Small Arms Control

Old Weapons, New Issues

Jayantha Dhanapala, Mitsuro Donowaki, Lora Lumpe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138344907
• eBook ISBN: 9780429796364
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1999, the papers collected in this volume were originally prepared for four workshops organized by the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs to inform the work of the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms. These workshops were held during 1995-96. Some of the authors updated their papers for publication in early 1998. Lora Lumpe, senior fellow with the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers in Oslo and Tamar Gabelnick, Acting Director of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, DC edited the presentations for this book.

Part I

Causal Factors and Policy Considerations

Chapter 1
An Overview of the Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons

Michael Klare*

This paper covers the distinctive character of light weapons, recent trends in the spread of light weapons insofar as they impact on problems of international peace and security and the need for new international constraints on the global trade in light weapons.

I. The Distinctive Character of Light Weapons

For much of the past 30 years, analysis of the international trade in conventional weapons has largely focussed on transfers of major weapons systems—like tanks, heavy artillery, aircraft and warships. This focus was an understandable response to the dynamics of the Cold War era—a period in which the two superpowers provided large quantities of major weapons systems to their allies and clients in the developing world, often spurring local arms races in the process. Because these arms races were widely viewed as a potential cause of tension and conflict, much research was devoted to the trade in major weapons and several efforts were made to impose new international controls on this commerce (including the US-Soviet Conventional Arms Transfer talks of 1977-78 and the negotiations by the five members of the UN Security Council in 1991-92). The trade in light weapons was rarely addressed in these settings, as such munitions were generally viewed as representing a minor aspect of the larger arms traffic and thus not worthy of analysis and discussion in their own right.

The end of the Cold War has significantly altered this perception. Although much attention continues to be focussed on the trade in major weapons, a decline in regional conflict and a rise in internal warfare has forced policymakers to devote increased attention to small arms and light weapons. Most of the sectarian conflicts of the post-Cold War era have been fought in part by insurgents, militias and paramilitary groups equipped, for the most part, with small arms and light weapons. As suggested by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a January 1995 report to the General Assembly and the Security Council, light weapons deserve our attention because these are the weapons that are most prevalent in the conflicts that the United Nations is actually dealing with and are, in fact, “killing people in the hundreds of thousands.”¹

There is considerable evidence for this assessment. In Bosnia, for instance, a great deal of the killing—especially that associated with “ethnic cleansing” campaigns—was carried out with pistols, machine guns, grenades, land mines, anti-tank rockets and light mortars. In Rwanda, an estimated 750,000 people were killed with small arms, grenades and machetes which the former Rwandan Government imported for this purpose. In Somalia, irregular forces equipped with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns repeatedly fired upon and ambushed UN peacekeeping troops. Lightly-armed militias associated with the military and the ruling elite in Haiti terrorised the civilian population there for years. Light weapons have also taken a heavy toll on civilians in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kashmir, Liberia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Peru, Sri Lanka and Sudan.²It is clear, then, that small arms and light weapons have played a major role in the conflicts of the post-Cold War era, particularly those in which large numbers of civilians have been killed, displaced or wounded. However, in attempting to study and respond to this phenomenon, analysts and policymakers have been hampered by the lingering perception of light weapons as a minor aspect of the arms trade. Most of the discussions around the UN Register of Conventional Arms have focussed on problems of reporting transfers of major weapons systems. It is only with the adoption of General Assembly Resolution A/Res/50/70, establishing the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, that the United Nations has come to recognise the importance of studying light weapons on their own as a unique and significant feature of the world security environment.

Light weapons are not just smaller and less powerful variants of major weapons systems—they are a distinct class of weapons with unique properties that distinguish them from other types of weapons. These distinctive features include:

Low cost. Light arms generally cost a tiny fraction of the price of major weapons systems. A modern assault rifle, for instance, can be acquired for less than $ 1,000, and land mines can be purchased for as little as $ 10; a modern tank, on the other hand, costs a minimum of $1 million, while jet fighters cost $25 million or more.

Portability. Light weapons, by definition, are small and light, allowing them to be carried by an individual soldier or by pack horses and light vehicles. Major weapons, on the other hand, cannot be carried by individual soldiers but require specialised vehicles and transportation systems (or, in the case of aircraft, adequate landing fields). Minimum infrastructure. Most light weapons require very little in the way of a repair and maintenance infrastructure, outside of a cleaning and repair kit that can be carried by an individual soldier. Most major weapons, however, require regular access to an elaborate repair, servicing and maintenance capability.

Minimum training. Typically, an individual combatant can be trained to fire a gun or other light weapon in only a few hours or days. By comparison, combatants must receive months or even years of training to operate major weapons like tanks, aircraft or naval systems.

Concealability. Most guns, grenades and other small arms can be concealed in the clothing or hand luggage of a single individual—making them ideal for assassinations, terrorism and banditry.

