Word: 47s
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...border post exudes an air of the illicit?a battered desk, a netted bed and a rack of rusting AK-47s cram a one-room shack. The Cambodian guard may ask for a $5 "gift" to expedite the paperwork: refuse only if you have plenty of time. The Lao post is on the opposite bank. The official there will also ask for a tip and may invite you to get drunk but it's best to beg off, as your next halt, Don Khon, is still a 20-minute boat ride away...
...September. But in the present vacuum, there is talk about Lebanon once again becoming a battlefield. A Western diplomat believes 10,000 Palestinian guerrillas are under arms inside the country. Camps like Ein al-Helweh in southern Lebanon, virtually off-limits to the Lebanese army, are awash with AK-47s. With schoolchildren raised on militant nationalism and playing war in the streets, Lebanese regard the refugee camps as ticking time bombs. The fear is that Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon, on orders from Arafat, the Syrians, the Iranians or out of their own desperation, will join the intifadeh by staging operations...
...government to recognize them and open talks. The insurgency has been pretty localized, and you don't get impression that they have much in way of ammunition or arms. Most of the weapons they're carrying are of World War II vintage, although there are a few AK-47s. The rebel force probably numbers a few hundred, but they're getting new volunteers all the time. We saw a steady flow of young men moving into the rebel-controlled zone. They don't appear to be very organized at this stage, or to have the resources to open...
...latent menace, what happened at that army camp on the Thai-Malaysian border is mundanely commonplace. In Thailand and Cambodia scores of illicit arms exchanges happen every day, some of them for as little as one or two pistols, others for crates holding several thousand Chinese-manufactured AK-47s, still encased in a thick layer of protective green grease. The two countries are the spring from which a flood tide of weapons - pistols, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, mortars, even the occasional light artillery piece - flows to every corner of Southeast Asia. The weapons are the lifeblood of the region...
...Samnang gets the weapons from his contacts within the Cambodian army, ex-Khmer mates and the villagers along the 700-km border. He mainly sells AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades. "I sell them to my buyers but I don't know about the end users because there are so many people in the chain. I have some protection from my boss who runs a syndicate. He is close to the powerful people...