Albanians accuse Serbs of waging demographic war, flock to secret birth clinics.

Abstract

Even giving birth has become a political issue in the tense Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Although ethnic Albanians in the province outnumber Serbs by nearly 10-to-1, they live 2nd-class lives. One ethnic Albanian midwife who lives near the capital of Pristina says that 1500 babies have been born in her spare room during the past 20 months to women who preferred to take risks rather than go to Serb-run clinics. Women who come to the midwife--she did not want her name used or even the name of her town mentioned--give birth on a narrow cot covered with 2 soiled plastic sheets. They clench their teeth to stifle the pain--the midwife saves her meager supply of anesthetic for severe cases only. Next to the cot is a small cradle, but otherwise there is no sign that the room with its sofas and cabinets is a maternity clinic. Albanians have a birth rate of 34/1000 residents--Europe's highest. In Kosovo, about 200,000 Serbs are outnumbered by 1.8 million albanians, in the land Serbia cherishes as the cradle of it civilization. The Serbs say they are being swamped by Albanians, and in the past 10 years, waves of Serbs have left Kosovo, Yugoslavia's poorest province. At least 2000 have left in the past 12 months. But ethnic Albanians say it is the Serbs who practice demographic warfare. After a period of unrest in mid-1990. Serbian forces clamped down on an Albanian independence drive. Albanian doctors and nurses were fired. The gynecological clinic in Pristina lost some top specialists. "They did it to change the demographic map of Kosovo--to discourage Albanian births," said Dr. Flora Doko, president of the health committee of the Democratic League--the main Albanian opposition party, which has formed a government-in-exile and seeks independence for the province. Unconfirmed reports of Albanian babies being positioned in hospitals further inflamed the atmosphere in the suspicious society. There is no law discriminating against Albanians in medical care, but they claim unofficial laws make them unwelcome. Momcilo Trajkovic, a member of the Serbian parliament, said Albanians were welcome in hospitals and those who chose to give birth at home did so out of nationalism. "Not everybody boycotts the hospitals," he said. "The sick don't think of nationhood." But Albanians clearly feel a need for secret clinics. The midwife displayed her records, painstakingly handwritten in an old ledger. "If you could see some of my cases, you would have cried," she said. One woman ran away from a hospital when she discovered there were no Albanian doctors there and came to Dr. Doko for help. "I said "go to hospital" and she said "I don't want to go, I want to die in you hands," Dr. Doko remembers. THe woman had a son, delivered safely by Caesarean.