Chris Hedges Reports from Kosovo.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 23, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 062301np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: From Kosovo
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

After covering the war in Bosnia, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges is now in Kosovo where a rebel army of farmers and students is fighting for independence from Serbia.

This war is in some ways a continuation of the Balkan war that was ended by the Dayton accords, and it threatens to spread. Earlier today, we called Chris Hedges in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. He spoke to us from the Hotel Grand, which he says has the only functioning phones in the city.

The rebels in Kosovo are ethnic Albanians who represent the overwhelming majority of the population. Kosovo is ruled by the Serb government which has cracked down on ethnic Albanians with virtual martial law since 1989. Kosovo, a province of Serbia, is about the size of Maryland and it borders Albania and Macedonia.

I asked Chris Hedges to describe the fighting there.

CHRIS HEDGES, NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: Well, we were out yesterday all day, and we ran into a lot of fighting. There's almost constant skirmishing between police who have set up checkpoints along roads to try and keep them clear. When we were coming back yesterday afternoon, we were stopped because the rebels had fired grenades at a police position and a police officer had been wounded.

We were actually trying to make our way to a Serb village that is pretty much surrounded by the ethnic Albanian separatists. And on the way up there, on the direct route, going from Pristina, we ran into a roadblock set up by the police. A police officer had been killed there the other day, and they told us that beyond the roadblock, the rebels had set up earthen barricades. We had to drive all the way around.

So there's constant -- just anecdotally -- I mean, everytime you go out, there's just -- there's the constant sound of gunfire, constant sound of shelling, and constant reports of clashes which leave wounded and dead. It's quite a nasty little war out there now.

GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about what this war is about. Ethnic Albanians make up about 90 percent of the population in Kosovo. What -- what -- in what ways are they being put down by the Serb government?

HEDGES: At the end of the '90s -- excuse me, the end of the '80s, there -- along with the growing Serb nationalist movement which brought Slobodan Milosevic to power, there were parallel nationalist movements among the Croats, among the Muslims, and among the Albanians. And the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, while a Serbian province, had enjoyed a degree of autonomy given to them by Tito's government in 1974.

They had run their own police. They had run their own schools. Milosevic revoked this and he revoked it in the face of a growing movement by the ethnic Albanians here for independence, fearing that Kosovo would secede, he clamped down.

Now interestingly enough, the response of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo was very different from the response, for instance, of the Croats or the Muslims. They decided to mount a peaceful resistance, and they did this led by the pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, a former university professor. They boycotted all state institutions. People withdrew from state jobs. They set up a parallel sort of shadow government. They ran their own schools in Albanian. They collected their own taxes.

And this lasted really up until this spring. I think that you can sort of mark the death of this movement from the Dayton Peace Accords. The Albanian leadership, who felt that they had responded to Serbian repression in a very civilized manner, were really stunned when the Dayton Peace Agreement was hammered out and they were ignored.

I really mark that as the moment of the decline of the peaceful resistance movement. The Kosovo Liberation Army, while only numbering a few hundred, began certainly to widen its support. At that time, it -- you know, it would do a few actions a month and shoot a policeman here and attack a police station there.

They did begin to step up their activities quite a bit by the end of last year and early this year. There was actually an attack last year in September where they managed to strike in the same day 10 police stations and walk away with several hundred weapons. This came as quite a shock to Belgrade.

You had a situation in the central part of the province, in an area of the Dreniza (ph), where in outlying villages, Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were now parading in uniform, wandering around in groups of half dozen or a dozen.

And so they moved in in March to essentially stomp them out. And that is what triggered this current revolt -- those attacks on Prekas (ph) and other villages left over 80 dead, most of them were women, children and elderly; very few of them were fighting-age men. And it just seemed to be the straw that sort of broke everything here, and launched the province into rebellion.

GROSS: Are a lot of people fleeing?

HEDGES: Well, you have had -- we've had two large rounds of displacement. The first was in March, when the Serb special police units went into the central Dreniza region and tried to clean out what at that time was a relatively small guerrilla group of the Kosovo Liberation Army, probably numbering just a few hundred.

