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India takes its arms beefs to the
UN
By Ramtanu Maitra
New Delhi is in the process of drafting
a proposal to the United Nations seeking a
global ban on small-arms sales to non-state actors. India
is being swamped with small arms from all
directions, but the most dangerous developments
are taking place in the country's restless
northeast. There, small arms are streaming in from
Southeast Asia by the boatload and via jungle
trails through Myanmar.
The worsening
security situations in neighboring Bangladesh and
Nepal, where violence and arms are proliferating
at an exponential rate, add urgency to Delhi's
concern. There is no indication that the
leadership in either Dhaka or Kathmandu can
control the threat.
In the present South
Asian regional context, New Delhi considers the
strengthening of its economic and political
relations with Southeast Asia of vital importance.
Besides the economic factor, which is of driving
importance, India's emergence as a major economic
and military power in recent years makes it
incumbent on leadership in New Delhi to cultivate
a regional presence.
Essential security
issue
The proposal for an international
ban on small-arms trafficking is being developed
jointly by the Indian Home Ministry and External
Affairs Ministry. According to reports from a
senior Home Ministry official who recently toured
the northeast to evaluate the scope of operations
and extent of control exerted by insurgents: "If a
global ban is achieved, it would help to improve
the security situation in the country."
Indeed, a host of poorly governed nations
adjacent to India in the east along with
subversion by various anti-India guerrilla forces
in the northeast have combined to put India's
security situation under extreme stress.
Secessionists, Indian Maoists (also known as
Naxalites) and the mafia are the primary
purchasers of small weapons, ranging from
Kalashnikov assault rifles to sophisticated M-16s.
A few Western European countries and collapsed
communist regimes of Eastern Europe, some Indian
officials point out, have been selling arms to
these violent groups, overtly or covertly, and
earning huge profits. The arms sales channels are
well established and serve ever-widening conflict
zones in India's northeast. It is also common
knowledge by now that insurgents and armed
opposition groups in South Asia and Southeast Asia
have access to top arms smuggling kingpins in
Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Whether India is successful in this initiative
depends on how it conveys its concerns to
the European nations, Israel and, particularly,
the United States. At this point India hopes that
the US and Israel will second the proposal,
perhaps with minor changes, because both have now
become full-fledged victims of militants and
extremists who use small arms and weapons to
terrorize their populations.
Broadly speaking, "small arms"
covers both military-style small arms and light weapons,
as well as commercial firearms (handguns
and long guns). According to the United Nations
Report of the Panel of Governmental Experts
on Small Arms (United Nations, 1997), a ban
would cover the following types of weapons:
Small arms, including revolvers and self-loading
pistols, rifles and carbines, assault rifles,
submachine-guns and light machine-guns; and light weapons,
including heavy machine-guns, hand-held under-barrel and
mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-tank and
anti-aircraft guns, recoilless rifles, portable
launchers or anti-tank and anti-aircraft missile
systems and mortars of less than 100mm caliber.
Trade bonanza
Significantly, during the 1990s, conventional arms killed
an estimated 5 million people, or 1,370 people
every day, and forced more than 50 million people
to leave their homes. Millions more lost
their property, livelihood or loved ones. In Rwanda
alone, almost a million people were killed in 1994 with the
aid of weapons that belong to the small-arms category.
At the present time, the annual trade
in small arms is about $40 billion. Two-thirds
of global arms deliveries go to the
developing countries. Small arms are produced by more than 1,000
companies in at least 98 countries, with about 7
million new arms produced annually.
These
are extremely damning figures, and one would
expect no country to have difficulty in supporting
the imposition of a global ban on small arms. But
such is not the case. In some ways, the economics
of gun-running are similar to drug production and
trafficking. The small-arms trade, like drug
trafficking, generates a lot of cash, much of
which stays out of the account books. It is a very
attractive option, not only to opportune investors
but also to cash-starved private banks.
Because of the economic return small-arms
manufacturers enjoy, India can expect to face an
uphill task in bringing about a consensus among
developed nations to get the draft to the UN
floor. Delhi, however, has no choice. It cannot
afford to ignore the realities in its northeast.
It cannot ignore how vulnerable the northeast has
become because of the brazen activities of drug
and gun-runners in Southeast Asia using Bangladesh
as a conduit.
The rapid rise of a virulent
form of anti-India Islamists in Bangladesh, and
their gathering of strength, is a reality. For
instance, it is public knowledge now that the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard and
Interpol agents are involved in investigating bomb
attacks that narrowly missed the Bangladeshi
opposition leader and former prime minister,
Sheikh Hasina Wazed in Dhaka, and British High
Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury, during his visit to
Sylhet. Another bomb attack killed Bangladesh's
former finance minister, Shah A M S Kibria. It is
evident that Dhaka, politically weak and
compromised, cannot afford to punish the culprits.
