Asia's biggest private arms manufacutring units in the doldrums

Khalid Kheshgi

PESHAWAR: The grey-bearded Wazir Khan Afridi is desperately thinking over to quit his business in arms dealing as customers and buyers have stopped visiting Dara Adamkhel bazaar, one of the biggest private-run arms manufacturing markets in Asia, where the security forces and armed militants are engaged in heavy clashes for the last two months.

Located some 38 kilometers away in the south of the Frontier metropolis, Dara Adamkhel is a small town of Frontier (semi-tribal) region Kohat, which has earned its name in manufacturing and dealing in locally-made arms and ammunitions and other illegal practices like forged documents and fake currency. However, besides arms manufacturing units, markets and shops remained closed for the last two months where the local administration had clamped curfew in the area after the security forces launched operation against local Taliban who had blown up two main bridges on main Indus Highway and threatened to explode the Pak-Japan Friendship tunnel at Kohat, linking Peshawar with seven settled districts and four of the tribal agencies in the south.

“We closed our shops and shifted precious arms to our houses soon after the security forces entered the Dara town,” Wazir Afridi said, who has his shop in the Malik Plaza in Dara bazaar. But the arms and ammunitions, we have left in the markets, remained safe while the ones we had shifted to houses were taken away by the security forces during search operation, the aged Afridi, who had been in arms business since his childhood, told this scribe.

Another arms dealer in the same market, who declined to be named, said that he saw no charm or future in the arms business as majority of craftsmen and workers in the arms manufacturing units had left the area after the deadly clashes between security forces and militants. “We have our customers in Peshawar, Lahore, Quetta, Karachi and other big cities of the country where we used to supply legally permitted weapons till recent past,” he said and added that after the military operation the arms dealers have stopped visiting Dara.

According to a rough estimate more than 3500 skilled persons, majority of them non-locals, were working in the arms’ manufacturing factories in the area where five large arms factories were operating and some 2800 shops were selling weapons and cartridges. More than 10,000 people in the area were associated with the arms’ businesses in Darra. Most arms and ammunition manufacturers run small production units in shops and their houses. Much of the work is done manually or with small machinery units.

A dealer in Asia Arms Store, Dara Bazaar said that the gun-manufacturing had employed more than 10,000 people. “Not only locals, but people from other parts of the NWFP and Punjab were working in the small arms factories,” he said. Nuts, bolts, triggers, rifle butts and barrels and a variety of ammunition are manufactured in small units.

“People have the skills to make different parts of weapons manually. Manufacturers buy these parts and assemble them,” said a manufacturer, adding that only 30-bore pistols, 12-bore rifles, AK-47 rifles and repeaters were being manufactured. “The first gun was manufactured by Ustad Rehmatullah in 1901 when he visited Mardan and saw a gun in the Hujra of a landlord there,” Ismael Shah, a craftsman, said.

“The people here are very talented and can make every kind of weapon, but the unavailability of high quality metals makes it difficult compete with the arms-manufacturing units in other parts if the country,” said Zahid Khan, another arms dealer.

Wazir Afridi said that they had a margin of Rs 1000 as profit in the selling of a gun or pistol in Dara, however, they used to earn more profit while selling arms in the wholesale to the dealers of various cities in Pakistan. “As the security forces had taken siege of Dara Adamkhel, so the arms dealers were reluctant to visit Dara and make a deal with them after the operation.

Since 2005, Darra became centre of militants’ activities who publicly punished notorious car-lifters, kidnappers, drug barons and those who were involved in music and liquor business. The government remained silent spectator to all these happenings in Dara Adam Khel until the militants abducted four military vehicles carrying arms and ammunitions and also closed the Indus Highway for all kind of traffic near Kohat Tunnel.

ends