A few assault rifles even have two letters of the Chinese alphabet marked on them meaning “Lian Dan”””an automatic rifle or something that can shoot continuously.
Most militant outfits are ignorant about the nuances of the trade barring some in Manipur and Nagaland but many are aware that consignments mostly originate in China. The author saw a few M-16 rifles in Manipur with the United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF), Kuki Liberation Army (KLA) and PLA, but the bulk was undeniably the Chinese-made Kalashnikov assault rifle and the 9 mm pistol. A few assault rifles even have two letters of the Chinese alphabet marked on them meaning “Lian Dan”—an automatic rifle or something that can shoot continuously.8 It is difficult to imagine that assault rifles produced in a country other than China would have these letters. However, since 2007, occasional reports suggest that the United Wa State Army (UWSA) has established a large weapons manufacturing facility in Myanmar on franchise from some Chinese ordnance factories.9
Similar to the Chittagong Arms Haul incident of 2 April 2004 in Bangladesh, but lesser in scale, was another episode that occurred in the icy heights of the Sino-Bhutan frontier in 1997. Information reached Indian intelligence agencies that a consignment was waiting to be transported from China to camps in southern Bhutan, belonging to United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO). Thimpu was alerted, and not only was the entire operation foiled but three officials of the Bhutanese army who colluded with the rebels for ferrying the weapons were arrested and put behind bars.10
“¦it is not only Indias Northeast that has been flooded with Chinese firearms; the Taliban are using them and the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) of Nepal also had access to sources in China.
Senior leaders belonging to United Peoples’ Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) and ULFA’s 28th Battalion (A & C Companies) have stated that around 70–80% of their armoury of assault rifles, pistols, cartridges, grenades and grenade launchers are of Chinese origin.11 It is not without reason that the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M) active in central India has firmed up an alliance with Manipur’s PLA last year.12 With the left-wing insurgency drawing to a close in Nepal and LTTE’s base demolished in Sri Lanka, a viable option for the supply of firearms could be from China through the Northeast. PLA is one of the outfits believed to have a presence in Yunnan and some pockets along the Sino-Myanmar border.
The demand has increased over the years, and arms will continue to pour into the Northeast since there’s no sanction of any sort on any of the seller countries. Unlike other weapons, no international control system governs small arms and grenades. During the Cold War, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons dominated international policy agendas and arms control efforts. Until the early 1990s, if countries were interested in the control of conventional weapons, it was predominantly heavy weapons that received attention. The UN Register of Conventional Arms—a voluntary mechanism for sharing information on imports, exports and procurement of some weapons systems—and the Wassenaar Arrangement, whose goal is to promote greater responsibility in conventional arms and dual-use exports, focus primarily on heavy conventional weapons. Small arms were often left out of these initiatives.
All that the UN has been able to achieve so far are a set of three international instruments: the politically binding Programme of Action that was adopted in July 2001; the legally binding Protocol Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition, which entered into force on 3 July 2005; and the politically binding International Instrument to Enable States to Identify and Trace, in a Timely and Reliable Manner, Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons, adopted by the General Assembly in December 2005. These protocols are limited in scope and content and set standards for national systems in such areas as firearms manufacture, marking and transfer.
Causes of Proliferation
A combination of several factors has made the Northeast and the adjacent regions ideal for transnational criminal activities like gunrunning and drug trafficking. They are fuelled by a distinct set of push and pull factors that range from the policies followed by Chinese ordnance factories to the volatile situation in Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Northeast.
“¦it may seem in a country ruled by an iron fist, the situation in some areas of Yunnan is not very different from that in Indias Northeast or some of Myanmars in so far as law and order is concerned.
President Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s vibrant economy today, had directed the military to generate its own resources, and the PLA (of China) had reportedly even ran nightclubs for self-sustenance.13 Over a period of time, Norinco, the state-run ordnance factory, began selling arms to buyers from different countries, which explains the wide availability of Chinese firearms in all troubled spots in Central and South Asia. It was also in the late 1990s that some Mafia groups (like Blackhouse) in Yunnan began supplying these firearms from ordnance factories to Northeast rebels.14 The biggest advantage of this source was that firearms were much cheaper than Thailand’s and supply through the land routes in Myanmar more consistent and safer than through the sea routes.
Easy availability led some outfits like the PLA and ULFA to station their own agents permanently in a few Chinese towns close to Kachin in Myanmar. After Operation All Clear in Bhutan in 2003, the ULFA despatched a small team under SS Lieutenant Partha Gogoi to establish a liaison office near Putao on the Sino-Myanmar border. The ULFA chief of staff, Paresh Barua, visited this office and even held a meeting with Burmese and Chinese army officials in late 2005. Subsequently, the ULFA supremo slipped into Yunnan in China and stayed there for a few months, which was exposed by a TV news channel on the day of the serial blasts in Assam on 30 October 2008 and later confirmed by former director general of Assam Police, G. M. Srivastava.15
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