Pristina's Novena bar is, the young rock singer tells me, for "what is left of the Albanian elite". He finds a more precise definition difficult: "It is for the intelligentsia, some students, journalists and professional people," he says. If it is for "what is left of the elite", where have the rest gone? "London or Germany. They're the guys you meet selling you takeaway food. They're the ones hiding in trucks and going into your country."

There are no jobs for the educated Albanians in Kosovo, he says, even though they make up 90 per cent of the population. "So they go to your countries to do horrible jobs," he says.

He has stayed, he says, because he is a rock singer. Not just any rock singer, but his band is "the musical wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army". His music is hard-core, a mixture of New York rap and metal, he says helpfully. They have a song called Don't Fuck With The Albanians, a 19-year-old law student explains.

It is 10.30 p.m. and the tables inside the Novena bar and on the pavement outside are crowded. Western rock music blasts out from the sound system inside as we discuss the same topic that is being talked about at almost every other table, the immediate future of Kosovo's Albanians.

Up in the hills in territory controlled by the rebel KLA, the guerrillas say the people living in Pristina have it easy. "You live like people in Switzerland," a man with a long Castro beard and all-black uniform, the clothing of what the KLA calls its military police, told a group of reporters and translators from Pristina on Wednesday.

As he spoke in the KLA stronghold of Malisheve, armed men jumped excitedly into vehicles to speed off to the latest outbreak of fighting in their battle with the Serbian forces.

Before the recent Serbian crackdown in the province, which is 90 per cent ethnic Albanian, the area's moderate Albanian politicians, led by Mr Ibrahim Rugova, had been seeking restoration of the province's high level of autonomy within Serbia, taken away from them in 1989.

But since the crackdown began in February and March, the KLA has attracted a large number of new recruits. Weapons have come in across the border from Albania. The KLA may now control between a quarter and a third of Kosovo's territory. As the West still pins its hopes on the resumption of dialogue between the Serbian President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, and Mr Rugova, the support for the KLA has grown and Mr Rugova has become marginalised among Kosovo's Albanians.

However, the movement of soldiers seen in Malisheve during the week was no rapid deployment of an elite force. Many of these men were in their late 40s and older, some dressed in combat fatigues, some in black and some in civilian clothing.

Most had a cloth badge bearing the double-headed black eagle symbol and the initials UCK (Ushtria Clirimtare E Kosoves, Kosovo Liberation Army in Albanian) somewhere on their person. Some had it sewn on, others had it hanging on with a safety pin.

Their vehicles were shabby family saloon cars, caked with mud and dented from years of abuse on bumpy mountain roads. One had a German registration plate, one a local plate and several none at all.

In the mountains, with Serbian military activity possibly curtailed by the temporary presence of the international media horde, this organisation may be able to keep control of inaccessible villages. Now they have also closed the road and rail links between Pristina and the western town of Pec. However, in other areas it is doubtful that they would be a match for the blue armoured personnel carriers of the Serbian forces.

But now at least the KLA has members, and some of these have uniforms, and they appear to have a large mix-and-match collection of guns, some of them Kalashnikovs but others less recognisable. Some men have a grenade or two hanging from their belt and a handgun stuck in it. One man at a checkpoint sported a long gun-belt of shiny large bullets around his neck in the style of Eli Wallach in The Magnificent Seven.

In February when the Serbian crackdown began in earnest, the KLA was dismissed by many as little more than a rag-bag collection of peasants with a few rusty rifles. As the crackdown has gone on amid considerable media publicity, funds are believed to have flowed in from the Albanian disapora, and weapons have found their way into Kosovo. Most are believed to have come across the Albanian border.

To emphasise this point the Serbian authorities this week displayed a haul of weapons they say they confiscated on the border. Nobody has challenged the accuracy of this. The haul included Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machineguns, snipers' rifles, landmines and anti-tank weapons. This week, one news agency reported a sighting in Albania of shoulder-held anti-tank missiles heading for the border drawn by a tractor.

The KLA is still disorganised. At its headquarters in a house in Malisheve, there was no senior officer present to see us, according to a guard in all-black uniform with KLA insignia on his baseball-style cap. "They have all gone to see about the fighting," he said.