By launching this attack, they displaced, oh, maybe 10- or 20,000 people. They destroyed several villages. They also essentially triggered a province-wide revolt among the ethnic Albanians who make up about 90 percent of the 2 million people who live here. A lot of weapons started coming across the border from Albania. A lot of armed fighters, many of them from the ethnic Albanian diaspora in Europe, which numbers well over 600,000.

And so earlier this month, the Serb military and the special police, now numbering about 50,000, moved into the border area to try and create a cordon sanitaire. They did this by shelling villages and burning them. And they drove out probably anywhere between 60- and 80,000 people. There is still pretty heavy fighting in that area, which is where we were yesterday and the day before.

And there is -- continues to be a constant sort of stream of people who, as the fighting spreads, are fleeing. So at this point, we're talking probably over 100,000 people.

GROSS: Chris, for people who don't know the expression "cordon sanitaire."

HEDGES: It's a buffer zone -- a depopulated buffer zone in which -- it gives the Serbs -- Serb military sort of license to shoot at anything that moves because they've cleaned it of civilians. And it's a pretty standard counter-insurgency tactic. For instance, if you look along the Turkish border with Syria and Iraq, where over the border there are pockets of Kurdish separatists, they have done this -- destroyed many villages and sort of cleaned up the area.

It -- it is an effective tactic. The problem, of course, is that, you know, to try and solve political problems with military means never works in the end because there is just sort of an unlimited supply of young men, certainly around here, ready to fight.

GROSS: Is this a form of ethnic cleansing?

HEDGES: Well, I've not used that term. And you know, I've debated it with my editors. Is it -- it -- ethnic cleansing is, as I understand it, is really an effort to drive people out of a zone and turn that zone over to an opposing ethnic group or allow a minority or a majority group that's within the zone to live there without having to live with another ethnic group.

I'm not sure that that's where we are yet. The depopulation of the zone in Dreniza and the depopulation of the border zone appears to me to be more of an effort to deny this growing rebel army support and succor. And I think that's the stage we're at now. I just think -- I don't see evidence that they're -- the Serbs are trying to depopulate Kosovo, which would be a pretty difficult task anyway.

GROSS: Chris, are a lot of the Albanians Muslims?

HEDGES: Most of them are Muslims. There are actually Christian Albanians -- Catholic Albanians. And there are even Orthodox Albanians. So, it's -- it is not an exclusively Muslim movement.

GROSS: But I'm wondering if the fact that many of them are Muslims is contributing to the Serbian antipathy toward them?

HEDGES: Yes, I think that is -- you know, they -- unlike, you know, this conflict is different from Bosnia and Croatia because they do speak another language. They speak Albanian. And the other -- the new generation doesn't speak Serbo-Croatian. So there's actually more distance between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians than there were between the Croats and the Muslims.

GROSS: Just -- just to clarify something. You know, everybody's writing -- describing other people as "ethnic Albanians." What do we mean by "ethnic Albanians?"

HEDGES: Well, only that they're not Albanian citizens.

GROSS: OK.

HEDGES: They -- you know, we'd have to use the same term in Bosnia when we described Croats or Serbs. We called them ethnic Serbs because technically they're citizens of Bosnia rather than citizens of Serbia.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. He's joining us from Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Chris Hedges is joining us. He's reporting from Kosovo now for the New York Times.

When -- when Milosevic agreed to end the war in the former Yugoslavia, my understanding was that he was willing to negotiate and willing to end the war because it was just too difficult for him. You know, there were sanctions against Serbia. Serbia was doing terribly economically. It was hard for him to finance the war any longer and his own people were suffering and becoming very impatient with the war.

So how can he now launch another war on another -- in other territory?

HEDGES: Well, the situation in Bosnia was different. That was sort of war by proxy. And the, you know, the Bosnians had a lot of support internationally that the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo do not have. Bosnia was recognized by the international community as a unified country. You had (Unintelligible)-Four, the UN peacekeeping force deployed in Bosnia.

And you know, what finally broke the Serbs were two weeks of NATO bombing in the fall of 1995 -- a bomb -- an extensive bombing campaign that destroyed the Bosnian-Serb military; destroyed their communications facilities, slammed into their artillery positions, warehouses, barracks, ammo dumps -- everything. And it was -- you know, those two weeks are really what brought Milosevic to the negotiating table.

