Five people from Skopje and Kumanovo ended up in a police station in Gostivar after officers searched their tents in Galičnik. The operation lasted exactly one hour and twenty-five minutes - from 19:20 to 20:45 on 4 September, at a spot known as "Stopanche". Pulled from the tents: packets of marijuana, a white powdery and lumpy substance, hallucinogenic mushrooms and pills.

Those detained are A.J. (32), M.M. (38), K.S. (45) and V.V. (44) from Skopje, plus R.T. (38) from Kumanovo. The officers came from the Gostivar police station and the Mavrovo police unit. The Interior Ministry says that once the case is fully documented, an appropriate charge will follow - the phrase everyone here knows by heart, and the one that usually means the real story is only starting, if it starts at all.

Galičnik is not a random location. It is a village that holds more tents than permanent residents in summer, a village the state advertises as a tourism brand every July when the traditional wedding takes place. The rest of the year it is empty enough for someone to camp calmly with five different substances in a bag.

What is missing from the statement is more interesting than what is in it. No quantities. No word on whether the five know each other or simply happened to be there. No word on whether the material was for personal use or for sale - and the difference between those two answers is the difference between a misdemeanour and organised crime.

On paper the police statistics look excellent: an operation, five people detained, material confiscated, photographs for the media. The question nobody will ask is how many of these raids end in a final conviction, and how many quietly fall apart in a courtroom a few years later, when nobody is writing about them anymore.