Illegal arms trade must be dealt with urgently

We are deeply concerned by the influx of illegal firearms and ammunition through our borders, as it poses a serious threat to our national security on varying levels. In the most recent instance, as reported by this daily, officials of the DMP's Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit arrested four individuals with five firearms and 301 rounds of bullets, including bullets for an AK-47 rifle, from Dhaka's Jatrabari area. One of these four arrested is Md Hossain, a legal arms dealer who used his licence to smuggle in illegal arms and ammunition from neighbouring India and Myanmar, and sold them to criminal groups in Dhaka, Chattogram and Cox's Bazar.

But Hossain did not operate alone—he had a syndicate of smugglers assisting him to collect unused licences, acquire weapons using them, and resell them to criminal groups after removing their barcodes. The fact that he did so while himself being a legal arms trader is alarming, to say the least. Is the country's mechanism for legal firearm ownership not strong enough to have prevented this from happening? Hossain has reportedly been imprisoned before for the same. Why was he not monitored by our law enforcers, given his apparent notoriety as an illegal arms dealer?

Not only could such illegal trade of weapons benefit small-time criminals, but the rise of more deadly criminal gangs in Cox's Bazar's Rohingya camps and elsewhere might also be a cause for concern in this regard. Six people were killed in a madrasa in one of the camps on October 22 when at least 50 individuals stormed in with sharp weapons, and even firearms. Be it the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA), as locals suspect, or some other malicious group—it is worth investigating if they are benefiting from such illegal import of high-powered weapons.

We hope the police will not only be diligent about going after those dealers and buyers who have been identified, but will also use this momentum to crack down on the illegal arms trade happening along our borders for so long. Their suspicion that criminal groups are trying to acquire heavier firearms such as AK-47s must be looked into with utmost seriousness, if any future national calamities are to be avoided.

We also urge the authorities to identify loopholes in the legal ownership mechanism for firearms, so that others like Hossain cannot take wrongful advantage of their licences. Most importantly, the government must strengthen our border security and clamp down on all avenues that allow such easy illegal trading of firearms and ammunition.