Chinese arms reach terrorists, pirates

Chinese arms to terrorists, pirates

2013-10-28

By Sushil K. Singh

China arms traffic: A Chinese police officer checks seized weapons prior to destruction in Shanghai. Weapons identified with some terrorists have been traced to China. [AFP]

China is emerging as a key supplier of small arms and light weapons [SALW] to developing countries and to nations riddled by conflict or fragile economies, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] claims in a new report.

SIPRI focuses on China in the organization’s latest published policy paper, “China’s Exports of Small Arms and Light Weapons.” China exported weapons to 46 countries, some of which had no controls over illicit transfers. Weapons have been re-exported and landed in the hands of terrorists, pirates and insurgents.

SIPRI is an independent international institute researching conflict, armaments and arms sales.

Recipients include countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle-East, Africa and South America. Some of the weapons from China have been found in the hands of armed non-state actors [ANSA’s] – organized armed entities that operate beyond state control. Countries nearsea lines of communication [SLOC] running through the Indian Ocean and through the South China Sea are among the importers.

The SIPRI studied the period between 2006 and 2010 and issued the 68-page report released Oct. 10.

In Sri Lanka: President Mahinda Rajapaksa examines weapons captured from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Kilinochchi. The defunct rebel group allegedly imported part of its arsenal of Chinese weapons from Cambodia. [AFP]

The three-member team of SIPRI authors – Mark Bromley, Mathieu Duchâtel and Paul Holtom – wrote: “A combination of security, political and economic drivers motivates China’s exports. […] China exports all types of new and surplus SALW, but does not provide public information on either SALW export authorizations or deliveries. [It] is probably the country with the largest quantity of undocumented exports.”

The report said evidence indicates armed non-state actors in South and Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are using weapons produced in China. These may have been stolen from government stocks or seized from government forces on the battlefield.

Cambodia, Burma and Pakistan have been listed in the SIPRI report as potential diversion points for Chinese SALW to ANSA in Asia. The now defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam[LTTE] in Sri Lanka allegedly received part of its arsenal of Chinese SALW from Cambodia. The United Wa State Army [UWSA] in Burma has acquired weapons from former People’s Liberation Army [PLA] officers acting without the formal approval of Chinese authorities. The UWSA is regarded as a potential source of weapons for armed non-state actors in South Asia.

South Asia and Southeast Asia are a part of the Asia-Pacific region that has several long-pending territorial disputes and contested over-lapping claims on under-sea reserves of natural gas and oil.

Some of the weapon-importing African countries such as Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Nigeria have not reported acquisitions to United Nations monitoring bodies on conventional arms. China, despite having committed at the UN in 2008 to curb SALW, has failed to report the sales to the UN Program of Action. The last Chinese report to the body was submitted in 2010.

Other countries in Africa including Sudan, Liberia, and the Congo seem to have followed a “guns-for-oil” program – allowing China to acquire oil to meet its energy needs through guns supplied to these countries.

“[A correlation has been drawn] between sources of natural resources for China’s growing economy and its recipients of arms, with suggestions that China is targeting resource-rich states in the hope of securing access to energy and raw materials,” the SIPRI report said.

What are small arms and light weapons?

In 1997, the U.N.- anointed panel of governmental experts defined small arms as weapons designed for personal use and light weapons as those designed for use by several people serving as a crew.

Small arms are categorized as:

• revolvers and self-loading pistols

• rifles and carbines

• sub-machineguns, assault rifles and light machine-guns.

Light weapons are classified as:

• heavy machine-guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers

• portable anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns and recoilless rifles

• portable launchers of anti-tank missile and rocket systems

• portable launchers of anti-aircraft missile systems and

• mortars of calibers of less than 100 mm.

‘Worldwide scourge’

The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs terms small arms and light weapons as a “worldwide scourge” and describes the threat: “Most present-day conflicts are fought mainly with small arms. They are the weapons of choice in civil wars and for terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare […] small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. Violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons.”

Today the spread of Chinese-produced weapons is in almost every conflict-ridden place, according to the UN Comtrade and the UN Register of Conventional Arms [UNROCA] data. Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – all in the Asia-Pacific – imported weapons from China from 2006 to 2010, according to the UN data.

Bangladesh has received assistance from China to produce weapons.

“In 2008, Bangladesh opened a factory to produce Chinese Type-81 rifles under license. Cambodia is believed to have been the first foreign recipient of the export version of the QBZ-95 bull pup rifle,” the report said.

Thailand also has been importing arms from China at “friendly price” since the early 1980s. There is limited information about Chinese exports to Burma. Sri Lanka is a significant importer of small arms and light weapons from China.

The UN data lists Bolivia, Cuba, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru as countries that imported small arms and light weapons from China from 2006 to 2010. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Qatar imported during the same period. Iran has been a major recipient of Chinese arms.

China’s confusing stand

China has opposed creation of an eighth category in the UNROCA to deal with small arms and light weapons. It has not signed the Arms Trade Treaty even as the country accepted the inclusion of small arms and light weapons in the treaty’s scope. In September, China voted in favor of the first UN Security Council resolution dealing with illicit small arms and light weapons.

SIPRI discusses the confusion and says interpreting these positions is made more challenging by the opacity of China’s system for controlling small arms and light weapons exports and preventing trafficking and the lack of data on the size and destinations of Chinese small arms and light weapons exports.

Is India helpless to prevent smuggling?

India, which has about a dozen active insurgencies, knows the dangers of illicit weapons but has porous and contiguous borders with Bangladesh, China, Burma and Pakistan, while Sri Lanka is just a short boat ride away.

The Indian Ministry of Defense backed Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses [IDSA] said in a 2012 report that “small arms and light weapons of 57 different types have been identified in India over the past several years. The origin of these weapons has been traced to China, Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Burma.”

Ravinder Pal Singh, a defense analyst and former project leader on arms procurement at SIPRI, wrote in an IDSA policy brief that “the Indian state remains helpless to address the issue of smuggled weapons. Security officials who seize smuggled weapons have no way of tracing their routes into India.”