Stop the death trade!

Richard Bingley and Martin Hogbin

One of the world's most famous arms dealers, Sam Cummings, said of the arms trade almost forty years ago: "It is almost a perpetual motion machine. We all agree that the arms race is a disaster, and we all agree that it could lead to an ultimate conflict, which would more or less destroy the civilised world as we know it. The old problem is, who is going to take the first move to really pull back?"
Since those days the Cold War order, and the omnipotent bipolar hostility thatruled our world, has evaporated. But not the arms trade--which has shrunk from ahigh of taking (US)$70bn of the world's resources in the mid-1980s to around$35-50bn today.
The trade in military equipment (ingovernment and industry circles around the world "arms exports" masqueradeunder the altruistic term of "defence exports") tends to be broken down intodifferent categories by the United Nations, other international government organisa-tions and NGOs: small arms, conventional weapons, Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD). The suppliers are usually private arms corporations (backed by governmentsubsidies, officials and marketing on the larger deals) and defence ministry cast-offschemes--while the buyers could be anybody from rebel groups and paramilitariesto the air forces and armies of some of the world's most repressive regimes.

Small arms to mass destruction

Small arms have been described by former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook as"the basic method of mass killing over the past decade". The UN estimates thatup to 90 per cent of fatalities in conflict are caused by people using firearms. TheSmall Arms Survey--a widely-respected Geneva based think-tank--claimed intheir latest annual publication that one gun existed for every eleven people onearth, and that over 500,000 people are killed every year at the business-end of a gun barrel. The trade in and use of smallarms has negative consequences for the health and well-being of communitiesaround the world. As Robert Muggah points out in his article on the impactsmall arms have on development (p26), even the development community "hasyet to fully wake up to the wide-ranging effects of small arms".
Conventional arms swallow up most of the net worth of the international armstrade but are seemingly relatively innocuous compared to problems causedby firearms. That is until we think of villagers attacked by Scorpion tanks in Aceh,Indonesia, recently (see article on Aceh on p20). Or ponder missile bombardmentsfrom (US-supplied) Israeli F-16s which hit not just their intended Hamas assassina-tion target in crowed Gaza in July 2002, but wiped away the lives of nine Palestin-ian children too. Not just tragedies in themselves, but a guarantee that retribu-tion and violence will follow on all sides, and the drive for arms continues unabated.The largely unrestricted flow of conventional weaponry worth around $40bnevery year during the 1990s feeds arms races and diverts resources in many impov-erished areas of the globe.
Weapons of Mass Destruction pro-grammes largely drive hidden trading in components and "dual use" equipment (iefor military or civilian application). These are not just mass-scale security problems,but pose an unenviable challenge for naturally benevolent-minded campaignerswho aren't keen to argue that certain distant states shouldn't receive industrialproducts and technologies which help improve economies and communities--ifthey are actually applied to the function promised by the recipient. For instance...it would have to be a brave campaigner to go on television and say that people in theMiddle East shouldn't be allowed certain chemicals to drain terra incognito swamp-land because they could be turned, at some stage, into Sarin Gas by their govern-ment--or an allied terrorist organisation!

Globalising resistance

As arms companies globalise, so campaigning globalises too. No longer is it credible(if it ever was) for a government to say "if we didn't sell them weapons, someone elsewould". The UN, international governmental organisations and NGOs, are atlast combating this anachronistic "establishment" attitude by suggesting thatthere should be an international treaty governing the arms trade. However, evenif these measures are implemented, will states be brave enough to trust interna-tional organisations to monitor the end use of every dual-use industrial, chemical or bio product? It seems unlikely.
    Between 9 and 12 September 2003, East London is being taken over by thedealers in death. Defence Systems Equipment International (DSEi) is a weaponsfair and conference of enormous proportions: the London arms bazaar is likely tobe one of the world's biggest ever arms exhibitions.
    For five days, the Excel centre, a modern complex in London's docklands, will hostin the region of 1000 arms companies, selling bombs, planes, tanks, landmines, military electronics, warships, guns, surveillance and riot control equipment to buyers from all over the world. One in three of the world's countries will be at the arms fair,shopping for military equipment. Friend and foe will shop side-by-side for weaponsto use against each other. All this will take place in secret, behind heavily protectedsecurity fences and police lines.
    Arms exhibitions are not just plush,high-profile showcase for weapons companies. As DSEi itself boasts, the armsfair will be a place where deals in weapons of death actually take place. At DSEi 2003,arms deals will be signed and sealed, ready for delivery to some of the world's worstregions of conflict, human rights abusing states and poverty stricken nations.That's why this arms fair must be stopped. We must prevent these armsdeals from taking place.

