Africa: The Political Economy of Small Arms & Conflicts

as published in:

 DPMN Bulletin - Development Policy Management in Sub-Sahran Africa
Conflicts in Africa: Resolution, Management and Peace Building, Volume VIII,
No. 1, July 2001

Abdel-Fatau Musah

Introduction

The July 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in SALW that saw civil society decisively gatecrash what had usually been an exclusive forum of Governments, was a deciding moment in this shift in priorities.  The Conference is the culmination of collaborative efforts by non-governmental organisations and willing nations to force the issue of small arms proliferation up the agenda of international discourse and make governments around the world take political stands.  It is significant, and also symptomatic of our times, that Africa’s actions actually propelled the SALW issue into the purview of the United Nations. In December 1993, following a peace deal with Tuareg combatants from the north and the realisation that the diffusion of small arms in Mali continued to threaten the fragile peace process the Malian President, Alpha Konare, requested the assistance of the UN secretary-general to locate and curb the flow of small arms in the country (Musah, 1997: p.8).  Since then, the United Nations has led from the front in pushing for measures to combat the trafficking in small arms and also mop up excess weapons from conflict-prone societies through its micro-disarmament programmes.  Regional organisations, such as ECOWAS, EU, OSCE, OAS and SADC, taking a cue from the UN and informed by local security concerns, have initiated wide-ranging measures either to inject responsibility into legal transfers, or contain the trafficking in SALW.  Though much has been done in this direction, positive results remain notoriously paltry.

The Small Arms Problem in Africa

In Africa, the sources of SALW proliferation are many and varied. While the thrust of international efforts to curb proliferation tend to concentrate on the manufacture and supply of new weapons, a major pipeline of SALW remains the stockpiles that were pumped into Africa in the 1970s and 1980s by the ex-Soviet Union, the USA and their allies to fan proxy interstate wars.  These leftover weapons have found their way through clandestine networks involving rogue arms brokers, private military companies, shady airline companies and local smugglers to exacerbate on-going conflicts and facilitate the commencement of new ones in the continent.  The break-up and deregulation of once state arms industries in eastern and central Europe has also led to the mushrooming of mini industries whose aggressive search for new markets in the developing world have made nonsense of existing export regimes.  Africa itself boasts countries that are arms manufacturers – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria among others, and countries that are dotted with growing small arms cottage industries.  Finally, small arms have found their way into civilian hands from official sources due to a combination of factors, including the breakdown of state structures, lax controls over national armouries and poor service conditions for security personnel.

Conservative estimates put the number of SALW in circulation worldwide at 500 million, seven million of which are guessed to be circulating in West Africa alone with comparable figures in the Great Lakes conflict vortex.  These weapons have helped regionalise and prolong wars in conflict clusters around the continent – from the Mano River Union in West Africa through the Great Lakes Region to the Greater Horn.  The effects – a most insecure social environment, spiraling violence, the mounting death toll and floods of refuges and IDPs – constitute a major developmental and human rights challenge.  Where wars have officially come to an end, the presence of small arms makes sure that physical insecurity persists through banditry and violent settlement of scores.  In the context of Africa, many countries could be described as nominally at peace.  But even in these societies – South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana – armed robbery is rampant and coercive protection and vigilante justice are replacing the incapacitated state security rackets.  As long as the small arms pipelines remain open, the prospects for peaceful conflict management, reigning in crime and promoting human rights will be greatly undermined.  This has dire consequences for the process of democratisation and fostering secure livelihoods. 

The so-called civil wars, fuelled by SALW, are sickening in their uncivil execution.  Firstly, easy access to global criminal networks, the diffusion of arms into the civilian domain became a key facilitating factor in the emergence of the civilian warlords, desperate to create his autonomous politico-economic power base by jumping on the bandwagon of legitimate internal grievances, appropriating these grievances and using them as a smokescreen for his personal gain.  In the Mano River Union, the Great lakes Region and the Great Horn, these warlords have created elaborate transnational criminal networks, with the help of which they carry out illegitimate exploitation of natural resources in part exchange for weapons and the hiring of mercenaries to prosecute personal wars.  Secondly, the SALW-facilitated wars led and executed by people other than the military, in many instances child combatants.  These civilians-turned combatants usually benefit from the very minimal, if any, combat training and are hardly aware of international human rights laws.  As a consequence the civilians – women, the elderly and children – constitute legitimate targets during the war.