Here, the ethnic Albanians are on their own. Nobody other than Tirana off-handedly and not even directly, is calling for an independent state in Kosovo. And the Western alliance, while pushing Milosevic to withdraw troops from here and end the crackdown, also say that any solution that's worked out has to see Kosovo remain an integral part of Serbia. And the plan that's held out is reestablishing the autonomy that it had in 1974 -- from 1974 until Milosevic revoked it. I think it was 1990.

GROSS: What are the odds that this will kind of grow into a larger war?

HEDGES: It already has grown into a larger war at a pace that those of us who've been covering it did not expect. The rebels control about 40 percent of the province. They have blocked several main roads. The scale of the fighting is stunning. It's -- you know, I've covered other guerrilla conflicts, and usually you can drive down a road for several hours and not hear much. Here, there's just the constant sound of automatic fire; constant sound of shelling; constant sound of mortars.

You know, it's -- it's -- you don't have to drive very far. And the scale of the sort of skirmishing is staggering.

As long as weapons in the quantity in which they've been coming in from Albania continue to come in, this conflict is going to spread. And as long as the Serbs believe that they can essentially stomp this out militarily, I think the fury of the Albanians will only grow. And that -- that fury is really what has ignited this whole conflict.

GROSS: Do you think that this conflict now in Kosovo will spread to other countries?

HEDGES: It can. I'm -- you know, Albania already is involved. All of northern Albania, which to be fair to Tirana, they do not control. Albanian, you know, after the sort of meltdown last year and looting and chaos, has become a country of feifdoms run by warlords. And the north of the country is run by the former president Sali Berisha, who is very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

You know, journalists -- I just was there. I came -- I left about a week ago. And we were watching groups of 200 uniformed Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, along with 20 or 30 pack horses loaded with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition boxes, cross nightly over these -- this very rugged and quite beautiful mountain terrain, into Kosovo.

So, the quantity of weapons and the numbers of people coming in here to fight -- they're all fairly inexperienced and a lot of them are volunteers, but nevertheless they're coming in armed -- means that, yeah, I think the conflict has certainly been growing and is continuing to grow.

GROSS: Possibly spreading to Macedonia, Greece?

HEDGES: Well, it's -- I mean, in essence, it's already spread to Albania because it's the sanctuary. It's become the sanctuary and the supply and logistics center for the rebel movement. How long can the Serbs allow that to continue? They have planted mines along the border. The border is 75 miles long. And there have been reports even of sort of small commando groups, going in and trying to set up sniper positions and pick off rebels who are coming in.

But if the -- this buffer zone that they have set up doesn't manage to stop the fighting, and it has not so far, I wonder if, you know, the military leadership in Belgrade won't think that the next step is to cross the border and try and strike at rebel positions in northern Albania.

This is certainly, of course, you know, what the Turks have done repeatedly to -- in fighting the Kurdish separatists. They have made several border incursions, large-scale border incursions, into northern Iraq to try and hunt out PKK camps. And I would not be surprised to eventually see that here.

The problem with Macedonia is a little different. You have in Macedonia -- in western Macedonia, a very restive and unhappy ethnic Albanian community that is contiguous to the border of Kosovo. And they are increasingly radicalized by the militant movement here, especially because before the breakdown of Yugoslavia, there were very close links between Kosovo and the Albanian -- ethnic Albanian community in Macedonia.

For instance, all of the people in Macedonia who are ethnic Albanians and wanted to be educated in Albanian, studied in Pristina. The leadership -- certainly the radical leadership of the ethnic Albanian community in Macedonia spent years and years -- decades, literally -- in Pristina. And when I have interviewed Kosovo Liberation Army commanders, they have told me that they have ethnic Albanians from Macedonia in the leadership and they make no distinction in terms of borders.

So you have the -- the sort of ideological contagion that's spreading, coupled with the fact that, you know, as the -- as the Serbs concentrate militarily on trying to close the border with northern Albania to prevent the influx of fighters and weapons, this long border with Macedonia becomes more attractive as a smuggling route.

GROSS: Chris, yesterday in the New York Times, you wrote about how -- how both sides -- the Yugoslav Republic and the rebels in Kosovo -- have this false sense that they can win. What is the false sense you see the rebels as having?

