Ten Turks and One Guide at Bogorodica: The Balkan Route Never Closed, It Just Stopped Being News

At around 00:40 after midnight, officers at the Bogorodica border station stopped an attempt to illegally cross the state border. M.A. (42) from Albania was detained, suspected of guiding a group of ten Turkish citizens.

The age range of the group is a figure worth reading twice: 15 to 61. So that transport carried a minor and a man who should already be thinking about his pension. This is not a picture of adventurers - it is a picture of people paying somebody to move them across a border because they have no other way.

The Albanian is being held at the Gevgelija police station, and the ten Turkish citizens at the Bogorodica border surveillance station, from where they will be brought before the competent court.

Macedonia is still on the same route it was on in 2015, only now the route is quieter. The Balkan corridor never closed - it just stopped being news. Instead of columns of thousands, today we get groups of ten, at night, with a guide who charges a fee. The same path, minus the cameras.

The quick part of this story is that the border police clearly do their job - the group was spotted and stopped. The slower part is everything else: who runs the scheme above the guide, how many similar groups pass when nobody notices, and what happens to the twenty-somethings and fifty-somethings once they have been through the courtroom.

The answer to that second question usually is not news. Which is why you never read it.