The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts

Author:Sue Lloyd-Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471153938
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

STOP may have raided hundreds of bars and clubs but there were few prosecutions of bar owners as a result. Proper disciplinary procedures against international peacekeepers did not take place in Bosnia,3 nor in the next destination where they were called upon to help.

From Sarajevo, I go to Kosovo where the war broke out six years after the Bosnian War. In the capital, Pristina, every second car belongs to an international agency. The locals call the red and white cars belonging to the international police force ‘Coca-Cola cars’. At its height, there were 50,000 international peacekeepers in the country.4 The Americans inhabit a formidable base, called Bondsteel, complete with cinemas, pizza and hamburger outlets to help comfort the men who are allegedly confined to barracks during their leisure time. Nonetheless, there is an onsite clinic that offers treatment for STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). I ask the doctor on duty whether the incidence rate of STDs in Bondsteel is high? ‘We do have cases,’ he replies. ‘Which have been contracted here, while the men have been based here?’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says.

I leave Bondsteel and drive around the city. There are many more bars here in 2002 than I remember when I first came here ten years earlier during the war. It is not very original for a journalist to seek information from a taxi driver but they are, nonetheless, often a good source. As I sit in the back of his cab, I ask Bashkim which came first, the soldiers or the bars? ‘The bars started up after the troops came.’ And do you take soldiers to them? ‘About every second night,’ he replies. ‘Sometimes they are in uniform and sometimes they change their clothes in my car – from military to civilian. People around here don’t like it and think it is a bad example for our young people but soldiers will be soldiers and they won’t stay put if there’s a night club outside the barracks.’

Boys will be boys, again. When the peacekeepers first arrived in Kosovo, they were welcomed for providing much-needed protection for the local Albanian community against attacks by the ruling Serbs. But now locals are wondering whether they don’t need protecting from their protectors. Already, the city of Pristina has all the trappings of a well-worn sex-trafficking industry with the clubs, massage parlours and secret houses with girls imprisoned in attic rooms.

Concerned NGOs help the girls who flee from such places and set up shelters where they can find refuge. In one of these shelters, I meet a fourteen-year-old girl. At first glance Luljeta looks like any other teenager, dressed in jeans, trainers and a Minnie Mouse sweatshirt. She is sitting at a table in the kitchen beside a middle-aged woman who is encouraging her to draw. Luljeta is frowning in concentration as she chooses from an array of coloured pencils. I look at her pictures. The first shows a little girl beside a car, then a naked little girl and the third shows the same girl, scarcely visible, with men beside her and on top of her.

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