Trading in Death

In April this year, a Tel Aviv court rejected a petition from an Israeli lawyer to release documentation of arms exports to the Hutu government in Rwanda in the 1990s.

Over 100 days in 1994, members of the Hutu majority acting with the Rwandan government killed hundreds of thousands of the Tutsi minority. The killing was carried out with machetes and light weapons. Israeli-made 5.56mm bullets, grenades and rifles were involved, according to human rights groups and Israeli arms dealers.

In 2014, lawyer Eitay Mack filed a freedom of information request with the Israeli defence ministry for details of exports to Rwanda. The request eventually found its way to the Israeli high court, which has just rejected the petition citing risks to national security and Tel Aviv’s foreign relations.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, the motive of Israeli arms dealers in Rwanda was “pure greed" and some arms dealers have even argued that supplying light weapons to Hutu murderers was a good deed because it meant that the victims would die more quickly from a bullet wound than from being hacked apart with a machete.

Given the deep connection between the Israeli defence ministry and the defence industry, it would be nearly impossible that senior members of the Israeli government weren’t aware of the arms deals with Rwanda.

Israel’s relationship with Africa, whereby the country profits from the continent’s conflicts and refuses to accept asylum seekers, demonstrates that there is no morality in statecraft.

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/israeli-arms-deals-in-africa-reveal-defeat-of-moral-judgment

Rwanda's shameful arms trade

Between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed over the course of 100 days in Rwanda in 1994 during the civil war.

Documents detailing Israel’s defence exports to Rwanda during the country’s civil war and genocide in the 1990s are to remain sealed, the country’s Supreme Court has ruled. Two years ago Professor Yair Auron and attorney Eitay Mack submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Israel’s defence ministry to discover the nature of any arms exports made to Rwanda between 1990 and 1995. The request was denied by the Ministry of Defence and later by the Tel Aviv District Court, upholding the argument that the release of information would undermine state security and international relations.

Mr Mack responded to the decision by calling it “mistaken and immoral,” but said that “at no point during the proceedings was there a denial that there were defence exports during the genocide,” and vowed to “continue to fight to expose the truth”.

Israel was not the only country to have supplied arms into this conflict. Egypt supplied $6million of weapons.  It included 60-mm and 82-mm mortars, 16,000 mortar shells, 122-mm D-30 howitzers, 3,000 artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosives, anti-personnel land-mines, and more than three million rounds of small arms ammunition. South Africa supplied automatic rifles, machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers and ammunition. In May 1993, a French arms dealer agreed to sell $12 million worth of weapons to Rwanda. On Jan. 21, 1994, in violation of the terms of the recent peace accords, a French DC-8 cargo plane landed covertly in Kigali loaded with weapons, including 90 boxes of 60mm mortars.

The African Arms Trade

China is now the world’s third biggest arms exporter after the US and Russia according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). American arms exports accounted for 31 per cent for all exports during the period.  Sudan, Morocco and Algeria are China's main clients in Africa.

China has primarily sold relatively low end and low technology type of equipment to a whole range of African countries. It involves armored vehicles; the numbers involved are not that high, it also involves a few tanks here and there and the cheapest simplest combat aircraft available on the market. It's true that Chinese weapons do play an important role. But there are of course plenty of other suppliers that are willing to supply a range of countries in the region and those weapons can at times fuel conflict and military coup d'etats. It's not just China involved, there are several Western European nations, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and others.

Sudan has long been a recipient of arms from China, Nigeria has bought quantities of weapons too and recently Tanzania has invested in Chinese arms. Namibia and Cameroon have bought arms in smaller numbers so it is really spread throughout the continent. It's important to mention Morocco and Algeria - which have larger defense budgets than other African countries – there China has in the last five years found markets for its arms and those are probably the most important markets for Chinese arms in Africa right now.

