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The Kosovo war over, another one begins for Musa the Dinosaur

DOBROSIN, Yugoslavia, Nov 27 (AFP) -

When the Kosovo war ended Musa didn't need to change his black uniform. He
simply swapped his
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) shoulder flash for that of another guerrilla group
and slipped over
the boundary with Serbia.

Musa, whose Albanian nom de guerre is Kulcedra or "Dinosaur", has signed up with
the Liberation
Army of Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac (UCPMB), which aims to unite the Presevo
valley area
and its 70,000 ethnic Albanians with Kosovo.

"I'm fighting for my people, the Albanian people," he explains, as rain lashes
down on his guerrilla
group's base camp in the village of Dobrosin, some 300 metres from the Kosovo
boundary.

The 34-year-old father of two has been the commander of the UCPMB's military
police for 10
months. Before that, between 1998 and 1999 he was in the KLA, running guns and
supplies to
fighters near the southeast Kosovo town of Gnjilane.

He's still fighting Serbs today, but in Serbia proper, across the administrative
border from the
breakaway province now under the control of NATO and the United Nations. He
joined the
UCPMB, he says, after hearing of two Albanians killed by Serb police near
Dobrosin in January.

"I hate the Serbs so much," he said. "They threw a grenade at my house during
the war, and drove
my family from their village."

As he tells his story a group of young men, barely out of their teens, approach
asking if they can sign
up. "Fair enough. Come and see me later, we'll see if you're up to it," he
offers.

Musa estimates that one fifth of the UCPMB's combattants in southern Serbia are
ex-KLA, but the
number seems much higher. Almost every guerrilla approached by AFP has some tale
to tell about
last year's war.

When the Kosovo guerrillas were disarmed and disbanded last year under an
agreement with
NATO he was one of many to hold on to his gun. "My three-year-old lad is very
proud to tell his
pals that his dad has got a gun to kill Serbs," he says, smiling.

Musa's two sons are staying with their mother in Kosovo, but the seven-year-old
can't wait for the
day he joins his father at the front.

"I told him to wait until he grows up, then he can join the army of a free
Kosovo," the proud father
said.

A tractor pulls a trailer through the village, carrying planks salvaged from a
Serb police check point
captured and demolished at the entrance to Konculj, a border town which fell to
the rebels last
week.

"How can we be anything other than happy right now?" demands Musa, pointing
gleefully at a map
showing the UCPMB's newly increased territory. The muezzin goes out from
Dobrosin's tiny
mosque, but the fighter just lights up a cigarette.

"I'm not marking Ramadan," he said. "The war has priority for the time being."