Merchants of death

According to the Africa Aerospace & Defence newsletter, the AAD 2006 “… is Africa’s showcase event for general and commercial aviation, aerospace and military land, sea and air technology and services.” However, anti-war groups argue that the AAD 2006 will exhibit the largest and greatest in machinery designed for only one purpose - the killing of human beings. This is the harsh truth behind arms expos; they supply arms for countries to go to war.

In Africa, a continent that has been devastated by civil wars, a continent where military weapons have brought nothing but misery and destruction, the last thing one would expect is a weapons fair. Dubbed “Africa Aerospace & Defence 2006”, AAD 2006 is the largest weapons exhibition that has ever been organised in this continent.

As if referring to a flea market, the AAD 2006 websites states that: “Air Force Base Ysterplaat [Cape Town, South Africa], against the backdrop of Table Mountain, will provide the setting for the only exposition of its sort in Africa and will feature more than 400 exhibitors from at least 25 countries.”

The AAD website further informs readers that by taking part in this affair, “trade visitors and the media have the unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor, experiencing and participating in the renaissance of the African aerospace and defence industry.” We are expected to believe that the same military weapons that have perpetuated civil wars in the DRC, Uganda and Liberia are in actual fact what constitute the African renaissance. This would be funny if this were not a matter of life and death.

Commenting on the exhibition, the Ceasefire and Umzabalazo we Jubilee campaigns wrote: “These arms companies will exhibit the largest and greatest in machinery designed for only one purpose, the killing of human beings. Husband, fathers, son, daughter and infants will all die because of this machinery. This is the harsh truth behind arms expos; they supply arms for countries to go to war with other countries and against their own citizens.”

The Cape Town Anti-War Coalition claims that: “Many of the arms companies ‘exhibiting’ at the weapons fair are allegedly involved in dealing weapons through third party front companies with extremely poor human rights records, like America, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Angola, Eritrea, Sudan and Nigeria. This method involves direct purchases by the foreign aid recipient from a government weapons manufacturer contractor, without directly government involvement in the process. Others are involved in further impoverishing poor countries like Malawi who have no need for military equipment but who are forced by the World Bank into taking out loans to buy weapons in exchange for aid.”

According to the Small Arms Survey 2006, “Applying the doctrinal distinctions outlined…to 166 countries (all countries with a population over 400 000 that have military) permits global estimation of the number of firearms controlled by the state-sponsored armed forces of the world. Combined with formally declared military inventories, this analysis concludes that the world harbours at least 200 million official military firearms. When distributed to compensate for a statistical margin of error (plus or minus 25 percent), the range of global military firearms appears to be between 150 million and 250 million. The estimating used here for People’s War militaries are conservative, which suggest that actual global totals are more likely to be closer to the upper parameter.”

Addressing specifically the issue of small arms, the Global Policy Forum (www.globalpolicy.org) states that: “Small arms and light weapons fuel civil wars and other conflicts, causing harm to millions of people, particularly in Africa. These small weapons are only part of a larger trade that includes heavier and more lethal weaponry, but light arms are often especially baneful because they are cheap, easy to transport and can be handled by ill-trained rebel soldiers and even children. Recent UN reports show how these weapons are illicitly exported, transported with connivance of government officials in many countries and smuggled into war zones.”

To fully understand what the AAD 2006 means for ordinary Africans, one has to take into consideration the role of small arms in African civil wars. As the Global Policy Forum points out, small weapons are a part of a larger trade, like the AAD 2006.

The Small Arms Survey 2006 (SAS 2006) reports that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) depended on small arms to keep the civil war going in Northern Uganda for the past 20 years. As a result, this led to high levels of armament among the civilian population in the region, levels exacerbated by government and military policies of arming sections of society against the LRA and other armed groups.

“The LRA’s primary weapons are Kalashnikov derivatives, and most commonly, the Chinese Type 56 assault rifle. However, the Ugandan military uses a number of weapons, and the same types are also used by the LRA. The most numerous after the Chinese Type 56 are Polish and Romanian AKM assault rifles and AK-47 assault rifles from the former Soviet Union. Some observers claim that NATO weapons, such as the Belgian FN FAL and the German G3, are also in service with some rebels, having formerly been in the arsenals of the Ugandan and Sudanese governments.” (SAS 2006)

Even with perfect case studies, such as Uganda, which illustrate that in the world today, military firearms serve one purpose and that is to terrorise and kill innocent civilians, AAD 2006 is unconvinced. The AAD 2006 newsletter claims that: “The conventional and terrorist threats to security together with increased demands for peace-support operations is prompting many African countries to revisit their defence requirement and to re-evaluate their investments in research and development and procurements.”

However, the Cape Town Anti-War Coalition points out that most of the companies who are exhibiting weapons are “responsible for the deaths of millions of civilians across Africa and the Middle Eats.” For example, Truvelo, one of the companies exhibiting weapons at the fair is “manufacturing a new assault rifle. This company is expert in manufacturing sniper guns.” Eurocipter, another exhibitor, makes 14 different military helicopters, including the “Tiger” which they supply to Israel, among other repressive regimes.

The sad reality is that the manufacturing of arms (instead of building homes for the homeless and feeding the hungry for instance) is not likely to change for a very long time. The projections by the Small Arms Survey 2006 show a world obsessed with military firearms. The SAS 2005 predicts that:

- The world’s militaries procure around 50 million small arms and light weapons over a 50-year period, or around 1 million units annually.
- Not all of this acquisition is of new stocks.
-Global production of military small arms and light weapons over a 50-year period range between 36 and 46 million weapons and averages 0.7 – 0.9 million annually.
- Production is not constant but cyclical and responds to the demands of the world’s wealthier states.
- The world’s poorer states often rely on surplus stocks displayed by wealthy state procurement programmes.
- This trade and transfer of surplus stocks to militaries across the globe could number up to 14 million units over a 50-year period.
- Some of the world’s largest procurers will launch major procurement programmes in the next 10 – 15 years.
- Global military production periodically peaks and id projected to do so in the coming 20 years as wealthy states modernise their small arms.
- Unless measures are taken to remove weapons from circulation, this peak is likely to displace yet more surplus stock to the world’s poorer states.

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