The Small Arms Trade

A Beginner's Guide

Matthew Schroeder, Dan Smith, Rachel Stohl

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781780741796

Small Arms are responsible for over half a million deaths each year. Despite this terrifying statistic, millions of guns flow into the streets of the world each year. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, and one which is barely regulated. From AK-47s to M16 rifles; from Terrorist-owned shoulder-fired missiles to child soldiers, this enlightening guide reveals the disturbing reality behind the murky underworld of international arms trading. Explaining how deals can often operate on the edge of legality, and listing the world's main players, it goes on to ask how the exchange of small arms can be tightened in the future. Full of insight and anticipating the danger of ever lighter and more powerful weapons, this is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the world today and one of the key threats to development, prosperity and international peace.

notes

introduction

1. Ken Silverstein, ‘Comrades in arms: meet the former Soviet mobsters who sell terrorists their guns’, Washington Monthly, January 1, 2000.

2. Graduate Institute of International Studies, Small Arms Survey 2004: Rights at Risk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 163–164.

3. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

4. Alex Schmid and Albert J. Youngman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide To Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, And Literature (Transaction Publishers, April 1998). See also Michael Stohl ‘Demystifying Terrorism: The Myths and Realities of Contemporary Political Terrorism’, in Michael Stohl (ed.) The Politics of Terrorism (Marcel Dekker, January 1988), pp. 1–28.

5. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 42.

prologue

1. Coincidentally, the Mississippi regiment had been commanded by Colonel Jefferson Davis. In fact, Davis’ personal wartime experience with a ‘real’ rifle probably pre-disposed him to accept the recommendation of the Ordnance Board. See Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org­/­wiki­/­rifle, and Byron Farwell, ‘Mississippi Rifle’, in The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Land Warfare: An Illustrated World View (W.W. Norton and Co., 2002), p. 565.

chapter one

1. Maharaj K. Koul, ‘Kalashnikov: A weapon of choice’, The Tribune (India), November 15, 1998, http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98nov15/sunday/head7.htm.

2. United Nations, Report of the Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, A/52/298, http://www.un.org/Depts/ddar/Firstcom/SGreport52/a52298.html.

3. Nick Paton Walsh, ‘I sleep soundly’, The Guardian Unlimited, October 10, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0.3604,1059879,00.html.

4. Robert Fisk, ‘Dealer’s Choice’, The Independent, April 22, 2001, pp. 10–14.

5. Chris McNab, The AK-47 (St. Paul: MBI Publishing, 2001), pp. 15–16; Duncan Long, AK-47: The Complete Kalashnikov Family of Assault Rifles (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1988), pp. 9–10; Val Shilin and Charlie Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the History, Design, and Impact of the Kalashnikov Family of Weapons (Boulder: Paladin Press, 2000), pp. 19–21.

6. Terry Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons: The Modern Underground Fighter’s Armory (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1990), p. 52; Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, pp. 19–21; Long, AK-47, pp. 9–10.

7. Walsh, ‘I sleep soundly’.

8. Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons, p. 53; Long, AK-47, p. 13; David Miller, Illustrated Directory of 20th Century Guns (London: Salamander Books Ltd., 2001), pp. 262–263.

9. Ministry of Defense of the USSR, The Official Soviet AKM Manual: Operating instructions for the 7.62 mm Modernized Kalashnikov Rifle (AKM and AKMS), translated and with original illustrations by Maj. James F. Gebhardt, US Army (retired) (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1999); Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, p. 37; Gander, Guerrilla Warfare Weapons, p. 56.

10. Fisk, ‘Dealer’s Choice’; Tom Parfitt, ‘Kalashnikov gives name to ‘manly’ but less lethal products’, The Scotsman, February 19, 2003, p. 15.

11. Larry Kahaner, AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006).

12. McNab, The AK-47, pp. 54–57; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 3.

13. Author correspondence with A.A. Zavarzin, October 20, 2005. According to the Director of Foreign Economic Activity Department for Izhmash, the company that produces the AK-47, up until the 1980s the Soviet Union supplied AK-47 factories and rights to manufacture the AK-47 to twelve countries. Other countries also produced AKs without obtaining licenses. However, those rights and licenses have expired and Izhmash believes no countries or companies currently have any rights to produce AKs or use the AK brand.; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 2; McNab, The AK-47, pp. 54–57; Shilin and Cutshaw, Legends and Reality of the AK, p. 34.