Research tells us that China exports arms to a wide variety of countries. Yes, it does abide by United Nations arms embargoes which of course are always supported by China. China has a veto against those (embargoes) so if it doesn't want them, they can say no and it won't happen. So they do abide by these embargoes but still they are quiet willing to supply to almost all countries. What we also see is that sometimes some questions can be raised for example we saw last year that China supplied weapons to South Sudan while at the same time tried to be a peace broker in the ongoing conflict. Another example is that there is an arms embargo to Darfur within Sudan and at times China is still willing to supply weapons to Sudan in the knowledge that Sudan will immediately transfer those weapons to Darfur which is against the United Nations Security Council resolution. So they do live up to the international laws but there are occasions where one can question their behavior in this particular regard.

China does play an important role as a total in percentage. It also plays an important role because it is willing to supply to a wide variety of countries more than other countries would do. For instance whereas China is willing to supply to Sudan and Zimbabwe, European countries would not do so. Russia is also an important supplier to a range of African states, Ukraine has supplied a lot of second hand equipment and then a number of European countries which are willing to supply to Algeria, Nigeria, and Angola and the rest.

Morocco is the second largest importer of arms in Africa during the period 2010-2014, the Swedish think tank has said. Arms purchases by Morocco accounted for 26 per cent of the continent’s overall imports between 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. Morocco is preceded by Algeria, the largest arms importer in Africa, with 30 per cent of imports and Sudan (6 per cent). Morocco received 1 frigate from France, the country’s first arm supplier, for an estimated 470 million Euros. Morocco’s weapons imports also come from other countries mainly, the United States, Italy and Germany.

Morocco’s neighbor to the east Algeria managed to increase its arms imports by 3 percent between 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. Major deliveries to Algeria included 1 helicopter carrier from Italy, the last batch of 48 air defence systems from Russia and an estimated 50 self-propelled guns from China. The report added that Algeria has several major outstanding arms orders. These include orders placed in 2014 for 2 submarines and 42 combat helicopters from Russia and 926 APCs from Germany.

http://www.dw.de/sipri-chinas-arms-trade-with-africa-at-times-questionable/a-18319346

Guns for Africa

The Sahel and parts of east Africa face a range of jihadists. Coastal states have seen piracy, most recently in the west. Offshore discoveries of oil and gas have increased the need for maritime security. More traditional threats, internal as well as external, persist in countries such as South Sudan

The Nigerian army, one of the biggest in Africa and the government has just decided to spend $1 billion on new aircraft and training, among other things. Across Africa military spending grew by 8.3%, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), faster than in other parts of the world (see chart). Two out of three African countries have substantially increased military spending over the past decade; the continent as a whole raised military expenditure by 65%.

Angola's defence budget increased by more than one-third in 2013, to $6 billion, overtaking South Africa as the biggest spender in sub-Saharan Africa. Other countries with rocketing defence budgets include Burkina Faso, Ghana, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The continent's biggest spender by far is Algeria, at $10 billion.

Ethiopia last year took delivery of the first of about 200 Ukrainian T-72 tanks. Neighbouring South Sudan has bought about half as many. Coastal states such as Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania are sprucing up their navies. Angola has even looked at buying a used aircraft-carrier from Spain or Italy. Chad and Uganda are buying MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets. Cameroon and Ghana are importing transport planes to boost their ability to move troops around and deploy them abroad, which they have been ill-equipped to do. For peacekeeping duties they generally ask friendly Western governments for help in airlifting troops, or charter civilian planes. Chad makes good use of its Sukhoi SU-25 jets--with the help of mercenaries. On the other hand, Congo-Brazzaville only manages to get its Mirage fighter jets into the air for national-day celebrations. South Africa bought 26 Gripen combat aircraft from Sweden but has mothballed half of them because of budget cuts. Uganda spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Sukhoi SU-30 combat aircraft but little on the precision weapons to go with them. Sophisticated arms have also fall into the wrong hands; witness the array of Libyan weapons that have fuelled conflicts across Africa, from Mali to the Central African Republic, since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

Many African nations are participating in a growing number of African Union and UN peacekeeping missions. Once rarely seen in blue helmets, sub-Saharan soldiers are increasingly replacing troops from Europe and Asia, benefiting from training as well as from reimbursements for purchases of weapons. A new "business model" for African defence ministries is taking shape.