HEDGES: The rebels, I think because of the lack of military training and because of this sort of naive and touching devotion to defending their little villages and farms, remain in fixed positions. And this makes them very easy targets. They may be able to sit in these positions for a few weeks, but given the firepower at the disposal of the Serbs -- and we're talking tanks, attack helicopters, huge 155 howitzers -- really big, heavy stuff -- it is -- as long as they're stationary, they're targets.

And if -- if Milosevic decides to unleash his forces in another round of -- another sweep, I think a lot of these people will die. I think in the long run, this will make the problem worse because it will only further polarize sides and inflame passions.

It will force the rebels to change their strategy, to move in more fluid and smaller groups, and I think begin the sort of -- I hesitate to use the word "terrorist" -- but attacks within the city, Pristina itself. You know, tossing grenades through windows from a motor bike and that kind of stuff we see in Algeria.

That's the problem at the moment with the ethnic Albanians.

GROSS: But what about the Serb leadership? Do you think it's deluding itself about the ability -- yeah.

HEDGES: ... the Serbs think that, you know, this problem can be solved militarily. And they don't understand -- you know, they're -- they are very isolated from and unrealistic about the sort of mood and sense within the Albanian community. I think that the whole passive resistance movement that -- or civic resistance movement that was mounted here, lulled the Serbs into sort of stereotyping the Albanians as passive.

And I look at this very much as a similar situation to the Intifada in Israel. You have the 1967 generation of Palestinians who -- and this of course, when Israel annexed the West Bank -- who were very much cowed by the Israeli military, but their children were not. And the young Albanians today have an anger and a bitterness and a hatred that I find very similar to the young Palestinians. And it's a big mistake to think that they have the same outlook as their fathers and mothers. They don't.

GROSS: Chris Hedges -- he's in Kosovo where he's covering the war for the New York Times. Our conversation was recorded earlier today. We'll hear more of it in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with more of our interview with Chris Hedges. We called him earlier today in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo where he's covering the war for the New York Times.

Kosovo is a province of Serbia. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are fighting Serb-led forces trying to break away and form their own independent state.

Why is Kosovo so important to the Serbs? Why won't they let the rebels secede from Serbia?

HEDGES: Well, the province is -- you know, Slobodan Milosevic's government is built -- its ideological base is nationalist. Milosevic ironically began his political rise in Kosovo. He came down as a communist bureaucrat and was -- found a very angry Serb community that felt that the communist government was too partial towards the Albanians and that Serbs were gradually being pushed out of Kosovo.

Kosovo, of course, is the historical heartland of the Serb Orthodox Church. It has many of its oldest and most magnificent churches and monasteries. Here, 600 years ago, the Turks defeated the Serbs and began the Ottoman rule in the Balkans at the Field of Blackbirds in Kosovo -- at Kosovo Poye (ph). And that is, you know, like the Shi'ites that -- the Serbs celebrate this defeat every year. It's the touchstone of their faith.

So, it has tremendous symbolic significance. And you know, with the death of communism, Milosevic latched onto all of this and rode it to power. So the Serbs themselves as they define themselves as a nation, look to Kosovo. It's not a place they necessarily visit, but they look to it as -- as a symbol of their origins.

GROSS: Are there more economic reasons, too? Are there economic things Serbia has at stake in Kosovo?

HEDGES: There are. There is a huge mine in Trepsha (ph), which you know, there are various estimates -- $2-3 billion. But mining is quite big here. And there is the huge -- there's a huge thermo-nuclear -- not nuclear -- a thermo -- it's actually coal-heated, but a huge thermo plant that provides power for all of Kosovo and I think part of Montenegro. So there are, you know, these sort of gigantic communist-era state-run factories and facilities that Belgrade would not want to give up.

GROSS: Is Kosovo a largely rural area? Is it mostly like small villages?

HEDGES: It's -- Pristina's a huge place -- 3- or 400,000 people, and it looks like Gaza: concrete hovels and huge potholes and horse carts and tremendous poverty.

The rest of the province is primarily rural, with farms and actually some very pretty countryside.

GROSS: Are most of the rebels people who aren't trained fighters?

