TERRORIST AND HE ARMS IT CAN BE LEAVING FOR FEWER OF 1000 EURUS

BELGRADO/BRUSELAS (Reuters) - does a Kalashnikov Need in Belgium? There is no problem, "Nemac" the Serbian says. Some few ones hundreds of Eurus are enough to buy the weapon and to reserve a place to keep it in a car or in a truck that he comes from the Balkans. This veteran of the Yugoslavian wars that spoke with Reuters in a stop of trucks of the Serbian capital, assures that he doesn't make smuggling with weapons, but yes he knows people that can send assault rifles as those used in the attacks of Paris of November 13. 

The main threat of militant in Europe was during a lot of time it was the bomb. But in the last year, the attacks of French and Belgian yihadistas that return of Syria put the attention in the routes of smuggling of weapons toward the heart of Europe, during many years controlled for mafioso Balkan that supplied criminals in Western Europe. It is not still clear the origin of all the weapons used in Paris, but on Saturday it was informed that some, at least, come from a series manufactured in Belgrade at the end of the decade of 1980. 

There are multitude of corners and grooves in a car or a truck where it can hide an unarmed gun, Nemac said whose alias "German" means. "People hide them in the deposit of fuel". Her partner Milan facilitated the list of prices of stolen weapons of Yugoslavian, Albanian arsenals and others: up to 700 Eurus for an AK-47 of Yugoslavian production, because the Albanian and Chinese versions of times of the Maoist Tirana are cheaper. The silent weapons cost more, the sub machines gun is easier of hiding, and they cost more, he added. "The guns continue being relatively cheap, about 150 Eurus each one." 

The terrorist threat (...) he moves in the limits between the terrorism and the serious crimes, Rob Wainwright said, director of the police agency of the European Union, Europol, while he noticed last week to the European Parliament that it could have more attacks with guns sold by criminals' Balkan nets to yihadistas raised in West or sleeping cells expecting the order from attacking. 

The threat is not new, neither the connection of the Balkans with France and, mainly, Belgium, where police data almost show 6.000 seizures of weapons a year more than in France. But the intents of cutting these routes are having problems to advance to the rhythm in that you the facts happen and for the proliferation of smuggling roads like those that come from Libya and the east of Ukraine. 

In May of the last year, the French Mehdi Nemmouche, 29 years old that returned of Syria, used an AK-47, the classic Kalashnikov of the Soviet world, to kill four people in the Jewish Museum of Brussels. 

In the attacks against the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a store of products kosher in Paris in January, Kalashnikov was used again, some acquired ones in Belgium, as those that the accused man took of attempting a massacre in the train between Brussels and Paris in August. 

And then the weapons used by three attackers to kill 89 people in the theater Bataclan during a rock concert are. 

In spite of the resolution of the European Union to increase the control of their frontiers and to close the lagoons in the laws that already forbidden in the practice the private property of assault weapons, Nemac, Milan and a weary Serbian police, they doubt that it can put on end to the trade. The Serbian agent that participates in operations against the traffic of weapons, said that the investigators hardly discover with luck a third of the shipping’s. 

The problem is the high number of weapons, it pointed out, narrating the history of a man that he said to the officials of the frontier of Serbia with the UE that was a musician that didn't have anything to declare, apart from its old accordion. When the officials registered the car, there was a hole in the deposit covered with adhesive tape and with 20 guns inside. Another time he was a gun in a bag of barks and another inside a sandwich. 

It is calculated that in the UE there are 80 million firearms, in their majority controlled with licenses or in being able to of the State. It is the readiness of old military arsenals in the black market what fixes the attention in the Balkans. We don't know where those weapons are, who he/she has them, neither how they are being used", Ivan Zverzhanovski said, of the organization Clearinghouse for the Control of Small and Slight Weapons, with headquarters in Belgrade. 

The easiness with which the weapons are entering to the UE and moving later inside thanks to the system of opposite open of Schengen is contributing, together with the movement of the same murderers and of hundreds of immigrants' thousands, to the orders to harden the border controls and to settle down new inside the block. However, it seems impossible to eradicate a trade of illegal weapons that flourishes inside the same UE completely. In fact, there is certain irony in that Brussels, "capital" of the UE and headquarters of the military alliance of the NATO, have become a market for these arsenals. 

An unexpected obstacle for Islamic State, mainly after Paris, it is the conscience of old soldiers as Nemac and Milan: It is "a dirty" matter, he told the last envelope the trade. "Nobody in Serbia, any Christian, would sell knowingly weapons to Islamic" murderers, Milan pointed out. 

Nevertheless, the UE doesn't have this and it looks for to harden the rules on the firearms this month introducing an identification system for the whole block and new standards on its destruction. For example, an AK-47 used to kill Charlie's caricaturists Hebdo it was bought legally as collector's piece in Slovakia, a country of the UE. But the challenges don't end up there, since the trade for internet in the denominated "dark net" is to the rise, the weapons can also be assembled with parts bought for separated from legal form and until they can be manufactured with printers in 3D, for what France requested that the UE forbidden the software to manufacture them. 

The situation is complicated for the European governments and, like they showed the attacks in Paris, some few weapons can cause a great impact. This story puts in its place that a thing is the weapons that the states negotiate among them for their armies or police forces and another thing is the black market that doesn't have anything to do with the legality and the "business warp" (although it sounds wrong to say this way it) of weapons. That we can discuss because we have ended up having to arm those some and the other ones but this is another matter, meanwhile the problem of the terrorism Yihadista is clear they send us for separate the soldiers and the weapons, total for about 1000 Eurus the group.