Swedish photographer Joakim Roos, who reported on the ground from various parts of Kosovo during the 1998-1999 war, has shared his most memorable moments from his work. He plans to publish a book showcasing all the materials he gathered, aiming to reconnect with the people he encountered.
Joakim Roos still holds onto the recording of a moment from one of his first visits to Kosovo in 1998—an encounter with an elderly woman in the village of Abri e Eperme of Drenas who was in grief from losing everything.
In an interview with BIRN, the Swedish photographer recalls that the woman told him that Serbian forces “killed two brothers and two nieces of mine at that crossroad,” while wiping her tears with a handkerchief.
“Twenty-two coffins have left my family,” Roos recalled the woman telling him.
Roos remembered the woman living in the ruins of her home, in a potato cellar, after her house had been destroyed.
“What have we done to them?” she had said. “Why do they come from far away to kill us here? We didn’t go to kill them there.”
Her words still echo in Roos’s memory: “They massacred a little one, with a nappy still in its mouth—my brother’s child. Everything is dead. What’s left are burnt and empty houses. Houses aren’t terrorists, children are no terrorists, Cows are no terrorists,” she said.
Between November and December 1998, Roos travelled throughout the Drenica region, documenting life and devastation in villages such as Brabonic, Polac, Cirez, Baks, Prekaz, Rezalle, Likoc, and Abri e Eperme. He also documented the mass fleeing of Kosovo Albanians in Blace refugee camps in North Macedonia.
Roos was on assignment for the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten which resulted in the publications “Kosovo’s Lost Soul” and “A Week of Terror in Drenica.”
His first trip to the region was in November 1998, when he flew to Belgrade, took a bus to Mitrovica, and stayed with the Berani family, who had previously been refugees in Sweden.
Their son Fuad acted as Roos’s interpreter until he was killed later during the war.
Blocked from returning
An elderly woman in Drenas, Kosovo, weeping over the loss of family members in 1998. Photo: Courtesy of Joakim Roos
In March 1999, as the NATO airstrikes began against the Yugoslav army, Roos attempted to return to Kosovo but was denied a visa by the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm.
“I was on Milosevic’s blacklist,” he explained.
Still determined, he went to Skopje, then traveled along the refugee routes to Blace, Tetova, and later to Kukës and Morina in Albania.
He eventually returned to Skopje, witnessing firsthand the chaos and despair in the “no man’s land” at Blace refugee camp, where hundreds of thousands Kosovo Albanians were sheltered.
‘The war is over”
Citizens of Skenderaj/Srbica celebrating peace and NATO troops arrival in Kosovo on June 1999. Photo: Courtesy of Joakim Roos
When NATO troops entered Kosovo in June 1999 after a three-month airstrike campaign and withdrawal of Serbian police and military troops, Roos returned once more. He recalls an emotional moment where a family hidden in the mountains did not know that the war was over. The Hasani family, who lived near the village of Brabonic, had become close to Roos throughout the war during his numerous visits.
“I landed in Skopje and aimed for Mitrovica. The Yugoslav Army was still near a bus station. Just a few hundred meters away, the French KFOR was setting up a roadblock.”
“I had grown close to the Hasani family, who lived there. A house near the main road had been burned down by the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army), who had used it as an outpost. After leaving, they set it on fire—along with many other houses along the road to Mitrovica.”
“Under plastic sheets, the entire Hasani family was hiding. They had been living in the woods for three months and didn’t know the war was over.”
He remembers how they were shocked to see him.
“Joakim, what are you doing here? It’s a full-scale war! They shoot every day!”
“I told them the war was over, but they didn’t believe me,” he added, recalling that Rama Hasani showed him his radio (with dead batteries). “I took mine from the camera flash and gave them to him. He sat with the radio pressed to his ear, then suddenly shouted, ‘The war is over!” Roos emphasised.
“I want to reconnect with people from my photos”
Kosovo Albanian refugees at Stankovac camp in North Macedonia on April 1999. Photo: Courtesy of Joakim Roos
Roos returned to Kosovo in the years that followed—January 2000, March 2001, November 2006, August 2013, and September 2014.
Now the 59-year-old photographer is planning to publish a book featuring his photographs and stories from Kosovo to reconnect with people he photographed.
“It’s important for me to know who the people in my pictures are,” he said.
“Sometimes things would happen too fast to get their names, but I remember most of them. I want to publish these photos in the hope that someone recognises themselves—or someone they love—so I can reconnect,” he concluded.
Children in Braboniq, a village in Skenderaj/Srbica, in June 1999. Photo: Courtesy of Joakim Roos
As of June 2024, anyone who is interested to know more about the Kosovo war can do so by going through the archives of war reporters at the Reporting House exhibition in the capital, Prishtina.
BIRN Kosovo, in collaboration with Paper Gallery and Prishtina Biennale, opened The Reporting House—a museum and exhibition space in Prishtina that commemorates Kosovo’s modern history, focusing on the 1990s. The museum covers everything from peaceful resistance to armed conflict and war, culminating in Kosovo’s liberation.
The exhibition showcases over hours of digitised international media coverage from 1992 to 1999, including television reports, photographs, and print stories. Notable contributors include BBC journalists Jeremy Bowen and Ben Brown, Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak, and Kosovo-based photojournalists Ilaz Bylykbashi and Hazir Reka.
By the end of 2024, the Reporting House had welcomed over 5,600 visitors from around the world.