Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of the Gun (38 page)

What was present, in abundance, was the stuff of war. This was expensive kit. Global military expenditure was estimated to reach $1,747 billion in 2013, and duck-lines of military men with chequebook intentions strode through this space. They were filled with self-importance. Generals in front, staff officers fretting behind. They eyed up the enormous trucks and tanks, the shoulder-held rockets and vehicle-launched missiles. They had a lot to choose from. There was an entire world of logistics: portable toilets, generators, kitchen units or quick-erect tents – the unexpected necessities of combat. These goods were sold with soulless straplines: ‘Global solutions for local needs’; ‘Tomorrow has arrived’. Here the marketing was stripped of that American ethos so overwhelming in Vegas. And without the
Stars and Stripes, Liberty and God, the adverts felt bare; words like ‘reliable’, ‘performance’ and ‘protective’ spoke of staid procurement processes. Others were brutally frank: ‘Dominating the Battlefield’; ‘You can’t choose your mission, but you can choose your equipment’; ‘Making a risky job – safe!’

Some companies just struggled with how to market this stuff. Missile manufacturers handed out branded lip balm; body armour companies produced mini flack jackets for teddy bears. One just displayed a statue of the ‘Predator’ from the film franchise. Here the most diplomatic enemy to have was an alien – you never know who you might have to invade next.

Of course, national clichés and stereotypes lurked if you looked hard enough. The French army showed off their military rations – complete with terrine, fondue and cassoulet. The Austrians stopped for lunch at one o’clock, on the dot, and ate steaming-hot smooth sausages with glasses of beer.

National flavours aside, though, one logo summed up this whole exhibition: ‘Connecting the Individual Soldier to the Battlefield Network’. The digital age had arrived in war-zones in a big way. You couldn’t walk anywhere without seeing a drone or a surveillance camera or ways of killing someone without you having to be there. The remote warrior was all the rage. These weapons systems had PlayStation controllers, not joysticks, because this is what young twenty-first-century fighters are used to.

There was also a burgeoning innovation in firearms here, like the iPhone attached to the rifle that enabled commanders, sitting comfortably far away, to get streaming images of the battle; or acoustic detection devices that let soldiers identify the direction from which they were being shot at; or a digital sniper sight which ensured that you could only shoot when you were ‘on target’.

But guns were still guns, and the new technological add-ons seemed just to highlight the fact that modern war was fast becoming a place where the pistol and the rifle felt increasingly redundant. Next to all the rockets and the drones, guns seemed diminished – old technology that actually meant you had to get involved in the grotesque business of combat. They certainly had a less-imposing presence here. Perhaps
this was also because the contracts for small arms are far less financially significant than the cost of some battle tanks.

The show also told another story. Stripping away the Mom-and-Pop outfits of Vegas, it revealed how the deluge of guns emanates from a mere handful of the world’s most powerful nations. What I had read during my research was strongly reflected here: the exports of no more than twenty countries account for 80 per cent of global gun trade.
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It showed how, in the arms trade in general, the three biggest players were the US, China and Russia.
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And, as I had already seen the US small-arms outfit up close, that left – for me – two pavilions to visit.

The Chinese pavilion was empty. A light from below cast a strange purple glow across the floor and made it look like a cheap Shanghai nightclub. Along a low shelf ran a line of armoured vehicle and supply truck models. Above them were glossy photographs of weapons systems with names like ‘Sky Dragon’. This was Norinco’s stand, one of four state gun manufacturers in China.
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But there was a problem: ever since Tiananmen Square the French government had not let the Chinese sell their guns here. This was both a good thing and – selfishly for me – a disappointment.

China has long been a major gun exporter. In 2010 they sold about $89 million worth of guns worldwide.
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At least forty-six nations had imported Chinese military guns in recent years, the largest proportion being in Africa.
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But China is also repeatedly opaque when it comes to their government’s gun sales. Published export data always shows Chinese gun exports as low for a state so often regarded as a major producer. This is because their guns are often sold at cut price as part of wider deals, sales are not recorded or weapons are just given away as gifts.

Despite this, some reports give a sense of what goes on behind China’s often-impenetrable walls. In 2011, a UN report criticised them for relying too much on Sudanese government assurances that the weapons they supplied to Sudan would not – as they were – be transferred to Darfur.
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Other documents found in Libya in 2011 showed that representatives of Chinese arms manufacturers met with Muammar Gaddafi’s cronies. They had, allegedly without state
approval, tried to sell the Libyans some $200 million worth of arms,
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even though at the time Libya was subject to a UN arms embargo.
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Then there was the delivery from China of guns for the Liberian special security services not reported to the UN Mission in Liberia. Instead the consignment was labelled ‘spare parts and chemical products’, and the UN in Monrovia was told it was a furniture delivery for President Johnson-Sirleaf’s guesthouse.
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But there was no one in Norinco’s pavilion able to answer anything. ‘Please put your questions in an email,’ was all I got. So I walked on.

The next pavilion was run by the Russians. In 2012 they made over $17.6 billion of international weapons and military equipment sales,
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of which firearms made up about $157 million – mainly to the US, Indonesia, Germany, Brazil and Cyprus.
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Unlike the Chinese, the Russians were there in force – tall, bearish men with hooded eyes and slender women dressed in high heels and fitted uniforms. The people from the weapons manufacturer Uralvagonzavod had built models of their armoured vehicles and were driving them up and down the hall. One was called the ‘Terminator’, and they had tied a Russian flag to its turret and were aiming it hard at visitors’ ankles, making them step out of the way. At the time the Russians seemed on the verge of invading Ukraine.

