Small Arms Make Wars Possible

The AK-47 has been the weapon of choice for insurgencies around the globe since the mid-twentieth century. Its design may be old, but it is short, sturdy, and reliable. It will work while dirty, requires minimal maintenance, and ammunition is fairly easy to come by. It is estimated that there have been somewhere between 30 and 50 million copies and variations of AK-47s made since it was first introduced to the Soviet military in 1949. The Soviets provided it to leftist guerillas all over the world during the Cold War and copies are still being made. Many of those guns find their way into the hands of guerilla fighters, terrorists, and child soldiers through the black market.

The AK-47 may be the predominant weapon of choice for poor people who feel the need to protect themselves from or rebel against some threat. That has a lot to do with its design being easy to copy and the rifle being extremely cheap. In some African countries that have suffered through years of internal conflict an AK-47 can be had, with ammunition, for the price of a chicken or sack of maize. It is by no means the only weapon being supplied to governments, para-militaries, or being sold to the highest bidder through the black market, however.

The US arms both militaries and para-militaries in countries where US interests are present. All of the arms sales aren’t direct. Many come in the form of licensing agreements. The export licenses are also given on a four year basis, so increases in any given year may seem low. But the arms are flowing. While FARC in Colombia is using AK-47s, the military and para-militaries that the US is using to fight against them are armed with 9mm Berrettas and American assault rifles. The supply and training in the use of those weapons has largely been turned over to private companies such as Halliburton, which gives the American government some plausible deniability should something go wrong, but the arms are flowing.

According to the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers (NISAT), “The US is believed to be one of the leading exporters in the world of small arms and light weapons through state-sanctioned export programs. The US government reports openly on these exports. The United States is also a major source of black-market arms, with guns purchased in the domestic market and illegally exported abroad.”

The US does, to their credit, at least report openly on their official arms sales and 2002 data on those sales is available on the NISAT web site. Still, the black market is booming. It does not just supply guns to criminals, but provides the weaponry for very real, very destabilizing wars.

The best known example of black market arms dealing is probably the Iran/Contra scandal of the eighties. In 1986 it came to light that the United States had secretly sold guns to Iran in a bid to free American hostages there. Profits from the illegal arms sale had been diverted to the Contras, a Nicaraguan rebel group fighting to overthrow the elected but left-wing government.

Iran/Contra is not the only case of governments being involved in black market arms deals, but it does exhibit the problem. Arms sales to Iran and providing aid to the Contras were both illegal under US law. The arms that were sold to Iran were used in their conflict with Iraq, the Americans’ official ally in the region. It was done to provide funding, used to buy arms, in an attempt to covertly overthrow a foreign elected government. The public was never supposed to know about it and the overall goal was to destabilize a country so that a friendly government could be installed.

The French supplied small arms overtly and covertly in Rwanda. They were, “protecting their interests,” as developed nations like to say when things go horribly wrong in places they’ve been meddling. The event that precipitated the slaughter was the shooting down of a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. The French claimed that the missiles used to shoot down the plane, two Soviet-made SAM-16 missiles, came from a stockpile the US had seized from Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War and sold to Uganda. The US says that the French seized the missiles in Iraq and supplied them directly to the Rwandans. Somehow the missiles ended up in the hands of somebody, it’s never been proven who, that shot down the plane. The death of President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda was used as an excuse by extremists to begin the killing.

It doesn’t really matter who supplied those SAM-16s, or who shot down the plane. Both France and the US, along with several other countries, have assets to protect in the region. Other countries were selling arms in the area purely for profit. Small arms, even shoulder-fired missiles, tend to move around easily and obscurely in regions where civil wars are raging. The profit motive, whether it is selling the weapons for cash or supplying them to protect a government or ensuring your favourite rebel group has a reasonable chance of over-throwing a government you don’t like, is the real problem. All governments involved in supplying small arms in the area are culpable in the ensuing genocide.

Canada, for its part, is a minor player in the small arms business. We have, since 1997, been a leader in international efforts to curb the availability of such weapons to parts of the world where they pose a very real threat to peace and stability and we are actively working to keep small arms out of the hands of non-state actors--rebel, terrorist, and para-military groups. We do still sell small arms though and while we are more careful than most about the buyers, the list of our customers still includes some questionable players.

Given the often unintended destinations and results the small arms trade has, the question is if Canada should be involved at all. We claim to be a peace-keeping nation, yet we supply weapons of war to other countries. An example of this is SNC Industrial Technologies of La Gardeur, Quebec. Although their main customer is the Department of National Defence, according to Project Ploughshares SNC has, cited “"export experience" with over 30 other countries, including Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, Oman, Russia, Thailand and the former Yugoslavia,” in reports to Industry Canada.

I don’t mean to single out SNC, since they are by no means the only small arms manufacturer and exporter in Canada. NISAT and the Small Arms Survey commissioned a list that contains a total of twelve Canadian companies that produce and export small arms, ammunition, and components for those arms. We make and export everything from sights to pistols to machine guns. While most of that goes to police forces and our military allies, the existence of a black market and the ever-changing political situations around the world leave such exports open to abuse.

The nations that benefit most from the trade in small arms are the nations that would choose and control the governments of developing nations. Such actions lead only to ever-increasing violence. Halting those exports is the first step in halting the violence.

Recommended links:
http://www.nisat.org
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/smallarms/salwindx.htm
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/index.html
http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/smallarm.html

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Reverend Blair was raised in Saskatchewan and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He comes from a long line of social activists and cried on Tommy Douglas before his first birthday. His column appears biweekly on Vive le Canada.

Note: http://www.nisat.org http://www.globalpolicy... http://www.smallarmssur... http://www.fas.org/asmp...