By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jan 14 2004 (IPS)

The wars of the 1990s and centuries of tradition of holding personal weapons have left millions of illegally held guns around the Balkans.

Several efforts to unearth these weapons including amnesty for weapon holders in Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo have failed.

Most weapons come from two sources, experts agree. The former Yugoslav army handed over hundreds of thousands of handguns and rifles to Serb civilians in former Yugoslavia since 1991. And they come from the looting of more than 1,300 army depots in Albania in 1997.

Hundreds of thousands of these weapons were smuggled later to other areas of the Balkans.

A round table meeting held in the Macedonian capital Skoplje last month sought fresh efforts to unearth these weapons. Government officials and members of several non-governmental organisations attended the meeting organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Several journalists from Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia also attended the meeting. The media can have a major role to play in convincing people that life without small arms can be safe, UNDP officials and NGO representatives said..

The presence of such arms "contributes to the atmosphere of insecurity and instability in an area that badly needs peace and development," the meeting declared.

The success in bringing these weapons to the surface has been modest at best, going by figures gathered by the UNDP-affiliated programme South- Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC).

Macedonia, a country of two million, has between 110,000 and 170,000 illegal guns, head of the national disarmament programme Blagoja Markovski told the meeting. In the first two weeks of the amnesty period (Nov. 1 to Dec. 15) only 389 pieces of small arms were handed over.

The arms date back to the short conflict after the 400,000 ethnic Albanian population asked for greater autonomy in 2001. International mediation settled the conflict.

The situation is worse in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province administered by the United Nations since June 1999 after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia. The NATO campaign sought to end repression of the two million ethnic Albanian population ordered by then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

The amnesty for surrendering illegal arms to the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) saw only 155 small weapons handed over until last September. International organisations say there are more than 400,000 illegally held small arms around.

Weapons have run in Kosovan families for generations. The perceived need to defend themselves from the Serbian army gave Kosovans more reason to hold on to their weapons and get new ones.

Little can be done immediately to change the situation, Kosovan sociologist Blerim Latifi said at the round table meeting. "Pictures of armed people in schools around Kosovo, and posters and statues of former KLA fighters with weapons keep the gun culture alive."

One of the first tasks of KFOR troops was to attempt to disarm the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the guerrilla group that had fought Milosevic’s forces. But most weapons went into thousands of homes.

A recent survey by SEESAC shows that one in five students in Kosovo carries a gun to school.

Efforts to unearth illegal weapons in Serbia found more success. "Some 35,000 weapons and explosive devices, and about two million rounds of ammunition have been surrendered," assistant interior minister Sreten Lukic told media representatives.

The surrendered weapons included kalashnikovs, scorpions, uzis, submachine and machine guns, hand grenades, mines, rocket propelled grenades and launchers, and explosive devices.

Serbian authorities had called for the surrender of illegal small arms following the assassination of former prime minister Zoran Djindjic last March.

But greater public awareness of the threat posed by small arms is some success in itself, Alain Lapon from UNDP told the meeting in Skoplje.

"Now 80 percent of the population in the area of south Balkans is aware that presence of weapons is a threat to society, and 73 percent say the amnesty is a positive campaign," Lapon said. People need more time to learn of the benefits of arms-free life, he said.

"Simply destroying or removing the illegal small arms is not enough by itself," UNDP regional coordinator Francis O’Donnell told journalists in Belgrade last month. "Changing traditional values and promotion of security can be achieved only when people can live normally, doing their jobs and reviving the economy."

Security is a basis for overcoming poverty, he said. "So what we are trying to do here is to fight the poverty."

But economic improvement in areas bristling with small arms has been less than modest so far, like the campaigns to erase memories of danger.

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