Together, these characteristics of light weapons add up to a picture that is very different from that associated with major weapons systems. Because of their higher cost, need for elaborate infrastructure and difficulty of operation, major weapons are rarely found outside of the confines of professional military organisations with access to the full resources of the state. On the other hand, paramilitary organisations with relatively limited resources easily obtain and operate light weapons. Indeed, their low cost, portability and ease of maintenance and operation make light weapons ideal for use by insurgents, criminal bands, separatist groups and other sub-state actors.

The distinctive nature of light weapons also feeds into the military and political objectives of such forces. Whereas regular military forces of the state practising traditional warfare usually aim at the destruction of enemy military forces (as a prelude to the occupation of territory or the extraction of other concessions), paramilitary operations of the sort practised in ethnic and internal warfare are often aimed at the physical removal or liquidation of particular groups or tribes (men, women and children together) and/or the déstabilisation of the existing social order. Such operations typically entail the detainment and execution or expulsion of targeted communities, along with house-to-house, village-to-village warfare—activities that are most easily performed with small arms, machine guns, grenades, mortars and other similar munitions.

The unique characteristics of light weapons command our attention. Because so much of the killing in recent wars has been performed by paramilitary forces, and because these forces have relied to such a great extent on light weapons to achieve their objectives, the international community cannot ignore the impact of light weapons trafficking on the world security environment. As much as we may worry about the continuing spread of advanced conventional munitions, we cannot afford to neglect the severe and distinctive threats to international peace and stability engendered by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

II. Recent Trends in the Spread of Small Arms and Light Weapons

That small arms and light weapons play a distinctive role in ethnic and internal warfare is hardly a recent discovery. Such arms have always figured prominently in conflicts involving insurgents and other non-state actors. One can also argue that many of the ethnic wars visible today have been under way for a very long time and that it is only in the absence of interstate conflict amongst the major powers that we tend to focus our attention on small wars of this type. This paper intends to demonstrate, however, that recent trends in the diffusion of light weapons are contributing to the incidence and intensity of ethnic and internal conflicts and are jeopardizing world security in new and distinctive ways. Four particular trends are: The growing lethality of light weapons; the proliferation of the technology to manufacture light weapons; the growing worldwide dispersion of surplus arms left over from the Cold War era; and the growing illicit trade in light weapons.

Increased lethality. While light weapons are not noted for their high-tech sophistication, there has been a steady increase in the destructiveness and lethality of such systems. Modern assault guns, for instance, can fire a burst of 30-35 bullets with one pull of the trigger—allowing people armed with such weapons to shoot into a crowd and kill many people at once (as occurred in the February 1994 Hebron massacre, committed with a 35-round Galil assault gun). In Somalia, light anti-aircraft guns like the Soviet ZSU-23 were mounted on modified trucks (called “technicals”) and used with devastating effectiveness against vehicles, low-flying helicopters and urban strongpoints. Antipersonnel landmines have been made smaller and harder to detect, as their low metal content and plastic packaging render them difficult to detect by metal-sensing detectors.³ Other weapons—handguns, shotguns, machine guns and grenades—have been “improved” in other ways, thereby increasing the killing power of light, hand-held munitions.⁴

Furthermore, research and development work now under way in many countries will make light weapons even more deadly and destructive in the future. The aim of these programmes, generally speaking, is to develop weapons that are lighter, more accurate, better at penetrating armour and more effective at long ranges. The United States, for instance, plans to introduce a “revolutionary” type of gun that will combine a rifle and a grenade launcher in a single unit. Known as the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, the gun will fire a standard bullet as well as a new type of bursting munition that will be shaped like a large bullet but will explode like a grenade, flinging shrapnel in all directions.⁵ Military firms in other countries are also developing new types of light weapons or are increasing the accuracy, range and lethality of existing systems.⁶

Proliferation of arms-making technology. While the production of major weapons systems is largely confined to a dozen or so major industrial powers, the production of small arms and light weapons is under way in a much larger group of countries, and the number of such producers is increasing all the time. Approximately 45 nations now produce light weapons of one sort or another, including 22 in the developing world. Some of these countries (most notably those in Europe) have been producing firearms for a century or more, but others (especially those in the Third World) have become producers only in the past few decades. These newer producers—among them, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and Venezuela—have generally imported technology and know-how from the older producers (usually via licensing agreements) when commencing the manufacture of arms or when switching production from older to more modern systems. The development of modern assault-type rifles by the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries after World War II, for instance, was followed in the 1970s and 1980s by the transfer of technology for the manufacture of such weapons from these countries to producers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.⁷

Although most developing world producers of light weapons originally began manufacture of such systems in order to satisfy the needs of their nations’ armed forces and to reduce their dependency on foreign suppliers, many have gone on to become exporters of arms themselves. Israel, for instance, has sold its Uzi submachine gun to the forces of 42 other countries and its Galil rifle to those of 15 other countries.⁸ Similarly, Argentina and Brazil have sold domestically-made guns and other weapons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Unidir
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acronyms
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Editorial Note
• Part I Causal Factors and Policy Considerations
• Part II The Problem of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Africa
• Part III The Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Part IV The Plague of Small Arms and Light Weaponry in South Asia
• Epilogue
• Recent UNIDIR Publications