The Business of War 0

Some interesting stats on gun violence and illegal firearms came out this week at the Philippine National Police Headquarters in Manila.  According to Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Rafal, more than half of the 2 million firearms in the hands of Filipinos are illegal.  About 70 to 80 percent of all those illegal firearms are concentrated in the southern islands of Basilan, Jolo and Tawi-Tawi, which form the Sulu Archipelago. Using a quick, back-of-the-envelop calculation, that leaves about 800,000 firearms in Sulu alone.

One has to look at these figures with some skepticism, because no one has actually done a real survey of small arms ownership in the Philippines. “There’s a need to account of all the firearms in the country,” Rafal admitted in a Reuters news story.

The admission that most of these illegal weapons are in the Sulu Archipelago indicates a fundamental problem: weapons will inevitably concentrate in areas where there is little enforcement of law and order.

But this also raises another question: who is profiting from this vibrant gun market?

Anyone who knows the business of buying weapons in Mindanao will tell that you that politicians and high-ranking military officials from Manila and other provinces have fueled the gun market.  There’s even such as thing as a “Dalmatian” order: buy 100 firearms, get 1 free.  The military-grade weapons sold often bear the mark of their origins. Many M-16 rifles will actually say “Property of the Armed Forces of the Philippines”. And certain types of weapons in the hands of clan warriors in Sulu, such as the M60 general purpose machine gun (pictured above) and the M67 recoilless rifle, leave no doubt as to where they come from.

With such a lucrative trade in arms, any talk of peace and security would mean cutting into the bottom line of the business of war.