Arms and the Men

The market may still be in failed States, but gun-running is getting respectable

One of the oldest arms bazaar in the subcontinent is the well known Darra Adam Khel in the FATA region of Pakistan. It is one of the most lethal home shopping bazaars with cash payable on delivery almost anywhere in Pakistan. Explosives and narcotics are commonly available in the same shop, and can be had on barter. In Sohrab Goth, Karachi, even heavy weapons can be purchased with Afghanistan still the largest arms dump in the region and there is a strong nexus between the drug dealer and the warlord along with considerable official connivance.
AQ Khan’s nuclear retail with Iran was probably done through these regions. International experts fear that extremely dangerous Soviet era missiles are untraceable and could have fallen into wrong hands. At least twenty 3000-km range nuclear capable Kh-55 strategic cruise missiles of the 578 missiles that were to be delivered back to Russia from the Ukraine were possibly diverted to Iran and China. Was this the genesis of the recent Pak cruise missile test in exchange for the nuclear technology? Defence analysts assess that the Kh-55 could be fitted with a 10-kiloton Pakistani-style warhead.
Based in Pakistan, with operations run through the UAE, Dawood Ibrahim’s various outfits would have provided logistic support in one or more of these operations something that the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International had done in the past. Such networks of black-market arms dealers work through fake end-user certificates, phony front companies and virtually anything that is available through surplus Warsaw Pact military equipment is for sale and usually for destinations in West Asia, Africa and former Yugoslavia.
One of the more prominent mercenary providers has been Viktor Bout, an ex-Soviet Air Force officer of Tajik origin but now a multimillionaire of no fixed address. Fluent in six languages, Bout mainly dealt with African heads of state like Gaddafi as well as rebels like Savimbi; he also earned US$ 50 millions through sales to the Taliban when they were trying to overthrow the government of Burhannudin Rabbani in Kabul. According to a Belgian intelligence report with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in January 2002, Bout operated for the Taliban ‘on behalf of the Pakistan government.’
There are others in this shadowy business of gun running like Arcadi Gaydamak, who enriched himself and others in Angola, Russia, Israel and France. Leonid Minin, was a notorious and a rather colourful Ukrainian arms dealer. When arrested he had bags of cocaine and diamonds in his pockets and prostitutes on his lap in a hotel room in Monza, Italy. Failed or failing states are the swamp where these arms traffickers breed along with criminals, terrorists, and drug traffickers. It is easier to do this kind of business in a failed state than it is in a highly developed Western state.
The business is getting more respectable. It is no longer the sole preserve of talented and unscrupulous adventurers of the Ocean’s Twelve variety. The trade appears much more upfront, with posh office suites and up market addresses, the women are sophisticated and the men wear Salvatore Ferragamo suits. Private Military Companies (PMCs) now register with the registrar their businesses of war under innocuous sounding heads. The other characteristics of these multi-million dollar companies is that they are invariably managed by those familiar with the trade – those from ex-Armed Forces or Special Forces or Intelligence. The same companies are owned by the rich and powerful, who walk the corridors of power and go through the revolving doors with practiced ease.
Take the case of Vinnell Corp, a subsidiary of TRW, with three decades’ experience of helping “modernise” the 55,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guard to protect the monarchy against its own people. Vinnell has worked with U.S. intelligence agents and armed forces personnel. Vinnell's parent company, BDM, also won numerous contracts in Saudi Arabia.
Until 1998, when BDM was purchased by defence giant TRW, its largest stockholder was the powerful Carlyle Group, an influential Washington, D.C., investment firm loaded with a number of luminaries, including former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of state, James Baker III. Frank Carlucci, who served as defence secretary during Reagan’s second term, was chairman of BDM when it acquired Vinnell. During Carlucci's tenure at BDM, the company flourished through a number of US government contracts.
Diligence, founded by William Webster, the only man to head both the CIA
CIACIACCCCCCCand the FBI, set up shop in Baghdad to help
companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction. One of its
co-chairmen is Joe Allbaugh, President George W Bush’s campaign manager in
2000. Among Diligence’s senior advisers are John
Major, the former British prime minister and chairman of Carlyle Europe; and former foreign
secretary and defense secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was made Chairman of ArmorGroup

Another example of this complex web is Vice-President Dick Cheney, who moved from the Pentagon to the international oil business and back as vice president in 2001. Cheney’s association with Kellog, Brown and Root and the mother company, Halliburton, currently very active if Iraq, is well known. Both KBR and Halliburton have profited.
MPRI (Military Professional Resources Incorporated) claims it is "the greatest corporate assemblage of military expertise in the world." This international firm provides basic training, doctrinal analysis, war gaming operations and non-military services wherever required. Founded by eight former U.S. senior military officers, MPRI employs several former high-ranking U.S. military officers including a former U.S. Army Chief of Staff and a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and a former Army vice chief of staff.
There is a strong bond between the owners and the managers of these companies. It is a kind of a secret exclusive club, where members help each other to rule and profit alternately. The catch is that the profits must continue to be made and the rule must be perpetual. These are heavy investment and high risk ventures dependent on external factors which have therefore to be controlled.
ICIJ’s investigations into the business of war confirms that these non-state actors have extensive connections with intelligence services, multinational corporations, political figures and criminal syndicates all over. They wield political influence in the countries in which they operate and often work as proxies for national interests whose involvement is buried under layers of secrecy. There were at one time, at least 90 PMCs that operated in 110 countries worldwide. Since 1994, the US Defence Department has entered into 3061 contracts worth more than US$ 300 billion with 12 of the 24 US-based PMCs. More than 2,700 of those contracts were held by just two companies: Kellogg Brown & Root and Booz Allen and Hamilton.
Revenue from the global international security market is projected to rise from $55.6 billion in 1990 to $202 billion in 2010. Since September 11, 2001 there has been a notable increase in the formation of new PMCs. There is considerable money to be made from such ventures, provided such opportunities keep recurring.
According to International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff, the Bush administration's new Bureau of Reconstruction and Stabilisation, a State Department subgroup, has got 25 countries under surveillance as possible candidates for Defense Department deconstruction and State Department reconstruction. ‘Rapid-reaction forces' of official, nongovernmental, and corporate business specialists are being developed with a capacity for three full-scale, simultaneous reconstruction operations in different countries." Presumably, the Pentagon is doing its homework too. The meaning is quite clear. There is greater premium in deconstruction (war) because that enables reconstruction (peace).

Source : Hindustan times 31st Aug 2005