MORINA PASS, Albania -- Some wept in fear and rage. Others smiled in relief. And still others crossed a border with a deadness in their eyes that matched the desperation of their lives.
This was the scene at the Morina Pass, along the Yugoslav-Albanian border, a lonely outpost where deliverance melded with heartbreak for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Serbia's war-ravaged province of Kosovo.
Yesterday, refugees continued to make a crossing from war to safety, flooding through the Morina Pass on foot, in cars, on flatbed trailers towed by tractors, even a wooden cart pulled by two gray horses.
Rounded up on the Yugoslav side by Serbian forces engaged in a well-orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, the refugees finally reached the Albanian side and were greeted by harried border guards who anxiously tried to count the people arriving soon after the Serbs reopened the border about noon.
The mood at the border was one of almost unspeakable sadness, as a mist settled between gray mountains capped by snow.
A mother rocked a baby and wept. A man drove a tractor with one hand and used the other to wipe away tears. A girl of 5 relieved herself in a field where sheep grazed as her mother shielded her from the eyes of the hundreds of refugees a few feet away.
This exhausted group of thou sands showed little anger after spending a long night making their way from rural Kosovo to the remote northeastern corner of Albania.
"I was scared to death," said 18-year-old Zade Gjuraj, describing the events of her extended family's banishment from Dakovica in Kosovo to Albania.
"Serbian forces came in the house, shot in the air, made signs to get out," she said. "That was yesterday [Monday] at 4 p.m. We left everything there."
Like thousands of others, they handed over their passports to Serbian authorities and got out -- 30 people, including 12 children, crammed on blankets spread across a flatbed trailer dragged by a tractor. The youngest was 2. The oldest 70. They claimed that Serbian forces burned down their house.
The refugees have become Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's ultimate weapon in his battle against a NATO bombing campaign. Serbian security forces have responded to the bombing by stepping up their ethnic-cleansing campaign in a bid to rid Kosovo of the ethnic Albanian majority.
Allied bombs and pronouncements have been unable to stop a flow of refugees as allegations continue that Serbian forces have cleared whole cities of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Jamie Shea, a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said that if reports are true, "This is something that we haven't seen since the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s."
From interviews with those arriving at the Albanian border, a pattern is emerging of how the Serbian security forces are behaving: Swift expulsion orders are issued, followed by quick roundups of civilians. Men are frequently separated from women and children, but many seem to be reunited later. The Serbs sweep the refugees toward border areas and then clear mined areas to enable the people to leave the country.
"If the Serbs allow them to cross, they cross," said Xhemil Shahu of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "They can only cross via a legal road."
What the Serbs can't loot from empty houses and villages, which in many cases are burned, they simply take off the people, picking up cash and jewelry, according to the refugees.
Atrocities have apparently been committed, but they seem to be random rather than calculated and widespread.
At first, many of the refugees arriving in Albania were women, children and elderly men. But in recent days, more young men have made the crossing, apparently confident that they wouldn't be harmed.
Still, the full extent of the campaign and the human and physical carnage remains unknown.
"We don't know what is happening inside Kosovo," said Zakarai Kawa of the U.N. refugee agency.
But refugees continue to provide horrific clues.
Latif Krasniqi came from Leshan and talked of seeing an 80-year-old woman tossed alive by a Serbian civilian into a burning house where she was believed to have died.
"He got pleasure when he took the old woman away," Krasniqi said of the Serb.
From Piran came 50-year-old Ismet Kabashi. He hid in a ditch with running water for 12 hours, while his father, Shaban, was trapped by Serbian security forces in a home owned by Malush Tulla, 72, and his wife, Dudie, 68.
When Kabashi emerged, he said, he found all three dead, the two men shot in the head, the woman shot in the back.
In the same town, Elami Tulla, 32, said he saw Serbian security forces pulling through the fields the bodies of brothers Sali Shala, 70, and Milaim Shala, 52. He claimed the bodies were burned in a house.
The refugee spillover has been enormous, as people have fled to Montenegro, which is part of Yugoslavia, and to Macedonia and Albania.
More than 70,000 have passed through Kukes, a city 20 miles inside Albania, straining resources of both the Albanian government and the international aid community. The refugees have been taken to several collection places in town, including a mosque, bingo hall, restaurants and a brewery. The goal is to get them to other areas of Albania within 48 hours.
"We have it under control right now," said Louise Bermsjo of Humanitarian Cargo Carriers. "The biggest need is always to get food up and out. We've got the military bringing in 6,000 loaves of bread. More loaves are coming up here. We're buying from the local bakeries which are working night and day. Everyone is really helpful."
But for the Kosovar Albanians coming here, Kukes is simply a way station. Many are now headed south toward Tirana, the Albanian capital. Yet their goal remains to return home.
"I think we'll go back to Kosovo," said a 27-year-old farmer, Hamez Gjuraj. "But everything is burned down."
Pub Date: 3/31/99