The flat, black and white, impersonal buzz of e-mail cannot mask horrific news from home. For Isuf Hajrizi, an Albanian from Kosova now living in New York, knowing, but not knowing, creates an almost unbearable tension -- and prompts a cry for action. Hajrizi is an editor of the Albanian-American newspaper Illyria published in New York.

NEW YORK -- I stare at my computer screen confused and unable to organize my thoughts.

Every few minutes I check my e-mail -- how many more have been killed, how many crossed into Albania today, where is my family? A friend calls to say he may have seen a photo of my elderly parents fleeing among the thousands of refugees.

That can't be, I think, but there is no way to find out. In the villages under siege, phone lines are cut.

I think back to my childhood, running happily through the plush green forests and along dirt roads that led to my school -- roads now filled with tanks surrounding the village and firing relentlessly on the houses and the people inside them.

I go back to my computer. A headline reads: "Mass refugees head towards the border" with a subhead, "Three-year-old boy dies in his mother's arms from fatigue." A report tells of some 50 dead and hundreds wounded and describes heavy Serb police and military attacks in the western Kosova town of Decan and the "surrounding villages." I was born and raised in those villages. I know most of the people in them. I know the names of the dead, I recognize the houses, or what's left of the houses.

My heart aches.

Why doesn't anybody do something to stop this madness? Why do humans refuse to take the time to help their fellow men and women in a day of need?

Not all people are indifferent -- many try their best, even to the point of risking their own lives, but they are in a very small minority. Am I being hypocritical -- asking help now that my people are in trouble? What did I do to relieve the pain of people in Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, Chechnya, Croatia, Bosnia?

While most of my family and the rest of the village have left their homes, my two brothers have armed themselves and are trying to defend the village with others who have stayed behind.

Should I call them freedom fighters -- or are they desperate people pushed against the wall defending homes where their ancestors, our ancestors have lived for centuries?

The Serbs, Russians, Greeks, French and at least one State Department "expert" have chosen to name them "terrorist" but these people do not know my brothers. They are honorable men, who always provided for their families and now are risking their lives to protect them.

When I ask why someone doesn't help, I have Washington in mind. I am convinced that people there -- one man there, Bill Clinton -- can make a world of difference. Only with his backing can NATO intervene. Only intervention by a NATO force can save Kosova.