From A Correspondent

PESHAWAR, Aug 11: The illicit arms manufacturing sector of the tribal region of Darra Adamkhel, some 35 kilometers south of Peshawar, may get legal cover as federal government’s agencies are studying prospects of registering and making eligible firms involved in manufacturing sports and vintage weapons.

Established more than hundred years ago, the gun manufacturing town of Darra Adamkhel, according to traders and official circles, houses some 200 small arms manufacturing units, about 1,600 workshops and some 2,500 retail business outlets where locally-manufactured arms, replicas of expensive imported guns, including Kalashnikovs, short guns, pistols and a large variety of sporting guns are sold without being checked by the official agencies.

Successive governments have been trying to regularise the Darra arms business without much success as efforts made in this respect by the previous government in NWFP also ended in futility. The previous government’s move of regularise their businesses by encouraging them to produce only sporting guns and vintage weapons did not work much.

A batch of some 50 skilled tribesmen from the area who were given training at the military-run ordnance factory, Wah Cantt, as part of the past government’s strategy to gradually change dynamics of the Darra arms manufacturing unit did not yield desired results as several of them, according to sources, on return after the training rejoined the old business.

However, according to official sources, the move of regularising the businesses of Darra Adamkhel is being pursued with renewed vigour in an effort on the part of Islamabad to keep a close eye on the Darra’s arms business and market which has, over the years, served as a major source of supplying arms to areas like Afghanistan, Kashmir, Karachi and Balochistan.

“The government will extend relevant laws to the area enabling the manufacturers and traders of sporting guns and replicas of classic weapons to get loans from the lending institutions and would carry out their businesses on the pattern of people associated with this sector in the settled parts of the country,” said an official source.

Darra Adamkhel’s arms manufacturing is also being considered for its conversion into a Reconstruction Opportunity Zone (ROZ) to be set up in various areas of Pakistan by the US.