HEDGES: That's the problem. Most of them did not do their military service in the Yugoslav Army, and they really have had no experience with war at all. I know that the leadership of the Kosovo Liberation Army is trying to recruit Albanian -- ethnic Albanians who were in the old Yugoslav Army to join the fight. There have been consistent reports that Muslim fighters from Chechnya and other places have come to offer their services. I don't believe that anyone's confirmed that.

However, when I traveled into northern Albania -- up to take a ferry for two hours down the river -- and we had five or six Mujahadin (ph) with long beards and cotton baggy pants and that sort of thousand-mile stare that we got used to in Bosnia. Where they were from, what country they were from -- I don't know, but I don't think they were from Kosovo.

GROSS: So are most of the rebels farmers and students?

HEDGES: Most of the rebels are farmers. You know, a lot of people -- farmers here just picked up a gun after this whole thing happened, and they call themselves members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, but I just think everybody's sort of become a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army. A lot of them are students or people who were washing dishes in Germany or Switzerland beforehand.

You know, it really runs the gamut. I mean, we've been out there and seen men well into their 60s who were carrying guns.

GROSS: How many rebel fighters would you estimate there are now?

HEDGES: The estimate that's handed out by Western military observers is about 3,000.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

HEDGES: I think it's pretty hard to tell. You go into any village that the rebels have and every male is carrying a gun. How many of them are, you know, would you classify as, you know, sort of militia or people just protecting their houses? How many of them are guerrillas? It's hard to say, but I think it's safe to say that it's certainly in the thousands at this point.

GROSS: New York Times reporter Chris Hedges is joining us by phone from Kosovo where he's been covering the fighting between Albanian ethnic rebels who want to secede from Serbia, and the Serbs who are trying to prevent that from happening.

You covered the war in the former Yugoslavia; the war in Bosnia. Do you feel like you're seeing another cycle of the same war playing out now?

HEDGES: Yes, and you're seeing many of the same mistakes, not only by the participants in the war themselves, but by the international community. This was -- you know, the red lights in Kosovo have been flashing for over a decade.

It was unrealistic to expect the ethnic Albanians to sit here and take mistreatment by the Serbs for years and years and never respond. And it is again, you know, another sort of tragic example of how we've failed to practice the kind of preventive intervention or preventive diplomacy that could have stopped this conflict.

GROSS: Like what? What do you think we could have done?

HEDGES: Well, I think you -- you know, first of all, you know, the Dayton -- the architects of Dayton certainly had their hands full with Bosnia and perhaps it was unrealistic to consider them to -- or have them consider the issue of Kosovo. But Kosovo should have been higher on the list of priorities of the international community. I mean, Milosevic was virtually rehabilitated after Dayton and I think that was a mistake.

We also have the same threats of force by NATO, but you know, increasing reports are coming out that although there's been very hard talk by the Secretary of State and others, there is deep reluctance within the alliance to actually do anything in Kosovo. And if you look back at the early years of the Bosnian war, there were often very harsh statements made by President Clinton and others, yet there was just a failure to follow through.

And the -- the regime in Belgrade really understands just one language, and nobody here's speaking it yet. And until they do, this conflict is only going to grow.

GROSS: When you run into rebel fighters, do you feel like saying to them: you have no idea what you're getting yourselves into here?

HEDGES: Yes.

LAUGHTER

Especially these poor farmers who, you know, they've sent their families packing off to Albania and they're all sitting behind an earthen barricade with an old AK-47. You know, there is a very sad sort of naivete about the whole movement. And they're going to pay a very heavy price for this.

I think it was heartbreaking for me to watch these young idealistic kids, really, show up from Germany and Switzerland -- some of whom left university, all of whom had left their families; many of whom spoke German better than they spoke Albanian; and essentially being given a uniform and a gun and sent over a mountain with very little or no preparation.

These people just don't last long. I mean, it -- you -- this is a nasty war that -- the Yugoslav Army is fairly well trained; the special police units, especially the commando units, are -- have a lot of experience. A lot of them fought in Bosnia. And you know, I think there could be quite a horrible round of bloodletting.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. He's joining us from Kosovo. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

My guest is New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. He's joining us form Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

I wonder what it's been like for you to witness the whole cycle of the war in Bosnia and to now be in Kosovo where a very similar thing is beginning. Do you feel like you've kind of seen all this happen and now you're seeing it repeat itself, but with different variations?

