By Adelina Ahmeti

“I told myself: ‘I have postponed confronting the truth for far too long, including what I witnessed 26 years ago.’ I decided to visit the Jashari family compound. I arrived there, but I couldn’t find the strength to get out of the car. I simply couldn’t. Then I broke down and cried uncontrollably because all the scenes came back to me.”

This is how Ilire Zajmi recalls her attempt to confront the trauma of reporting during the war. Tears continue to roll down her cheeks as she pauses for a few seconds to regain her  composure before continuing her story.

During the war in Kosovo, journalists were among the first witnesses to violence, displacement, and the human consequences of the conflict. While documenting events on the ground and informing the public, many were repeatedly exposed to traumatic situations that left lasting effects long after the war ended.

Yet, the impact of these experiences on journalists’ mental health has remained a largely overlooked topic, often silenced by social stigma and the lack of public discussion about psychological trauma.

In 1999, Ilire Zajmi was 28 years old and worked as a journalist for both local and international media outlets.

A young journalist, unprepared for what awaited her in the field, Zajmi, together with other reporters, traveled across different regions of Kosovo to document and report on massacres, killings, forced expulsions, and the burning of villages by Serbian security forces.

She first entered the field during the fighting in the Drenica region in 1998.

“In several villages in Drenica, we had heard that fighting was taking place. I remember trembling for the first time. I thought to myself: ‘Oh God, am I okay? Why did I come here?’ That was my first traumatic experience, hearing the bursts of gunfire and the fighting,” says Zajmi.

The experiences she endured while reporting during the Kosovo war in 1998–1999, she says, remain vivid in her memory, and she continues to suffer their consequences today.

“One of the greatest impacts that I still carry today happened when we went to Prekaz. We went there and saw the entire Serbian apparatus removing members of the Jashari family from a large pit where they had been placed,” Zajmi explains, recalling how she observed the bodies of the Jashari family from a distance of approximately 100 meters.

As she recounts, it took her days to process and cope with what she had witnessed.

“Every time I tried to sleep, those scenes would replay continuously in my mind,” recalls Zajmi. At the time, she was at the scene together with a colleague from Kosovarja magazine and an Italian journalist from La Repubblica.

Beyond what she witnessed in Prekaz, Zajmi also remembers the massacre in Rogova e Hasit.

“The police entered at six in the morning, took people from their bedrooms, killed and massacred them, then dressed them in KLA uniforms and placed weapons beside them. The entire scene had been staged,” she says.

Zajmi emphasizes that the events she witnessed 27 years ago remain fresh in her memory and continue to resurface from time to time.

She says that she has discussed these memories, traumas, and emotions with colleagues over the years, but she has never received professional psychological treatment.

At the time, Musa Kurhasku, a journalist reporting for Albanian Radio Television (RTSH), covered massacres and killings in the Dukagjini region during the war. He also found himself reporting on tragedies involving members of his own family.

Kurhasku did not personally report on the death of his brother, who was killed by Serbian forces.

“I assigned one of my colleagues, my friend, to cover it. It wasn’t because I couldn’t handle it; it simply seemed unbelievable to me. I couldn’t even trust myself because we had been extremely close,” Kurhasku recounts.

He also recalls the years leading up to NATO’s bombing campaign, saying that many of the situations he witnessed remain with him to this day.

“Until the day the war ended, and even afterward, we continued reporting because many things happened after the war as well. I was present at the Loqë massacre. To tell the truth, for two or three months I could not get rid of the smell of the dead bodies,” he says.

Although 27 years have passed since the end of the war in Kosovo, Kurhasku says those experiences still follow him.

“You relive those experiences when you meet the families of the victims. Every time I attend massacre commemorations, I experience it all over again. I remember what we saw and reported during the war,” he explains.

Ridvan Slivova is a photojournalist who documented the violence and repressive system of the Serbian regime in Kosovo through photography.

He began taking photographs at a young age, initially focusing on artistic subjects.

In 1990, he took his first professional journalistic photographs when members of parliament declared Kosovo a Republic.

He recalls repeatedly witnessing painful scenes, but the first photograph he took of a victim remains among the most difficult experiences of his career.

“When the army arrived, and the news reached us, I immediately went out. That was the first photograph I took of a dead body. My photograph was published in several newspapers, including in Slovenia. When the newspaper was sent to me 80 days later, I realized that what I was doing was documenting history,” Slivova explains.

After that, he reported from villages across the Drenica region, including Prekaz, Polac, Klinë, and Qirez.

“We often found ourselves in extremely dangerous situations where I didn’t even know whether I would be able to go back out into the field the next day,” he says.

One image that remains deeply etched in his memory is the column of displaced people from Gollak.

“It was the column of Gollak victims in Prishtina. Even today, I have revisited 90 percent of the places where I took photographs. The memories return immediately, but now it feels different. I only feel the scent of freedom. When I look at the camera I now carry openly, I remember that during the war we had to hide our cameras to avoid being discovered by Serbian police,” he adds.

Slivova says that immediately after the war, he sought psychological help from a friend.

“I had collected around 200 photographs of massacres and persecution. Through long conversations, I tried to address my trauma together with him (a psychologist friend),” he says.

Gresa Miftari, a clinical psychologist, associates the experiences of journalists reporting from conflict and war zones with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and secondary trauma.

Miftari also explains why there was little focus on mental health treatment after the war, including for journalists.

“After the war, as a society, we focused more on economic and institutional reconstruction, while mental health was not a topic widely discussed in public. We also lacked well-established services or treatment and awareness. The first trauma therapy professionals only emerged toward the end of the 2000s, after many years during which people, including journalists, had been living with silent pain,” she explains.

According to her, support for mental health treatment, both in the past and today, has been provided largely through non-governmental organizations and individual initiatives.

“This is certainly linked to the limited resources available in a state undergoing transformation, as well as a lack of knowledge and appropriate approaches,” Miftari emphasizes.

Full link in Albanian: https://kallxo.com/lajm/lufta-qe-vazhdon-brenda-tyre-trauma-e-gazetareve-qe-raportuan-nga-zonat-eluftes-ne-kosove/

This article is a product of the Academy for Reporting in the Field of Dealing with the Past (DwP) and Conflict-Sensitive Journalism, implemented by the Pro Peace Program in Kosovo and the Association of Kosovo Journalists – AGK. The views expressed in this article are the responsibility of the journalist and do not in any way reflect the views of Pro Peace and AGK.