Bangladesh: Trans-shipment
point
The
internationalization of Bangladesh's internal security problems
have led investigators to look back
into Bangladesh's biggest arms haul ever - an event that
took place on a jetty in the Karnaphuli River
in Bangladesh's port city of Chittagong last April 2. The
international investigators believe that militants
from India, who have been provided sanctuaries in
Bangladesh, could be behind the assassination
attempts; India, which was denied an investigative
role in the Chittagong arms haul, still maintains
that the weapons seized were consigned to the
outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)
and other northeastern terrorist groups.
According to Indian intelligence
sources, that haul netted 1,790 rifles (including
Uzi submachine-guns and assault rifles of the AK
series), 150 rocket launchers, 840 rockets, 2,700
grenades and more than a million rounds of ammunition.
After being unloaded on the east bank
of the Karnaphulli River from two trawlers that
originated in Malaysia, the weapons were being
loaded on to 10 trucks. Some former
Bangladeshi army generals and security analysts
observed that the weapons recovered and the
quantity involved suggested use in conventional
warfare against a regular army.
Investigators believe that well-organized
syndicates in Bangladesh are using the country
only as a transit route, and that the arms were
earmarked for the Maoist rebels in Nepal or the
numerous separatist groups operating in India's
northeast. An English daily from Dhaka, the Daily
Star, quoted "intelligence agents" pointing out
that the weapons were probably destined for the
troubled Indian state of Assam. Indian authorities
insist that the topmost military commander of ULFA
has been operating his anti-India insurgency from
bases in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh.
According to local media
reports in Guwahati, capital of the northeastern
Indian state of Assam, the trawlers were owned by
the brother of a ruling Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP) leader. These ships often use the
Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Ltd (CUFL) jetty
to unload consignments - the same jetty at
which Bangladeshi paramilitary troopers carried out the
raid last April. It is said that the local police had
no intention to seize the material and that it is
more than likely that large caches of weapons had
been allowed to enter the country by the local
authorities on many occasions.
UN
dithering
It's not that the international
community is not aware of this scourge. At the UN
Small Arms Conference in July 2001 the
international community recognized the need to
control the state-sanctioned trade in small arms.
A key provision in this regard is found in Section
II, Paragraph 11 of the UN Program of Action:
"Member states undertake to assess applications
for export authorizations according to strict
national regulations and procedures that cover all
small arms and light weapons and are consistent
with the existing responsibilities of states under
relevant international law."
At
the same conference, a proposal to ban the
transfer of handheld and shoulder-supported
missile launchers to non-governmental parties
received nearly universal support. Unfortunately, however,
the US delegation fought the ban, and prevailed.
The US group also opposed proposals to
register new weapons with identifiable,
inalterable serial numbers. Indelibly marked weapons would
be easier to trace back to their manufacturers
and brokers. The 5,000-10,000 small rockets that now belong
to non-state combatants - including terrorists in
Afghanistan, who have made US aircraft some of
their priority targets - somehow leaked out of
government channels worldwide and into the black
market.
The US position is not,
however, simply driven by its manufacturers'
extra cash-generation benefits. In reality, although
the US is by far the world's leading source for
legal weapons, with annual arms sales totaling about
$12 billion, the bulk of illegal weapons sales
come from former Sovie-bloc countries where
the Kalashnikov is produced, according to
law-enforcement officials and arms traffickers alike.
Most of the weapons used in irregular warfare,
from the Balkans to Colombia, have come from
Russia and former Soviet satellite states.
At the UN Special Conference in 2002
on the possession, proliferation and misuse
of illegal small arms and light weapons
(SALW), numerous non-governmental organizations
were engaged in either persuading or assisting
national governments in the worst-affected states to
establish plans of action to address SALW issues.
These range from ensuring better stockpile
controls within the security forces to the
creation of national commissions to work across
government departments and the security forces to
address issues relating to control,
decommissioning and destruction of weapons.
New Delhi believes that the US has begun
looking at the issue in a different light since
September 11, 2001. Perhaps. But according to
Dosim Sapayev, an analyst from the International
War and Peace Institute: "The West is worried
about nuclear missiles, tanks and aircraft, not
hand-held weapons."
Ramtanu Maitra
writes for a number of international journals and
is a regular contributor to the Washington-based
EIR and the New Delhi-based Indian Defence Review.
He also writes for
Aakrosh,
India
's
defense-tied quarterly
journal.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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