| |
Philippines: Crazy about
guns
By Marco Garrido
MANILA
- As the so-called "second front" in the war against
terrorism, the Philippines has received a massive amount
of military aid from the United States. The
administration of US President George W Bush has pledged
the Philippine government more than US$100 million in
military equipment alone; this includes transport
vehicles, high-tech gadgets, and a whole lot of weapons
- some 30,000 M-16 rifles, to be exact.
While
these weapons are intended to help the Armed Forces of
the Philippines eradicate the nettlesome Abu Sayyaf
bandits, their light weight and high value make them
especially prone to ending up in the country's thriving
small arms black market. As it is, small arms run
rampant in the Philippines. There are well over a
million firearms loose in society. Registered firearms
account for 706,148, while those that are unregistered
number some 349,782. In Mindanao, more than 70 percent
of the population owns one or more guns. Machine-guns
can be bought for as little as $375 and revolvers for a
mere $15.
Gun-crazy
The demand for
small arms is great, and the sources of this demand are
various and complex. Insurgent groups obviously demand
arms in order to wage their causes. In the same way,
criminal groups such as the Abu Sayyaf require arms to
carry out their criminal activities. The patent
lawlessness of these groups, however, sets them apart.
But the demand for or, more accurately, the fascination
with arms and being armed does not alleviate in the
mainstream. More ingrained and insidious justifications
take hold, whether for protection, power, or prestige,
or to accord with supposed tradition.
In
cultural terms, being armed becomes a proxy for
manifesting personal prowess (although in truth all that
a gun bestows is power). Likewise, family prowess,
measured in a family's ability to dominate or win
elections, is greatly enhanced by its "show of force",
which roughly equates to its show of arms. In this
manner, many a clan dispute is settled, law evaded, and
election decided.
Gun-running
Three
sources largely account for the abundant availability of
small arms in Philippine society: local manufacture,
smuggling, and diversions from government stocks.
Forty-five or so local manufacturers of firearms, or
paltik, provide an easy and affordable supply of
guns not only domestically but throughout the region.
Japanese yakuza regularly import paltik
from Mandaue or Danao in Cebu, and even smuggle in
Filipino gunsmiths; in fact, the Philippines ranks third
among countries in the production of seized handguns in
Japan, and third again in the number of gun shipments
foiled by the Japanese.
Small arms are also
commonly smuggled into the country through a number of
"back doors". Smuggled guns can be cheaper than their
local counterparts and need not be licensed. Moreover,
shipments made in connivance with foreign governments or
organizations often go to arm domestic insurgency
groups. China once shipped arms to the New People's
Army, as did both Libya and Malaysia to Muslim
secessionist groups in Mindanao. More recently, arms
shipments to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front from
Afghanistan have allegedly emanated from al-Qaeda and
been financed by Osama bin Laden. Some of the money that
goes to purchasing these arms may even be pilfered from
aid allocated for developmental purposes.
Finally, through loss, thievery, or sale,
government munitions end up in the wrong hands. There is
certainly no shortage of buyers, and the lucrative black
market for small arms can prove an irresistible
temptation to underpaid and enterprising soldiers. The
influx of new small arms from the US can only augment
that temptation.
Bullet-riddled
security
The toll small arms take on state and
human security is enormous. Their unchecked availability
makes them highly susceptible to misuse. Small arms
enable armed conflict, crime, and general lawlessness,
and generally foster a climate of insecurity and fear.
In terms of armed conflict, the free flow of these
weapons not only arm insurgents but also the communities
near where insurgents operate. Reactionary and vigilante
groups, assembled for defense, retribution, or offense,
escalate the level of violence. The conflict thoroughly
permeates communities as each becomes another front in
an enlarging civil war.
Small arms likewise
enable crime. Not only do they endow crime with a more
violent character - small arms are routine implements in
homicide (82 percent) and murder (78 percent) in the
Philippines - but are themselves a reason to engage in
criminal activity, since their smuggling is lucrative
business. Not to mention, of course, that troublesome
criminal cum terrorist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf
would not be half as effective in sowing terror if they
went about brandishing bolos rather than ArmaLites.
Compounding the rampancy of small arms is the
Philippine government's inability (or perhaps
unwillingness) to do very much about it. Smuggled guns,
as I mentioned, escape government detection and often
fall into criminal hands. Between 1993 and 1999, for
example, 93 percent of the firearms involved in criminal
cases were unlicensed. Meanwhile, the government can do
little more than tout small victories, all but
imperceptible given the scale of the problem. In
observation of Small Arms Destruction Day in 2001,
despite the hundreds of thousands of small arms
available, Secretary of the Interior and Local
Government Joey Lina could only produce 300 for
destruction.
The free flow of small arms
conduces to a general disorder that undermines human
security in a variety of sinister ways. Conflict results
in displacement and deprivation, insurgency groups
degenerate into criminal gangs that prey on communities,
which arm themselves to the hilt in response; a climate
of fear deepens. Developmental functions fail and
further development is discouraged. Basic services such
as health care cease being delivered into embattled
communities; development projects cannot be implemented;
schooling is interrupted as young people are conscripted
to fight or simply because going to school has become
too dangerous; democracy becomes a farce as candidates
buy or bully votes through a show of arms; private
armies allow rich families to evade or even break laws
with impunity; a poison takes over people's minds, hate
and fear seed further conflict; a climate of insecurity
deepens insecurity.
While the rampancy of small
arms is not the only factor deepening human insecurity
in the Philippines, its agency is unmistakable.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
