Small arms -- the global trade in life and death

LONDON, June 19: From Africa to Bosnia, back to Africa and on to the W Asia -- the often secretive flow of guns and bullets follows the world's cycle of wars.

In the middle are the faceless brokers who have facilitated the multi-billion-dollar trade since the 1950s and 1960s when the United States and the Soviet Union used go-betweens to arm their allies to fight the Cold War by proxy.

''Small arms in Europe are not as cheap as they used to be at the end of the 1990s ... partly because the initial flood of weapons from former East Bloc armouries has slowed down,'' said one European arms broker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from his small, tight-knit community.

''But there are still ample supplies left around. For AK-47s particularly all the old East Bloc countries still have some surplus new weapons and, of course, there are lots of used ones,'' he told Reuters.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, unleashed not only a flood of cheap arms but also the giant aircraft needed to carry them to wars in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

From the steamy jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the dangerous streets of Baghdad and the drug-ruled favelas of Rio de Janeiro, guns acquired illegally spread terror, contribute to poverty and halt development.

Ahead of a United Nations meeting in New York from June 26 - July 7 to discuss this global trade, calls are growing for tighter regulations -- especially on the activities of brokers.

''Arms supply networks are increasingly sub-contracted and increasingly opaque and out of control,'' small arms trade expert Brian Wood told Reuters.

''Some of the drivers of the international arms trade today are individuals with laptops, mobile phones, air tickets and shell companies. They travel around,'' he said.

CROSSING THE LEGAL LINE The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a group of agencies including Amnesty International and Oxfam, estimates the global gun trade is worth around 4 billion dollars a year, of which up to 1 billion dollars may be illicit.

Prices for guns vary enormously from the 350 dollars-400 dollars per new Kalashnikov with three magazines, quoted as an example by the broker, to anecdotal stories of the same rifles changing hands for a tenth of that price in African war zones.

And if guns are available, they will be used.

''In places like northern Kenya, we are seeing pastoralists using AK-47s to dispute access to the diminishing number of watering holes whereas in the past they might have talked it out or at least used less lethal means,'' said Anthea Lawson, a spokeswoman for IANSA.

''It used to be said that the main victims of gun violence were women and children. That is not true. It is young men who are both the victims and the perpetrators,'' she said.

Rosoboronexport officials declined requests for an interview for this story, but customs figures show Russia's arms exports -- of which it controls 90 per cent -- have grown by almost 70 percent since Putin established the agency in 2000. The Kremlin hopes the increasingly aggressive consolidation of the industry at home will make the export trade a cornerstone of its system of state capitalism, before the post-Soviet decline that has plagued production becomes irreversible.

Some experts say that point has already been reached.

''The industry is in deep, terrible crisis. I believe it is beyond recovery because no components are produced. They use old components. The industry has disintegrated, and they have sold the equipment,'' said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent analyst who closely follows the Russian arms trade.

Very few new weapons were being designed and -- more importantly -- component factories had closed for a lack of new orders and their skilled workers had dispersed, he said.

''This is not an industry, it is a trade. There is no growth in this industry.'' Felgenhauer said the Soviet stockpiles were large enough to keep selling for years and years to come, but the trade was not creating employment or any long-term growth.

''A SELL-OFF'' ''This is a sell-off. These are good weapons for Sri Lanka, say, or Africa. They are easy to use for badly trained personnel,'' he said.

''As for the future: it depends where war will happen.'' General Yuri Baluyevsky, head of Russia's General Staff, said last year he feared the domestic weapons industry might not be large enough to supply the armed forces by 2011.

That, experts say, has led the Kremlin to forge a state arms champion out of Rosoboronexport, originally an export agency.

It has taken control of Russia's top carmaker AvtoVaz, has been eyeing truckmaker Kamaz and is in talks to buy into VSMPO-Avisma, the world's top titanium maker -- reportedly to get hold of Russian firms with easy access to a metal that is key to the aerospace industry.

''It is a kind of state capitalism. Rosoboronexport controls all military exports and we compete well in this sphere, but we need to keep working at it,'' said Gennady Raikov, a member of parliament who worked for decades in rocket design and aviation.

He said the new consolidated system -- reinforced in March when Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov was put in charge of the whole industry -- was a return to the Soviet system of having a single overseer of the military-industrial complex.

''To perfect our technology, we need to pull together,'' said Raikov, who said Russian scientists could create systems as good as Western powers but that investment was needed.

Reuters