Small Arms? Big Problem
by Frida Berrigan
Published on Friday, July 9, 2004 by CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0709-01.htm
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the specter of mobile chemical labs, dirty nuclear bombs, anthrax spores, sarin gas, and other weapons of mass murder has fueled fearful imaginations and launched countless anti-terrorism initiatives. While these fears are real, people throughout the world would be surprised to learn that the most deadly weapon of all is still legal, accessible and dirt cheap.
The AK-47, the M-16 and other so-called "small arms" are responsible for half a million deaths each year. About 300,000 people- mostly civilians- are killed in wars, coups d'*tat and other armed conflicts annually as the victims of small arms. Another 200,000 people are killed in homicides, suicides, unintentional shootings and shootings by police. Another 1.5 million are wounded. If we take into account their cumulative impact, small arms are truly weapons of mass destruction.
They are also cheap, portable and easily concealed, making them ideal terrorist weapons. While small arms are deadly and dangerous, they are also profitable, which erects significant barriers to their control.
According to data collected by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, more than $4 billion in small arms sales are made each year. The United States, responsible for 18% of that market share, has the dubious honor of being the largest exporter, with $741.4 million in sales in 2003. Not surprisingly, the U.S. purchased $602.5 million in small arms and munitions the same year, making it the largest importer as well.
Profit notwithstanding, the failure of small arms producing states to curb and control small arms has a devastating impact on human rights, development and the war against terrorism.
In Iraq, the prevalence of small arms has contributed to the marked increase in attacks on U.S. troops. According to journalist Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill, the Marine platoon he was embedded with in Iraq was shocked by amount of arms and ammunition that littered Iraq.
In a recent article in the New York Times, Wright notes that at the time of the coalition invasion, "Iraq had one of the largest conventional arms stockpiles in the world, includ[ing] three million tons of bombs and bullets; millions of AK-47's and other rifles, rocket launchers and mortar tubes; and thousands of more sophisticated arms like ground-to-air missiles.. As war approached, Iraqi commanders ordered these mountains of munitions to be dispersed across the country in thousands of small caches."
If the platoon was stunned by the amount of weaponry they discovered; they were flabbergasted when ordered not to stop to destroy the stockpiles in the rush to Baghdad. As a result of these orders, by the time the Marines reached the capital, Iraqis "bent on killing Americans" had taken up the weapons they had passed along the way. Their experience is just one example of the dangers that result as the U.S. and other major powers continue to overlook the big problem of small arms.
In Afghanistan, continued violence and instability can- at least in part- be attributed to the concentration of small arms in the hands of warlords and Mujahedeen. Many of these weapons were purchased with covert U.S. aid and given to anti-Communist fighters 25 years ago, a gruesome testimony to the durability of small arms and a powerful argument that destruction of weapons stockpiles be part of every peace agreement.
Since the beginning of the war on terrorism, the United States has increased police and military aid to countries like Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. But too often, the small arms and training provided by the United States have been turned against the civilian populations of those countries- used in human rights abuses, assassinations and state repression.
In fact, according to Amnesty International, the demand for weapons has risen since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A correlation between the proliferation of small arms and the proliferation of human rights abuses is stark and out of control.
The "war on terrorism" should have stopped arms falling into the wrong hands, but as Amnesty International's report Shattered Lives: The Case For Tough International Arms Control finds, U.S. and other Western suppliers have gone in the other direction, relaxing arms controls "in order to arm new-found allies against terrorism, irrespective of their disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law."
This week, organizations from around the world are uniting under the umbrella of the International Action Network Against Small Arms to draw attention to human toll of small arms proliferation and misuse, and to demand governments enact policies that put their citizens' security first.
Rather than handing out more guns in the name of fighting terrorism, the United States and other major powers should be doing everything in their power to stop the spread of small arms to terrorists, tyrants, and human rights abusers.
IRAQ:
Arms Suppliers Scramble to Feed Hungry Market Thalif Deen
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24574
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 9 (IPS) - When the 15-member U.N. Security Council legitimised the U.S.-imposed interim government in Baghdad in June, the five-page unanimous resolution carried a provision little publicised in the media: the lifting of a 14-year arms embargo on Iraq.
The Security Council's decision to end military sanctions on Iraq has triggered a mad scramble by the world's weapons dealers to make a grab for a potentially new multi-million-dollar arms market in the already over-armed Middle East.
The former U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which handed over power to the new Iraqi government Jun. 28, finalised plans for the purchase of six C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft, 16 Iroquois helicopters and a squadron of 16 low-flying, light reconnaissance aircraft -- all for delivery by April 2005.
The proposed purchases were part of an attempt to rebuild and revitalise Iraq's sanctions-hit, weapons-starved military.
But some experts question the strategy.
''The flow of weapons to Iraq will not improve the security situation in Iraq, nor will it make the country safe from outside threats or an external invasion,'' said Naseer H Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus) at the University of Massachusetts.
''With 140,000 U.S. military personnel, 20,000 from the so-called coalition of the willing and another 20,000 contracted civilians, Iraq remains occupied and denied effective sovereignty,'' said Aruri, author of 'Dishonest Broker, the U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine'.
''Purchasing weapons at this time, therefore, is more relevant to the needs of the occupier relating to the suppression of armed opposition, and consolidation of U.S. hegemony. Moreover, it is not appropriate for the interim government, a sub-contracting agency for the United States, to go shopping for arms as numerous arms exporting countries compete feverishly for contracts,'' he told IPS.
The United States, Britain and Jordan are providing assistance and training for the creation of a 40,000-person Iraqi army.
