UN Arms Trade Treaty & Tackling Armed Non-State Groups

By Col R Hariharan (Retd.)

[Excerpts from this article were included in a presentation made by the author at a conference “Towards a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty by 2012” organised by the Control Arms Foundation of India at New Delhi on February 16 & 17, 2010.]

Introduction

The United Nations is poised to bring an international agreement on global arms trade and finalise ‘a strong and robust’ Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at the conference to scheduled for July 2012. Already 153 nations have voted in favour of the resolution towards this while 19 countries including India abstained while one voted against it.

Can ATT help to check the rising tide of terrorism and other forms of violence by armed non state groups (ANSG)? This question is of immediate relevance to South Asian nations, particularly India and Pakistan, who are facing sustained ANSG inspired violence for a few years now.

This article tries to answer this question and examine some of the priority areas for action for using the ATT advantageously in the fight against ANSG violence in South Asia.

Rising scourge of terrorism

Terrorism has become the number one scourge of 21st century. According to the January 2010 strategic comment of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) there is likelihood of violent extremism remaining high in 2010 due to continued geo-political conflict in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

This is evident from the ever increasing number of lives lost due to violent extremism of armed non-state groups (ANSG) in India and Pakistan – the two nations most affected by the ANSG. In the year 2009, a total of 13,801 people lost their lives in these two countries due to ANSG related activities (see Table 1 for details). This means on an average of 38 lives are lost daily representing 3.8% of estimated loss of 1000 lives every day world wide due to ANSG related activities.

Table 1-Fatalities due to violent extremism 2009
Pakistan	India
Civilians 2307	Civilians 722
SF personnel 1011	SF personnel 431
ANSG persons 8267	ANSG persons 1073
Total killed 2009 á 11585	Total killed 2009 â 2226
Total killed 2008 á 6716	Total killed 2008 ↔ 2611

Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal February 2010

In real terms, the damage caused by ANSG activities is much more than fatalities. Given the practice of joint families in Asia, 13,800 fatalities would affect the lives of about 138,000 members of their families forever. As most of these fatalities are among the people of younger age group, their death in the most productive period represents substantial loss of human resources of nations.

Control of armed extremism comes at a high cost to the state draining its resources. The state is compelled to expand, train and arm police, paramilitary and security forces to fight extremists. Often states have to divert funds from social welfare sector to sustain counter terror operations. , Terrorist also damage infrastructure and dislocate normal life of people. Poor people, particularly daily wage earners are the most affected by such disruptions. ANSG actions also create social unrest and friction within the community.

Arms trade and ANSG activities

Global military expenditure, which had gone down at the end of Cold War, had has been steadily increasing since 1994. It has now reached Cold War levels to $ 1.427 trillion.

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Year Book 2009 data, out of the world military expenditure of $ 1.4 trillion in 2008, the U.S. accounted for 48% of total expenditure while Europe followed with 20%. Out of this a substantial amount relates to expenditure incurred in procuring weapons to tackle ANSG.

At the heart of all ANSG activities is the muscle power arms give. And ANSG are the key driving force for thriving illegal arms trade world wide. This home truth was not unknown to the international community. As early as 1994, the UN Disarmament Commission had noted “wherever there is violence, terrorism, subversion, drug trafficking, common and organized crime and other illegal criminal actions, their link to illegal acquisition of arms has been demonstrated.” This statement is truer now than ever before.

Modern day ANSG are technologically savvy. The ANSG are more sophisticated than before in their operational style. Their reach transcends international borders, thanks expanding networking of nations due to globalisation. They are often internationally networked. For instance the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had fraternal links with Jihadi terrorist groups operating in many countries, Maoists, United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the PKK of Turkey.

With increasing migration of people, even small ANSG can find overseas support for their activities increasing their damage potential. They take advantage of globally networked lifestyle of the 21st century to expand their activities and enlist popular support through front organisations. They have shown their ability to use modern information and communication resources using the Internet and satellite technology to conduct operations of huge impact with a small number of people in another country as demonstrated by the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. They have used criminal gangs to further their activities both in India and Sri Lanka. Mumbai criminal kingpin Dawood Ibrahim gang’s involvement in Jihadi terrorist strikes in Mumbai in 1996 is a case in point.

ANSG are involved in a whole gamut of other illegal activities to propagate their cause, win over and train recruits, collect funds for their activities, intimidate officials, terrorise the public, dislocate governments, run parallel State, take over and run charitable and social organisations as their fronts, run profitable business ventures under cover names to siphon off profits through illegal money laundering channels.

