PESHAWAR, June 7: The speakers at a seminar held here at the Press Club on Saturday expressed concern over the rapid increase in sale and manufacture of illegal small weapons.

“The ever-increasing number of weapons in Frontier province is due to the West sponsored Afghan war, in which the developed countries supplied arms and ammunitions in bulk to fight USSR,” Dr Ayesha Siddiqa Agha of the South Asia Partnership, Pakistan (SAPP) said at the seminar entitled the “Fighting Weapons of Civilian Destruction”, held to mark the global week of action against small arms.

The proliferation of these arms, coupled with the gun culture in the NWFP, had adversely affected the law and order situation.

“In South Asia and Latin America, the people possessed 18 million small weapons that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 people annually. The problem of weapons was started in this part of the world in 1980s due to the cold war and then the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan,” she said.

The inhabitants of the NWFP were unlucky, because of the massive weapons production, sale and stockpiling of the small weapon by the manufacturers in Darra Adamkhel and other tribal areas, she said.

The ethnic and sectarian violence had increased manifolds, due to the easy accessibility to the lethal arms and even the notables, including the Senators, MNAs and MPAs had been protected by gun- wielding guards which encouraged the public. It has become status symbol, because the influential people were issued licenses for prohibited bores of weapons.

Waseem Akram of SAPP, blamed the government for the prevalence of arms in the society, saying that only the government of Punjab issued 45,446 arms licenses against the target of 18,864 in 1984. Likewise, in Gen Zia’s era, the Senators and MPs were authorised to issue licenses for small arms.

He said from 1986 to 1990, the courts in Punjab heard 46,000 cases with regard to possession of illegal weapons. This was because of the government’s apathy that in 1980s, the students who were supposed to hold books and pen in their hands, took up arms and became part of the terrorism.

Mohammad Amin, said that there were 600 million small weapons in the world, which according to Unicef’s report caused 80 per cent of the total 700,000 deaths on annual basis.

SP Rural, Kashif Alam, said the cooperation of the people was of vital importance to eradicate the menace of small weapons from the society. The government, he said had collected 87,000 small arms from the people in its deweaponization campaign and seized 6.6 illegal weapons on daily basis. Faiz Ahmad Fayyaz of the Pakistan Campaign to Ban landmines (PCBL), expressed concern over that people in tribal areas, were being killed and disabled by the anti-personnel mines that were planted by the USSR to restrict the movement of the Mujahideen in 1980s.