Small arms trade threatens stability

The political stability of countries of Southern Africa is under threat as the illegal trade in light weapons and small arms, the legacy of decades of liberation wars and civil strife, proliferate the region, a report released by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) says. Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, according to the report, have become both a source and transit routes for the weapons."One of the legacies of conflict in Southern Africa is the glut of light weapons and small arms," says the Pretoria-based ISS. "These weapons are being transported illegally across borders, where they are used to generate political instability and to carry out crimes in many rural and urban areas in the region." The report attributes the sources of the weapons to such diverse societal elements as demobilised soldiers, refugees and other migrant communities, rural communities and urban populations of Southern Africa. "The greater volume of illegal small arms flows to and from Zimbabwe comes from Mozambique and South Africa, with a less significant portion, mainly for the purpose of poaching, issuing from Zambia," says the report. "Small arms flows have also been related to the state of civil war in Mozambique, and Zimbabwe's direct involvement in that war," it adds, citing the involvement of the former Rhodesian government in the formation and arming of the RENAMO rebel group in Mozambique in 1976 to destabilise the new government. "It is estimated that between 1982 and 1992 Zimbabwe sent 15,000 troops to Mozambique, to protect vital transit lines and directly assist the government of Mozambique in fighting RENAMO." This involvement with Mozambique, says the report, exacerbated the problem of small arms flows in the Southern African region by facilitating illegal flows through official channels. According to the report, in Mozambique, following the 1992 declaration of peace between RENAMO and FRELIMO, illegal small arms seem to exist in three different forms, namely: caches held by demobilised and individual active soldiers; arms retained by individual civilians; and caches deliberately retained by the then-warring parties. "To hold back weapons as a form of insurance was vital, in case the peace process failed or the outcome proved undesirable," says the report. However, adds the report, there are numerous examples of demobilised soldiers, police and active soldiers being involved in arms trafficking and other arms-related crimes. As a way of example, the report said the arms-related cases in Mozambique increased from 1,122 in 1994 to 1,679 in 1996. The Mozambican government, says the report, has since 1995 established two special task forces, one to stop highway attacks along the major routes and control cross-border gun trafficking, and the other to destroy arms caches, while at the same greater cooperation was sought with the police forces of South Africa, Malawi and Swaziland. The special task force responsible for destroying arms caches between 1995 and 1998 recovered and destroyed 9,864 weapons of different kinds seized from arms caches as well as thousands of related accessories. This was achieved mainly through co-opting, working with and sometimes remunerating individuals holding or taking care of arms caches. Meanwhile, the cooperation between Mozambican and South African police forces has destroyed over 450 mt of illegal weapons since 1995 the report adds.