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Florquin, Nicolas, Dauren Aben and Takhmina Karimova. 2012 ‘Illicit Sources.’ Blue Skies and Dark Clouds: Kazakhstan and Small Arms; Occasional Paper No. 29, pp. 20-21. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 1 May

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Illicit Sources

Some sources of illicit weapons in Kazakhstan are internal. Diversion of state stockpiles was a major concern in the late 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, former Soviet military arsenals in Kazakhstan became a source of small arms and ammunition for both the international and the domestic black markets (Vasilyeva, 2010)…

There are no openly available statistics on weapons theft from the country's military stockpiles, but in 2008 the Ministry of Defence acknowledged that the armed forces remained one of the sources of illegal firearms and ammunition for the criminal underworld (Severnyy, 2008).

Another source of illicit supply to the domestic small arms market is craft production. The majority of hand-made firearms seized by police in Kazakhstan are actually gas pistols converted to shoot live rounds(19). In one case in 2008, Russian authorities in Saratov seized an IZh-79 gas pistol that had been modified to shoot live 9 mm rounds. The investigation established that the perpetrator had brought weapons from Oral, Kazakhstan, where he had an accomplice, a worker at the Metallist factory, who had been converting gas and smooth-bore weapons into rifled firearms and equipping firearms with optic sights at home (Kulikov, 2008).

According to official statistics, cases of illicit weapons manufacture increased more than threefold between 2006 and 2010 (MIA, 2010c; PGO, 2011a). Little analysis is available on this increase, although it may be partially explained by tightened firearms regulations, which are discussed below…

[MIA = Ministry of Internal Affairs; PGO = Prosecutor General's Office]

Sources cited:

Vasilyeva, Kira. 2010. 'Great Rifle Road.' New Times. No. 6, 22 February.

Severnyy, Vladimir. 2008. 'Transformatory armii.' Megapolis (Almaty), No. 28 (393). 21 July.

19) See, for example, Kazakhstan Today (2003; 2010b); Kazinform (2010); and MIA (2010d).

Kulikov, Andrey. 2008. 'Arsenal by Transit: A Craftsman from Kazakhstan Was Supplying Criminals with Weapons.' Rossiyskaya gazeta (Moscow). 3 April.

MIA (Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan). 2010c. Official website. http://www.mvd.kz/

PGO (Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan). 2011a. Database of the Committee for Legal Statistics and Special Records. http://www.pravstat.kz

ID: Q6556

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