The massive proliferation of small arms and light weapons in South Asia is directly linked to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the subsequent creation by the United States of a system, commonly known as the Afghan pipeline, to funnel weapons covertly to the Afghan resistance. The Afghan pipeline enabled the transfer of tens of thousands of tons of weaponry to the mujahidin; the weapons were procured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) served as the conduit. The ISI received and stored weapons acquired by the U.S. and distributed them to Afghan party leaders who turned them over to field commanders. To conceal U.S. involvement, the CIA provided limited oversight over the workings of the pipeline and imposed virtually no effective controls. Even the total numbers of weapons that the CIA transferred may have been impossible, or too sensitive, to document; the former director of the Afghan bureau of the ISI maintains that the ISI kept no records. 

The deliberate efforts to dodge accountability on the part of the U.S. and Pakistan allowed weapons to be siphoned off from the pipeline, apparently by the ISI and by Afghan mujahidin who, many claim, sold weapons to raise cash for field supplies or for personal gain...Large numbers of pipeline weapons have made their way into the hands of Sikh and Kashmiri militants. Evidence suggests that the militants obtain the weapons in several ways: directly from members of Pakistan’s intelligence and military establishment, particularly the ISI, from the arms bazaars in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, and from former Afghan fighters. 

The human rights situations in Punjab and Kashmir have been acutely affected by the militants’ acquisition of advanced small arms and light weapons diverted from the U.S.-supplied Afghan pipeline. In recent years, militants in both states have committed numerous, serious violations of humanitarian law, including direct attacks on unarmed civilians, indiscriminate attacks, summary executions, hostage-taking, rape, threats to commit bodily harm, and the use of religious sites for military purposes.

The Arms Project believes that governments that provide arms and training to armed opposition groups should bear some responsibility for the willingness or failure of the recipients to abide by the minimum humane standards established in international humanitarian law. While the Arms Project takes no position on whether states should ever support insurgents in second countries, it believes that whenever assistance is provided, the supporting government must assume some responsibility for ensuring that the recipients act only within the limits of international standards regulating armed conflict. Governments should use their influence to this effect, and sever all support to those groups that persistently violate the standards of the laws of war.