For anyone who’s ever wondered how Hamas and Hizballah get their huge arsenals of weaponry –  who ships them and who funds them – read on:

North Korea’s illegal trading in war weapons has come into sharp focus with the seizure of a big payload at a Bangkok airport at the weekend.

It is believed the 35 tonnes of missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and other explosives were part of an illegal arms run to Asia, but the final destination remains unclear.

Thai officials say they were enforcing a UN resolution aimed at curbing North Korea’s arms trade.

It was a circuitous route that began in Ukraine with a Georgian registered plane and a crew from Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The plane made two stops at Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates before loading up the cargo in Pyongyang.

After landing in Thailand to refuel, authorities – apparently acting on a US tip-off – impounded the plane, found 35 tonnes of missiles and explosives and arrested and charged the crew.

The crew have denied any involvement in arms trafficking, telling police they believed they were carrying equipment and pipes for oil drilling rigs.

Professor John McKay from the foreign policy think tank Analysis International says North Korea’s trade in illicit goods has taken a dangerous twist.

“It’s estimated that the arms trade alone brings in about a billion dollars a year for the North Korean regime; counterfeiting and other types of illegal activities, maybe another billion,” he said.

“What we’re beginning to realise is that the North Korean regime is a criminal regime. [These are] not some criminals who are sort of out of control. This is controlled, orchestrated and planned by the government as a way of furthering its aims. And one of its aims, as it sees it, is to look out for its own legitimate security needs and the way in which it is choosing to do that at the moment is by having nuclear weapons.” - Prof. John McKay, Analysis international

The usual suspects

The pilot and crew of the seized plane have reportedly said they planned to offload their cargo in Sri Lanka and the Middle East, but the intended destination remains unclear.

Professor McKay says North Korea’s customers for black market goods are well established.

“Iran is usually the chief suspect and those groups that are supported by Iran immediately come to mind as well – Hamas and Hezbollah and similar groups in the Middle East,” he said.

“There’s been a lot of speculation about Burma and the Burmese regime’s purchase of equipment from North Korea, and a variety of other regimes in the Middle East and to some extent in North Africa, but mainly in the Middle East.

“But it is Iran that is usually the first suspect.”

And he says the confluence of outcast regimes buying and selling weapons from each other is a worrying trend.

“The rogue states seem to be working together and all of the evidence that we have, including this latest incident, suggests that these rogue states, these more difficult cases to solve are intertwined in all kinds of complex ways,” Professor McKay said.

“And that any solution will involve probably dealing with more than one situation at a time.”

The seizure comes just days after a US envoy returned from talks in Pyongyang aimed at restarting stalled nuclear disarmament talks.

But Professor McKay says the diplomatic and political problems that North Korea presents to the United States are as difficult as ever.

“I think it’s going to be extremely difficult, particularly given the Chinese position on these matters, to bully the North Koreans,” he said.

“The enforcement of sanctions is going to be extremely difficult. I think we have to deal with this as a whole. This is at the core of the North Korean regime.

“We have to deal with the basis of the North Korean regime and deal with its overall aims and goals until North Korea is brought somehow into the mainstream of the international community.

“And that’s going to be a very difficult political and diplomatic exercise. I think we’re going to have incidents of this kind recurring, as seems to be the case at the moment, every couple of months.”

We’ve reported before about how the North Koreans work with régimes such as Iran and Syria to further Jihad and harm Western interests. They are even implicated in then construction of a nuclear processing site in Syria, thought to be a backup weaponising plant for Iran – and certainly said by experts to have been designed for nothing else.

The term ‘rogue states’ is not merely a taunt. Countries such as North Korea and Iran are direct threats to the West – and they are aided and abetted by Russia and some of the former Soviet states in realising their aims.

Meanwhile, the US and the rest of the Western allies are in full-blown appeasement mode – despite the fact that the diplomatic tea dances that have been happening for years now produce nothing but  hot air, broken promises and outright lies.

At some point these malign states are going to have to be challenged militarily.

[Source: ABC  | Video: Al Jazeera]

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