Police have seized several rare German assault rifles in the Philippines’ conflict-affected Bangsamoro in recent months.
The weapons almost certainly came from government stocks, highlighting a persistent security challenge as the region tries to overcome decades of insurgency, corruption and violence. They also point to a commendable Philippine government practice.
On November 9, a local official handed over four weapons to the police in the violence-ridden municipality of Datu Saudi Ampatuan, in the heart of the conflict-affected Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
The weapons included two assault rifles with Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) markings and two Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifles, which were apparently surrendered to the official by local residents.
Such surrenders are common in Bangsamoro, where a 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) created an opportunity to collect illicit weapons in one of Southeast Asia’s most arms-saturated regions.
Recently, the government launched an amnesty campaign that works with local community leaders to secure illicit weapons in exchange for material assistance from the state. The program has yielded hundreds of firearms since its launch in late 2023.
But the HK-416 rifles are unique. They are not available on the civilian market and they are only used by select police and military units.
German arms transfer data suggests they could have only been exported to the Philippines between 2006 and 2012. The authorities have seized these rifles on at least three other occasions in 2024, all in close proximity to each other.
The first seizure occurred in February when police arrested a local arms trafficker during a sting operation in nearby Cotabato City. In May, police seized another HK-416 from an outlaw MILF commander in Sultan Kudarat, just north of Cotabato City. Police seized another in July after spotting armed men in a vehicle at a traffic checkpoint in nearby South Cotabato Province.
These incidents are remarkably close in time and place, as HK-416s have not been seen in illicit circulation in any other part of the Philippines. There is also no indication they have been seized before 2024. The fact that government forces have collected several of these rifles in different contexts suggests there are more out there and that they were diverted in a systematic way.
This raises a key question: how did these modern, high-end rifles that were procured in limited numbers for elite units (the German data suggests only 800 rifles were exported to the Philippines) end up floating around in illicit possession throughout southwest Mindanao?
In a nutshell, government-held weapons can be diverted into illicit hands in a relatively limited number of ways: through battlefield captures, loss, spontaneous or coordinated theft, looting, desertion, intentional state-sanctioned diversion, or corruption. While it’s impossible to know the precise story of these rifles, some of these pathways can be discounted.
The BARMM continues to be a conflict hotspot with several armed actors who might seek to capture weapons through combat. This includes the communist New People’s Army, rogue elements of the MILF, or radical Islamist groups like Dawlah Islamiyah.
The region is also rife with clan militias, often overlapping with pro- and anti-government armed groups, that frequently engage in violent feuds. Any of these actors could feasibly capture these rifles through an ambush on government forces or by looting a government armory.
Yet battlefield captures have become rare in Bangsamoro. While attacks against government forces do occasionally occur, such engagements do not reach the frequency or scale as they did in past decades.
Armed groups are usually eager to publish images of claimed captured weapons, yet a sustained monitoring of NPA and Islamist sources does not show any claims involving HK-416s. In recent years, there have been few attacks on government forces large enough to feasibly capture several of these rare rifles in a single event.
Similarly, looting events are rare and usually take place within a larger security crisis. It is possible that IS-aligned gunmen looted government armories when they swarmed the city of Marawi (now part of the BARMM) in 2017.
But there is little evidence that the HK-416s were leaked this way as they would have appeared in seizures and surrenders well before 2024. Furthermore, a spontaneous theft or loss would also be unlikely to divert several HK-416s without drawing significant outside attention.
This suggests the weapons would have been diverted through some process that involved inside help – either through state-backed diversion, desertion, coordinated theft, or corruption.
If any one of these diversion pathways were to occur, it would likely happen through a well-known but relatively undocumented process in Bangsamoro – a blurry fusion of government security forces and private militias affiliated with influential clans, families, and politicians.
In its quest to stabilize the restive region, the government has relied on security programs and agencies that are susceptible to political interference at the local and provincial level. This includes Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs) – armed volunteers meant to support military and police units with extra manpower.
Local and regional elected officials can influence the selection of such volunteers, and can use their power to place their own cronies or buy off personnel within this force, typically giving them access to surplus state weapons.
Furthermore, local police units answer to local elected officials as well as to the national police agency. This creates a situation where influential clans and politicians can install loyalists in local police offices, giving them a degree of access to police armories, firearm licensing processes, and procurement channels. The 2009 Ampatuan Massacre is still relevant for demonstrating this dynamic, despite being 15 years old.
On November 23 of that year, gunmen affiliated with the powerful Ampatuan clan massacred dozens of people in a municipality named after the clan itself. The victims were a political rival on his way to register for a local election, his entourage, and journalists documenting the process.
After the massacre, security forces seized an astounding arsenal from the clan’s militia, including machine guns and mortars that could have only come from government armories, as well as ammunition that had been procured by police officers only a year earlier.
The ammunition shows how police can act as a channel for politically influential clans and warlords to illicitly source weapons. In 2008, four officers purchased one million ammunition rounds from a Philippine arms manufacturer, ostensibly for operations in a province adjacent to where the Ampatuans held power. The officers did not have official purchase permits and reportedly paid $400,000 cash for the ammo, contrary to government protocols.
The manufacturer shipped the ammunition from Manila to the stated province, and it was seized four months later. When the authorities seized 1,200 weapons from the Ampatuans, only a quarter were registered and legally owned – the rest could have been sourced through police or similar channels.
Electoral violence and clan feuds are enduring sources of insecurity in the BARMM. The inter-connected trends are so severe that they threaten the durability of the 2014 peace agreement as the MILF refuses to fully disarm given the level of arms access and violence still present in the region. The HK-416s strongly suggest that arms traffickers, prominent clans, and armed actors can still source even modern government weapons through subtle forms of collusive diversion.
This might seem damning for the government, but it points out two positive points that it should be commended for. We can identify and track these HK-416s only because the Philippine government actively and creatively seeks to bring illicit weapons back into state control, and because military and police units publicly disclose each seizure and surrender on their social media pages for public awareness.
Such transparency is invaluable; it illuminates high-level trends that local or provincial units may not be able to detect. This reporting can allow government agencies to plan better interventions, such as targeted amnesties for specific types of high-value weapons, or focused police audits in regions where such weapons are seen to be proliferating.
It also benefits international stakeholders. Arms exporters can use these reports to detect diversion risks or to find opportunities to support the Philippine government. These disclosures also allow interested stakeholders to track the flow of illicit weapons back into state control, providing a vivid image of how security conditions in Bangsamoro are transforming over time.
Other governments would do well to replicate this public reporting.
