Kosovo: crime and cooperation

This is the main crossing point between Serbia and Kosovo set up under the EU devised Integrated Borders management scheme or IBM.While Belgrade and Pristina still have to agree on how to implement their recent agreement on the North of Kosovo.After a difficult start, the next step will be that Serb and Albanian teams will work under the same roof, at a permanent border-crossing premises.Aside from facilitating traffic, the scheme has helped reduce smuggling through illegal crossing points, in the North of Kosovo. Goods imported from Serbia for the use of this Serb inhabited region, have been free of duty until now.Traffickers, both Serb and Albanian, have taken advantage of this, and used side roads to smuggle goods illegally from the north to the south of Kosovo, 70 percent of the goods seized by customs and police in this storage room in the northern city of Mitrovica, are smuggled through secondary routes in the north Arianit Rexhepi, is the head of Kosovo customs anti-smuggling team:"Around here there are many vehicles that belong to smugglers that follow us and the police, to know our position and where we are and what road we are patrolling."Thousands of liters of gas for instance escape the scrutiny of customs and police. Bordering country roads just south of Mitrovica, illegal pumps  resell the gas at half the market price. A business which cannot function without full agreement between both Serb and Albanian trafickers, north and south of Kosovo.Besim Hoti from Mitrovica police believes lessons in cooperation can learned from the smugglers.