PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — Lugging their worldly possessions in plastic bags, some 140 ethnic Albanians returned home to Kosovo on a flight from Germany Friday — many not knowing where they would live or how they would get a job.
"I was forced to return. The (German) police came and told me to sign papers and said if I didn't they wouldn't let me return to Kosovo for 10 years," said Shqipe Dautaj, a 19-year-old traveling with her 1-year-old daughter. Her Albanian fiance' and parents remained in Germany, she said.
"My house has been destroyed, so I will probably go and live with my uncle," Dautaj said.
The 144 returnees who flew in from Munich received money for travel, plus $225 from the German government to cover some of their resettlement expenses.
With the onset of spring, hundreds of returnees are expected to return to Kosovo from Australia, Germany, France and Switzerland.More than 1,000 have returned in recent weeks.
On Thursday, Bernard Kouchner, the U.N administrator of Kosovo, called for a slowdown in the return of thousands of people to the province, which is strained by poor infrastructure.
An influx of thousands within a short period of time "will put at risk the fragile institutions set up to provide social welfare, and . . . their position will tarnish the ... humanitarian and international efforts to restore stability, law and order to the province," he said in an open letter.
There are concerns that people will be uprooted against their will — some people returning have lived in host countries with families for several years — and will have nowhere to live.
"It will be good to be with my family again, but our house was destroyed by Serbs," said Haradin Bujupi, 21, who fled Kosovo during the 78-day NATO air war when his older brother— a fighter for the Kosovo Liberation Army — was killed by forces loyal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
There have already been cases of people being forcibly returned. Two days ago, a man was handcuffed and taken off a plane at the Pristina airport because he did not want to return to Kosovo, U.N. officials said.