The organisation's "spokesman", a new invention dreamed up by the KLA last week, was not available either. He had gone to the fighting as well, we were told. Journalists arrived in Malisheve throughout this week, crossing over from Serbian to KLA-held territory on a two-hour journey over bad roads through many Serbian and KLA checkpoints, sometimes through the scene of gun battles, only to find that this "spokesman" was not there.

When he is there he can speak either very poor English or no English at all, according to reporters who have met him. However, his existence is being used by KLA units everywhere to refuse to speak to the press or to refuse journalists access to various parts. "You must go to see our spokesman," they say everywhere. Along the roads, there were occasional clusters of several hundred bullet casings where serious fighting had taken place earlier.

Some 6,000 people live in Malisheve and its surrounding villages. Most live on remittances from family members working abroad, mainly in Germany.

"Malisheve is ethnically clean and it is free," a local man in the town explained. He did not mean that Serbs had been thrown out of the town: they had never lived there. Just one village in the municipality, Kjeva, contained Serbs, he said.

Fifteen kilometres out of town, Malisheve's freedom appears clear, but limited. Armed KLA men sit behind sandbagged positions, emerging to stop cars and check papers. Along the road armed men give the organisation's adopted salute of right-handed clenched fist.

But beyond their checkpoints in each direction are Serbian positions. They look at each other across valleys through binoculars. They ambush each other from time to time. The "free" people of Malisheve have little freedom of movement. All week there have been gun battles in this area, with several Serbian soldiers and KLA members killed or injured.

This is summer. Nobody is sure what will happen if the stand-off continues until the winter. The mountain tracks used by the KLA guerrillas to avoid main roads will become impassable mudbaths. The sleek blue armoured personnel carriers of the Serbs will still be able to use the more direct main route. The weaponry of the KLA is increasing in sophistication, but is still no match for the MiG fighters and armoury of the Serbian regime.

On the other hand, Albanians claim the Serbian authorities are attempting to bring police and soldiers from elsewhere to fight, and that they are finding it difficult to get recruits to come to this inhospitable, unfamiliar terrain to face a guerrilla army. On Thursday some 200 women, mostly mothers of Serbian soldiers in Kosovo, protested in Belgrade against the secrecy surrounding their sons' whereabouts and demanded to be allowed communicate with them. Some want them to return home.

In Pristina, Serbs rage against the international community's demands. In a municipal office on Thursday several junior administration officials drank Scotch whisky and plum brandy at lunchtime and fumed about the "travesty".

"They demand that our police leave the area," says the more senior-looking man. "What do they want? That we hand the province over to the Albanians? That we just say OK, KLA, here it is, we're leaving now?"

Another asks what is the point of trying to talk with the Albanians. "They all want independence, they want us to get out of Kosovo."

Kosovo is of great historical significance for Serbs. Their 1389 defeat at the battle of Kosovo Polje has become the great national historical event, and the region has a number of deeply-important Christian Orthodox cathedrals and sites.

But Kosovo has long lost its appeal as a home for Serbs, whatever the emotional attachment to Orthodox churches and Serb history. Now wedding parties drive up and down Pristina's streets waving flags and giving Serb signs to the passers-by before retiring safely to the town's Grand Hotel. The Orthodox Church now awards a medal to Serbian mothers bearing four or more children in Kosovo, but there are few winners.

The Serbian Ministry for Information has taken over a large banqueting hall on the first floor of the Grand Hotel. This media centre hands out daily press releases concerning attacks by Albanian "terrorists" on Serb police and civilians.

Back in the Novena bar, we have been discussing the situation for over an hour and the 19-year-old law student now tells me she wants to join the KLA. Maybe she would be more use with a gun than writing, she says. She mentions several times how bad she feels about being out drinking and having a good time while "who knows where the men in the hills are sleeping tonight?"

When asked, all six people at the table say they support the KLA now. Just two say they would have given the same answer six months ago. They say the same radicalisation has happened to most of their friends.

"The West can forget about getting the Serbians to talk to Rugova. It's the KLA we support now and it's independence we want," says one.

Albin Kurti of the Students' Independent Union of the University of Pristina insists his organisation has a policy of non-violence, but says it is not now adequate to deal with the problems in Kosovo.

"If we organise big non-violent demonstrations in Pristina there will be tensions between civilians and it will explode. It's impossible that that will not happen.

"It is not that the people are all joining the KLA," he says. "The people are becoming the KLA. Soon this will not be a guerrilla war like ETA or the IRA carried out. This will be a national uprising."