Bangladesh: go-to transit spot for smuggling China-made arms

Given a choice, smugglers go-to transit post to illegally move weapons into India and Nepal is Bangladesh, as made clear in a recent court verdict.

The most recent verdict in Bangladesh presented a case that was close to ten years old and has brought into the spotlight the ongoing scourge of arms smuggling that goes on from China into South Asia.

Just one week ago, a judge in the city of Chittagong, Bangladesh sentenced 14 men to death. They had been found guilty of their role in what was thought to be a called off bid to smuggle in at least 1,500 cases of weapons. Ten trucks would have been needed to carry such a heavy load.

Some of the men that were sentenced were a well-known Bangladesh opposition leader Motiur Rahman Nizami and many other top officials. Paresh Barua, the fugitive leader of an outlawed Indian armed group was also found guilty of partaking in the same smuggling deal gone sour. Barua is heads the military section of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which has a main aim of the northeastern province to once and for all secede from India.

The judge said in his ruling that the weapons seized in the trucks were all made by China’s Norinco ordnance company. Officials said that these weapons boost the arsenal of India’s Maoists as well as those in the country’s northeast.

Information of this sort does not seem like it would come to a surprise to Major General Gaganjit Singh, former deputy chief of the Indian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). He claims that on Bangladesh’s coast, south of Chittagong city, it had always been the preferred place to land weapons transported in from China.

However, after a revision in the government in Dhaka came into play and a clamp down was imposed on armed groups, smugglers have had to open up other channels to get their supply to the demand. Though, illegal weapons dealers have not entirely crossed off Bangladesh from their preferred transit spot.

“Bangladesh was no longer safe for landing Chinese weapons for onward transhipment to Maoists in India and Nepal or rebels in India’s Northeast,” Singh said. In fact the rebels have started getting Chinese arms from the Sino-Burmese border and transporting them to their bases in Northern Myanmar, according to G M Srivastava, former chief of Assam police. “From there, these weapons are carried into India and possibly Bangladesh and Nepal.”

Bangladesh is still a better choice for many since difficulty remains in ease of transport in other areas. Such artillery is hard to carry over the harsh mountain area of Northern Myanmar. “From Bangladesh, it is also easy to reach the Maoists in eastern India. It is much more difficult to carry it to them over a long stretch of Indian territory,” Srivastava said.

He said that more than seventy percent of the weapons brought in by the ULFA so far have been sold off to the Indian Maoists for a premium.

Barua has been on the Indian intelligence officials list as the man who is most likely to be the king-pin of the operation, running all the shots in arms weapons trade. “He is more of a warlord now, a mastermind in the trafficking of weapons,” Gaganjit Singh said.

Over Barua’s many years of service given in the Northeast, Singh has been closely and carefully watching the suspected king-pin’s activities.

Indian intelligence said Barua has been traced by signals interception – during a recent telephone call to a junior ULFA commander Jyotirmoy Bharali – to Ruili, a Chinese town on the country’s south-western border with Myanmar. One month ago, he was traced back to Techong, a Myanmar town opposite of Ruili.

Intelligence officials in Bangladesh hold high concern as they theorize that such illegally obtained Chinese arms will make their way into the hands of radicals in the nation.

“That motivates them [the government in Dhaka] to crackdown on these rebel groups,” an Indian diplomat serving in Dhaka said anonymously.

“Our government has zero tolerance for terrorism,” M K Alamgir, until recently Bangladesh’s home minister said.

Voice of Russia, Al Jazeera