Operations of some of the trans-national ANSG show a remarkable ability to influence public policy misusing instruments of democracy to their advantage. They have not hesitated to use political lobbying to further their ends.

In order to carry out these activities they use arms as a source of power. So they illegal procurement and traffic of weapons becomes a key activity of ANSG. And in the process they are involved either directly or indirectly in traffic of other kinds including narcotics and illegal immigrants using forged documents and passports.

A mind mapping terrorism dramatically shows the wide range of activities connected with it (See Table 2 below). Most of these activities involve violation of civil and criminal laws by using the power of illegal arms.

Table 2 – Mind Mapping of Terrorism

Ideology, Leadership, Control, Arms: procurement-production-trafficking, Child recruitment, Training, Extortion, Violence, Organised crime, Political & NGO fronts, Smuggling, Money Laundering, Human trafficking, Benami assets, Drug & Arms Dealers, Smuggling, Threats, Corruption, Coercion, Brainwashing, Forgery, Rumours, Black propaganda, Surveillance, Murder, Kidnapping, Indoctrination, Intimidation, Lobbying, Suicide bombing, IED, Assassination, Infiltration, Human rights violations,

Illegal arms transfers and traffic have been flourishing through third country operations of nations like the U.S, China, Pakistan and the erstwhile Soviet Union. This has sustained ANSGs insurgencies worldwide i.e. Palestine, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, India, Iraq, and Myanmar. Afghan insurgency during Soviet occupation in late 90s gave a great fillip to illegal arms transfers in South Asia. They also gave muscle power to war lords of narcotic syndicates of South and Southeast Asia and Latin America. This combination of drug and arms trades has further made international illegal arms trade a lucrative business. In South Asia, ANSG had generally been sourcing illegal weapons from a number of countries worldwide. Specific geographic areas sourced for illegal arms are given in Table 3 below:

Table -3 Geographic areas involved in illegal arms trade

Northeast and Southeast Asia: China, Hong Kong, North Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Southwest Asia: Afghanistan and Pakistan (through ‘Afghan pipeline’)

Former Soviet Union: Ukraine

Middle East & Eastern Europe: Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Africa: Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and South Africa with Eritrea as transit point.

International strategies to combat terrorism

After 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks in the U.S., globally there is greater consciousness in strengthening counter terrorism measures globally. As a result internationally coordinated actions to curb ANSG activities, cut off their international links for financing, propaganda, and trafficking links. The evolving strategies include the following:

1. Coordination: At international level cooperation to combat terrorism through coordinated action through international treaties at global, regional and national levels.
2. Cooperation: Networked data resources on ANSG activities and identities are being evolved.
3. Synergy: Nations are being helped train their security forces on techniques, and modernise their state systems to facilitate greater synergy in action.
4. Control strategies: International protocols are in place or being evolved for controlling weapons of mass destruction, illegal trafficking in arms, narcotics and humans and money laundering. The proposed UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) would come under this category.
5. Preventive strategies: Encouraging ending of existing insurgencies, defusing potential conflict areas and educating public through participatory activities.

The proposed UN Arms Trade Treaty can provide teeth to make some of these strategies more effective. The ATT enables nations to perform better in combating ANSG and contributes to improving quality of life of the people (see Table 4 below):

Table – 4 Arms Trade Treaty’s contribution in fighting ANSG

Ensures universal commitment on NO support to terrorism, armed violence and organised crime

Promotes international amity and cooperation.

Ensures accountability of arms manufacturers, dealers, transporters, & end users; makes arms trafficking more difficult

Facilitates evolution of common strategies to curtail firepower of ANSG and reduce their coercive power.

Reduces chances of success of ANSG.

Neutralises threats to democratic governance and help restore rule of law

Enables poorer nations to reduce security budgets to fight ANSG and augment social welfare outlay.

Improves quality of life of poor and downtrodden by combating whole range of threat from variety of crimes

Priorities for action

The UN will be finalising the ATT at its July 2012 session as it enjoys overwhelming support of members. People everywhere, particularly those belonging to the 19 nations had abstained in the past, should prioritise their actions to ensure the ATT successfully sails through in the UN in 2012. Some of these priorities are are listed in Table 5 below:

Table -5 Priorities for action

Spread public awareness on ATT to remove misinformation.

Enlist support of youth through institutional interaction and women’s organisations (SHG).

Network with maximum civil society organisations for making common cause on ATT.

Create allies among media for ATT cause

Political lobbying to bring pressure on their governments to support ATT.