Comment

Reining in Arms Trade

Civil war in Syria seems to have reached a stage where international opinion in favour of intervention from outside is gaining momentum. With the rebels refusing to accept the Kofi Annan peace plan and the Assad regime showing no inclination to stop genocidal approach to its own people, it is a matter of time that NATO bombers over the sky of Syria would be a hard reality as it happened in case of Libya. America is waiting for a Syrian push by backing the rebels financially and unilaterally. But the nature of civil war that has been unfolding in Syria for such a long time, looks a bit complicated as sectarian issues including majority-minority divide play a crucial role in destabilising the Syrian society.

After the fall of Iraq, Syria was the only secular state in the region. Socialism as practised by the ruling Baath Socialist Party may be questioned but the regime of Assad, otherwise authoritarian, didn’t allow Saudi Arabia sponsored religious fundamentalism to flourish. With change in regime, the possibility of which looks bright because of money and weapons the rebels are getting from abroad, Syria is likely to go the Iraq way, burying secularism once and for all.

If Russia is blocking US-brokered UN sanctions against Assad’s Syria, it is because Damascus has long been an important customer of Russian arms. Also, China’s ‘no’ to tough UN measures has a similar ring. In truth Assad is killing his people with Russian fire arms while the rebels are doing the same with western arms.

Peace cannot return to conflict zones including the latest civil war theatre of Syria, unless voices are raised against global arms trade. Peace talks, however, everywhere have so far failed to rein in the international arms business that fuels war and civil war as well.

Even as the world remains mired in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, one sector continues to witness bonanza—global arms trade. Arms exporting countries and weapons contractors are scrambling to expand foreign sales at a time when their own military budgets are levelling off or declining.

Total volume of the yearly arms trade across the world hovers between $40 to $50 billion, dominated by a few players. The United States has accounted for half or more of the value of international weapons exports, followed by Russia at about 20 percent.

Russia is now by far Syria’s largest arms supplier and that connection combined with its historic political ties to Damascus since the days of Soviet Union, has actually played its part to oppose the UN embargo on weapons transfers to Syria even as the bloody conflict affecting civilians continues unabated.

The merchants of death have a unique logic of unity and struggle. Though Washington is pressing for a ban on weapons sales to Syria, it itself is buying helicopters for use in Afghanistan from the very same Russian Company—Rosboron export—that is the prime supplier of arms to the Syrian military.

There are at least two dozen major conflicts throughout the world, now under way, according to the Canada-based Project Ploughshaers. And over a third of these wars are in Africa, with Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the most deadly and bloody of all, causing enormous civilian casualties. China has been a major supplier of arms to Sudan. They are all pouring arms into these countries in exchange for access to mineral resources.

The point at issue is whether major arms exporters can be brought on board in efforts to enact a rigid treaty to ban arms exports having potential to fuel civil war. The answer is certainly in the negative.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No.9, Sep 9-15 2012