Two Russian guns caught my eye. They were in a tank filled with water – a pistol and a semi-automatic – and below them was a sign: ‘Underwater Small Arms System’. I had last heard of designs like these in the Leeds Armoury. Immediately, a woman called Angelina in a slim suit came over. She smiled delicately and asked what I was doing, and I tried to be charming and explained about the book. She was from the Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building – or TsNIITochMash – a state-funded and Moscow-based guns research unit. They were a legacy from Soviet times, producing guns with precise and bureaucratic names such as the Gyurza SR-1M and the VSS Vintorez ‘Special Sniper Rifle’. I wanted to know if I could visit their factory, and she left to consult.

Anna, the head of marketing, came over. Unlike Angelina, Anna was dour and suspicious, and her aggressive air was not helped by a
lazy eye and a hunched back. She was dressed like the Bond villain Rosa Klebb.

‘We do not likely allow foreign journalists to our concern,’ she said. Then two men came over and crowded in close and pushed hard against me. Their fingers were stained with nicotine and their breath smelled. If this were a backstreet in Moscow it would not have been funny. But we were in Paris, so I wagged my finger and told them to calm down. They glowered.

I walked away and then found around the corner the stand for Kalashnikov Concern. I had had no luck understanding their US sales representative back in Vegas, so I asked if I could have an interview with someone here. Other hefty men started to crowd in on me, and I sighed. Russian diplomacy, I thought. Then, to my surprise, I was told yes, Andrei Kirisenko would give me a few minutes of his time.

Andrei was a professional shooter and the main counsel for the director of the group. He was enormous, over 6ft 4in. in his camouflaged deck shoes – bigger than the hired thugs at least. I wanted to know who they sold Kalashnikovs to. But he did not tell me. Instead I got more anodyne talk of ‘modernisation’ and ‘product superiority’. So I asked about new technology. ‘What is the next big transformation going to be in guns?’

‘Guns are based on the principles of physics,’ he said. ‘We all want
Star Wars
guns but that will not happen until we can break the barriers set down by the limitations of physics.’ It was a diplomatic response. The Russian attitude seemed to be – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Not surprisingly – the AK design brought in profits by virtue of the fact that it was iconic. There were mountains of dollars to be made with that legacy.

So I asked him if he was concerned that Kalashnikovs were being used by forces the world over, including those with appalling human rights records.

‘Of course, we understand that criminals use our weapons. But you can also get rid of bad guys with our weapons. Our weapon,’ he said, perhaps getting carried away with his own voice, ‘is a weapon of the world, it is a weapon of peace.’ He rubbed his thick fingers
together. ‘Girls are weak, and so guys should protect them. I feel proud to be able to protect them with a gun.’

In the US guns seemed to be all about God, freedom and individualism. Here it seemed that power was what the gun really meant. Yet in both the US and here in Paris what was really evident was the constant search for profitability. God, power, flags and ego were just different ways to sell gunmetal.

Further away stood the Ukrainian stand, covered in strips of blue and yellow. A sign on it read ‘We make Ukraine Strong’. If the Russians weren’t going to talk to me straight, I thought, perhaps the Ukrainians might. I began to walk over, but then a bell sounded. Eurosatory was over for the day, and I had missed my chance.

But, in a sense it did not matter. Ukraine was a place I had already decided to go to on my journey, not least because, of all the countries in the world, it seemed to be the one place that was repeatedly implicated in the sale of arms to countries caught up in the tumult of war.

On 24 February 2001, the MV
Anastasia
was intercepted in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. It was reported that Spanish officials had clambered on board and interrogated the captain. In so doing they reportedly found 636 tons of assault rifles, ammunition and other weapons in the dark hold.
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The ship was duly impounded, at least until the Angolan government confirmed it was, indeed, their shipment, and the ship was allowed to continue its journey.
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In 2001, Angola was in the middle of a civil war that was to claim over 500,000 civilian lives.
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In 2007, four days before Christmas, the MC
Beluga Endurance
, a ship flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, reported to be carrying 10,000 AKM assault rifles, as well as forty-two T-72 tanks, landed near the bleached beaches of Kenya’s Mombasa. The load was allegedly headed for South Sudan.
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A year before, hundreds had been killed in the South Sudanese town of Malakal in heavy fighting between northern forces and their former southern rebel enemies.
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Then on 6 March 2010, the BBC
Romania
was reported to have made its way to the mountain-rimmed port of Matadi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was carrying 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles. A few months later mass rapes were reported in North Kivu province. The UN envoy, a Swedish firebrand called Margot Wallström, blamed both the rebels and the DRC army.
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So far, so bad. Three ships scattered over time and destination, reportedly legally delivering guns to countries ravaged by violence, but there was one thing that they had in common. They had all begun their journeys in Ukraine.

Traces of these journeys, though, are not easy to find. The organisation that charts small-arms transfers – NISAT – shows virtually no records that these shipments ever left Ukraine. NISAT has no detailed data on exports from Ukraine in 2001. In 2007 there was nothing recorded having been sent to South Sudan – 40,000 machine-guns were listed as heading to Kenya and 1,000 rifles to Chad. Only in 2010 was NISAT able to list 10,000 sub-machine-guns and 3,000 rifles publicly as heading to the DRC.

It was purely through extensive data searches and cross-referencing that these shipments could be traced. But this was not new. The murkiness of exports from Ukraine has long been a source of concern to governments and arms trade observers alike. But an insight is sorely needed. Between 2006 and 2011 there were about $117 million worth of registered firearm exports from there, but this may be but a drop in the ocean of arms that have really left the ports of the Black Sea.
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