Bunduk or bunduq: From the Persian and Arabic, used in the Raj and throughout the British Army for rifle, as in "Pick up your bunduk, you slovenly soldier!"
Wallah: Suffix -wallah indicates a person performing an activity, like the tea-serving chai-wallah in Slumdog Millionaire who strikes it rich
Image: Sikh Cyber Museum
A British friend of mine, when he worked at the Ministry of Defence, was assigned to Arms Merchant duties in the Far East for a few years. He self-deprecatingly referred to his new duties as "bunduk-wallah."
And he probably wasn't called an "arms merchant" either, that epithet being reserved for dark figures like Viktor Bout, the legendary Russian arms smuggler, or the fictional "Yuri Orlov" played by Nicolas Cage in Lord of War.
In official arms-merchant circles, the terminology is so mundane as to put you to sleep: the Pentagon speaks of "acquisition" when it puts in orders for hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of weapons systems. Its bunduk-wallahs in turn sell American arms overseas, doing their genteel work from the comfort of American Embassies. Their offices are often labeled "Office Of Military Cooperation (OMC)," which I suppose it is (cooperation, that is) when the weapons sold stay in the hands of properly-constituted militaries.
But arms, like cash, are fungible. That why "SALW" (Small Arms and Light Weapons) proliferation is such a problem in places from Monrovia to Mexico. In Africa, leaders used to plead with post-Iraq invasion American envoys to pay attention to "their weapons of mass destruction problem" - small arms, from Kalashnikovs to RPGs, a contributor and enabler of continental-scale instability and mass murder. My former Pentagon employer, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, even organized seminars to analyze the problem.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to her credit, has recognized that the US often is the problem, at least in the case of arms-for-drug-cartels. The Obama Administration will "try to get more tools to go after the gun dealers" in the United States, she told Mexican leaders. Proof of the pudding: Obama is appointing arms critic Ashton Carter to head the Pentagon's arms acquisition program. Is it becoming difficult to be an arms dealer?
A glance at the 5-year trend of the DFI Amex Defense Index (from the WSJ's MarketWatch site) shows that the arms trade ain't what it used to be. It used to look like this - ever upward. So bunduk-wallahs have to be more imaginative, to tailor their product, but more importantly their marketing pitch, to potential buyers.
No more generic one-size-fits-all worldwide PR campaign, but spots tailored to the tastes (or lack thereof) of the arms-buying public. "Public" may be out of place in this context - these deals are done behind closed doors.
So we have several people to thank for bringing the following gem of missile-marketing to our attention: my old friend (and reader) Dick, for sending me the link; law professor Chris Borgen of St. John's University and his excellent Opinio Juris website; and finally Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. for producing this masterpiece:
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, other than showing the lengths arms marketers will go to flaunt their midriff... product. As Chris Borgen says, "Who am I fooling? I don’t have a substantive point here. Just check out the video." Bet you can't get that refrain out of your brain:
"I need to feel safe and sheltered..."
"I promise to defend you..."
"Dinga Dinga Dee"