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Often it was peasant farmers who did the smuggling - carrying the weapons across, two or three at a time, on the backs of pack animals. If they were successful they could expect to earn about US$50 per trip.
But there were dangers. Serb forces realised the smuggling was going on and mined the frontier area. As a result many villagers and farmers were killed or wounded.
The presence of those guns in Kosovo during 1998 and 1999 undoubtedly allowed the KLA to sustain their military campaign and hold out for a political settlement.
But the story of the Albanian weapons looted in 1997 does not end in Kosovo. Soon after the war ended, those same arms began to move again.
They were shifted east into Northern Macedonia. Using similar methods to those employed on the Albania-Kosovo border, smugglers were once again able to move arms to a potential zone of conflict.
It is these weapons which now form the bulk of the NLA's armoury - some of them having been used in three different conflicts in four years.
Despite limited disarmament in Macedonia, it is very possible that many of those weapons have not been fired for the last time. Experience suggests they will either be stored by ethnic-Albanians in Macedonia or sold onto warring parties elsewhere.
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