Australian Surgeon Lifts Lid on Dark Side of Kosovo Conflict

By Shengjyl Osmani Craig Jurisevic's memoir will shock many with its portrait of disorder and corruption – as well as heroism – behind the Kosovo war frontlines in 1999.
Craig Jurisevic's extraordinary journey from an Adelaide hospital to the frontline of the Kosovo Liberation Army is the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. So it no surprise that Academy award-winning producer Eva Orner, has agreed to translate his remarkable tale to the big screen. Jurisevic's book, due for release on May 1, according to the cardiothoracic and trauma surgeon, will be uncomfortable reading for some former senior commanders of the KLA who are now leading politicians and businessmen. He told Balkan Insight: "My book describes the heroism of the men and women who, unlike most of their commanders, stayed at the front despite horrific conditions and insurmountable odds. "It is a frank and honest description of the war as it really was, and not as the propagandists would have many believe. "I have strong support from the men of the Atlantic Battalion and the German and Swiss battalions with whom I served on [Mount] Pastrik and they have verified crucial aspects of the book," he continued. "Some of the commanders who left their troops on the mountain to drink coffee in Krume are now influential ministers in the Kosovan government and business community, and this book may well be an affront to them. "The people of Kosova and the world need to know what really happened and this book does just that. It is a testament to the will and strength of the Kosovar Albanians during this terrible war and it will stand as an accurate, unbiased account of that period." Kosovo was not Craig's first experience of conflict. He worked in Israel in the early 1990s before landing on the Albanian border with Kosovo in 1999 as the struggle escalated between the KLA and Serbian forces and as NATO launched its bombing campaign. Since the end of the conflict he has worked with the Australian army in East Timor and in Afghanistan, and has now returned to normal life as a surgeon and lecturer back in Adelaide. He came to Kosovo early in 1999 after being shocked by the images of war on television, leaving his wife Donna and five-year-old son Jackson at home and volunteering with the International Medical Corps. Soon he was treating sick and injured Kosovar refugees as they streamed across the border to Kukes, in northern Albania, a town close to the border into which at one point tens of thousands of refugees were arriving daily. But while tending the injured, he began to notice that something was wrong. Despite the humanitarian disaster unfolding around him, suspiciously few patients were making it to the hospital. Although the hospital was brimming with brand-new medical supplies, few injured people were benefiting. Jurisevic found out that the sick were being asked to pay for treatment. Desperate to publicise the problem, he met the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He then leaked the story to a US journalist, after which the racketeers quickly pointed the finger of blame in his direction and he was urged to leave Kukes without delay. "I exposed corruption in the Kukes hospital where injured refugees were being turned away or left to die if they did not pay the hospital director for treatment," Jurisevic said. "The story was printed in the Stars and Stripes [US military newspaper] and NATO investigated the corruption." Shortly after leaving Kukes, Craig was introduced to Hosnje Hoxha, a KLA commander who asked him to join the surgical team operating on casualties in a camp closer to the frontline. His experience at the KLA base at Helshan and on the frontline from late May to June 9 was disillusioning. The KLA, he found out, mainly comprised young inexperienced recruits from all over the world who barely knew how to hold a rifle, let alone fight a vicious guerrilla war. It was obvious that they were not trained to face the battle-hardened Serbs in the regular and paramilitary forces. Well-equipped surgical facilities at the medical camp lay idle as it was too far from the fighting, and the doctors were not prepared to travel to where the action was taking place in order to treat and retrieve the injured. Craig decided to head to the frontline. The journey to Mount Pastrik range was a dangerous trek that took him along mined goat tracks. On the way he came under regular attack from Serbian sniper and artillery fire.

At the front he set up a primitive operating theatre in a cave, working long days while treating horrific injuries and even amputating limbs. He slept alongside the dead as bodies piled up in the cave that served as hospital, surgeon's quarters and morgue. "I sit in the cave with dead bodies rotting at the back, their reek growing riper in the awful heat," notes Craig in his book. During that period, Craig led retrieval teams behind Serbian lines at night to rescue injured civilians from nearby villages. In consequence, he witnessed the aftermath of a massacre of women and children and saw at first hand the terrifying results of Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing. One patrol led him to a sacked village where a horrifically injured woman had been left to die a slow death, surrounded by her murdered family. She pleaded with him to end her suffering, which he agreed to do, with the only means at hand – a Beretta pistol provided for his personal safety by the local KLA commander. Keeping a promise he made to the dying woman, Craig carried the body of her little boy up into the mountains, burying him in a grave overlooking the village. "At the frontline of the KLA in Pastrik I was the only doctor because all the other doctors stayed down in Cahan or Krume where it was far safer," he recalled. "Only four or five commanders stayed at the front on Mount Pastrik, the remainder staying in Krume where it was infinitely safer and more comfortable." The KLA fighters were left almost leaderless at the front, he said. "Apart from sporadic patrols behind Serb lines, some of which I led, there was little offensive action against Serb forces from May 30 onwards. "The KLA soldiers were told not to assault Serb positions but to stay in their positions. [However,] these positions were exposed to heavy and accurate Serb mortar, artillery, Katyusha rocket and sniper fire, resulting in terrible losses, some 75 dead and 250 injured between June 1 and June 9, 1999," Jurisevic said. Realising that the inexperienced recruits were being sent off to certain injury or even death, Craig took it upon himself to better equip the soldiers for their daunting tasks. A skilled recreational shooter back home in Australia, and with combat military retrieval experience gained in Israel and Gaza in the early 1990s, he trained the youngsters in basic weapon handling and military field tactics. "Earlier in my medical career I had daily experience of the type of wounds being inflicted in Kosovo," he recalled, "wounds caused by automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire; by the explosion of anti-personnel mines, hand grenades, mortar rounds and artillery shells. "In Israel, during the first Intifada of 1992 and 1993, I'd witnessed what bullets and shrapnel could do to the human body and I'd learnt how effective modern surgery could sometimes be in restoring the wounded to the world." Asked why he joined the KLA, he said passed-down memories of his Slovenian grandfather's experience of the Second World War spurred him on. "My Slovenian grandfather on my mother's side survived Dachau and Mauthausen (Nazi concentration camps)," he said. "Had I not felt roused to action by Milosevic's concentration camps, it would have been a betrayal of my memories of that gentle and compassionate man." Work on the film is at early stages, Jurisevic told Balkan Insight. It is hoped it will be released in 2011. ‘Blood on My Hands', co-written with Robert Hillman, will be available from May 1, published by Wild Dingo Press. For more details, see www.wilddingopress.com.au. The book will be on sale in Dukagjini Bookstore, Mother Teresa Boulevard, Prishtina.