- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday December 01 2000 15.34 GMT
They have never stopped killing each other, of course, but the latest round of bloodletting is different: it's taking place not in Kosovo, but in Serbia itself.
A small band of ethnic Albanian rebels has seized control of hilltop positions along part of Serbia's sinuous border with Kosovo. They have been active in the area for much of the year, but, in the past few days, they have stepped up their attacks, killing four Serb policemen.
The area is home to much of Serbia's sizeable ethnic Albanian minority. Many of them live in the five-kilometer demilitarised zone that was set up on Nato's insistence at the end of last year's war.
The Yugoslav army is barred from the demilitarised zone, which is patrolled by lightly armed Serb police, horribly vulnerable to guerrilla ambush.
The rebels call themselves - with the pomp and bravado so dearly loved by such men - the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac.
Those are the main Albanian population centres in southern Serbia.
Almost certainly, however, the guerrillas are not based in Serbia, but are cadres of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought a desultory war against the Yugoslav army before Nato's polyglot army, Kfor, took over the province.
Since the arrival of the Nato forces, the KLA has atrophied and splintered.
Denied a primary role in the emerging government or in the fledgling police force of Kosovo, it has also been outflanked politically by the leading political moderate, Ibrahim Rugova.
Now, it seems, militant KLA members have decided to revive their irredentist war and carry it to the Serbian enemy.
The implications for Nato are chilling. If the guerrillas provoke the Yugoslav military establishment into returning to the border buffer zone, their soldiers will be eyeball to eyeball with Kfor troops.
The Nato soldiers apparently have neither the stomach nor the means to prevent KLA men crossing the border, but they will be obliged to prevent any Serb military incursion into the buffer zone.
Had Slobodan Milosevic remained in power, the danger would be more imminent.
As it is, the new leader in Belgrade, Vojislav Kostunica, has talked reassuringly of restoring calm and seeking a political solution.
But Kostunica is also insisting that Kfor take control of its side of the border and stop the guerrilla incursions.
He knows that the Serbs, after their abject rout by Nato last year, are in no mood to be further humiliated by a ragbag bunch of mountain fighters in their own country.
Related special report
Kosovo
Useful links
Kfor
Map of the region
The war
Chronology of events in the Balkans
Ethnic cleansing
Critique of the Kosovo Liberation Army