HEDGES: Yes, very much. And of course, the big advantage to that is that you understand it.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

HEDGES: We were out in -- my photographer and I were out in a Serb village yesterday that's pretty much surrounded by the Albanians. And there are Albanians -- ethnic Albanians on hilltops taking potshots at them. And these Serbs have dug four big trenches around their village and gotten out all their rifles and are trying to hold the Albanians off. All of the small hamlets, Serb hamlets and farms around them have been taken by the rebels.

For the last three days, most of them have not been able to go in and out on the road because of ambushes. And the noose is sort of slowly tightening. We -- while we were there, we went to a funeral for a 17-year-old boy who'd been shot by the -- by the rebels. And you saw among the Serbs this horrible kind of anger.

You know, there has been an increase in attacks against Serb civilians by the rebels. There has been an increase in attacks against Serb villages, depopulation of Serb villages. There are dozens of families that have been driven from their homes and are now in a town called Klina (ph) in this area that we were.

And this I found extremely dangerous, and is what caused the war in Bosnia to be so savage.

GROSS: This feeding of hatreds and stereotypes?

HEDGES: Well, this involvement of civilians. Once you begin attacks against civilians -- and up until now, we haven't had attacks by the Serb special police and military. Many of these attacks have been against civilians, but they've been conducted by a trained and unified military force.

Now, because of the attacks -- the new attacks launched by the guerrillas against Serb civilians who live in areas that the guerrillas want to control, they're building these ad-hoc militias. And these are extremely dangerous because there's no control at all.

And as, you know, a Serb kid gets killed, they are so angry and they are looking for revenge that they tend to turn on innocent Albanians. And this thing just spirals so quickly out of control. And this is what the whole war in Bosnia became. It became a war against civilians of an opposing ethnic group, in essence. And I worry, especially after what I saw yesterday, that we're moving in the same direction.

GROSS: You know, it's funny. I mean, obviously your job is to report on what you see and not to tell people what to do, but it must be just so frustrating to you to see this and just stand by and watch this worst-case scenario begin to play out.

HEDGES: Yes, it is and you know -- sometimes you can sort of sit down and have a conversation and I've had many with the rebels and others, but you know, they don't -- they don't listen. I mean, they don't -- I think people learn from their own experience, but not from the experience of others, I guess.

GROSS: What about you? Do you feel like you've had enough after, you know, covering Bosnia for -- how many years?

HEDGES: Three.

GROSS: Yeah, and now you're covering a new variation on the same war. Are...

HEDGES: I've had enough.

LAUGHTER

I'm leaving. End of July, I'm leaving...

GROSS: You are.

HEDGES: Niemann (ph) Fellowship at Harvard.

GROSS: Oh wow, great.

HEDGES: I've -- it's also just the danger. It's very dangerous out there. We had a Dutch TV crew got 17 bullets in their hard car yesterday. And I mean, one of the things that haunts me doing this is the realization that as this intensifies, as in Bosnia, there will be journalists who will die here.

GROSS: What are you doing to try to stay safe while you cover the war?

HEDGES: I drive a armored car and I carry a flak jacket. And that's the luxury of, you know, journalists who work for large news organizations. People who come in here as freelance -- you know, a hard car like that costs over $100,000. And to rent it costs between $500 and $700 a day. And you can't do that if you're freelance. So you have a lot of these -- that doesn't mean that you can't get hurt, but you're much safer than a lot of these freelancers who come in here and go out in soft -- those soft cars.

And it was -- we saw a lot of them, you know, a lot of them got killed in Sarajevo 'cause of course in Sarajevo working for the New York Times I also had a hard car.

GROSS: Who are you traveling with? You traveling alone or with other journalists?

HEDGES: I travel with a photographer.

GROSS: What about a translator?

HEDGES: Sometimes. Sometimes it's too dangerous. We went into...

GROSS: Too dangerous for the translator?

HEDGES: Yes, because if you travel with an Albanian translator sometimes it can be risky, to get into Serb areas. And if you travel with a Serb translator, it can be risky to get into areas controlled by the Albanians.

