up at Skopje."

Hopping into her Toyota Land Cruiser, we headed toward Pristina, about eighty kilometers (50 mi) from the border. After we had introduced ourselves and our organizations to Virginia, she gave us a briefing on the situation. There was an urgent need for the UN civilian administration to catch up with the NATO military component in Kosovo, where 24,000 soldiers were already deployed. About 71,000 people, half of Kosovo's Serbs, had left to seek refuge in central Serbia and Montenegro because of arson attacks, threats and sniper shootings by angry Albanians.

At 5:45 p.m., we arrived in the famous city of Pristina. "You guys are lucky--you can attend the UNHCR security briefing in the civic center at six," said Virginia.

An eye for an eye

As we entered the center, I was surprised to find the briefing room filled with over a hundred people from the UN, NATO, and over sixty nongovernmental organizations.

Randolph Kent, chief coordinator of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, announced that basic law and order in Kosovo was being maintained as more and more civilian police officers had been deployed and a total of 1,350 civilian police officers had so far been pledged by UN member states, including 450 announced by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in June. However, Albanians were accused of carrying out a spree of vengeful acts of looting, arson and murder that had undermined the Kosovo peace accord.

After hearing Kent's briefing, I could not help but sympathize with the local people's awkward situation. The Serbs had wanted to take control of Kosovo by killing and driving out the Albanians, who accounted for eighty-five percent of the local population. This greedy action invoked NATO's intervention and bombing. The Serbs originally thought that they would get the upper hand by implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing, but they soon lost many lives themselves during the bombing. What was worse was that after the retreat of Serbian policemen and soldiers, there was an increasing incidence of violence and harassment against the remaining Serbs. However, would the Serbs then adopt the same rule of "an eye for an eye"? "These people are creating bad karma for themselves," I said to Hsu Hui-wen, the representative from ICDF.

At the security briefing, I was lucky enough to bump into Terry Heselius, country director of MCI. I approached this locally famous, white-bearded person. "Oh, Ellsworth phoned me yesterday and asked me to offer you all necessary assistance," he said. I gave him a copy of our brochure and explained the purpose of our visit. But Terry was extremely popular there, and our conversation was often interrupted by other NGO members. I asked him about the most needed things that we could perhaps provide for local farmers. "Fertilizer!" he answered without any hesitation. Since there was no time for details, he promised to send me the information via e-mail.

Why destroy the farms?

In the following two days, Virginia took us to Prizren, the second largest city in Kosovo, and Mitrovica, located not too far from Serbia. We were surprised to find that Prizren was still in pretty good condition, whereas Mitrovica had been systematically destroyed by Serbs. Almost all the stores along the main roads were in ruins. But we were happy to find that in Mitrovica, the Albanian-run Lin Project Company, composed of a group of engineers and contractors, had begun to investigate the condition of each building located along the main roads. They will later cooperate with the UNHCR to maintain the original style of each block when they rebuild the houses. As they showed us a pile of detailed blueprints of all the buildings they had inspected, Virginia could not help but praise them for doing a good job.

When we drove to small villages such as Suhareke, Bukosh and Shtime, the condition was really discouraging. Almost all the farmers' houses were roofless or burned down.

Why had the Serbs left most of the houses in the cities alone while systematically destroying farmers' houses? Faton Vatovci, our driver and World Vision interpreter, explained that most of the members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were from the countryside. In the Serbs' eyes, they were not only troublemakers, but guerrillas that killed their soldiers. Albanian farmers supported the KLA materially and provided them with refuge. "That was why the Serbs hated the farmers so much," Faton explained. "Besides, if they destroyed the farms and set landmines in the fields, our farmers would not dare to work in them and would eventually leave."

Epilogue

After seeing so much and hearing so many sad stories in Kosovo, I thought about the theory of cause and effect. I just hope people will learn to get along with one another and stop creating bad karma by giving each other such a hard time.

In Pristina, UN officials urged frightened Serbs to stay in Kosovo to rebuild a multi-ethnic society. However, they admitted that a growing wave of revenge attacks meant that minorities in the province were not safe. How can people relax when they live under such conditions?

We foreigners might provide the victims of Kosovo with some material relief items, but who can look after their hearts and minds, which might be traumatized for the rest of their lives?

Can't we human beings get along with one another?