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The city of Zimbal is a port city in the south of the Republic of Yemen near the Gulf of Aden. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 InfoIn the entire Republic of Yemen, Zingibal is not a well-known port, because a hundred kilometers away there is another largest port in Yemen, Aden.

Although the port of Zimbal is not famous, it is famous in the underground arms market of the whole world. It is currently the second largest arms smuggling center in the world after Miami in the United States, and it is also the world's largest underground arms trading market.

Here you can see the hawkers carrying guns and ammunition back and forth in the streets and alleys, or you can see a shop full of weapons lined up like a small arsenal. If you're lucky, you might even see armored vehicles passing through the streets, escorted by a large group of militants...... In short, here, you must not think it is New York. If you're not interested in weapons, then sorry, there are no other sights to see.

The underground black market for weapons in the city of Zimjibar traces its origins back to the 1934 war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Since the defeat in the war in Yemen, Britain has taken the opportunity to coerce Yemen into many unequal contracts, and it is then that countless Yemenis have begun to engage in armed resistance. The geographically disparate port of Zimjibar has naturally become the main source of weapons for all armed forces.

After decades of development, the black market for weapons in Zimjibar has become 'above board', just like the gambling city of Macau in China, where any arms trade is legal. Even now, more than a decade after the reunification of the Republic of Yemen, the Yemeni authorities have not carried out any clean-up of the arms trade here. However, in order to obtain the huge tax revenue from the arms trade, the Yemeni authorities have set up a special tax collection point in Zimjibar for the arms trade, which provides hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the Yemeni treasury every year. This is also in the case of tax evasion on most transactions.

As a haven for underground arms dealers, the arms trade in Zimzibar has gradually formed an organization - the exchange. If you don't know, you will think that it is a securities exchange or something, but she is really an institution that manages the underground arms trade.

In the exchange, there is a relatively strict organizational division, for all the arms trading organizations or arms dealers in Zimjibar, the exchange will remind them to register and provide capital accounts, which is mainly for the bulk of arms trading services, but also to facilitate management, so that this legal arms trading market order will not be chaotic.

On this day, outside a very modern building on the northern outskirts of the city of Zinjibar, three off-road vehicles came. After Li Mo got out of the car, he looked at most of the pedestrians around him who were wearing suits and leather shoes or directly wearing a set of camouflage uniforms, and couldn't help but sigh that it was really 'weird' here.

"Boss, this ten-story building is the largest arms exchange in Zimzibar, and it is also the only trading market on the exchange. Customers come and go from all over the world every day. It is mainly non-political axe armed forces and small state organizations in various places, of course, the main body here is still the underground arms dealer ......" The mouse stood on Li Mo's side and introduced this place to the boss.

After the group entered the exchange, Li Mo first felt that it was big. Yes, it's just a big word. On the first floor, there is a huge space that feels like an international airport lobby. When I looked up, it was full of human heads. On the walls of the hall on three sides, LCD screens are installed, and the red scrolling font shows the various weapon models and transaction prices of today.

"This ...... Is this really an underground arms exchange? Li Mo opened his mouth slightly, and there was a taste of entering the Grand View Garden. Before Li Mo came, his idea was that the underground arms transaction should be in a dimly lit warehouse, where the two groups of people secretly connect, and then look at the weapons and give money. But it's about the same as a stock exchange. Although he didn't see the real weapons in kind, he also knew from the words of the mouse that as long as they were displayed on the LCD screen, they were all weapons held by today's exchanges or arms dealers registered on the exchange, that is, weapons that needed to be sold.

This exchange is like an auction, where arms dealers from all over the world bring their weapons to the exchange and register them, and the weapons must be jointly guarded by the exchange and the arms dealers themselves. Once these weapons have been registered, they are entered into the exchange's sales slip via a computer, and then displayed on the LCD screen here. If someone has their eye on a certain weapon and thinks the price is right, they can ask the staff here to buy it. At this time, the staff will verify that the purchaser's funds are sufficient. If sufficient, a weapon that the buyer has a fancy, will be temporarily blocked from the LCD. The transaction awaits the purchaser and the arms dealer providing the weapon in the presence of an exchange officer. After the transaction is completed, the buyer pays to withdraw the arms, note that at this time, the buyer deposits the money into the exchange account, and then the exchange deducts a 1% commission before transferring it to the account registered with the arms dealer on the exchange. In this way, an arms deal is completed.

"I'm so good, it's really troublesome. And there is a 1% commission on every transaction, so how much does this exchange have to make in a day? Luo Xiang, who followed Li Molai, couldn't help but babble. Looking at the queue in front of those 10 sales windows, you can see that the daily transaction volume here is not small.