With blessings from the U.S. Congress, the former CPA also earmarked about
2.1 billion dollars for national security, including 2.0 billion dollars for the new army and 76 million dollars for a civil defence corps.
Since late last year, Iraq has purchased 50,000 handguns from Austria, 421 UAZ Hunter jeeps from Russia and millions of dollars worth of armoured cars from Brazil and Ukraine, along with AK-47 assault rifles, nine-millimetre pistols, military vehicles, fire control equipment and night vision devices.
The biggest single deal was a 327-million-dollar contract with a U.S. firm to outfit Iraqi troops with body armour, radios and other communications equipment. The contract has been challenged by two non-U.S. firms that lost out on the bidding process.
The decision by the CPA to purchase the handguns from the Austrian gun-maker Glock late last year evoked a strong protest to the Pentagon.
''There are a number of U.S. companies that could easily provide these weapons,'' Representative Jeb Bradley, a member of President George W Bush's Republican Party, said in a letter to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ''Why were other firearms companies, namely American companies, passed over?'' he asked.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded two contracts, totalling 2.7 million dollars, to U.S. firms in March this year for transmission, distribution, communications and controls for the Iraqi infrastructure. A third contract valued at 7.8 million dollars -- for a modern, digital cellular, command and control system to link the various sites of the Iraqi armed forces and the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team -- was also awarded to a U.S.-based company.
The United States has also awarded a 150-million-dollar contract for the renovation of four military bases located at Umm Qasr, Al-Kasik, Tadji and Numa niyah in various parts of Iraq. And the Pentagon has plans to expand existing military bases near Mosul, Baghdad and Kut, specifically for the U.S. army. This contract is estimated at about 600 million dollars.
''It does not seem wise to introduce new weaponry and military capability into Iraq's volatile mix of ongoing war and occupation, civil strife and political transition,'' according to Frida Berrigan, senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Centre, a project of the World Policy Institute (WPI).
On average, more than two U.S. soldiers are killed each day, she said, and inter-Iraqi violence is taking a deadly toll on civilians and government officials. ''Before Iraq is outfitted with high-tech weaponry, it seems that the low-tech needs of clean water and reliable electricity should be met,'' Berrigan told IPS.
In addition, if experience with the Iraqi police force is any indication of what is to come from a U.S.-armed and trained security force, she said, this is not the right time for the interim leadership to embark on an arms spending spree.
''Instead of aiding the United States in putting down the uprisings, thousands from Iraq's newly trained police force deserted, and many reportedly turned over their U.S.-issued weapons to street fighters. How many of the 135 Americans killed during that month faced American guns and ammunition?'' Berrigan asked.
''It's a well known fact that Iraq is saturated with weapons and ammunition, particularly firearms and light machine guns but also others,'' said Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst based in Jordan and a contributing editor to the Washington-based 'Middle East Report'.
That is one reason why the United States has experienced so much difficulty in its efforts to eradicate the insurgency, he said: the insurgents do not appear to be dependent on a flow of weapons from outside their borders.
At the same time the Iraqi security forces, particularly the Iraqi national army once it is properly reconstituted, does not have -- or has only very few
-- weapons systems normally associated with national self-defence, such as combat aircraft, artillery and air defences, Rabbani added.
''One can argue about whether or not investing in such systems constitutes a particularly wise move by the Iraqi national authorities given the numerous and severe challenges facing Iraqi society,'' he told IPS.
But it is a fact that a sovereign Iraqi state has a legitimate right to acquire sophisticated weapons systems and, given the way political and military leaders invariably behave, will seek to acquire them, he added.
Rabbani said Iraq has a long military tradition, some would even say a long tradition of militarism, and the dissolution of the Iraqi armed forces, combined with the destruction of much of the heavy weaponry that was left at the end of a previous war, means the government will have to invest considerably more in developing an effective military than would otherwise have been the case.
But, he added, ''it would be particularly reprehensible if American and other arms exporters exploit their control of Iraq and its government to foist upon it the purchase and acquisition of weapons system that are either prohibitively expensive (including systems marked up in price to make a fast buck) or unnecessary.''
If they do so, Rabbani said, they would be repeating a pattern of weapons sales seen during the past several decades to, for example, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states (part of the system known as petro-dollar recycling).
Overall military spending in the Middle East is estimated to reach about 55 billion dollars annually by 2007, rising from about 52 billion dollars in 2003, according to Forecast International, a U.S.-based defence market research organisation.
The big spenders include Saudi Arabia, which will average more than 18 billion dollars in defence spending annually through 2007, followed by Israel (over nine billion dollars), Iran (4.5 billion), the United Arab Emirates (about 3.7
billion) and Egypt (over 3.0 billion dollars).
A large proportion of the funds is earmarked for weapons purchases, mostly from the United States, Britain, France and Russia.
Iraq's first decisions concerning military acquisitions will be critical, Rabbani said, because they will virtually determine subsequent purchases (in terms of compatibility, for example).
''It therefore seems to me crucial that such decisions be made by a genuinely independent Iraqi government, upon the recommendation of a professional assessment by a genuinely independent Iraqi military high command, on the basis of both the current and future needs of the country and its existing traditions,'' he added.
Even "grants" of sophisticated weapons by the United States or other states with military export industries will interfere with this process.
''The pattern in Iraq so far is that it is being seen as a financial bonanza
-- and where civilian contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel have gone, military contractors such as Lockheed and Raytheon can be expected to follow'', he added.
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Frida Berrigan
Senior Research Associate
World Policy Institute
66 Fifth Ave., 9th Floor
New York, NY 10011
ph 212.229.5808 x112
fax 212.229.5579
The Arms Trade Resource Center was
established in 1993 to engage in public education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the international arms trade. www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms