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| New threat from Myanmar's UWSA | | Lethal weapons being smuggled into J&K | | BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JAN. 19: It is the sensational story of drugs to guns. The story's origin is in Myanmar. And the threat from the characters involved in it is so serious that the troubled State of Jammu and Kashmir has not been left out. The characters have been identified as Myanmar's United Wa State Army (UWSA). It is the world's largest armed narcotics-traficking group.
Reports reaching Delhi say that Myanmar's UWSA is dangerously diversifying its business interests into a new type of contraband--that is, newly produced war weapons. And if these reports were to be believed, Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), with its effective network across Myanmar, has also been responsible for the stepped-up activity of UWSA.
More importantly, several Islamic rebels from Indian Kashmir and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) have, according to these reports, been noticed in a few places in Myanmar. While Myanmar's UWSA want to build their cash reserves by clandestinely smuggling lethal weapons into the neighbouring areas, including India, the flow of part of these weapons into Jammu and Kashmir is not ruled out as Pakistan-based anti-India jehadis have, on more than one occasion in recent times, talked about purchase of arms from various sources for the "Kashmiri freedom fighters".
Myanmar's UWSA is reported to have recently set up new production lines for asault rifles and light machine-guns. Gun-manufacturing activity has been reported from Myanmar's "Special Region No 2". The factory, reports said, became operational in September 2006. The factory is manufacturing replicas of the Chinesedesigned M-22 asault rifle--a knock-off of Russia's AK-47. The factory is also manufacturing the Chinese M-23 light machine-gun, as well as the 7.62 mm amunition that is used by both weapons.
India's intelligence comunity has been informed that the UWSA-controlled factory has plans to diversify production in the near future to include 9mm handguns and amunition. The weapons manufactured at the new Kunma production line will also go to expand the militia's supply of weapons to sell to regional insurgent groups, both inside and outside Myanmar.
The UWSA's bold move into weapons production, intelligence specialists point out, comes at a time Myanmar's ruling military-led State Peace and Development Council SPDC has pressured the the 20,000-strong militia to disarm permanently and disband its forces. The nnew supply of locally produced weapons also potentially threatens to reignite or prolong armed conflicts between other armed ethnic insurgent groups and the SPDC in contested borders territories. And intelligence specialists have warned that it could also flood underground regional arms markets, which usually deal in used weaponry, with a source of new arms.
The development, intelligence specialists say, lends new credence to the United States' assertion last week at the United Nations Security Council that the lawless situation in Myanmar's ethnic territories represents a threat to regional security. China, a longtime ally to the internationally ostracized SPDC, vetoed the resolution on the rationale that Myanmar was not a threat to regional peace and stability. But China has long played a duplicitous game between Myanmar's military government and the UWSA it has historically heavily armed.
The UWSA, which emerged from the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) in 1989, has long benefited from China's substantial military support, which has established the militia as the strongest and best equipped of the various insurgent groups active inside Myanmar. Significantly, the UWSA is the only armed force to have roughly doubled in size since the military-led SPDC (then known as the State Peace and Development Council, or SLORC) took control of the country in 1989.
China has various strategic and economic interests in maintaining the UWSA's dominance over Special Region No 2, which runs along its Myanmar border. Beijing fears that a weakened UWSA could invite an SPDC assault, which would risk spilling into China's adjacent Yunnan province and potentially create a refugee situation similar to that in Thailand. Many of Myanmar's "special regions" are administered by formerly China-backed CPB commanders, including the drug-dealing Lin Min-xian, alias Sai Leun, leader of National Democratic Army Alliance that oversees Special Region No 4.
To be sure, China's policy toward the UWSA cuts two ways, with one set of directives issued from Beijing and another independent set pursued by Yunnan-based authorities who have close ties with the main players across the border. While Beijing clearly sees a strategic benefit from maintaining a buffer zone between its border and Myanmar's erratic ruling generals, it has also grown frustrated with the heavy flow of narcotics, mainly heroin, manufactured in the special regions and moved through Yunnan. And Beijing has openly expressed its displeasure about the unknown billions of yuan siphoned from government coffers by corrupt local-level officials that have been squandered in the special regions' jungle casinos.
The UWSA's recent move into weapons production, however, does not necessarily indicate a falling-out with China, its traditional patron and until now sole arms supplier. Indeed, on August 1, China arranged for the delivery of a large arms consignment to the UWSA, one month before the Kunma arms factory became operational, according to intelligence sources. The consignment, reports said, included 82mm, 60mm and 120mm mortars as well as 14.5mm ZPU heavy machine-guns, and an anti-aircraft.
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