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1. United States and Africa: Arms transfers and trafficking

Sun, 18 Jul 1999 11:45:17 +0100

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State Department on Arms and Conflict in Africa
U.S. Department of State (Washington)
July 15, 1999

Washington - Arms transfers and trafficking and the conflicts they feed
are having a devastating impact on Sub-Saharan Africa. For the first
time since 1989, Africa has more armed conflicts than any other
continent.

Defining a "major armed conflict" as one with at least 1,000
battle-related deaths, the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute identified 11 major conflicts in Africa in 1998. It is not
surprising, then, that during that year approximately 8.1 million of
the roughly 22 million refugees in the world were in Africa. Millions
more Africans are internally displaced. The proliferation of light
weapons, financed by cash, diamonds, or other commodities, did not
cause Africa's wars, but it has prolonged them and made them more
lethal.

By the late 1990s, wars in Africa increasingly had taken on a regional
character, especially in the greater Horn, the Great Lakes region, and
southern Africa. As of mid-1999, large-scale wars were ongoing in
Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda,
Somalia, and Sudan. Low-intensity conflicts plague several countries,
including Burundi, Chad, Djibouti, Senegal, and Uganda. Other countries
suffer from internal instabilities which could evolve into greater
civil strife.

To the extent that arms transfers and trafficking contribute to these
conflicts, they undermine the promise of African democracy and
development, contribute to political decay, and facilitate state
collapse. As conflicts drag on and escalate, they can cause widespread
violations of human rights and exacerbate famine conditions,
particularly in areas such as southern Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
Wars divert scarce resources away from social services, disrupt trade,
discourage tourism, and contribute to the breakdown of family
structures. The pervasiveness and persistence of conflict also have
grave psychological consequences as children are traumatized or become
accustomed to a culture of violence.

Organized crime also has become active in arms trafficking to
strengthen its illegal activities. Gun runners and drug peddlers in
southern Africa are beginning to pool their resources to maximize
profits. Unconfirmed reports suggest similar trends in other areas of
Africa.

There has been a fundamental change in weapons sales in Sub-Saharan
Africa since the end of the Cold War. Many nations and manufacturers
eager to empty warehouses and arsenals of arms made superfluous
by post-Cold War political and technological advancements have seen
Africa as an attractive market. The consequent widespread availability
of cheap weapons, easy to use and maintain (AK-47s sell for as little
as $6 in some African countries), fuels destruction throughout the
continent. In some countries, it is easier and cheaper to buy an AK-47
than to attend a movie or provide a decent meal. Although the infusion
of weapons is not large compared with arms transfers in the rest of the
world, the impact of arms trafficking on Sub-Saharan Africa's
politically fragile countries has been catastrophic.

Light Weapons

During the Cold War, state-to-state arms transfers to Sub-Saharan
Africa involved primarily heavy, high-maintenance equipment such as jet
fighters, helicopters, transport aircraft, and tanks. Such items
accounted for the largest portion of many African military budgets.
After the collapse of communist governments in the former Soviet Union
and its East European allies, state-to-state transfers declined
from $4,270 million in 1988 to $270 million in 1995.

At the same time, however, gray (commercial) and black (illegal) arms
trafficking in light weapons increased. Because no agency keeps
comprehensive statistics on such sales, and arms dealers have little
interest in revealing the details of these transactions, their annual
value is unknown. An educated guess is hundreds of millions of dollars.
Arms trafficking involves primarily low-maintenance, durable light
weapons (e.g., AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, and
land mines). However, heavy weapons remain popular with some African
countries, including Angola, Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria,
Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Local Wars and Regional Conflicts

The growth of arms trafficking has coincided with a change in the
nature of warfare in Sub-Saharan Africa. Warfare has become more
complicated as guerrilla groups have proliferated and divided into
warring factions. The region has also seen the emergence of warlords
(e.g., in Somalia) and cult movements (e.g., the Lord's Resistance Army
in Uganda).

Warfare by proxy has helped spread conflicts regionally. For example,
the armed forces of eight countries and several militia groups are
entangled in the conflict in the Congo-Kinshasa. Kinshasa, for its
part, provides military support to rebel groups in Uganda, Rwanda, and
Burundi. In response to the evolving regional conflict, Uganda and
Rwanda have provided military support to rebel groups in the
Congo-Kinshasa. In another example, Sudan provides assistance to the
Lord's Resistance Army and other Ugandan insurgent groups in large
measure, it claims, because Uganda supports the Sudanese People's
Liberation Army (SPLA). Such cycles of violence complicate
conflict-resolution efforts and increase the damage suffered by local
populations. The use of mercenaries and private security firms has
increased, and targeting of civilian populations or individual ethnic
groups is more widespread. To prevent chaos, regional peacekeeping
forces have sometimes become involved in conflicts as combatants (e.g.,
ECOMOG in Liberia).

