An island awash with arms
Editorial-August 14, 2013
Sri Lanka has been known the world over for its tea and garments. Rubber, spices etc may be added to the list of its most sought-after exports. But, now we are told, it has been exporting arms as well.
No less a person than Indian Defence Minister A. K. Anthony has told the Lok Sabha recently that the Indian armed forces have procured weapon systems from several countries including Russia, Israel, the US, the UK, Poland, Slovakia, Finland and Sri Lanka.
What has been reported of Anthony’s statement lacks clarity; the weapon systems concerned have not been named. Sri Lanka couldn’t have exported gal katas and T-katas (shot guns and assault rifles with barrels sawn off) or the deadly kata puncha aka muzzleloaders, the mere sound of which is scary enough to unnerve even battle-hardened commandos! Will an Opposition MP here ask, in Parliament, for a list of ‘weapon systems’ India has obtained from Sri Lanka?
Minister Anthony is quoted as having said that the Indian government has changed the procurement procedure for promoting self-reliance in weapon manufacturing by giving priority to indigenous production. India is, no doubt, equal to the task. The mention of ‘indigenous production’ reminds us of Sri Lanka’s plans in days of yore to produce lethal weapons.
The Kumaratunga government, in the mid 1990s, toyed with the idea of establishing a weapon manufacturing facility. A Cabinet subcommittee was appointed to prepare a blueprint for the project which did not get off the ground. Even without any such facility, we have apparently achieved self-sufficiency in arms! Time was when Sri Lanka was known as the ‘Granary of the East’. Today, it has become the ‘Armoury of the East’!
Meanwhile, there are some unanswered questions about the huge amounts of arms and ammunition recovered from the former war zone. The weapons captured from the LTTE—caches of arms continue to be unearthed—may be enough for half of the Indian army, so to speak. Why did the Tigers beaver away at stockpiling so many weapons? They also had floating arsenals on the high seas to carry out gunrunning and the Sri Lanka Navy destroyed most of them.
Is it that a cocky Prabhakaran’s plan to use this country as a transit point, in a bigger way, for his gunrunning operations went awry because the Navy turned the tables on the Sea Tigers who boasted of ruling the waves? Or, is it that he was so confident of carving out a separate state militarily that he wanted to have wherewithal ready to defend it maybe with additional personnel from elsewhere? The man who may be able to answer these questions is Prabhakaran’s chief arms procurer, KP, who has switched his allegiance to the government.
It is rather strange that mum’s the word on the part of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa as regards Minister Anthony’s statement. We thought she would be up in arms, threatening a fast unto death unless weapons procured from Sri Lanka were returned forthwith or dumped into the ocean. Her silence is puzzling. Not even DMK leader M. Karunanidhi has made a whimper. Why?
The Sri Lankan government has chosen to let Minister Anthony’s revelation pass. However, it would be able to make a fortune out of the weapons in the hands of its own politicians, especially the Pradeshiya Sabha Chairmen and members if they were collected and sold to a foreign buyer.
Before exporting or importing arms, the government had better do something drastic about the plethora of weapons in the wrong hands. The proliferation of arms, thousands of well-trained military deserters at large and the sheer number of trigger-happy politicians with private armies pose the same threat as terrorism to the country. Hence, the need for disarming politicians and their goons and cracking down on the underworld awash with drugs and weapons!