"Even small countries like Benin and Djibouti now field respectable forces," says Alex Vines of Chatham House, a think-tank in London.

A number of countries hope to foster defence manufacturing at home. A huge South African purchase of arms from, among others, Germany and Britain, agreed to more than a decade ago, included promises of "offsets" whereby local firms would help assemble jets and ships. Angola plans to build its own warships. Nigeria and Sudan make ammunition. Four European arms manufacturers set up African subsidiaries this year: Antonov is going into Sudan; Eurocopter is in Kenya's capital, Nairobi; Fincantieri, an Italian shipbuilder, is in the country's main port, Mombasa; and Saab is setting up a plant for its military aircraft in Botswana.

Since the anti-colonial guerrilla wars of the past century, most African conflicts have been internal. Few countries previously had the ability, let alone the inclination, to fight their neighbours. In the late 1990s, several countries, including Angola and Zimbabwe, sent forces to take part in Congo's civil war--to little avail. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought each other in 1998-2000. Tanzania sent its army into Uganda, along with guerrillas returning from exile, to overthrow Idi Amin in 1978. In general, however, few disputes between African countries have been liable to spark wars. But the build-up of beefier armies is bound to carry a risk.

From here

In Peacetime - Prepare for War

It's projected that military spending among African nations will surpass $46 billion by 2018.

Nation-on-nation war among African countries has been on the decline, the report noted, and although conflicts between countries still flare up on occasion they rarely escalate to extreme levels. If the trend continues, decade-long sanctions and arms embargoes could be lifted and opportunities for global defense firms would expand, particularly in the area of internal security products and services, explained Forecast International said in a report titled The Military Market for Africa. "Key arms purchases will likely be state-of-the-art surveillance equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles and electronics. African nations have already experienced firsthand how the lack of proper military surveillance equipment can handicap their militaries and security forces.

Forecast International said. "A number of Western nations are therefore eager to help equip African militaries, which remain open to practically all weapons suppliers."

"As optimism about the continent's prospects increases, global defense firms have started to eye the African market more closely," said the report's author, Nicole Auger. "It has ignited an intense competition between non-African defense companies while opening up an array of possible joint ventures and technology transfer agreements with African defense firms."

From here

ANC - Gun runners

South Africa was quick to respond to a United Nations request last October for three attack helicopters and two utility helicopters to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  The South African arms industry is considered one of the most advanced in the non-Western world today, and very much in the company of its IBSA partners, India and Brazil.

Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher, Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told IPS the South African arms industry is advanced in a few niche areas such as certain light armoured vehicles and anti-tank missiles. “But overall, it has become increasingly a part of the global arms industry acting as sub-contractors and supplying military components for complete systems elsewhere.”

He said South Africa currently supplies weapons and other military equipment to many countries throughout the world, from the United States to China, and from Sweden to Zambia. The U.S. was a one-time major client because it urgently needed mine-protected armoured vehicles for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. South Africa was the world leader in the production of such vehicles, he added, including the Casspir. This dated back to the apartheid regime when the South African armed forces had to learn how to fight guerrilla forces in Zimbabwe and Namibia. The 1977 arms embargo provided the incentive for South African firms to research and develop its own weapons so that it could become self-sufficient.

“...the new ANC government quickly set out to support the industry for the same reason as other arms-producing states: as a source of income, a catalyst for technological development and even hoped it could be used as a foreign policy instrument, in particular in Africa,” said Wezeman.

South Africa was also on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power with its well-developed clandestine programme to produce weapons of mass destruction – even while it remained ostracised by the global community. South Africa’s nuclear weapon programme was successful in producing seven weapons which were eventually destroyed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS that South Africa has the unique distinction of being the only country to have abandoned its nuclear weapons programme voluntarily – setting an example for other nuclear-armed states. In 1991, South Africa joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state after destroying the weapons it had developed in a clandestine programme during 1974-1990, allegedly with Israeli collusion, he pointed out.

