THE ROAD TO BABYLON 211then backward and overwhelmed capital, was like navigating a postapoca-
lyptic obstacle course. The border crossing was a hellish scene of chaos, with
thousands of people vying for a visa or exit stamp from one of the few surly,
overworked Macedonian border guards. I managed to fight my way through
the mob, got my passport stamped, and hitched a ride to Pristina with some
French Kosovo Force soldiers who were part of a NATO convoy entering
Kosovo. While the miles-long convoy was delayed for half an hour or so, two
of the French soldiers in my vehicle hopped out to conduct business with
some desperate but enterprising young roadside prostitutes. Vive la France!
After several hours we finally reached our destination. I made my way
to the Grand Hotel—a misnomer if ever there was one—in the heart of
Pristina. I was already familiar with the hotel, since I had always stayed
there during my many TDYs in the past. The Balkan breakfasts were
wonderful, but the number of neon stars on top of the hotel seemed to
increase in direct proportion to the building’s growing cockroach popu-
lation.^4 Walking the familiar, filthy streets of my old stomping ground, I
surveyed the damage done during the brief but violent war. I also couldn’t
help but notice the absence of smothering Serb surveillance, which I had
always attracted during earlier trips to Kosovo. The freedom was actually
a bit disconcerting. (During one earlier official trip to Kosovo, our US gov-
ernment car broke down on a snow-bound highway outside of Pristina,
but my mind was at ease, knowing our chain-smoking secret police escorts
were parked right behind us.)
As I strolled around postwar Pristina, refreshingly free of Serb sur-
veillance, it was evident that NATO planes had done an excellent job of
precision bombing only key targets, pancaking several Serb regime build-
ings. Otherwise, Pristina was left largely intact, in dramatic contrast to the
towns and cities the Serbs had completely trashed and destroyed many
years earlier in Croatia and Bosnia—places like Čilipi, Mostar, and Sara-
jevo, all of which I visited during the war and saw with my own eyes. Not to
mention Dubrovnik’s airport, where I observed that the Serbs had mined
the runway, trashed the tower along with every window, sign, and fixture in
the airport, and stolen all valuable radar and other equipment, along with
several nearby dairy cows. (The Croats did their fair share of destruction
in Mostar and other places once they and the Bosnian Muslims turned on
each other.)