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Tracing the dynamics of the illicit arms trade
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| 29 August 2003 |
By Tamara Makarenko
The case of Hemant Lakhani, the Briton charged in the USA on 13 August with attempting to sell an Igla-S surface-to-air missile to an undercover agent from the FBI, has highlighted the threat posed by the ever-expanding illicit arms trade.
While international efforts to reduce the threat from terrorism have focused on eliminating terrorist safe havens and blocking terrorist finances, relatively little effort has been made to circumvent terrorist access to the weapons that fuel violence.
Roughly divided into the 'grey market' and the 'black market', the illicit arms trade necessarily involves a range of state and non-state actors. Although often considered to work independently of one another, one of the most important traits of the illicit arms trade is the extent to which the licit and illicit world are complicit in their actions.
The greatest threat associated with the illicit arms trade is the diversion of legal stockpiles. Known as the 'grey market', this aspect of the illicit trade in arms refers to state supplies of arms to non-state actors or to embargoed states. During the Cold War it allowed the superpowers to arm insurgent groups involved in conflicts throughout satellite states. For example, it is accepted that the Soviet Union sent arms to Angola, Ethiopia, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and South Africa, while the USA transferred weapons to states including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Nicaragua. Highlighting the extent of this trade is the example of CIA covert support to Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989, which resulted in the transfer of an estimated US$2bn in aid to the mujahideen.
Although transfers of this size disappeared with the end of the Cold War, the grey market has continued to operate through the 1990s and into the 21st century. For example, members of NATO supplied the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Balkan conflict; Kurds in Turkey have received support from Greece, Syria and Russia; and private military companies - with the knowledge of Western states - have supplied weapons to Sierra Leone and Liberia in spite of UN sanctions.
In contrast to grey-market arms transfers that are solely co-ordinated by state actors, the involvement of organised crime in the illicit arms trade is almost entirely limited to the black market. Normally accessing state-controlled arms stockpiles through corruption, coercion or theft, organised criminal groups act as the key weapons providers to insurgent and terrorist groups worldwide.
The nexus that exists between organised crime, the illicit drugs trade and arms smuggling is highlighted in the growing number of arms-for-drugs deals that have been uncovered since the late 1990s. Such trends are common between criminal groups, and between organised crime and terrorist groups within the Russian Federation (for example, from Russia to Chechnya) and the former Soviet Union; between the Russian Federation and Central and South Asia; between Thailand and Southeast Asia, between the Russian Federation and South America (specifically Colombia); and within South America and the Caribbean.
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