We -- most of the people speak German or French. Most -- in most of the towns, because of the diaspora, you find people who speak German or French. And when we were in Eunich (ph) the other day, we just -- we didn't go in with a translator. We just thought it was too risky.

Most days, yes we have -- we have to work of course with -- you know, we have to have two translators for -- we had a Serb with us in the Serb community we were in yesterday, and then when we go into Albanian areas, we carry an Albanian-speaking translator. But there are moments when we just don't carry a translator at all.

GROSS: Is there some kind of like press symbol on your car?

HEDGES: Yes, we all put tape that says "TV" on the car, on the assumption that's sort of...

LAUGHTER

... recognizable.

GROSS: Another blow for the print media.

HEDGES: Yes, I know. I know.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Is it respected?

HEDGES: Sometimes they want to find our cameras, you know, and all we have are sort of notebooks and Nikons. So...

GROSS: Well, do they accuse you of lying then?

HEDGES: No, no. I mean, we sort of explain that it's a little hard to write -- writing "New York Times" on the side of the car would sort of just I think just baffle everybody.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Do they respect you as press, on both sides?

HEDGES: Yes. I've found it better than Bosnia in that sense. You know, Bosnia, you -- there was much less authority among the Bosnian-Serb military and the Bosnian-Serb police, they tended to drink quite a bit. And I will say that up until now, there -- we've had some nasty moments.

Police have ripped up press credentials. Police have -- we drove by a military convoy the other day and they stopped the convoy and the guy -- officer leading the lead truck got out and flipped us the finger as we went by.

But that's all relatively benign compared to what we went through in Bosnia. So I would say that in that sense, things are better in -- the Bosnian-Serbs could get pretty nasty with press.

GROSS: What's the story that you're following today? As we record this interview, it's mid- to late-afternoon in Kosovo where you are.

HEDGES: I'm writing the story I did yesterday, which is the story of these Serb self-defense militias that have been formed in Serb towns to fight off the growing attacks by the guerrillas. And the anger within the Serb community over these killings of Serb civilians, and how this kind of tit-for-tat killings of Albanian civilians and Serb civilians will give a new color to the war; that perhaps will make it much more savage and much bloodier.

GROSS: Chris, you are such a veteran now of war reporting. I'm wondering if there's a lot of people who aren't experienced as you are who come to you for help and suggestions and advice?

HEDGES: Yeah, I'm an old man now, you know.

LAUGHTER

This is a young man's job and most of the kids who show up here are in their 20s. I certainly learned, you know, when I covered the war in El Salvador. A lot of these guys had been in Vietnam and when I was a kid, we were in awe of them. And I don't suspect it's the same here, but yeah, I mean, you know, it -- it -- it's never easy to go through this stuff, but it's a little easier when you're familiar with it; when you know the sound of outgoing fire, incoming fire, and you know, you know that if a road hasn't had traffic, it's not a good idea to go down it until, you know, a truck has run through ahead of you, because of mines. And you know, what to do when a mortar round comes in, and all of that stuff's useful information that we certainly do our best to share.

You know, a lot of times, it's these young gung-ho reporters who come down and get into situations which they're unprepared for, and who die.

GROSS: If instead of fighting, the people of Kosovo decided, well, let's just kind of go along with the Serb plan -- what would their lives be like?

HEDGES: Well, you know, Serbia has run this place like a colonial outpost. The 150,000 Serbs here occupy all the jobs. They run the place, so the police is a Serbian police; the military is a Serbian military. And it very much reminds me of, you know, it -- you see the sort of arrogance and insensitivity of a colonial power.

One has to remember, too, that the Serb nationalist movement is in essence a racist movement, and it is a movement that denigrates other ethnic groups. So there is a terrible kind of chauvinism that's practiced by many, many Serbs towards the ethnic Albanians who live here.

GROSS: Well, I wish you really good luck in Kosovo. And I want to thank you very much for telling us what you've been seeing there and for explaining the situation. Really appreciate it.

HEDGES: Not at all. Thank you.

GROSS: Chris Hedges spoke to us from Kosovo where he's covering the war for the New York Times. Our conversation was recorded earlier today.