The mouse nodded and said in a low voice, "This exchange is said to be controlled by the political axe, which was not the case before. In the past, it was founded by the union of several large arms dealers and local clans. According to a few friends I know here, the highest trading volume of the exchange since its inception was $360 million. ”

At this time, not only Luo Xiang, but also Li Mo showed a moving look on his face. $360 million in transactions, $3.6 million in 1% commissions; And that's just one day's income. So how much should there be in a year? Perhaps, this number is nothing in some economically developed countries, but what is this place? Yemen! For a country with an annual GDP of only $15 billion, the annual income of at least a few hundred million dollars is a huge amount. And the cost of this income is almost insignificant.

Economic benefits aside, the benefits of this exchange to the Republic of Yemen are significant. If an arms dealer gets a batch of the world's most advanced weapons, the Republic of Yemen will be able to purchase them to equip the Yemeni army without registering them.

"Let's go, go see what we need!" Li Mo sighed in his heart, resisted the urge to occupy his own, and commanded the mouse.

The mouse nodded, he had been here many times, and he was no longer impulsive. After receiving the order, he immediately took Li Mo and the others to a corner with a small number of people on the right.

The group came to the bottom of a display screen, and when they looked up, they could see the words "missile series weapons" written in Arabic and English at the top of the display.

Here, the arms sold are divided by type. First of all, it is naturally divided into land, sea and air. It is then subdivided by actual use. For example, in the display screen below the missile series weapons, all kinds of missile weapons are displayed, regardless of whether the missile is an anti-aircraft missile, an air-to-air missile, or an anti-ship missile. If the air series is shown above, then there will be fighters, air-to-surface missiles, helicopters and much more in the display. If it were a land series, there would be all sorts of armored vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, and so on. Each weapon has the potential to appear in several different categorical displays.

In the display screen of the missile series of weapons, there are not many types of missile weapons scrolled through, and the number is not very large. Such weapons are, after all, not 'conventional weapons'. Most of the buyers who come here are non-political axe weapons from all over the country, and few can afford to use such exquisite weapons.

Li Mo looked up at the monitor for a while, and then saw the target of this visit: Daepodong I (3rd stage propulsion) Daepodong I is a medium-range ballistic missile researched and produced by North Korea. In 1998, North Korea conducted its first Taepodong-I missile launch test. At that time, it was launched at Taepo-dong 1 with a 2-stage propulsion range of 1700-2200 km and a warhead weight of about 700-1000 kg. At this time, the display shows an extended-range ballistic missile with a 3rd stage of solid fuel propulsion on the basis of Taepodong I. The firing range is about 4000-6000 km. However, because of the secret surname of the DPRK's military industry, the outside world still speculates about its range, but the United States and other countries speculate that the range is about the same, and in fact, the range of the extended-range ballistic missile is about this distance.

Li Mo came for this ballistic missile. The aim, of course, is to find a carrier for the nuclear warheads in the base. In the absence of strategic bombers, Li Mo had to load nuclear warheads with ballistic missiles. In the international arena, missiles are the core weapons that a few countries can research and manufacture. There is very little to be revealed from the outside world. When the former Soviet Union collapsed, many advanced weapons, including nuclear warheads, were revealed, but ballistic missiles were rarely heard of. Even if there were ballistic missiles that were revealed at that time, Li Mo estimated that they must have been dissolved in a secret research institute of a certain country now.

And with the political form of North Korea and the control of the regime at home, this high-end weapon of North Korea should not be revealed; Li Mo believes that even the appearance of the American F-22 here, there is no surprise that the appearance of North Korean missiles here. If he hadn't received the news in advance, he wouldn't have believed that North Korea's high-end weapons would appear in the underground arms market thousands of miles away.

"Boss, do we really want to buy it?" The mouse glanced at the price tag behind Dapodong I and asked with some hesitation.

The unit price is 30 million US dollars, and there is only one medium-range ballistic missile of this Daepodong I. The thought of this number hurts the mouse. 30 million US dollars is enough to equip a regiment of Lion King infantry fighting vehicles, and now a missile is bought, and when it is launched, there is nothing left of the surname weapon.

Li Mo didn't pay attention to this, in his opinion. This price is more than the actual value of the missile. But it is certainly that the exchange knows what this missile does for other countries. Many countries, such as the United States and the Republic of Korea, have always had a great 'interest' in North Korea's ballistic missiles, and now they have a missile, and as long as they spend $30 million to buy it and study it, they will naturally be able to know North Korea's long-range strike capability and make corresponding defenses. For the United States, South Korea, and so on, 30 million US dollars can calculate North Korea's long-range strike capability, which is still very cheap. But it was precisely this that Li Mo found strange. He doesn't believe in this trading market, and other countries don't know. Every country certainly has secret intelligence agents here. Why did this missile hang for a few days, and no one bought it?

(To be continued)