Walking around Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina, with the sun shining, young people strolling around and the pavement cafes open, a certain normality is fast returning.

Normality, that is, except for the highly visible presence of small patrols of British paratroops, both in vehicles and on foot.

Belfast of the 1970s has come to the Balkans.

But it is the British army's experience in Northern Ireland, backed by decades of colonial policing, which has enabled its troops to adapt easily to their mission in Kosovo.

Urban operations are the latest fashion in Western military circles. The American army is seeking to learn the lessons of Mogadishu and Sarajevo. The US marine corps, in particular, trains heavily to fight in and control cities - what the jargon describes as urban terrain.

Somalia has bad memories for the Americans

But what for the Americans is a relatively newly-learnt discipline, the British army has been doing for years. Such factors need to be remembered when making comparisons between the way different national contingents are operating in Kosovo.

For command purposes, K-For has divided the province into five multi-national brigade areas. One is led by the British, one by the French, with American, German and Italian officers commanding the other three.

They all of course come under the authority of K-For's commander, General Mike Jackson.

National comparisons

He sets the mission for each subordinate command, but the way in which individual French, say, or German units carry out their tasks depends upon their own training and concept of operations.

Inevitably, there have been invidious comparisons between, for example, the way in which the British troops have clamped down in Pristina with what the Germans have been doing in Prizren or the continuing problems that the French are having in policing Serbian enclaves in their sector.

Protecting the Serbs is a priority

K-For is highly sensitive to such comparisons, insisting that all its troops are doing a good job. But differences in doctrine, training and experience are bound to affect the performance of different units.

The German army, for example, has done little of this sort of work. For them, this is the first deployment into what was, at least initially, a combat zone since the Second World War.

The different brigade commanders have also had to face very different situations on the ground, depending upon the level of fighting in their area between the KLA and the Yugoslav forces, the level of physical destruction and the incidence of ethnic cleansing and massacres.

There will in due course be the further complication of adding up to five Russian batallions to this complex mix of forces, with plans for Russian units to operate in American, French and German commanded sectors.

Decades of prejudice

Despite some tensions, sporadic looting and instances of revenge attacks and murders, K-For's operations are settling into a pattern.

Presence is everything. Key buildings, access routes and installations are identified and heavily patrolled to deter any violence.

Meanwhile, other patrols fan out through the area to provide reassurance to the population at large.

However, there is a clear limit to what the troops can do. For one thing, they cannot be everywhere and while they can try to deter outright violence, they cannot transcend decades of prejudice.

Serbian perspective

Local Serbs in Pristina, for example, have welcomed K-For's efforts to provide them with physical protection, but claim that Nato can do little to ensure they're not turned away from Albanian-owned shops or charged higher prices because of who they are.

Serbs claim that many are leaving because they have been frozen out of society, rather than because of outright physical intimidation.

The other great problem for the peace-keepers - just as in Bosnia - is not to become drawn into too many additional activities: what the military call "mission-creep".

Civil tasks

In the first weeks, K-For troops have to help restore power, water-supplies, medical facilities, even rubbish collection. If they don't, their task will be much harder.

But they do not want to become locked into such activities. In due course, it is going to be up to the international civil authority, alongside local organisations, to take over many of these tasks.

And the fear is that, just as in Bosnia, the civil operation will only slowly move into gear.