Regional/National Consequences

Contemporary arms transfers and trafficking make today's conflicts more
lethal and contribute to devastating humanitarian and refugee crises
that spill over state borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
Ongoing conflicts in Angola and Congo-Kinshasa have forced hundreds of
thousands of civilians to seek refugee status in neighboring countries.
As many as 1 million other Angolans may have been internally displaced
by the renewed civil war. The same is true of hundreds of thousands of
Congolese civilians.

The region's conflicts have claimed an estimated 7-8 million lives, a
large number of which have occurred during the past decade. According
to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), more than 2 million of the
fatalities have been children. Some 4-5 million children have been
disabled, another 12 million left homeless, and more than 1 million
orphaned or separated from their families. Tens of thousands have
become "child soldiers."

Almost 2 million people have died in Sudan's 16-year civil war.
Angola's 25-year war has killed an estimated 500,000 persons. During
the past 6 years, genocide and insurgency have claimed a million lives
in Rwanda and several hundred thousand in Burundi. Liberia's civil war
(1989-97) took 150,000 lives. The Eritrean/Ethiopian border war, in
less than a year and only a few brief battles, may already have cost
the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides. The
Eritrean/Ethiopian conflict has spread to Somalia, where local warlords
often exchange allegiance for weapons and other supplies. Somalia shows
no sign of emerging from the anarchy that has engulfed it for the past
8 years.

Arms Transfers and Trafficking: What It Costs/How It Works

African nations spend considerable sums on arms to prosecute border
wars, counterinsurgency campaigns, and wars of secession. Angola
probably has spent at least $4 billion during the past 6 years
trying to defeat the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola
(UNITA). Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Congo-Kinshasa probably have
spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire a variety of
weapons including small arms, tanks, artillery, and sophisticated jet
fighters. Rwanda and Burundi, limited by the revenues available to
their agricultural economies, nevertheless spent tens of millions of
dollars.

The arms market provides many opportunities to those with assets other
than hard currency to fund weapons purchases through parallel
financing. Cash-poor governments and rebel groups often sell or
barter diamonds, other gemstones, and minerals to obtain arms. The SPLA
and UNITA have exchanged timber, cattle, and animal trophies for
weapons and other military supplies. UNITA is estimated to have
earned several hundred million dollars during the past 5 years from the
sale of diamonds mined and smuggled out of numerous sites in
northeastern Angola. Since the early 1990s, the Government of Angola
has issued tenders for military equipment on short-term loans,
mortgaged against future oil production. Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan
have mortgaged crops (e.g., sesame, gum arabic, cotton, coffee, tea,
etc.) to pay for guns.

Hutu insurgents in Central Africa buy weapons with remittances from
Hutu expatriates and the proceeds from the sale of stolen relief
supplies and vehicles. Some Hutus reportedly obtain money for arms by
trafficking in wildlife. Somali warlords sell stolen relief supplies or
"tax" relief shipments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to get
cash to buy weapons. Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in Sierra
Leone mine diamonds. Liberian President Charles Taylor, when he was a
rebel fighter in the early 1990s, sold iron ore and timber. More
recently, Taylor has become an important player in the sale of West
African diamonds. By supplying money to buy weapons, which he provides
to the RUF, such activity enables him to influence the war in Sierra
Leone.

Arms Merchants

The people who operate the arms trafficking network in Africa come from
a variety of backgrounds. Many are former military or intelligence
officers. For example, an ex-KGB official operates a fleet of
transport aircraft which flies arms throughout Africa. He also recruits
East European mercenaries for African clients. Others work as arms and
drug dealers. Senior ex-government officials, including some
associated with South Africa's former apartheid regime, have been
accused of arranging arms deals for UNITA. Another South African has
been linked to arms shipments to Hutu extremists. All are motivated
by profits and are masters at leaving false paper trails, making
prosecution extremely difficult.

Arms Trade Labyrinth

Monitoring state-to-state weapons transfers is relatively easy because
there normally is only a seller and a buyer. The gray and black arms
trafficking businesses are significantly more complex operations
involving African and non-African, corporate, and individual suppliers
and an array of transshipment points, brokers, and financiers
throughout the world. African states or insurgents interested in
obtaining weapons can choose from numerous manufacturers whose
headquarters span the globe. A single weapons purchase can involve
several nations, corporations, or brokers.

