President Slobodan Milosevic?s solution to the challenge posed by the Albanian majority in the Serb province of Kosovo was to drive them out. Melanie McDonagh went to Albania to witness for herself the greatest human exodus in Europe since the end of the Second World War. IT WAS news to me that I was travelling to northern Albania with the Kosovo Liberation Army. I thought, when I set out from Tirana, that the young men who were piling into the minibus with me were exiles from Kosovo returning to look for their relatives. I was wrong. The young Albanians, a dozen of them, had arrived from Germany the day before, and they were back to fight.

They were all in their twenties, and only two had had any military experience. One, Hasan, had been an officer with the KLA (or in Albanian, the UCK) the year before; another, Mentor, had been a mines expert with the old Yugoslav Army. One bought me a hamburger and an orange squash for the journey; they couldn?t wait to be off.

There are about 20,000 men already with the KLA in Albania; the previous day, another 200 had arrived. Once it dawned on me what they were in Albania for ? and, being Kosovars, they found Albania an odd place, for all the common language ? I swivelled round in my front seat to demand whether they were scared. The Yugoslav Army, I said, had the tanks and heavy artillery; the KLA had Kalashnikovs. Besides, they would be fighting soldiers who had had proper training. They laughed. Fear? said Hasan, a tall, rather gentle young man. No, no fear. And we?ve got morale. Lasen, one of the oldest, who had worked longest in Germany and spoke the language easily, said: The best soldiers are volunteers. We?re all here of our own free will. I gave up a good job in Germany to come here; we all did. I told my firm I was taking a month?s leave. I?m fighting with my heart.

It was all very well to be desperate to fight, I said brutally, but for untrained volunteers to be fighting tank convoys was unproductive and suicidal. Lasen shrugged. I?m going north to be trained; I don?t know how long it will take. All I know is, I want to get a Serb soldier in my sights and to shoot. He put a phantom rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. As soon as my commander lets me, I want to get into Kosovo. If I?m killed, I?m killed.

Is the UCK paid? I asked. The boy at the back with a scarred face interjected indignantly: No, of course we?re not. If your country were invaded by Russia, would you want to be paid? Well, not if you put it like that.

We were passing through the mountains of Mirdita; coming in the other direction was an extraordinary stream of refugees, in open carts, Albanian army lorries, combi-vans, cars with mattresses balanced precariously on top. As one huge convoy passed us, the driver muttered: Catastroph, Catastroph.

As a spectacle it had the palpable effect of steeling the volunteers: if they needed reminding why they were here, the reason was on the other side of the road.

We stopped for lunch at the same time as one refugee bus was leaving ? my omelette was courtesy of the KLA ? and I asked Lasen to translate for one man, Muharem Krasnici, from Rugova. The town was grenaded, he said. Several people were killed. The Serbs said to us: ?It?s not your land.? And the police and the army took our money. We spent ten days in the forests; the children didn?t have any food. There were ten or fifteen thousand of us in those woods. I saw people in the river, dead people.

As we clambered back into our bus, a couple of the volunteers who had been talking to other refugees said what they?d heard: At the border, the Serbs selected the young girls, the prettiest ones. They?d pick those they wanted, and let the others go.

Why, I asked, had the KLA been so useless in this latest bout of ethnic cleansing? Mentor, the mines expert, said drily: At the start of the fighting, you?d get a village of 100 houses surrounded by 150 tanks. What can you do against tanks? The bus driver interjected: If we had 10 per cent of the weapons that the Serbs have, we?d be in Belgrade. And what did they make of the argument that the Nato bombing had caused the ethnic cleansing? There was a chorus of dissent from the back of the bus. The boy with the scarred face said: It wasn?t Nato that caused the situation. The Serbs knew they?d lost. And because they?d lost, they did all this. Were they looking for ground troops? I asked. No one demurred. But Hasan said: Give us the weapons and we?ll do the job ourselves. All we need are the weapons.

On the side of the road, there was an over-packed car of refugees, broken down. Selflessly, the bus driver stopped to lend a hand. I talked to the owner. He was Feriz Hoxha, 38, a primary teacher from the Prizren region. In the three days that the cleansing in Randubrava had lasted, the town had been full of police. First, it had been shelled. He had been in his school when he heard two men being shot in the building next door; with his own eyes he had seen young men draw up in their car to attack a boy on the street; they killed him with knives, and put the body in a sack, while the police watched. They had gloves, he said, covered in blood. It?s better to live with hyenas than Serbs, he said. It?s better to be in the teeth of a dog.

Back in the bus, I asked the volunteers whether there could be any more living together with the Serbs. They shook their heads. No, never again, said Lasen. Before, yes, we had them as neighbours and we did business with them. Now, no. Mentor said: They can never make up for what they?ve done.

We parted company at the town of Kukes, where the bulk of refugees ended up and we waved goodbye. By now, I expect they are fighting. The driver left me with his friends, an Albanian army commander, and his family. The aplomb with which Albanians can accept a guest of unknown provenance, with no language, in the dead of night, is testimony to the nicest aspect of Balkan society, the legendary, humbling hospitality.

Kukes was awash with refugees. And journalists. I was introduced to a driver, a cheerful man called Bardhyl; he in turn brought me to a fixer from Tirana for one of the television companies to translate my needs. The fixer recommended that we go as soon as possible to the border crossing between Yugoslavia and Albania at Morin; there, he said, we would meet the fresh refugees. God forbid that I should have to talk to stale ones who?d been cleansed a week ago.

