NATO yesterday outlined the panoply of Serb special units it says are involved in what it believes is the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo. In doing so it named some familiar names.
Throughout the past year, like most reporters, there have been meetings with the various Rambo-style units which form the backbone of the Serbian Interior Ministry forces.
In customised jeeps festooned with machine guns, in combat uniforms or all-black attire, these units have led the fighting against the rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, though the victims have often been civilians.
NATO, too, has been watching. There, in yesterday's televised briefing complete with graphics, were the JSO, the special forces of the police, also known as the Red Berets.
The JSO work for the Interior Ministry, are mostly recruited from the army, and have spearheaded battles against the KLA in various strongholds. "They have a penchant for modern, armoured four-by-fours," said the British NATO spokesman. What he failed to mention was the make of these four-by-fours: British Land Rovers.
Throughout the Bosnian war, most television companies equipped themselves with the top range customised armoured Land Rover, painted white like aid vehicles. Now the Serbs have followed their lead, even down to the white paint, a dubious example of British export success.
In the spring of last year I was introduced to them when, seeing a convoy of white armoured Land Rovers heading up the highway to Pristina, I assumed they were some kind of mass-arrival of TV crews.
Halfway into the road to flag them down, I noticed the occupants: no slouching cameramen. Instead, these were soldiers, bulky in their combat jackets and helmets, with one sniper riding "Top gun", poking from the trapdoor cut into the roof.
Another feature of the JSO is its loyalty. President Slobodan Milosevic distrusts his army, ever mindful that they will plot a coup against him. Instead, he uses the JSO: "We also believe that they act as Mr Milosevic's praetorian guard," said the official.
Then there are the PJP, the special police troops, a much larger organisation of 10,000 soldiers, which operate as a sort of gendamerie, with equipment that some police forces might find excessive: Light artillery, machine guns, and armoured personnel carriers. "They are the police assault troops," says NATO. "Their organisation is the backbone of Serbia's control in the province."
The PJP, like other police units, wear uniforms of the same camouflage pattern as the army, a sort of tiger-stripe, but the colours instead of being green and brown are shades of mauve and purple. The sight of these units was an early-warning sign for journalists that a battle was about to commence.
Serbia has six PJP battalions, each of 700 men, the equivalent, says NATO, of a light infantry battalion in both equipment and size.
Much of NATO's bombing appears to be concentrated on hitting their bases - with attacks on police barracks in towns across the province: Mitrovica, Djakovica, Pec, Orahovac and of course Pristina in recent days.
Then there are the elite of the elite, the SAJ, Special Anti-terrorist Unit. NATO says the SAJ numbers 400 men. "The recruits are young, fit, no-one older than 35," said the NATO spokesman.
Military monitors said they were based in a disused factory just outside Pristina. Although these are the cream of Serb forces, several independent Serbian journalists insisted last year that they were not responsible for atrocities. "They are tough, but they are clean," said one.
These units specialise in customising their jeeps - convoys would rumble out at dusk each evening for the hazardous run down the border road with Albania, hoping to interdict guerrilla supply columns, in a collection of cut-down jeeps with machine guns.
Pick-up trucks also had heavy machine guns fitted to a mount fixed to the floor at the back, with a gunner in helmet and flak jacket hanging on, Rambo-style, as the vehicle raced down the road.
Not all police units enjoy topline vehicles. More often than not, PJP units appear in a mix-match collection of vehicles - an armoured car painted blue leading, followed by a couple of light trucks with thick rubber mats stuck to the sides to give sniper protection, followed by a couple of transit vans or a truck borrowed from the public works department.
At the start of the fighting last March, one unit of special police moved around Srbica, centre of fighting between rebels and the Serbs, in a cluster of rusting white Zastava cars. The effect was comical, until you looked at the balaclava-clad men crammed into their small interiors.
But British monitors were scathing, saying these units, the soldiers often draped with bandoliers of ammunition, being less effective than they looked.
"The Serbs have no units trained for counter insurgency work," said one former British officer. "They won't go off the roads and chase the KLA."
He said Britain's SAS, like other counter-insurgency units, would shed jeeps and instead walk off into the bush, hiding out for days if necessary to attack guerrilla columns at night.
The Yugoslav army also has special units, yet like the rest of the army, these have so far taken a back seat. There is a mutual antagonism here - retired generals have criticised Mr Milosevic for leading the army into a war in Kosovo having led them into defeats in wars in Croatia and Bosnia. He, of course, mistrusts them and fears they may mount a coup against him.
Prominent in the organisation of Interior Ministry special units is Frankie Simatovic, accused yesterday by NATO as being the "link man" between the Interior Ministry and various paramilitary organisations. Simatovic has been a key player in the Yugoslav wars from the beginning, having organised paramilitary units for the very first battles by Serbs against Croats in 1991.
But noticably absent has been the greatest paramilitary commander of them all, Arkan.
This week's belated indictment of the baby-faced Arkan, real name Zelkjo Raznatovic, by the International Court in The Hague is for alleged crimes committed during the Bosnian war, not Kosovo. The reason is simple - he has stayed out of the current battles.
His private army, the Tigers, spearheaded the drive to "ethnically cleanse" Croats and Muslims from large swathes of Bosnia in 1992, but has played no role in Kosovo, its leader having long since shed his camouflage for a suit as a successful businessman and owner of a Belgrade football team.
NATO's aim in outlining the special police units and their leaders has been to try and deter them from committing atrocities - hoping they will fear joining Arkan and others in facing war crimes indictments. But few Serbs tune into foreign TV networks, and on the evidence of current fighting in Kosovo, fewer seem to be scared of The Hague.
Reuters adds: Arkan yesterday praised the three US soldiers taken prisoner by Yugoslav forces and promised they would be well treated.
"They are brave soldiers, they have been fighting, they [didn't] want to surrender and I said `Thanks be to God that they are alive'. They are brave American soldiers," Arkan told BBC World Service Television. "The Yugoslav army is keeping them [and] they'll be treated under the Geneva Convention. They will be well treated, don't you worry."