From here, he plans to take a bus north to the Albanian border where he will be given a gun and instant admission to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). It is that simple. ``Nobody has done so much to anyone in the world as the Serbs have done to us,'' he says. ``I've come here with my friends. My only wish now is to get some training and go straight into battle.''

Afrim is not alone. Volunteers for the KLA are pouring into Albania from across Europe and the United States at the rate of500 per day. Teenagers Labinot and Mentor, sons of emigre parents, left their high schools in the French city of Lyons to join up, only to be rejected from the front line. ``We wanted to fight but they said we were too young,'' said Labinot. ``But they have agreed to put us with their anti-aircraft units.''

``Our parents are worried, but they could not hold us,'' said Mentor. ``We wanted to take our girlfriends, but one is 14, the other is 15. Older girls can join up and fight, but they had to stay behind. There were lots of tears.''

KLA spokesman Visar Reka said not everyone can fight. ``A lot of guys are untrained, we are not sending them into battle. But our diaspora is well-educated, we have computer experts, financial experts, everyone is able to do something.''

This international brigade is being thrown together in a hurry -- most of the KLA's original units are now trapped inside the province by Serb forces. Unlike the brigade's namesake in the Spanish Civil War, these men are exclusivelyKosovan, part of the 3,00,000-strong diaspora in Western Europe and the US. New recruits arrive at the Albanian port of Durres, where they board coaches straight for the mountain camps, or else spend a few hours having a cooked meal at a beachfront cafe, called Drenica.

Drenica -- the name comes from Kosovo's most rebellious province -- is run by a bear of a man named Gani Kapiti, who also happens to be the area commander. ``My job is to organise the arrival of the recruits, bring them here, get the transport sorted out, and send them off,'' he says, sipping a tiny cup of coffee that seems to vanish in one huge hand.

Gigi, in burlyness a close second to Kapiti, guards the cafe with two friends, Agim, a 31-year-old former guard in a Viennese disco, and Besi, 29, who says he was a private detective in Germany. ``I like nursing, but now is the time for fighting,'' says Gigi. ``People are coming from all over Europe, this is our biggest battle. Most of us come with friends -- you arrive together, you traintogether, and you fight together.''

International observers are sceptical, saying friendship and willpower are no substitute for either proper training, or heavy artillery. But the KLA counters that NATO is on their side and is now levelling the playing field. ``The minute NATO has destroyed the Serb artillery, that is the minute Kosovo will be free,'' says Kapiti. ``When it is man against man, we expect the Serbs to run away we know the place, we are fighting for our homes.''

-- The Observer News Service