Conflict, terrorism, human rights

This year DSEi is expected to invite official delegates from more than 60 coun-tries, from every continent on the globe, to buy and sell the weapons of death. Thelist of invited guests is kept secret right up until the exhibition begins. But in thepast, DSEi has played host to delegates from some of the world's worst humanrights abusing states, including Indonesia, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey andIsrael. Inviting delegates to arms exhibitions like DSEi not only provides themwith the opportunity to buy the weapons and tools with which they perpetratehuman rights abuses, but gives moral and political support to them to do so. It alsogives the British government's approval to human rights abuse.
The arms trade is the hub of international and internal conflicts, whateverapologists may say about peacekeeping and the right to self-defence. Simply put,without the international arms trade, countries could not go to war on the scalethey do, civilian and military casualties would be far less, and the world wouldsimply be a better, safer, happier place. DSEi is directly responsible for fuellingconflict around the world, allowing arms companies to sell weapons to countries currently at war with each other, on thebrink of war or involved in some kind of internal conflict. At DSEi 2001, delegatesfrom no fewer than 23 countries currently at war or in serious conflict were invited.

About CAAT

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) was set up in1974 by a number of peace and other organisations who were concernedabout the growth in the arms trade following the Middle East war of 1973. It is a broadcoalition of groups and individuals in the UK working to end the international arms trade.In seeking to end it CAAT's priorities are to:

end government subsidies and supportfor arms exports;
end exports to oppressive regimes;
end exports to countries involved in anarmed conflict or region of tension;
end exports to countries whose socialwelfare is threatened by military spending;
support measures, both in the UK andinternationally, which will regulate and reduce the arms trade and lead to it even-tually end.

CAAT, 11 Goodwin St, London N4 3HQ,Britain (+44 20 7281 0297; fax 7281 4369; email enquiries@caat.demon.co.uk; http://www.caat.org.uk/ ).

The most horrific weapons

As if the dealing in weapons of death was not enough, the DSEi exhibition has beenthe venue for two separate breaches of worldwide anti-personnel landmines legis-lation. The 1998 UK Landmines Act, which follows global landmines treaties,rules than any person involved in the production, sale, promotion or transfer ofanti-personnel landmines should face up to 14 years in prison.
    At DSEi 1999, undercover journalists revealed that a Romanian state arms firm,Romtechnica, had promotional material for anti-personnel landmines on its stand--which it later admitted. Exhibitors at the stall told the journalist they couldarrange the transfer of the weapons, even though they were illegal. At the samearms fair, BBC journalists met representatives of Pakistan Ordnance Factories(POF), another small-arms firm. After the exhibition, POF again offered illegal anti-personnel landmines for sale, as well as illegal shipments of small arms to Sudan.
    The British police were asked to investigate both cases, and failed to bring anycharges at all in either case. The DSEi exhibition admitted it had no specificchecks in place for preventing illegal sales of landmines. Meanwhile, after twoactivists chained themselves to a train outside DSEi 2001, to prevent delegates fromdoing illegal deals and preventing a greater crime, they were duly arrested,charged and harassed by police. The judge in the case refused to accept they wereattempting to prevent the illegal promotion and sale of anti-personnel landmines.
    But it is not just arms trade-related crimes that take place here in Britain thatthe British police have been asked--and failed--to investigate, writing in hisdetailed article on the South African arms deal (p22-24), Terry Crawford Brownecomments "When allegations arose that BAe Systems had paid #1 million to vari-ous South African politicians as a `first success fee', they were referred for investiga-tion to the British Secretary for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers. Byers delegatedthe task to the London Metropolitan Police who, with desultory indifference, reportedback that there was insufficient evidence to pursue the matter."
    From a few landmines to tens of billions of pounds worth of equipment, itappears the death dealers are experts at escaping justice--with a little help fromtheir friends.

Stop DSEi 2003

DSEi 2003 is likely to follow the same pattern as previously. Government minis-ters will attend and hundreds of arms companies, from all over the world, arelikely to do both legal and illegal deals in the weapons of death.
Thousands of police will be drafted in to protect the arms dealers, and repressive policing measures will prevent normal,concerned people from expressing their disgust, dismay and anger at one of thelargest weapons fairs ever taking place.
However, with concerted, united butdiverse and determined protest we can stop DSEi 2003 and similar arms fairsaround the world, and strike a blow at this horrific trade in death.

Richard Bingley worked as CAAT's press and publications worker until August 2003.
Martin Hogbin is CAAT's campaigns worker