KOHAT: The weapons market in Darra Adam Khel, which once got international fame for export orders of shotguns from Europe, is in ruins for many reasons, but mainly due to the Taliban violence and the resultant military action against them.

Once a bustling place, the weapon market, where gun fire rang out every minute to a show that a weapon had been purchased, is almost deserted as the potential buyers find it difficult to get through the security checkposts which dot the road leading to the market.

Talking to Dawn the weapons dealers said that first, the Taliban militants occupied the places they used to manufacture arms and ammunitions, using them as their hideouts, then the same places were used by army troops as checkposts to flush the militants out of the region.Naeem Afridi, an arms seller, said in a grief and fear filled voice: “We have even forgotten the names of our people and friends, and our minds do not work properly after Taliban militants subjected us to worst torture and brutally killed our people”.

He said that long war between the security forces and the militants on their soil destroyed the tranquility and peace of the region. “Whereabouts of many of our tribesmen, who were taken away either by the security forces or Taliban, are still unknown,” he says. “We are dying for peace and unable to restart our once flourishing business once again”.

Pointing towards a seat in his shop, Mr Afridi said that his white bearded farther used to sit there, but he was also murdered during the hostilities.

Another tribesman complained that the army had banned firing in the air due to which they were unable to check their weapons for buyers. He said that another reason for dying of the arms business was that local market had been flooded with foreign weapons and the potential buyers now liked to purchase imported or smuggled weapons from Russia, China, US, Australia, UK, Czechoslovakia and other countries. The Russian and China made Kalashnikovs and pistols are very famous, he added.

The arms dealers complained that they couldn’t buy foreign made weapons due to their high costs.

Another arms dealer said that discovery of huge coal reserves in the mountains of the area had had also contributed to the downfall of the arms manufacturing business as people now preferred to exploit minerals to make quick bucks. The tribesmen complained that the promises made by the concerned authorities during the last 15 years for establishing an industrial estate and an arms showroom had proved to be false.

They said that the government had also promised to set up a university in the region, but the promise was yet to be translated into action.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2015

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