Arms suppliers in Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North
America, Latin America, and Asia have sold arms to African clients.
Sellers include the obvious large producers, such as Russia and
China, and less-publicized sources, such as Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria,
North Korea, Romania, and Slovakia. Clients also may obtain weapons
from individual arms traffickers or from African suppliers such as
Uganda, South Africa, Sudan, or Zimbabwe, all of which have indigenous
weapons-production facilities.

Weapons are flown and shipped into and through Africa by a variety of
routes, sometimes directly, often through one or more transshipment
points. These nodes make up an elaborate network of options for gray
and black arms dealers who skirt customs inspectors and law enforcement
agencies.

According to regional journalists, some of the more frequently used
African airfields for flights to eastern Congo-Kinshasa include
Entebbe, Goma, Kigali, Luanda, and flights also have come from Juba in
southern Sudan. After Kampala's military intervention in Congo-Kinshasa
in 1998, the increase in arms flows was so significant, according to an
African news report, that at least five East African-based commercial
air carriers (Air Alexander International, Busy Bee, Sky Air,
Planetair, and United Airlines -- no relationship to the U.S.-based
United Airlines), and Sudanese, Ugandan, and possibly other regional
military aircraft transported weapons and other military supplies into
eastern Congo-Kinshasa.

African seaports used by arms traffickers include Aseb, Beira, Conakry,
Dar-es-Salaam, Djibouti, Durban, Luanda, Merca, Mombasa, Monrovia, and
Nacala. After arrival, arms are forwarded to their destination by road,
rail, air, or ferry, often to what press accounts describe as interior
distribution centers, such as Port Bell, Ouagadougou, and Juba.

Constraints on Limiting the Flow

Several factors limit the international community's ability to control
arms flows into Africa. With the exception of countries/groups under a
UN arms embargo -- Liberia and Somalia and rebel groups like the
RUF (Sierra Leone) and UNITA (Angola) and Hutu and ex-FAR extremists
(Central Africa) -- it is not illegal to sell arms to Africa. Even
those nations and organizations subject to a UN arms embargo easily
acquire weapons because of the paucity of effective international
monitoring and policing mechanisms. As a result of these loopholes, no
one has been prosecuted during the past decade for violating UN arms
embargoes in Africa.

Another problem concerns the chronic abuse of end user certificates,
which supposedly identify the ultimate destination of an arms shipment.
Recently, for example, Ukraine sent weapons to Burkina Faso, listed on
accompanying documents as the end user. Ouagadougou transshipped these
arms to RUF insurgents in Sierra Leone.

Growing concern about the arms trafficking problem has spawned numerous
initiatives by nations in Africa and elsewhere to restrict the flow of
weapons. For example, the UN Security Council on September 16, 1998,
passed a resolution urging member governments to punish those who sold
weapons to countries under a UN arms embargo, especially those in
Africa.

The lack of adequate policing and enforcement mechanisms undermines UN
efforts to control gray and black arms trafficking to Africa. In 1993,
for example, the UN Security Council implemented an arms embargo
against UNITA (made more robust in 1997 and 1998). However, UNITA
easily evaded the embargo by buying millions of dollars' worth of
military equipment. This buildup allowed UNITA to abandon the peace
process and press for a military victory over the Angolan Government.

On a regional level, the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) on November 1, 1998, announced an ambitious three-year
moratorium on the importation, export, and manufacture of light
weapons involving member states (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote
d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali,
Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo). According
to some estimates, there are at least 8 million weapons in West Africa,
with more than half in the hands of insurgents and criminals.

The success of the ECOWAS and UN initiatives and other similar arms
control accords will depend on the implementation of strong monitoring
and policing mechanisms. As of mid-1999, arms trafficking continued
unabated throughout much of West Africa because ECOWAS lacked the
resources to establish such systems.

Prospects

Arms transfers and trafficking will continue to add volatility to
politically unstable areas of Sub-Saharan Africa for the foreseeable
future. Given the multidimensional and highly complicated nature of the
arms transfer/trafficking network, there can be no "quick-fix" solution
to this problem. Establishing strong monitoring and policing mechanisms
to support ongoing efforts to restrict arms flows to and within Africa
will require a demonstration of sustained political will on the part of
African leaders and a commitment from the international community to
begin sharing information about arms sales and exercising a far
higher degree of restraint in approving the transfer of weapons to the
region.

Many of Africa's protracted wars continue because the combatants
believe military force can resolve political and economic problems. A
concerted effort to constrain the availability and flow of weapons to
these conflicts might significantly alter the plans of those who
continue to choose war over peace.

Distributed via Africa News Online (www.africanews.org). If this item
is redistributed, published or used for broadcast, the content should
not be changed and U.S. Department of State should be credited.

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