“President [F.W.] de Klerk, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the late Nelson Mandela, told me he was kept in the dark about the nuclear weapons programme until he became president when he decided to halt the programme,” said Dhanapala, one of the world’s best-known authorities on nuclear disarmament. He said it was fitting the treaty declaring the whole continent of Africa a nuclear weapon free zone should be named the Treaty of Pelindaba, named after the place where the South African nuclear weapon programme was located.

From here 

Who Cares about CAR?

The UN has declared the entire 4.6 million population of the Central Africa Republic to be victims and the country among its most dangerous destinations. Its refugee agency has called it the "most neglected crisis in the world". Médecins Sans Frontières warns that the country had been effectively "abandoned to its fate".

The Central African Republic is all but lawless, with just 200 police to guard those 4.6m people from rebel gangs who attack women, kill men and recruit children at will. Despite repeated warnings, the international community has done little, even as arms continue to flood into the country. In Bangui, the capital, convoys of gangs can be seen speeding through its suburbs and are blamed for looting and indiscriminate shootings. The country's infrastructure has been effectively demolished. Human rights groups say the justice system has been dismantled, the prisons destroyed. The army has been disbanded.

Malnutrition rates have skyrocketed and malaria cases have risen by 30% since the Seleka rebels assumed control of the country. Latest assessments reveal 484,000 people at risk of food insecurity, with more than 206,000 people displaced. Armed groups running amok in a state the size of France, free to plunder as they wish.

"There is nobody to help the population. There are no authorities, no militaries. When you resist, they kill you," Albert Vanbuel, Catholic bishop of Kaga-Bandoro, a town of 26,000.  Even the sprawling UN compound 3km from the town has been looted, its food stores pillaged.

A plan was constructed to pay off fighters who agreed to disarm. UN officials told the security council that a lack of funding to complete the disarmament process could push the country "to the brink of disaster".  Just two countries: Luxembourg offered £67,000 and Australia £134,000, despite £14.2m being required to complete the disarmament and reintegration process.

 A UN request for £129m of aid received £40m. A recent Unicef emergency appeal outlined a need for £21m, but received under £6m.

Britain, along with the CAR's colonial owner France, is among those accused of neglecting the country. A Foreign Office source said he could not recall if a UK minister had ever visited the country. The British ambassador is based in Cameroon, 500 miles away.  The UK cuts its annual aid to the republic from £2.7m to £1.29m two years ago.

Since 2005 the UK has been the fourth largest European exporter of arms to the CAR. Equally alarming is the role of Britain as the key supplier of arms to the increasingly unstable region of central Africa. Britain is Europe's largest arms exporter to Uganda and the third largest to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both CAR neighbours. Britain is the fourth largest supplier of arms to Chad and the second largest to Sudan, both officially classified as "countries of concern" by the Foreign Office. Almost £670,000 of mainly tanks and vehicles have been sent to Chad, while the UK government last year approved £7.6m of military export licences to Sudan including weapon sight mounts. The UK has emerged as the second largest exporter of arms to the volatile, embryonic state of South Sudan – and its sole supplier of explosive devices.

Israel's racism and militarism

A blog describes Israel’s latest refugee deportation ploy policy.

Ynet reports that the government is close to inking a deal with three African states (who are likely Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Uganda) who will take “tens of thousands” of ‘undesirable’ African refugees from Israel in return to Israeli weapons and training.  Isn’t that neat and tidy!?  Israel gets rids of what Israeli politician  Miri Regev called a “cancer in its midst” and contributes to the rising tide of mayhem and violence in countries like South Sudan and Eritrea, already beset by instability and civil war.

The Israeli government revealed there are 7,000 registered arms merchants plying Israeli weapons to precisely these sorts of unstable states, making Israel the sixth largest arms merchant in the world.  

Gun Trade

Arms spending in Africa is rising once again. Billions of dollars are being poured into armoured vehicles and logistics.Since the end of the Cold War, global military spending has fallen by 35%. But the Stockholm Peace Research Institute estimates that in sub-Saharan Africa it has risen by almost a third over the same period. In Uganda alone, spending on military hardware almost doubled in a single year (1997-98), according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Paramount Group, a South African-based firm and the largest privately owned defence contractor on the continent sales have been rising by a quarter year-on-year since 2005.