Finally, to these warlords and their armies of dispossessed combatants, war becomes an end in itself.  In their minds, war becomes an opportunity for self-expression and the AK-47or Uzi, the ultimate blank cheque for livelihood.  Thus, attempts to end such wars at the negotiation table become an exercise in futility, a dialogue of the deaf.  As was demonstrated in the numerous attempts to broker peace in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the DRC and Somalia, rebels often appear at negotiations when their backs are to the wall, drag the talks with unreasonable demands while using the lull to rearm and regroup.  The proliferation and diffusion of SALW often take on a life of their own, creating multiple centres of power and bringing into play many more armed actors.  SALW are particularly prone to rights abuse as they are easier to maintain, manipulate and carry, and are deadly.      

Placing Small Arms proliferation in Context

Many factors, both internal and external, have contributed to the run-away culture of violence that is tearing African States apart.  The SALW debate can best be appreciated if placed at the point of intersection between the internal governance processes and the external influences that shape them.  For example, it is true to say that the post-cold war phase of globalisation characterised by the hegemony of the market and liberal democracy constitutes a major vehicle of structural of violence in the developing world, not least in Africa. That notwithstanding, the weakening effect of globalisation on the African State should be seen as exerting only an exacerbating but subordinate impact on the collapse of internal governance.  Consequently, the spread of weapons and intractable violence across Africa should be contextualised within the post-colonial state building project.

The State as Primary Source of Violence

At independence in the 1960s, the key failure of the first generation African leadership lay in its inability to rise above the arbitrarily imposed colonial borders and to transform inherited structures to meet popular aspirations for human security and peaceful transfer of power.   Instead, these institutions were grafted unto, and grew apart from, traditional structures, thus creating fatal fault lines in the architecture of the new microstates.  To the extent that ordinary people did not see themselves as stakeholders in the state-building project, the typical African State has lacked popular legitimacy and remained a shell state since independence.  Governance is a loaded concept and is both about creating and assuring public goods and the responsible management of instruments of coercion, among which are weapons.  Unable or unwilling to lead in societal transformation that would guarantee security to the majority, and fearful of societal backlash, the post-independence African leadership yielded to the instinct of self-preservation.  The preoccupation with assuring personal power and regime security blocked any moves towards democratic institution building.    The state building project was effectively replaced by rent seeking arrangements based on personal loyalty and the denial of human security to the majority.  Starting off at independence as parodies of the liberal democracies of the former colonial powers, virtually all African governments had transformed themselves into one-party states a decade later.  By denying space for healthy competition between ideas and among personalities and aborting the efforts to consolidate the nascent structures of checks and balances within body politic, the one-party state and its variants became the harbinger of institutional violence. 

The obsession with regime security and the need to suppress the populations’ aspiration for economic well being and democratic protection led to the conversion of the typical post-colonial state into a ‘security racket’ (Tilly, 1985: pp. 169-186).  The ruler was obliged to rely on a clique of sectional/regional political heavy weights, usually selected on the basis of personal loyalty and ethnic affiliations, to ensure their security.  Often, the ruler became beholden to these power brokers – powerful military commanders and party stalwarts – who also had political and economic ambitions of their own, and thus confronted the ruler with a security dilemma.  ‘The ruler who organized the security racket was liable to be replaced by those who actually executed it’ (Hutchful, 2000: p. 213). 

The Army and Military Coups

The increased politisation of the military as a result of the army becoming the prime arbiter in the struggle between the civilian elites and the masses, and the resultant military coups that spread across Africa from the late 1960s through to the end of the 1980s were, in part, a function of these dynamics. 

