Macedonia Relief Group Is ‘First, Last Resort’ for Kosovo Refugees

TETOVO, Macedonia —  Fatmir Tresi has been living in two worlds since ethnic Albanians from Kosovo started flooding across the border near here almost two months ago.

One is his ordinary, usually happy, sometimes mundane world as a second-grade teacher, husband and father. The other is the demanding, sometimes horrifying, always emotionally draining world as a lieutenant in a home-grown army of volunteer relief workers.

Unlike the numerous international aid agencies working in Macedonia, the relief organization known as El Hilal (New Moon) has no rich donors, no fancy vehicles and no well-paid professionals. But what it lacks in material wealth it makes up for with the passionate commitment and tireless devotion of people like Tresi.

Keeping the two worlds separate is often impossible for the teacher, red-eyed on a recent day from lack of sleep.

“When I go home or to school, I try to put the refugees out of my mind. But when I sit at the table to eat or lie down to sleep, I see scenes of the refugees in front of me. I go to school and look at my pupils, and they remind me of the agonized faces of refugee children,” Tresi said in a rare moment of reflection after weeks of nonstop activity.

El Hilal’s network of more than 500 volunteers reaches almost every community with an ethnic Albanian resident in Macedonia. Whether its volunteers are resettling refugees with local host families, supplying them with food or offering them information on the whereabouts of loved ones, they have played an invaluable role in helping Macedonia deal with an influx of people displaced from Kosovo, the separatist province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia.

“El Hilal is both the first and the last resort for refugees,” said Chris Hyslop, food coordinator for Mercy Corps International, which is providing food aid in Macedonia.

El Hilal’s success comes from the extraordinary willingness of the ethnic Albanian Macedonians to help their ethnic brothers and sisters from Kosovo, even when that means sacrificing their own bedrooms or the means of their livelihoods.

Without El Hilal’s efforts, particularly at a few crucial moments during the past month, there would have been a “disaster” in Macedonia, said Sasho Klekovski, executive director of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation.

The group’s role was strikingly apparent at the peak of the refugee influx early last month, when 65,000 ethnic Albanians languished for as long as a week in a muddy pit at the Blace border crossing. El Hilal volunteers went to a nearby village, borrowed 15 tractors and kept a steady stream of food, water, blankets and other necessities flowing into the desperate crowd. Scores of El Hilal volunteers worked round the clock.

As El Hilal acted, the relatively few international relief agencies present had their hands tied by Macedonian authorities and could play only a bit part in preventing a large-scale tragedy.

Long before the first tent was pitched for a refugee camp at Tetovo, about seven miles from the Kosovo border, El Hilal had mobilized Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority to host refugees in their homes.

“We know this is a really heavy burden for the local population,” said Arsim Zekolli, El Hilal’s spokesman and coordinator with international organizations, who took a leave from his paying job to volunteer full time at the peak of the crisis. “But we have a raging war a few miles from here. No one expects perfect living conditions.”

This responsibility would be eased if the country’s Macedonian Slavic majority pitched in, but only a handful of Macedonian families have taken in refugees.

“I could count them on the fingers of two hands,” said Klekovski, whose staff is predominantly Macedonian. The reasons are clear: “Most Macedonians fear that these people will stay a long time, bankrupt the [host] families and change the demographic balance of Macedonia.”

The members of Macedonia’s Albanian minority are predominantly Muslims. The majority Macedonians, who speak a Slavic language, are predominantly Orthodox Christians. There are few mixed marriages or other signs of blending of these two ethnic groups in Macedonia, which has a population of 2 million. Ethnic Albanians represent between 23% and 30% of that population, depending on the estimate.

To help sustain the refugees living with host families, El Hilal has served as a major pipeline for the delivery of hundreds of tons of foreign donations of food, blankets, personal hygiene products and other necessities.

With El Hilal’s help, even the poorest ethnic Albanian families have been able to open their doors to refugees.

Xhevahir Bajrami, 37, and his family of four live in the three finished rooms of a house that they cannot afford to complete in a new neighborhood of Tetovo. He is unemployed and receives cash assistance from the government. Nonetheless, he took in five refugees.

“Without El Hilal, we couldn’t help these people,” said Bajrami, standing in front of his house, which has cinder-block-sized red bricks exposed throughout and large openings where the second-floor windows should be.

Every day, the Bajramis and their refugee charges get bread from El Hilal distribution centers. Once a week, they get sugar, beans, oil, rice, canned meat, flour, laundry detergent, soap and other household staples.

El Hilal’s distribution centers are warehouses and stores on loan from local businesspeople. The centers are staffed by volunteers, many of whom have taken leaves from their jobs or volunteer evenings and weekends.

“If we don’t do this, who will?” asked Durmish Azemi, 45, who lent his massive warehouse in a predominantly ethnic Albanian neighborhood of Skopje, the Macedonian capital, to serve as El Hilal’s main depot for the duration of the crisis.

El Hilal officials diplomatically describe their function as supplementing the Red Cross distribution of food provided by the U.N. World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Corps International. But many refugees say their only source of aid has been El Hilal.

In addition to shelter and nourishment, El Hilal provides moral sustenance. Its volunteers distribute Albanian-language newspapers in the camps to give refugees some contact with the outside world and information about the war in their homeland.

El Hilal offices in several Macedonian cities also help refugees find relatives they lost in the chaotic forced exodus from Kosovo.

Early this month, volunteers had registered about 90,000 refugees and entered information about their whereabouts into the organization’s computer database.

While their work is hectic, the volunteers in the computer room clearly derived immense satisfaction from it.

“If I can’t carry a weapon and fight, at least I can do this for my people,” said Arber Ibrahimi, 19, a chemistry student who serviced computers in Pristina, Kosovo’s provincial capital, before he was driven out of his home by Serbian security forces during the mass forced exodus from the city in early April.

Although a growing number of El Hilal’s volunteers are refugees like Ibrahimi, the vast majority are Macedonian citizens.

Although every individual has a slightly different motivation for volunteering, most say they do it because of their concern for their fellow ethnic Albanians, out of a duty to God and because they receive personal fulfillment from their efforts.

“Only a person without any feelings could not help,” said Tresi, a member of the Tetovo branch’s 11-member board. “We are Islamic, and every Muslim has an obligation to help people in need. We know that God sees what we’re doing. This gives us strength and power.”

And even with expected grants from abroad and the promise of a few paid professionals, most of El Hilal’s efforts will still be fueled by people like Tresi, who does not expect any compensation--except, “perhaps, in another world.”

Many charities are accepting contributions to help refugees from Kosovo. The list may be found at https://www.

latimes.com/kosovoaid.