May 24 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

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As bombs exploded around Pristina, Kosovo, in NATO's largest military action since its inception, Anton Krasniqi, who pastors the first Albanian Pentecostal church in Pristina, his wife, and two children spent five harrowing nights hiding in their home.

"We could see Serbian policemen breaking into shops and houses around our home in the center, looting and destroying," Krasniqi told CT. "We could not sleep for fear that they would come to get us as well."

NATO's air campaign against Serbia began March 24 after Serbia rejected peace initiatives that would have stationed NATO troops in the Kosovo province to deter the ethnic cleansing of its 1.8 million people who are mostly ethnic Albanians and Muslim. But after the bombing started, Serbian police and soldiers forced more than 500,000 people from the country. An estimated additional 400,000 have fled their Kosovo homes but remain within the province's borders in an area that long has been deeply divided by religion and nationalism (CT, Feb. 8, 1999, p. 60).

"I do not think that we will ever be able to live together with the Serbs again," Krasniqi says. "NATO must finish the job now. My people do not flee because of NATO bombs, but because of the Serbian forces killing and looting."

In Kosovo, there are fewer than 300 evangelicals in about seven churches, the largest of which has 60 members. The Krasniqi family escaped to an evangelical church in Skopje, Macedonia, before Easter. A neighbor who is a Pristina customs officer drove them to safety through Serbian checkpoints. Kraniqi hopes his family will be allowed to travel to Germany, where his sister lives. But for the moment, he says, "We are in shock. The five nights we stayed in Pristina after the bombing started were like ...