Rachel gets the guns

More than a decade after the end of Mozambique's civil war, violent crime involving illegal firearms is on the rise. Carjackings, violent house break-ins and street robberies are no longer unusual. Most of Mozambique's 4,212-km border is unpatrolled, mainly because of lack of human and material resources. That provides ample opportunities for the smuggling of weapons, vehicles, drugs and other illicit goods. Attempts to investigate organised crime have cost lives, most notably that of the celebrated Mozambican journalist, Carlos Cardoso, who was shot dead by hit men in the heart of the capital, Maputo, over two years ago. He had been investigating a multimillion dollar bank fraud. Six men were sentenced to long prison sentences this year for his murder, all of whom were involved in the world of organised crime. Then came the unresolved murder in 2001 of Antonio Siba-Siba Macuacua, a young, vibrant economist put at the head of the debt-ridden Austral Bank and saddled with the task of ascertaining its true financial situation, and preparing it for a second privatisation. Siba-Siba launched a debt recovery programme, publishing the names of over 1,200 Austral debtors in the main daily paper, Noticias. On 11 August 2001, unidentified assailants entered the bank's headquarters, went up to Siba-Siba's office on the top floor, and murdered him. Most cases, however, do not hit the headlines, especially those involving "ordinary" citizens. The situation could have been much worse, were it not for a bilateral agreement signed in 1995 between South Africa and Mozambique to destroy arms left over from the civil war, and to combat crime between the two countries. Although the UN's peacekeeping operation in Mozambique, known as UNOMOZ, was successful in overseeing the peace process, it had to leave the country soon after the first multi-party elections in 1994, before it could identify and destroy all the arms caches. That daunting task was left to the Ministry of the Interior. One year later Operation Rachel was launched. It has produced some notable results, but is being hampered by lack of finance and equipment, the director of international relations in the Ministry of the Interior, Joaquim Bule, told IRIN. So far, a total of 25,000 weapons have been discovered in seven operations in the southern and central part of the country. "It has never been possible to quantify the weapons still out there, but what we have recovered and destroyed so far under Operation Rachel was enough to equip an army," said Bule. The project, which began in 1997, is now covering the whole country. The operations employ a team of South African and Mozambican police. They carry out intelligence activities mainly in the villages and rural areas. Once the locations of the caches are identified, they are destroyed on site and the crushed weapons are taken to the Mozambique Christian Council, who are organising a popular project using artists to convert the weapons into a range of creative sculptures that have been sold all over the world. South Africa provides technical assistance for the operation, while Mozambique contributes personnel, and expertise on information collection and analysis. Bule conceded that although headway has been made, "there is still a lot of violent crime, often involving war weapons like the AK-47 assault rifles. We do need more resources, especially support for the logistics and for more specialised equipment."