Instead, I made first for the town of Kruma, and then for the smaller crossing of Qafe Prush, which amounted to a farmhouse a field away from the border point. On the way, in the rattly little bus I had hired for the journey, we picked up a man who was going to the checkpoint to collect a family who had just arrived at four in the morning. The father of the family was already sitting outside on the grass, with the owner of the farm. I sat with him and my interpreter.

Hysen Jetishi, 64, was a dignified old man, with a black beret. Which made it all the worse when he started to cry. He was from the village of Brakovac, near Djakova. It began with the Nato bombing, he said. The biggest crisis was after that. The army blockaded the village, and no one could move. We just had what food there was in the house, for four days. There were tanks, cars, police. They were killing people. One man I know, the police killed him with a knife, and put the body in the centre of the village for everyone to see. They burned the village after four days.

The police came to say we had to leave our houses, or else they?d burn them down. We walked for 20 hours. The police beat us on the road; I could see men with blue masks. They put four men into dirty water ? I think he was talking about drowning them ? and they raped the girls.

As he talked, the tears rolled down his cheeks. Was he, I asked, in favour of the bombing? As far as I know, Nato is helping us, he said. I know that it?s really hard for refugees, but it?s a really good thing that Nato is doing. We thank them.

When his family emerged from the house, they were carrying plastic bags and blankets. The bus only had room for the women; there were 14 of us altogether, including two babies: one bawled all the way. Alberita Hasanaj, 23, spoke for the rest; she had a sweet face.

They started killing on the night Nato bombed, she said. They went first of all for the intellectuals, the chairman of the commune, teachers, daughters of teachers. I don?t know how many people were killed. That first night, I saw everything; after that, I just heard the shootings.

After that, 2,000 locals left together. We had 20 minutes to leave. On the road, I saw two corpses. And I saw Serbian police take two women and rape them. All along the way there were police; they wouldn?t let us stop for a rest. They took our passports at the border and they wouldn?t give them back.

She spoke disjointedly and once she put her head against the driver?s seat and cried. I felt a heel for my inquisition. Later, I asked her whether she was in favour of the Nato action. She nodded.

That night at Kruma, another 4,000 refugees turned up. It was dark and raining, and the convoy of lorries and trucks carried on for a couple of hours. I went out with my host, who carried a torch, to see the spectacle close up. It was grim beyond words; a kind of fairground of mud and bustle. One old lady in the traditional baggy trousers that do not allow freedom of movement between the ankles was being hauled over the side of the cart by a supportive friend. A number of the lorries and carts had simply come to a standstill. There was nowhere for the occupants to go, now that they had reached the end of their journey; they had to stay under plastic sheeting, in the rain. It was a miserable end to an awful day.

I found some men who spoke Serbian as well as Albanian, others German. One showed me his tractor, which had been battered at the front by a tank, pushing them from their village. Then he took me to see a quiet baby who had been wounded in the shelling.

Next day I went to talk to others of the refugees; I was mesmerised by the women from the villages, who looked like costume dolls. They had wooden panniers below their skirts; the head-dresses were gorgeous. I was dying to ask how the ensemble was worn. Perhaps the saddest of all those sad stories was the poor woman I spoke to whose seven sons had all been taken away from her, and she did not know where any of them were. She cried when she talked about them. The Serbs said their hands would be red with blood, she said. The masked police and soldiers lined 30 men up against the wall, and killed them with knives. As usual, all the refugees were in favour of the Nato action. Skender Ukaj from Korisha told me, If there hadn?t been Nato bombs, the Serbs would have bombed us day and night.

As for the border crossing at Morin, the one favoured by journalists, it was like the arrivals terminal at Heathrow. I saw one old couple come through the border, hand in hand. One lady dragged a suitcase on wheels; a woman from the villages carried a wooden cradle on her shoulder with the baby inside. I was talking to one couple when two women stopped as they passed the border guard and grabbed my arm. They were from Djakova. It?s terrible, terrible, one said disjointedly. They have killed children two years old. Men were killed in the yards of their house. They raped women. The day before yesterday, they killed and they burned. I don?t know who?s left.

She had a face that was swollen with sleeplessness and crying; the other woman added: We?re scared when we see the Albanian Army troops. The Serb militia killed one woman, Vera Tringa, with five children. The Russians did the worst things; they were worse than the Serbs ? we heard them speaking.

The husband of one of the women came to draw her away: The Seselji (paramilitaries) came to our house, three of them, with masks, he said. They went from one house to another: they are like wild beasts. We got out through the back windows. Some of the others climbed over the wall. I went into the cellars; it was dark while they were looking for me. I got out by the back and went to my uncle?s house early in the morning and we escaped together. They were hunting us, shooting us as we were running away. There are plenty of men who didn?t get away. They were hiding in the cellars and they were killed there.

Another man added: It was like that film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I turned to talk to his wife in Serbian ? educated Albanian Kosovars speak the language ? and she burst into tears. I don?t know where are my sisters, brother, mother, father, she said. I don?t know who?s left. I don?t know anyone in Albania. Her husband added, looking at her: It was God who helped us, not Nato.

There was much more to the destruction of Djakova that I heard, but these stories are typical. The ethnic cleansing is bloody and swift, procured by police, military and paramilitaries working together. And this mass murder and dispossession is still happening in Kosovo. I believe that it will take ground troops ? whether Nato?s, or the KLA, properly armed, or both ? to preserve the people who are left. But for what it?s worth, I made a point of asking all the refugees I spoke to, of both sexes and all ages, what they thought of the Nato bombing. And although some thought it should have happened earlier and others that they needed ground troops as well, not one was against it, even though, invariably, when they were driven from their homes, the Serbs had said to them: Go to Nato, go to Clinton, to Blair, to help you. They have paid for their opinion, in blood.

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