Zoran Petrov is a former intelligence officer and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and author of the book “The Assassination”. Currently, Petrov is the National coordinator for implementation of the State Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. He spoke to CivilMedia about the links between illegal arms trade and organized crime in the country and the region. The conversation with Petrov took place on December 27, 2021, as part of the CIVIL project “Past, present and future of arms control in the Republic of Northern Macedonia” with the support of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the Resilience Fund.
Petrov congratulated CIVIL for the project and added: “What I know and can say, will not be something exclusive, but Macedonia has long been oversaturated with weapons. Those assumed numbers are fantastic even on the verge of incredible, that it is over 450.000 pieces of small arms, three-quarters of which are illegal. These are huge numbers and it does not apply only to Macedonia, in general, this rule applies to the entire Balkans region.”
“As far as I know, and I do follow this subject, since 2014, the Macedonian authorities have maximally tightened the conditions for legalization of weapons and in 2014 I think that 7.000 licenses were issued, and now they are issued around 1.000 per year. This is about legal weapons” – Petrov told CivilMedia’s Zoran Ivanov.
As an assumption and according to some indications from your research, the country and the region are not ready to deal with this topic more successfully. So who has that large amount of weapons here, our individual citizens or some organized formations?
PETROV: Macedonia has repeatedly tried to seize those weapons and tried to legalize them. You remember the action “Essential Harvest” in 2001, “Amber Fox” which ended in 2003.
In 2003, a law was passed to decriminalize owners who voluntarily surrendered their illegal weapons to avoid prosecution and indictments. In 2010, for the last time, the Macedonian government launched an initiative to legalize illegal weapons and all these actions yielded a relatively symbolic result.
Where are the weapons? Well, the weapons are in our tradition, in our conscience, in our folklore, and people feel the need and obligation to have them.
Do we hear it at various weddings, festivities, and religious holidays?
PETROV: Yes, unfortunately, there are many accidents as well and the problem is not only with the illegal weapons. The problem is also in the legal, official weapons that are being given. I have great reservations that the services are doing that check, that proper control over the delivery of weapons. By the way, I was an official for a while, I had an official weapon, and from personal experience, I can say that the weapon does not make me safer. I do not feel safer when I have a weapon, on the contrary.
Where those weapons end up, they are smuggled by criminal groups probably here as well and state officials are involved in turning a blind eye at the border crossings, perhaps the police etc. No mafia can survive without the support of certain centers of power in a country at least that is the theory. Where do those weapons end up, with individuals or?
PETROV: Arms smuggling goes hand in hand with drug trafficking, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, by itself and on itself it does not function on its own. It’s a pretty lucrative business that moves in many directions. What I can say from the memory is that during the terrorist attacks in France a few years ago, weapons involved in the attack were originating from the Balkans, Yugoslav, Chinese production, etc. We can assume that we are also a transit zone among other things and it goes to markets where there is a higher price. I will improvise a bit because I have friends from this field, for example, a Kalashnikov in the West can reach a value of 2 to 3 thousand euros, while in our country it can still be found for 500 to 1,000 euros. Guns are relatively cheaper depending on the model, but in the West they reach a higher price.
Where can one get such a gun, a Yugoslav one?
PETROV: I do not know, I did not engage in that kind of investigations, you should call inspectors from the Ministry of Interior. I do not know if there are black market pages on the Internet for smuggling, but I do not think it is difficult to find illegal weapons.
What should the state and institutions do to reduce smuggling, but also the possession of illegal weapons that are in private hands?
PETROV: We will go into politics a little and I will say another thing, we have implemented the European legislation, our laws in this segment are quite strict and rigorous. We fail in the implementing department, there is an occasional police action where drugs are sought and where drugs are seized, and large amounts of weapons are found because those things always go together. These are police activities and I expect much more operational increments in the future.
Can a new action of illegal weapons collecting help reduce that amount of weapons, at least among the citizens, if not among some fantasists or organized groups?
PETROV: The latest action taken by the Government to legalize weapons has given symbolic results, people are more likely to report trophy weapons, hunting weapons inherited from ancestors, relatives, etc., and while keeping the new assets. The results of that action were weak.
Zoran Ivanov
Transcript and text processing: Dehran Muratov
Camera: Atanas Petrovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
Translation: Natasha Cvetkovska
Interview conducted by: Zoran Ivanov
Transcript and ext processing: Dehran Muratov
Camera: Atanas Petrovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
Translation: Natasha Cvetkovska
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