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[JTW Interview] British Expert: Smuggling in Central Asia is Endemic |
2 August 2011By Ryskeldi Satke (Contributor)
British intelligence analyst and journalist Richard M. Bennett says the Fergana Valley is extremely vulnerable to the covert smuggling of arms and drugs, despite the official reports of Central Asian governments denying its highlighted status. Mr. Bennett told JTW that Russia has been responsible for an overwhelming amount of illegal arms circulating in ex-Soviet Central Asia. In his view, Russia's military intelligence (GRU) is the mastermind of major trafficking activities involving Russian organized crime groups in the region.
Ryskeldi Satke: C. J. Chivers, a senior writer for the New York Times newspaper and the author of book The Gun, described a global cascade of arms and the implications of weapons flowing through conflict zones worldwide in the article "Small Arms, Big Problems", particularly in regards to the ongoing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Chivers, Czech-made Vz. 58 assault rifles have been one of the main attributes of out of control arms trafficking in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions as well as miscalculations of Washington over the issue of supplying small arms to the Afghan police and military. Thus, Chivers states that a large and untraceable number of Vz. 58 rifles found their way to the "main streets" of Afghanistan, and also notes the dissatisfaction of the Afghan police with the quality of Czech-made assault rifles. Meanwhile, the outbreak of ethnic conflict between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010 has become another piece of the puzzle for researchers who have been investigating the appearance of Vz. 58 and AK-47 knockoffs in significant quantities, illegally circulating in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad. Initial reports from the ground in Kyrgyzstan indicate a covert flow of small arms, including Vz. 58s and surplus AK-47s to the conflict areas weeks before the breakout of violence. The Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan had made a statement on arms shipments in southern Kyrgyzstan in May 2010, thus alerting the Kyrgyz interim government of a coming trouble. How, from your perspective, died the mentioned shipments of weapons get delivered to the Kyrgyz side of the Fergana Valley, and who might have been behind the logistics?
Richard Bennett: Well, Kyrgyzstan has been awash with small arms since the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. The numbers and variety available have simply increased in the last five years or so.
While it is true that AK-47 7.62mm assault rifles and the Czech built variant the Vz. 58 have featured widely, other weapons have now appeared in similar numbers, including the AKM and Chinese Type 56 (copy of the AK-47) both again in 7.62mm. The squad automatic variant known as the RPK is also commonly available. As in Kosovo, the more modern 5.56mm AK-74 is reported. This list of course does not include heavier weapons such as the 7.62mm SVD Sniper Rifle, or 7.62mm PK/PKM GP Machine Guns, nor Mortars or Anti-Tank Weapons such as the RPG series which have also become widely available… These have come from a variety of sources including former Soviet arms dumps left behind and inherited by the armed forces of the newly independent CAR’s; others from Afghanistan and neighboring states.
Some have been deliberately supplied to further destabilize the region and the culprits in this case certainly include Russian intelligence (the GRU, SVR & FSB), while the US CIA may have also supplied weapons to some of its short-term allies. The active involvement of both the Pakistani ISI and the Chinese GUOANBU simply cannot be discounted, and of course local terrorist groups and drug smugglers have regularly been the conduit for moving weapons across international frontiers.
However, I strongly suspect that Russia has been responsible for a large percentage of the tens of thousands of small arms that have flooded into the Fergana in particular, either officially mainly via the GRU Military Intelligence or unofficially via Russian organized crime (the so called Mafia)
Ryskeldi Satke: The turbulence in the Kyrgyz Republic after April 2010 pushed neighboring states to enforce restrictions on border crossings and movements. For instance, Uzbekistan as well as Kazakhstan locked their borders with Kyrgyzstan during the month of April. The Tajik border service took adequate steps to secure the perimeter on its own territory and observe the situation in the Fergana Valley and crossings in the Badakhshan section of the border, which according to mainstream opinion worldwide, is a major drug trafficking route from Afghanistan. And of course, China could not be less concerned than any of Kyrgyzstan’s other neighbors, with its potentially volatile Xinjiang province just north of the hot spot. Given the landlocked location of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, with some degree of blockade on the borders and extra measures of security in the region, what are the chances for sizable inland arms deliveries in the region?
Richard Bennett: The difficult borders of these sparsely populated countries are extremely vulnerable. Not only do the nations involved have little in the way of sophisticated surveillance or well-trained manpower, they lack the financial resources to build an effective border protection capability in the foreseeable future.
Western nations, however sympathetic, are stretched by current military commitments and constrained by the current economic situation from offering more than small amounts of training and equipment, and as usual a lot of well-meaning, but largely useless advice.
Moreover, smuggling in Central Asia is endemic, highly skilled, and has been a major activity in the region for many hundreds of years. Small arms, if ‘broken-down’ or moved in small quantities at a time, can quite easily use the inland routes used by both drug smugglers and human traffickers.
Ryskeldi Satke: It’s believed that there is dual trafficking of heroin and weapons from Afghanistan to the north via ex-Soviet states in the Ferhana Valley, although it is not clear. The United Nations report on drugs and crime in Central Asia states that the illicit threat of drugs trafficking is becoming a serious challenge that governments of the region would not be able to cope with without close cooperation between them, including the active involvement of the European Union, US, China, and Russia. Such a view reinforces the notion that drug trafficking in Central Asia is becoming an increasingly significant international issue, and that the regions borders are not considered secure enough. But according to studies and reports during the last decade, arms trafficking in the Fergana Valley has created a different dynamic that cannot be taken into account as merely heroin trafficking. Are drug cartels and arms dealers playing on the same field, in your opinion, or are we talking about unrelated subjects?
Richard Bennett: Drug and gun smugglers are largely synonymous in my view. So often in the past, drug smuggling paid for weapons for terrorist or insurgent groups. Sometimes, as in Columbia, the relationship was so close that armed insurgents provided the protection for the drug smugglers, and the cartels provided the cash to buy weapons and underwrite the insurgency.
The same people and routes will be involved, and even when governments decide to play the ‘Great Game’ and provide covert assistance to one side or another, it is often easier for them to use local criminal organizations to actually move the weapons.
Nor should you imagine that Western governments might be squeamish about such a relationship. There are well known incidents of cooperation between intelligence agencies and crimal groups; The US OSS and the mafia in Sicily in 1943 and the Iran-Contra affair are two notable occasions, while there are reported to be many former Russian intelligence operatives working for major organized crime syndicates who succeed in keeping a foot in each camp, to the undoubted benefit of the SVR. |
2 August 2011
Ryskeldi Satke (Contributor)
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