Pounding the beat in Glogovac

Canadian troops do much more than keep the peace in their sector of Kosovo

By MATTHEW FISHER

February 11, 2000

GLOGOVAC, Kosovo -- The taxi driver couldn't believe it. About 30 cm of snow had just fallen and here we were storming down a perfectly plowed back road at about 80 km/h in a battered, third-hand Mercedes-Benz.

"It never used to be like this after a blizzard in Kosovo. The roads often wouldn't get plowed at all. If they didn't, we'd have to wait until the snow melted before we could travel to a lot of places," the driver said.

"We have to thank the Canadian soldiers. They sure have made a big difference."

Performing such civic duties as clearing snow, building roads, helping to put roofs on houses and teaching land mine awareness to children was the responsibility of units from Alberta after NATO arrived in Kosovo last June. Since December, the work has been done by soldiers from Camp Petawawa on the upper Ottawa River.

But the Canadians in Kosovo have three primary responsibilities. Troopers from the Royal Canadian Dragoons provide intelligence for the British brigade the Canadians are attached to. Infantrymen from the Royal Canadian Regiment try to maintain the peace to the west of Kosovo's capital, Pristina. Sappers with the 23rd Field Squadron of the 2nd Combat Engineers Regiment are destroying Serbian land mines and unexploded cluster bombs dropped by NATO warplanes and proving that roads are mine- and bomb-free.

To the north of the Canadians are French troops. To the east and southeast are Brits, Swedes and Norwegians. To the south and west are Italians. To the northwest is a Russian motorized rifle company.

"It's interesting dealing with the Russians and I'll leave it at that," a Canadian officer with Duke's Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment, which is responsible for the Glogovac area, said, rolling his eyes. Canadian soldiers speak of occasional confrontations with the Russian peacekeepers, who often seem keen to celebrate the fact they are not posted to Chechnya by getting drunk.

ALBANIAN COMMUNITY

Duke's Company, the oldest infantry outfit in the Canadian army, sends out about four or five foot patrols a day from its base in Glogovac's municipal building and visits each of the surrounding villages at least twice a week in armoured personnel carriers. The town of 10,000 is unique in all of Kosovo in that it is entirely Albanian, the few Serbs having fled soon after Belgrade capitulated eight months ago.

Even with the Serbs all gone there were still plenty of guns around. The Canadians got to hear them every time there was a wedding or KLA funeral.

As Glogovac was predominantly Albanian during last year's one-sided civil war it received lots of attention from Serbian soldiers, policemen and paramilitaries. As only Albanians live here now Glogovac is usually quiet. Nonetheless, there have been three murders recently.

KLA HANGOUTS

Duke's Canadians keep a particularly close watch on five known Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) hangouts in town. These pizzerias and discos each attract a different crowd of regulars until the early hours every morning. That violence might yet erupt here is a given. Tellingly, not one person in the area took up a recent amnesty the Canadians offered to those turning in weapons.

"A lot of Albanians died here during the war and a lot of them hid out in the mountains," said Sgt. Robert Carriere of Sudbury, as he took me on a foot patrol with four other RCR soldiers.

Stopping in front of the local hospital, where a truck was stuck in deep snow and other vehicles had given up trying to get through, Carriere requested by radio that Canadian engineers come to clear a path to the hospital door. Entering the building, the sergeant confirmed it was still without heat, had little electricity and few drugs. Even the maternity ward was closed. Women were sent home immediately after giving birth.

Receiving word that another Canadian snowplow was on its way, Carriere and his patrol walked back out into the snow and ice.