PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is in the process of working out a timeframe and other modalities to regularize and develop arms manufacturing into a full-fledged industry in Pakistan’s northwestern Darra Adam Khel tribal region, a senior official told Arab News on Wednesday.
“As the KP governor has just recently pointed out, we need to properly register the Darra Adam Khel weapons’ industry the way other industries are functioning," Mushtaq Ghani, provincial assembly speaker said.
He added that once the industry was given a license, it would be able to export arms because its manufacturers were already producing weapons of a very high quality.
A large number of tribesmen associated with Darra Adam Khel, an area located between Kohat and Peshawar to the south of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told Arab News that the weapons industry dated back to pre-independence era.
They said that their ancestors, during the course of their armed expeditions elsewhere in Asia, had acquired weapons’ manufacturing skills and passed them on to future generations.
Governor Shah Farman told the local tribal council (Jirga) members on Monday that the government was striving to develop the Darra Adam Khel arms manufacturing facility into an industry.
The governor was addressing tribal elders from Darra Adam Khel who called on him at the Governor’s House in Peshawar.
According to a statement, the governor expressed his commitment that all arms and ammunition produced in Darra Adam Khel would have access to national and international markets, while manufacturers would be able to procure good quality raw material through a legalized registration process.
A budget has been allocated to initiate development activities for the purpose, he said, adding that the legitimate problems raised by the tribal people would be resolved at the earliest.
Kamran Afridi, an arms dealer and manufacturer from Darra Adam Khel, told Arab News that the global community was heading toward modernization but the decades-old Darra Adam Khel weapons industry could not be developed along modern lines because previous governments had ignored it.
“The government should regularize the industry and issue manufacturers and sellers with licenses to mainstream the business because this is the sole source of income for thousands of families,” Afridi said.
He added that there was “no rocket science” involved in the development and regularization of the arms industry, adding that the government needed to register all small and large weapons' businesses or firms there, which would help them get official recognition.
Afridi was pessimistic that the arms industry would be developed anytime soon because successive governments in the past had been pledging for years to regularize the Darra Adam Khel weapons industry: “All those commitments were nothing but political point-scoring and gimmickry.”
Referring to the 10-year federal government package for the tribal areas, the governor said that a number of schemes to the tune of Rs.100 billion would be initiated soon.
He said that the homework had already been done for the purpose and completion of development projects which could usher in an era of progress and prosperity in the tribal belt that had been infested by militant groups up until a few years ago.
He reiterated that the people of the tribal areas would be given all perks and privileges that were enjoyed by people in the rest of the country. 
Samiullah Afridi, another arms dealer from the Darra Adam Khel weapons industry, said that it could take years to move the weapons industry or regularize it since no development activities had been initiated thus far.
“We have been demanding that the government to regularize the Darra Adam Khel weapons industry. Once it is regularized, I am sure the small and heavy weapons of this industry will be exported because of its good quality,” he noted.  
According to a rough estimate, nearly 50,000 residents of Darra Adam Khel, which has a total population of 110,000, are associated with the weapons manufacturing business.
Speaker Ghani said that the industry was one of the oldest businesses in the country and the government was planning to streamline and regularize it, which would help bolster the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
“The government is pondering on measures to regularize and develop the industry and award proper licenses to manufacturers and dealers, which will strengthen the market, multiply job opportunities, and help stabilize the national exchequer in the long run," Ghani added.