The arms trade has contributed to the tragic present, in which it is impossible to exist without adequate arms, against forces in turn armed to the teeth, forces such as the militants that currently infest Pakistan. It is a dire situation, given the manifold other requirements of this society, a ‘bhooki nangi’ society in its entirety. It is part of the greater bhooka nanga Muslim bloc of countries, which stretches from the Middle to the Far East, and includes many of the countries in Africa.
The Second World War resulted in the creation of the United Nations which was given the job of maintaining peace between nations, and to ensure humanitarian conditions for all. The charter of the Security Council, an arm of the United Nations, makes it the responsibility of the Council to formulate plans for the establishment of an arms regulatory system. It also makes the Council responsible for recommending measures, not involving force, to prevent or stop aggression. As a lesser priority the charter grants it the power to take military action against an aggressor.
In an analogy to the head of a banking house granting himself massive unsecured loans, the five permanent members of the Security Council the US, the UK, Russia, France and China between them account for almost 90 percent of the world’s total export of arms.
There is as yet no regulation of this trade. An Arms Trade Treaty is as yet only in the works. Although it is due for major discussion at another negotiating conference in 2012, it is doubtful if it will ever gain sufficient support or possess teeth enough to enable it to be enforced. Pakistan, one of the 24 countries to abstain from voting in favour of its draft resolution has said the resolution ‘does not address the question of existing imbalances which impact negatively on regional security and (which) are caused by the inequitable policies of certain supplying states.’
There is some justification for this stance, underlined by the fact that the USA, one of the ‘certain supplying states,’ if not ‘the’ one, as also the largest exporter of arms, voted against the draft resolution.
Therefore, this massive commerce in equipment capable of killing with more than required thoroughness continues unchecked, as though we are all so many cats with nine lives.
This trade is invariably conducted under the umbrella of peace, and repayment extracted in various ways: by the establishment of military bases in debtor countries, by concessions and access to facilities, airspace and regions that would otherwise be inconveniently out of reach.
Human rights violations have been an invariable result, such as against the Kurds when they were viewed as potential Russian allies, when Saddam in turn was favoured as a Western ally in his capacity as the leader of a country perceived to be a buffer against the Soviet Union. The world powers turned a blind eye then to the genocide committed by Iraq against the Kurds, and to their displacement on a massive scale. Besides, the arming of all parties naturally translated into huge profits for traders in arms.
This scenario is repeated again and again around the world, and is the driving force behind armed militants such as the Taliban.
These militants’ stance on women and gender issues is unforgivable, as are the violent methods they employ to get their views across. Their terrorism is as monstrous as the factors for which they condemn the West and the governments of modern ‘Islamic’ states. What should be considered, however, is their antipathy to the methods employed by world powers where there is a certain rationale behind their chain of thought, however distorted that chain of thought may be.
The Middle East is the most weapon saturated region in the world, and Pakistan the sixth largest importer of arms, while Pakistan’s spending on education and health do not figure as even a distant blip on this radar.
Pakistan possesses a thriving arms industry of its own, equally unchecked, which adequately supplements the arms supplied to this country by its ‘friends’.
Pakistan, this bhooka nanga country, has therefore mortgaged its inheritance for several generations to defend…what? A strip of land, the odd river and some worm eaten boundaries, all eventually as defenceless and mortgaged against various forces as before, if not more so as recent events have proved.
Viewed in these terms, and given the fact that every day brings this country closer to annihilation, it is understandable why the illiterate and ignorant people of Pakistan, driven to the edge by hardship, support persons who use (to their thinking) the sublime arguments of religion against their obvious enemies – enemies such as successive governments that make no move whatsoever to ameliorate their pathetic lot, on the contrary making every shameless effort to steal what little is left to them for their own use.