Except in countries of active liberation wars (southern Africa, ex-Belgian Congo and Guinea Bissau), Africa was not burdened with the proliferation of weapons, going into independence.  Even in territories where the super powers dumped weapons to support proxy wars, arms were generally under adequate control by state organs.  The advent of coups d’etat gradually emphasized the decisive role of weapons as the surest route to power and personal enrichment, and their proliferation increased with the entry of junior military officers into the political arena.  In West Africa alone, there occurred six junior officers’ coups between 1980 and 1986 (Ghana, 1979 & 1981; Liberia, 1980; Burkina Faso, 1983 & 1986 and the Gambia, 1984).  As a rule, the advent of junior officers coups further exacerbated arms diffusion, introduced arms possession to the civilian youth – radical students, workers’ leaders and the marginalized sections of the urban population - and increased gun-related civilian casualty rates  (Musah, 1999: pp. 115-119).   From the advent of junior military coups and the diffusion of arms into civil society, the stage was set for the entry of the civilian warlords and their ill-trained combatants into the conflict vortex.

Exacerbating External Influences

The internal conflicts that have reared their heads in a big way in Africa since the 1990s were always fermenting in African countries during the cold war.  However, the need by the super powers to free the hands of dictators to help prosecute proxy interstate wars meant that the US and its allies helped Mobutu crush internal rebellions or at best, looked the other way.  On the other side of the divide, the former Soviet Union and her Warsaw pact allies would treat Mengistu in the same way in Ethiopia.  Now that the cold war was over, these once prized assets lost their value and became more vulnerable to internal challenges.

Globally, the receding threats of mutually assured destruction by the superpowers, waning proxy wars and the collapse of apartheid following the end of the cold war have led to massive global downsizing of armies without any proper alternative training and reintegration of demobilized soldiers.  Consequently, a huge labour pool of potential security entrepreneurs, mercenaries and arms merchants was created, particularly in South Africa, eastern and central Europe.  As well, the weapons industries in South Africa, eastern and central Europe had become these states’ main competitive enterprises in the global economy post-cold war.  Most of these were transferred to private hands who indiscriminately supplied new and surplus weapons (especially light weapons and small arms) into conflict zones through rogue brokers, adding to the huge cold war stockpiles.  In the 1960s there were 10 manufacturers of small arms in the former Soviet Union.  By 1999, this figure had grown to 66 in the ex-Soviet territories.  Globally, corresponding figures stood at 99 and 385 respectively (Abel, 2000: p.83); and from sales of around US$3 billion per annum during the cold war, estimates of global private arms sales were reported to have exceeded US$25 billion in 1996 (Hutchful, ibid. p.217).  Most of these weapons, and their proliferators – rogue merchants and mercenaries - have now become the tools used by foreign powers and extracting companies in conjunction with the corrupt elite in the Africa to pacify violent resource enclaves for illegitimate exploitation of resources, exacerbating violence and speeding up state decay in the process. 

The International Financial Institutions

The policies of the international financial institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have also added to the pressures on Africa’s weak states.  Through the cure-all-ailments structural adjustment programs, they have put excessive pressure on the already anorexic state to further slim down by selling off state assets, cutting down on military expenditures and subsidies on essential social services.  The state has, thus, been pushed further to the abyss while the corrupt leaders bolster their positions and wealth.  The corrupt elite in these states has responded in the most cynical fashion possible.  Firstly, they have cut down on military strengths, starved the army of pay while setting up numerous informal parallel security groups, whose main preoccupation is to guarantee personal and regime security, crush civil society dissent and eliminate threats from rival strongmen.  Meanwhile, the paralysis within the formal armies has thrown up freelancers eager to kill and maim in the service of criminal gangs, warlords and local strongmen.  In the Great Lakes, Mano River Union and the Niger Delta, combatants are prepared to carry out assassinations, fight wars in foreign lands and serve in protection rackets for strongmen and criminal gangs for next to nothing. 