14. Walsh, ‘I sleep soundly’.

15. Worldwide, there are between one and ten million Uzis and approximately seven million M-16s in circulation. Rachel Stohl and William Hartung, ‘Hired guns’, Foreign Policy, May/June 2004, pp. 28–29; Abdel Fatau Musah and Robert Castle, ‘Eastern Europe’s arsenal on the loose: Managing light weapons flows to conflict zones’, BASIC Occasional Paper 26, May 1998.

16. Michael Wines, ‘Symbols are important. So what does a gun symbolize?’, The New York Times, October 7, 2005, p. A4.

17. Anti-Defamation League, ‘International Terrorist Symbols Database’, 2006, http://www.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/default.asp; Fisk, ‘Dealer’s Choice’.

18. Sami Faltas and Wolf-Christian Paes, ‘Exchanging guns for tools: The TAE approach to practical disarmament—An assessment of the TAE project in Mozambique’, Bonn International Centre for Conversion Brief 29, April 2004, p. 7, http://www.bicc.de/publications/briefs/brief29/brief29.pdf; Parfitt, ‘‘Manly’ But Less Lethal Products’.

19. Fisk, ‘Dealer’s Choice’.

20. Kahaner, The AK-47, Preface; Walsh, ‘I sleep soundly’.

21. McNab, The AK-47, p. 63; Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 2.

22. John Walcott and David Rogers, ‘Ship used to send arms to Contras said to aid delivery of East-Bloc arms to US’, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1987, p. 1; William Godnick, Robert Muggah, and Camilla Waszink, ‘Stray bullets: The Impact of Small Arms Misuse in Central America’, Small Arms Survey Occasional Paper 5, October 2002, p. 5, http://hei.unige.ch/sas/OPs/OP05CentralAmerica.pdf; George Gedda, ‘Contras obtain 10,000 Polish AK-47s rifles, US Officials Say’, Associated Press, August 31, 1985.

23. Kahaner, The AK-47, Chapter 5; Frank Smyth, ‘Mysterious influx of Soviet and Chinese arms for Salvador rebels’, The Sacramento Bee, June 4, 1989.

24. Gedda, ‘Contras Obtain 10,000 Polish AK-47s’; United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Final Report of the Independent Counsel For Iran Contra Matters, 1993, Chapter 2, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh.

25. Godnick, Muggah, and Waszink, ‘Stray bullets’, p. 6.

26. Godnick, Muggah, and Waszink, ‘Stray bullets’, pp. 11 and 26; ‘Firearms Deaths Decline’, Canadian Medical Association Journal, 169, (10), 2003, http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/169/10/1064-a.

chapter two

1. Koul, ‘Kalashnikov’.

2. Fisk, ‘Dealer’s Choice’.

3. Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey 2002: Counting the Human Cost (London: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 104.

4. R.T. Naylor, ‘The structure and operation of the modern arms black market’, in Lethal Commerce: The Global Trade in Small arms and Light Weapons, eds. Jeffrey Boutwell, Michael T. Klare, and Laura W. Reed (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995), p. 48; Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied (London: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 13; Small Arms Survey 2002, pp. 66, 109, and 111, Box 3.1.

5. Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey 2001: Profiling the Problem (London: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 141 and 190.

6. Adapted from Rachel Stohl, ‘The tangled web of illicit arms trafficking’, in Terror in the Shadows: Trafficking in Money, Weapons, and People, eds. Gayle Smith and Peter Ogden (Center for American Progress, October 2004), pp. 21–26. For specific information on the UN reports on Angola and Liberia see UN documents S/2000/203 and S/2001/1015.

7. Ruchita Beri, ‘Coping with small arms threat in South Africa’, Strategic Analysis, 24 (1), April 2000, http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/sa/sa_apr00ber02.html; Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• introduction
• prologue
• one symbol of violence, war and culture
• two spreading weapons of individual destruction
• three costs and consequences
• four stemming the flow of small arms
• five man-portable air defense systems – the terrorists’ delight
• six bleeding the soviets
• seven the proliferation and control of MANPADS in the 1990s
• eight the post-mombasa scramble
• epilogue future challenges of proliferation
• glossary
• websites
• notes
• index