Proliferation of illegal arms

TRAiNING GUNS AGAINST INDIA

Going by the spate of recent killings in Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh and a general link of such atrocities to Islamic terror groups, India feels rightly wary as it is vulnerable to myriad forms of insurgencies. But the availability of easy arms should cause sufficient alarm and it is about time that we trained our guns, literally, on the international networks that feed it.

It is well documented how Chinese arms manufacturing companies regularly sell small arms – portable lethal weapons like AK series rifles, light and sub-machine guns, grenades etc – to insurgents in the Northeast India. China, in fact, holds the key to the availability of weapons and ammunition among the rebel groups in Northeast India that is keeping the pot of insurgency boiling in this far-eastern frontier.

Binalakshmi Nepram, author of book ‘South Asia’s Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation in India’s Northeast’, has revealed that many parts of South Asia, and in particular the Northeast region of India, are fragmented societies run on guns and drugs.

She says how the region is being flooded with a frightening influx of small arms and narcotics and resulting in proliferation of groups armed by China, Pakistan, Burmese rebels and other Southeast Asian states, and criminal groups. There is no audit of the huge arms inventory of the insurgent groups in the Northeast. The Chittagong Hills Tract provided free access to at least 25 Indian armed groups that ran thriving empires of narcotics, arms-running and other illicit trade.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) should take a serious look into how the ring of narco-insurgency has spread its shadow across the seven states of the Northeast exacerbated by a massive international border which runs through difficult, porous and changing terrain and which touches several nations.

Nepram observes that narco-trafficking and insurgency, coupled with extortion, form a menacing ring which includes politicians, rebel groups and common people. The illicit trafficking in narcotics is often linked to arms smuggling, insurgency and organised crime. Illegal trade in narcotics and arms generate billion of dollars in the black market and is the major source of funding terrorism, insurgency and organised crime, with international ramifications.

The proliferation of cross-border illegal arms accounts for a spate of terrorism and insurgency. Following the arms haul in Chittagong port on April 2, 2004, by far the largest seizure of illicit arms in the history of Bangladesh, it was found out that Chinese arms and ammunition were headed for two armed Indian groups, ULFA and NSCN(IM).

Bangla-desh and Myanmar have been the key transit routes through which small arms made in China reaches the Northeast.

Arms from the Southeast Asian nations have either been routed through Bangladesh (via the Garo Hills route in Meghalaya) or have come through the porous Indo-Myanmar border at Moreh. For Nepal, the Terai region bordering India is a leaky point.

How alarming is the situation? Past the killings of eight soldiers after a Central Reserve Police Force convoy was ambushed by terrorists recently in Pampore in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, it was found that the two assailants subsequently killed were carrying AK-47s and hand grenades. Incidentally, the CRPF personnel were returning from a firing practice in Lathpora when their six-vehicle convoy was fired upon on a highway on the outskirts of Srinagar.

According to state Home Department officials, security forces have seized nearly 31,000 AK rifles of various series from the militants and their hideouts in the state till 2012 since the eruption of militancy in 1990. It was observed that the quantity of arms and ammunition recovered by security forces from militants in Jammu and Kashmir over the two decades is enough to raise an army larger than that of 150-member countries of the United Nations.

Late N S Saxena, former DGP, Uttar Pradesh, once noted in a report that there were more firearms, both licensed and unlicensed, with individuals in Moradabad district than in the whole of United Kingdom or Japan. According to the data from the MHA, out of all fatalities that occurred across the country between 2009 and 2013, around 90% involved unlicensed weapons.

Most-armed society
According to the website gunpolicy.org, there are an estimated 40 million firearms in the hands of civilians and only about 6.3 million of these are registered. That makes India the second most-armed society in the world next to the United States. A 2011 survey conducted by the India Armed Violence Assessment Institute, Delhi confirms the estimate. It took note of the fact that four of the top five most violent cities (Meerut, Allahabad, Varanasi, Kanpur) in terms of murder by firearms are located in UP.

And as a footnote, one can add that small arms play an important part in jeopardising the electoral process, mindful of the fact that Assembly elections are due in UP in early 2017.

In the course of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, it was found that the state had one of the highest rates of violent crimes as per the National Crime Records Bureau. While Malda, Murshidabad and Nadia districts are the arms-making and smuggling hubs, the Maoist areas of Bankura, Purulia, Jhargram are places where weapons are collected and stored.

The rise of Birbhum as one of the most troubled districts has to be accounted for the huge inflow of arms. Recently, a key suspect, a resident of Labhpur in Birbhum district, with possible links to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) as well as with Islamic State was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The Indian Arms Act of 1959 does not envisage strict penalties for illegal possession of firearms.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” goes the dictum of the National Rifle Association. But India’s internal security would be beefed up, if it prevents arms from falling into wrong hands.