Tetovo: Rebel war songs blare out in cafes of occupied city

In a café whose windows have been blown out by shell blasts, and whose walls are scarred with bullet holes, Albanian rebels who have brought Macedonia to the brink of civil war sit quietly cradling their Kalashnikovs. Everyone is silent because the local commander, known as Leka, in heavy beard and bandana, is on his mobile phone doing a live television interview about the deadlocked Western-brokered peace talks, which dragged into a third day yesterday.

This is rebel-held territory, but it is not some remote mountain village. The area under rebel control includes part of Tetovo, the main Albanian city in Macedonia. You cross an invisible line among the neat suburban villas near the stadium. There is no way of telling you have just crossed the front line, except for a glimpse of a black-uniformed rebel sentry hiding behind a wall.

A mile or so down the road, you are flagged down by rebel police. There is no nervous gun-waving, just a polite document inspection. The rebels are in control here. Albanian civilians sit calmly in cafés by the roadside. In one, the rebels' pop song is blaring out of the radio, a jaunty Turkish tune with a chanted chorus of "UCK! UCK!", the initials of the rebel National Liberation Army in Albanian. You can hear similar war songs from the other side in the capital, Skopje – songs of the ethnic Macedonians, set to Western pop beats.

The West is trying to make both sides sit down and talk peace, but war songs are topping the charts. This is the territory the rebels were supposed to have left, under a new ceasefire hastily agreed under Western pressure last week. But even as the peace talks continue in a desperate bid to avert full-blown civil war, the rebels are ignoring the deal and occupying part of Tetovo.

Western monitors told reporters they had seen the rebels pulling back. But clearly they have not. Commander Leka says: "We stayed here because we fear Macedonian paramilitaries might attack our civilians." He is based just beyond Tetovo, in Poroj, a satellite village. He shows grisly pictures of civilian casualties killed in the fighting last week. The Macedonian army fired indiscriminately on civilian areas in Poroj, as it has done elsewhere.

Jehona Saliu, a 12-year-old girl, was killed when shrapnel tore across the her front door. Her mother, Latife, and her 16-year-old sister, Agrone, died on the spot. Jehona was rushed across the front line to Tetovo hospital, where she died.

A young rebel, his head swathed in bandages, says with a smile: "Two week ago I was still a civilian." He was working in Austria and sending his earnings home. His Vienna-registered car is parked in the street. "I came back to visit," he says. "When I saw how bad things were, I had to join up."

Leka is the commander of the area where the car of the hardline Macedonian Interior Minister, Ljube Boskovski, was attacked on Sunday night, in what the Macedonians are calling a serious ceasefire violation. Leka claims the minister's bodyguards opened fire first.

The rebel commander says his men will respect a peace deal if one comes, but that it would have to be guaranteed by Nato. A deal is going to be difficult. Macedonian refugees returned to their homes up the road, in the village of Tearce, in what Western diplomats said was a vital confidence-building measure. The refugees found their homes burnt, and the rebels still here, so they fled back to Skopje. In effect the area has been ethnically cleansed, just as the southern city of Bitola was cleansed of Albanians, chased out in riots last month.

And if the peace talks break down? "We won't attack Tetovo again. We've already won here," Leka says. "If we attack anywhere it will be Skopje."