Coming up, a new Miles Davis box set.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Chris Hedges
High: New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges. He's been reporting from the Serbian province of Kosovo, where rebels are battling for independence from the Yugoslavian republic.
Spec: Europe; Kosovo; Albania; Serbia; Violence; Military; Politics; Government; NATO
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: From Kosovo
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 23, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 062301np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Miles Davis Box Set
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:55

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says that jazz may never have been so obsessed with its own past as it is now. One sign is that the vast majority of rich and exploratory records coming out are reissues, especially Miles Davis reissues.

A new box set collects studio recordings by Miles' 1960s quintet, with saxophonist Wayne Shorter (ph). Kevin says like all such boxes, it's expensive, but you don't need to shell out big bucks to sample this music.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, MILES DAVIS AND QUINTET PERFORMING)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, JAZZ CRITIC: To this day, no rhythm section sounds like the one Miles Davis had in the mid-1960s. Pianist Herbie Hancock (ph), bassist Ron Carter (ph), and drummer Tony Williams (ph) orbited around each other more than they meshed together. But mostly thanks to the drummer, they swung like crazy anyway.

When tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter joined them in 1964, they made up a classic quintet that lasted four years. It's one of the great groups in jazz history, period.

Now, the inevitable six-CD box of all their studio sides is out. It has 13 new alternate or rehearsal takes, and the sound is a bit dryer and clearer than on previous issues. And it's for sure nice to have all this stuff in one place.

But if your pockets aren't ballooning with cash, please note the quintet's original albums are already on affordable single CDs. For an introduction to this band, I'd pick up a copy of the album "Miles Smiles" or "Nefertiti" (ph). They were recorded in 1965 and '67, but still sound amazingly fresh. All the music in this segment can be found on those records.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "FOOTPRINTS")

That's Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" from the album Miles Smiles. Footprints has the form of the blues, but doesn't sound like the blues. That was typical of Shorter's composing style, which set the band's tone. By various means, Shorter and company loosened the connection between a piece's theme and the improvisations on it, stretching or contracting the form during solos, for example.

He designed his compositions so the players could interpret some details in different ways. These musicians listened to each other so closely and often played so sparingly, the results sounded open, rather than chaotic.

As horn players, Shorter and Miles Davis already chose their notes with care. Now, bass and piano followed suit. Since it wasn't always clear what a tune's underlying chords might be, Herbie Hancock took to playing piano solos with one hand, as if he, too, was a horn player -- when he didn't simply vanish outright.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, MILES DAVIS QUINTET PERFORMING)

Everyone else stepping back and playing less gave the energetic Tony Williams uncommon autonomy for a drummer. Drums became the backbone of many arrangements, leaving Williams free to steer the music all sorts of ways -- all by himself.

He'd alter tempos or density or dynamics as a piece was unfolding, making the compositions and arrangements that much more volatile. The tune might end sounding very different from the way it began, or he'd boil over while the other musicians remained impassive, so the band sounded aloof and explosive at the same time, as on Wayne Shorter's Nefertiti.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "NEFERTITI")

What all these innovations gave rise to was excellent jazz that threw out a lot of the conventions of what good jazz was. A consistent tempo, a consistent mood, strict observance of the form -- these and other usual goals went out the window as the band reinvented every piece in performance.

Miles Davis, never content to leave well enough alone, by the end of 1967 began incorporating electric instruments and pop elements into the blend. His fluid acoustic concept evolved into his slippery electric music of the '70s, which used to have a bad reputation, but now has a good one.

His '60s band was always widely admired, though, and thanks to Wynton Marsalis, directly inspired the whole young lions jazz revival of the 1980s. But Marsalis like other admirers recreated some of the Davis Quintet's mannerisms, without digging into the complex collective improvising that gave rise to it.

Thirty years on, jazz still hasn't caught up with the Miles Davis '60s quintet. It's riskier and more inventive than most anything in jazz these days, and by no coincidence, it's way better, too.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead is the author of the new book "New Dutch Swing," which is published by Billboard Books. We'll talk with him about it soon.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Kevin Whitehead; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: A new box set of Miles Davis recordings has been issued. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a review.
Spec: Music Industry; History; Miles Davis
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Miles Davis Box Set
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.