Secondly, the external demands have offered the political elite in weak states a handy excuse to wash their hands off the socioeconomic needs of their people by relinquishing their responsibility for development and provision of social services to international non-governmental organisations.  At the same time, they are selling off state assets to their cronies and striking lucrative deals with shady external private entrepreneurs to loot national resources.

Also, the neoliberal era has been characterised by the easy, cheap and speedy access to lethal technologies, including night-vision equipment, satellite communication gadgets, rocket-propelled grenades to state and non-state actors alike.  Crucially, the advancements in electronic technology has enhanced the ability of agents other than the state to efficiently and speedily carry out electronic financial transactions involving the sale of gems, brokering and delivery of arms from the remotest possible parts of the globe.

The Role of Foreign Powers 

Foreign powers, particularly the US and France, continue to be actively involved in Africa, sustaining pliant leaders and protecting their transnational oil companies and other economic interests.  They have done so by training and equipping the armies of their allies through their intelligence services and private military companies.  In the wars that have ravaged Rwanda and the DRC since 1996, African-American mercenaries and the private security firm with strong links to US power structures, Brown & Root, have been supporting Rwandan and Ugandan war efforts with sophisticated weaponry that has included helicopter gunships fitted with 105 mm cannons, rockets, machine guns, landmine ejectors and infrared sensors (Madsen: 2001).  The well-connected US private military company, the Military Professional Resources Inc., has led America’s train and equip programmes in Nigeria and Angola, primarily to pacify the oil enclaves in these countries.

The Serb mercenary army, put together to save the crumbling Mobutu regime in 1997, was supported by the French secret services, DST and DGSE (Pech: 2000).  Similarly, the French oil giant, Elf Aquitaine, was instrumental in providing financial support for arms and logistics to Sassou Nguessou in civil war that ousted the Government of Pascal Lissouba in Congo Brazzaville in October 1997.

As can be seen, it is extremely difficult in the conflict zones of Africa, to distinguish between the formal and the informal, the legal and the illegal, the legitimate and the criminal. For the corrupt leader, warlord and their external backers, political instability has been interpreted only as a market issue. And in this market place, the small arm has become the key currency for transactions.

The Responses

The reflex action of groups that are caught up in the cycle of violence is self-protection.  The affluent in exclusive suburbs of African cities spend fortunes building fortresses to insulate themselves from the violent environment.  Concrete perimeter fencing, barbed wire, sophisticated alarm and CCTV cameras are becoming standard requirements for the elite.  These are complemented by armed security guards supplied by private security firms, a booming industry in Africa.

At the grassroots level, individual families are arming themselves while communities have set up armed vigilantes and neighbourhood watches.  However, these measures only heighten the sense of apprehension and vulnerability as rearmament only increases the feeling of insecurity.

Faced with the daily realities of carnage and suffering occasioned by the proliferation and misuse of SALW, civil society groups across the continent have invariably incorporated conflict resolution and micro-disarmament programmes into their activities.  Their advocacy work has brought to the fore the horrendous consequences of SALW proliferation and jolted policy makers into action.  Thus across Africa individual States and sub-regional organisations have come up with initiatives to contain the problem.  South Africa is today paying the price of the former apartheid regimes liberal domestic firearms policy vis-à-vis the white population and its supply of arms to RENAMO during the Mozambican civil war.  Small arms are crossing back into the country from neighbouring countries and fuelling criminality.  The death toll has been enormous.  Between 1990 and 1998, 15 000 people were killed in politically motivated incidents while in 1997 alone, 25 000 were murdered (Cukier & Sarkar: 1999, p.289).  Indeed Zimbabwe, despite its political turmoil, is a safer society than South Africa in terms of physical security.  It is no surprising that South Africa has, since the end of apartheid, led bilateral and SADC initiatives against the proliferation of small arms.  Since 1995, South African and Mozambican police have been co-operating under a programme code-named ‘Operation Rachel’ to discover and destroy arms caches along their common border (Musah: 1997, p.7).  The EU has also been assisting the Southern African Development Community to combat illicit arms trafficking under the EU-SADC agreement signed in 1998.

