There was a fine line between the joyous celebration on Vranjevac hill and a lynch mob yesterday as Irish Guards in armoured fighting vehicles named Dublin, Drogheda, Dromore, Donamore, Derrylin, Donegal and Downpatrick spread out along the Pristina to Belgrade highway.
Thousands of exultant Kosovar Albanians lined the road for two kilometres, showering the troops with flowers and sweets, chanting, "NATO, NATO, NATO". The name "Tony Bler" was daubed in black paint on the road. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," screamed a teenage girl who grabbed my notebook and wrote in pidgeon English, "Majnem [pronounced `my name'] is Luljeta Musliv." Her friend then took it to inscribe her own message: "I love NATO, Melita."
Nineteen year-old Private Aidan Sullivan from Cork patrolled the bottom of the road, beside the mosque where the Warrior vehicle called Dublin was parked. The Irishman walked with his assault rifle in firing position, too busy trying to keep the Albanian crowd from blocking the road to notice the young girl who slipped a bouquet of red roses between his flak jacket and uniform, just below his helmet.
But as the jubilation continued, retreating Yugoslav army vehicles and Serb civilians - now the refugees - were greeted with whistles and jeers and another chant, "UCK, UCK, UCK", the Albanian abbreviation for "Kosovo Liberation Army". Watching their cars and trucks run the gauntlet of Albanians lining the highway, I was reminded of the freed Albanian prisoners who had told me how they were forced to walk between two rows of Serb policemen who beat them with rifle butts.
Some of the departing Serbs raised three fingers in a defiant, Serb Orthodox salute. Others extended their middle finger in an obscene gesture. One Serb soldier started up the hill in an empty truck, took fright and reversed to the bottom, where he stood chain-smoking, trying to decide what to do. Serb women in cars loaded down with family belongings hid their faces. With Serb authorities turning some refugees back at the border between Serbia and Kosovo, their future is grim.
It was an incredible, face-to-face confrontation of former oppressors and those they'd oppressed, but also of angry victims turning on the innocent. When we walked among the crowd, the Albanians were joyous and friendly. But when we drove up the hill, they booed us too - because our car bears Belgrade plates - and pelted us with pebbles, one of which hit my face.
Later, Serb officials said that a policeman, two soldiers and a fleeing civilian were shot dead in Vranjevac yesterday. The Serbs asked Kfor to retrieve their bodies. More than 100 KLA guerrillas commanded by Bakri Gashi had taken over a school in Vranjevac, and it was no longer safe for them to go in, the Serbs said.
Several sources reported that the KLA killed three Serb refugees and five Serb military at Stimlje, on the road between Pristina and Prizren. German special forces prevailed in a stand-off with armed Serbs at Djure, a village near Prizren where Albanians attacked fleeing Serbs. The KLA was torching Serb homes in that area, Yugoslav officials said. They claimed that Archbishop Artemije made a desperate plea via an amateur radio for help; one of his priests had been murdered.
Until the last moment, Serb para-militaries wearing running shoes went from door to door in Vranjevac, demanding gold and money from Albanian families. On Friday, one Albanian resident of Vranjevac telephoned the local police when three gunmen raided houses on his street. Amazingly, a policeman in a blue camouflage MUP uniform showed up, but the militiamen pointed their guns at him and said: "Why don't you let us finish the job?" and the policeman fled. Albanian houses in several north Pristina neighbourhoods were still burning yesterday. "Most of the houses they are burning now are the ones the army and police moved into during the bombing," an Albanian woman explained. "They took the most luxurious villas, and before they pull out, they loot them and burn them."
With NATO finally here to protect them, the Albanians sense strength in their numbers. "I had no idea there were so many of us, because we were all hiding," said Isuf Bugujevci amid the tumult on Vranjevac hill.
A former employee of the OSCE monitors who were evacuated before the war started, he added: "Serbs cannot stay because they know what they have done. Everyone with Albanian blood on his hands must go to Serbia." Selim Ismaili, a 64 year-old man wearing a black beret, walked up to us, smiling and weeping at the same time. "My wife and children and grand children are refugees in Turkey, he said. "They can come home now."
Through the weekend, Pristina transformed, chrysalis-like, from a Serb-held to an Albanian and NATO-held city. Without moving, we have gone physically from one side to the other, although the two still co-exist, with British paratroopers walking around among Yugoslav soldiers and police who must in theory leave the area by tomorrow. The gunfire continues; it is the single shots - not the frequent peals of frustrated Kalashnikov fire into the air - that are most sinister.
NATO will find it difficult to impose peace amid such anarchy. "Which is the most hostile bit?" Private Graham Shaw from the Ballysillan area of Belfast asked us yesterday as he stood by the airport road, which goes through the Serb neighbourhood of Kosovo Polje. "You're in it," we had to tell him. A few hundred metres away, a Serb man kicked a Warrior armoured vehicle. But then - inexplicably - a Serb girl walked up to offer Private Shaw toffees.
Twenty-four hours earlier, we had eaten lunch in a nearby restaurant. Our Serb driver and interpreter were reassured by the presence of a Yugoslav lieutenant colonel and captain. But we felt less safe when the officers departed, leaving us in the company of Serb militiamen wearing hand grenades and knives on their belts. One had a brandy bottle sloshing in the knee-pocket of his trousers, and the others drank white wine and mineral water spritzers.
Two Serb irregulars fought each other in the parking lot and a bullet from a volley fired into the air smashed into the patio floor with a bang. When we drove past the same stretch of highway a few hours later in the vain hope of reaching the Kfor commander, Gen Sir Michael Jackson's press conference - which never materialised - we were stopped by gunmen so drunk that they couldn't stand up straight.
On returning to our hotel, I received a desperate phone call from Nartile, the Albanian woman whose story was published in Saturday's Irish Times. She had fled Vranjevac, where all telephone lines have been cut, and was calling from central Pristina. "We are being driven from our homes," she said, crying.
"I must try to go back for my parents. Please come, and bring as many people as you can with you." We asked a British officer outside the Grand Hotel if he could notify Kfor; he promised to ring back on our mobile phone, but we never heard from him. We found an American television crew and a Swedish journalist willing to go to Vranjevac with us. When we reached Nartile's home we found her family had been terrified by gunmen who went down the street shooting, but the danger had passed - at least for the moment.
Within two days, both the Serbs and Albanians of Pristina experienced "liberation" - the Serbs by more than 100 Russian troops who arrived at 1.30 a.m. on Saturday, the Albanians by NATO forces yesterday. The Albanians do not trust the Russians, whom they see as allies of the Serbs, and the Serbs see NATO as an army of occupation in league with the KLA. That belief was reinforced by the fatal shooting of a Serb policeman by a British paratrooper in a Pristina street yesterday.
The Russian troops ensconced themselves at Slatina Airport. Despite US and Russian predictions that they would withdraw immediately, the Russians waited around for Gen Jackson's arrival late on Saturday in the midst of a hailstorm of Biblical proportions. Far from ordering the "renegade" Russians out of the airport, the President Boris Yeltsin promoted Gen Viktor Zavarzin, Russia's representative at NATO and the man who led the troops in on Friday, from lieutenant general to colonel general.
Three separate British military sources said that the NATO commander, Gen Wesley Clark, had wanted the British to throw the Russians out on Saturday night, by force if necessary. Common sense prevailed and Gen Jackson was still haggling with the Russians for control of Slatina late yesterday, even as more Russian troops prepared to enter Kosovo. To the delight of the Serbs, the two men were expected to reach an agreement under which British and Russian forces will share the most strategic airfield in the Balkans.