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Small arms: Fuel for many
fires
By David Isenberg
A
study released earlier this month by a private group
says the production of small arms is more widely
distributed around the world than previously thought.
The study, Small Arms Survey 2002, by the Graduate
Institute of International Studies in Geneva, says that
the estimated total global stockpile of small arms and
light weapons has risen this year to at least 638
million, significantly higher than the 2001 estimate of
at least 551 million, and about 60 percent of them are
legally held by civilians.
It also says that
civilians purchase more than 80 percent of the eight
million new weapons manufactured worldwide every year.
Small arms include pistols, hunting rifles and machine
guns; and also light weapons, such as shoulder-fired
rocket launchers and mortars.
The study puts the
value of global trade in small weapons at US$4-5 billion
a year. It says about 80-90 percent of the trade is
legal. It also found a general decrease in the
stockpiles of small weapons held by insurgent groups.
Small arms and light weapons proliferation has
been an issue of increasing concern in Asia for many
years. Many of the current problems date back to the
1980s when the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave
over $2 billion in light weapons to mujahideen groups in
Afghanistan fighting the Soviet invasion between 1979
and 1989.
Some countries have emerged as gun
havens for black market arms traffickers. For example,
many of the rebel groups in foreign countries, such as
the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Free Aceh Movement from
Aceh in Indonesia, breakaway Chakma rebels in
southeastern Bangladesh, ethnic rebel groups from the
southeast Himalaya and northeast states of India, and
the New Mon State Party, the Karen National Union, the
Karenni Progressive Party, and the Shan State Army in
Myanmar continue to order secondhand supplies and war
weapons from gunrunners along the borders of Thailand.
Asia is also one of the most active regions for
maritime illicit arms trafficking. Patrolling the vast
waterways and islands has proved a daunting task for the
region’s navies and coastguards. Insurgent groups use
anything from commercial ocean freighters to fishing
boats to deliver small arms.
President George W
Bush has offered the Philippine government over $100
million worth of excess military equipment - including
helicopters and transport planes and 30,000 M16 rifles -
to fight various armed groups. One of these armed
groups, Abu Sayyef, a Muslim secessionist group involved
in kidnapping for ransom, is alleged to have had links
with al-Qaeda, the group accused of being behind the 11
September attacks in the USA.
At a recent
"Regional Seminar on Implementing the UN Program of
Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons," held in Manila
to try to address the proliferation of firearms, a
UN-funded study found that two out of every 40 Filipinos
own unregistered firearms. Such weapons were used in 46
major conflicts fought in the 1990s, which claimed the
lives of four million people. Of those, 90 percent were
civilians and 80 percent of these were women and
children.
Other key findings from the Small Arms
Survey include:
Nearly seven million commercial firearms were
produced worldwide during 2000.
Total estimated annual worldwide production of small
arms and light weapons and ammunition has increased to
approximately $7.4 billion, including both commercial
and military-style firearms.
More than 1,000 companies worldwide are involved in
some aspect of small arms production. Nearly half of
them are located in Europe or the CIS, and 92 of them,
or 8 percent, are in the Asia-Pacific region.
At least 98 countries produce, or have the capacity
to produce small arms and/or ammunition. Twenty of them,
constituting 21 percent of the total, are in the
Asia-Pacific region.
From the Asian perspective
one of the striking findings of the study is that even
though Asia suffers greatly from the small arms
proliferation it produces relatively little. The study
notes that there is uncertainty about the current
production of some of the Asian countries listed, such
as Bangladesh and Cambodia.
The most prominent
producer in Asia is China. The major small arms
producing company in China is the state-owned China
North Industries Group Corporation (also known as
NORINCO. In the 1990s its combined sales of military and
civilian products averaged about $2 billion annually.
However weapons account for only 20 to 30 percent of
overall production. In July 1999 NORINCO was divided
into China South Industries Group Corporation (CSG) and
China North Industries Group Corporation (CNGN). CSG
will refocus almost entirely on civil production while
CNGN will be the new weapons producer and will produce
most of China’s small arms, apart from some small PLA
factories.
The study estimates that at its peak
the Chinese military inventory probably totaled at least
27 million firearms, probably the biggest in the world.
It also found the firearms are rapidly becoming
more plentiful in Chinese society. One striking example
was the comparison of confiscation of illegally traded
firearms in China and the United States. The US
government confiscates an average of 34,000 illicitly
traded firearms every year. In the winter of 2000-1,
police in the province of Guangxi raided 60 illegal
firearms factories and seized 240,000 illicit 'guns,
moulds, and tools' in this one province.
In
other words, the entire United States, with some 240
million publicly owned firearms, confiscates from
illegal trafficking only 15 percent as many guns as a
single Chinese province. China has 34 provinces,
independent municipalities and autonomous regions. As
the study notes, "It is hard to resist the conclusion
that China’s gun market is growing at a rate virtually
without precedence elsewhere."
(©2002 Asia Times
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