By far, however, the most ambitious sub-regional initiative against SALW proliferation has come from West Africa.  On 31 October 1998 the 16 Member States of the Economic Community of West African States signed a three-year Moratorium on the Importation, Exportation and Manufacture of Light Weapons.  A unique experience in multilateral self-restraint in weapons acquisition, the Moratorium is voluntary, not legally binding but a demonstration of confidence building and political will, brought together to tackle the run-away instability in the sub-region through a freeze on the trade in weapons and the elimination of existing stocks.  The object is to fight the culture of violence and create an enabling environment for secure livelihoods and physical security based on the twin strategy of security and development. Under the agreement, Member-States have created National Commissions drawn from state, security and civil society structures to oversee disarmament within individual Member-States.  So far, the Moratorium has attracted active support from support from the UN and its agencies, as well as other bodies, such as NISAT and the Wassenaar Arrangement.  Under it ‘arms for development’ micro-disarmament projects have been carried out in Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger, among others.

Conclusion: An Agenda for Peace

In dealing with the proliferation of weapons, campaigners need to be aware of the peculiarities of the problem.  Firstly, SALW facilitate and exacerbate conflicts and promote banditry, but they do not cause them.  Secondly, quite unlike the successful campaign to ban anti-personnel land mines, it is practically impossible to ban the production and transfer of SALW.  While it is difficult to dispute the inhumane nature of landmines, it is an acceptable fact that SALW have legitimate use – for security forces, hunting and sports.  Secondly, discourse about SALW invariably touches on state security and national sovereignty.  Consequently, at the end of the day, agreements on arms transfers, likewise their implementation, an only be taken by Governments.  That many of the restraint agreements on SALW are voluntary, and not legally-binding, and that the thrust of most of these agreements is aimed at the illicit transfers (a law and order issue) usually conducted by non-state groups, should be seen within this context.

Laudable as they are, efforts to remove weapons from society should be seen only as a means to an end.  Unless disarmament is linked to effective measures to tackle the social causes of demand, the efforts will be meaningless.  True, several of the disarmament programmes supported by multilateral agencies are premised on the twin strategy of security and development.  However, most of these initiatives are targeted at relief and quick impact micro projects designed to alleviate immediate humanitarian suffering.  To make disarmament and peaceful conflict management irreversible, policy makers need to effect a paradigm shift towards sustainable security.  Firstly, the major arms suppliers – the US, Russia, UK and France – should show greater restraint in arms transfers.  They should likewise pressure the main sources of illegal arms transfers to Africa – Bulgaria, Ukraine, Slovak Republic – to establish greater internal control on arms transfers.  Secondly, the developed countries should shoulder greater responsibility for the operations of arms brokers and private security companies that operate from their territories.

Finally, the praiseworthy external support for the internal struggles for good governance and human rights should be extended beyond electoralism by empowering local communities to take ownership of the democratisation process.  Most importantly, the powerful nations should demonstrate practical commitment to long-term developmental efforts on the continent.  For this to be realised, a paradigm shift is required that will replace the conflict-promoting IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes with a social-democratic agenda that will ensure food security, add value and eliminate restrictions to African exports.

References

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AFP Report, IRIN West Africa Update, 4 December 1998

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Dr. Abdel-Fatau Musah

Head of Research & Advocacy, Centre for Democracy & Development, London

Co-editor: Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma, Pluto Press, London, 2000

Over a Barrel: Light Weapons & Human Rights in the Commonwealth, CHRI, 1999

[1] In this piece, the term small arms and light weapons (SALW) is used to designate any weapon that can be carried and manipulated by one or two persons.  The categories of SALW are: light weapons – from heavy machine guns and  mortars of up to 100mm, to portable anti-tank/aircraft systems; small arms - a sub-category of light weapons comprising automatic/semi-automatic weapons of up to 20mm calibre (e.g. self-loading pistols, revolvers, carbines, rifles and machine-guns; ammunitions and explosives are also subsumed under the term.