Police Drive to Disarm Macedonians Backfires

Six months into a one-year campaign to collect weapons held illegally in private homes, Macedonian police admit they have collected only two guns, one mine and a few dozen bits of ammunition.

Another 50 people have responded to the police appeal for them to come forward and legalize their weapons.

"We have collected an insignificant amount of weapons," the police spokesman, Ivo Kotevski, said. The police will unveil a media campaign in future, hoping to improve the results, he added.

Xhabir Derala, head of Civil, the NGO that initiated the action to control privately-held weapons, said the police were not doing enough to reach out to people and gain their trust.

"People will hold on to their weapons as long as they don't have any trust in the system and in their neighbours," he said. "Disarmament is a complex process that takes time and one TV ad is not enough."

Derala complained that that the NGOs that potentially had the greatest outreach in communities had been all but excluded from the campaign.

Macedonia carried out its first disarmament action in the aftermath of the 2001 armed conflict between Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

The operation was carried out by NATO forces and was designed to ensure that the insurgents handed over their weapons before being pardoned and reintegrated in to society. In only 45 days, NATO collected some 7,500 items of weaponry.

Although the operation was seen as successful, experts warned that huge arsenals still remained unregistered across Macedonia. OSCE and Macedonian police estimates vary from 170,000 to half a million people in the country of 2 million illegally holding one or more pieces of weapons.

Derala said the number of illegal weapons in Macedonia may surpass even the most pessimistic estimates. According to the NGO's studies, the proliferation of weapons among young people was especially worrying.

Amendments to the law last year gave gun owners a year to hand over weapons or ask for their legalization. After this period expires in mid-2011, holders of illegal weapons face harsh penalties.