Cashing in on Death

On foot of Amnesty International's latest report, Undermining Global Security: the European Union's arms exports, An Phoblacht looks at the lax legislation that allows states, businesses and brokers to cash in on conflict and death around the world. Two weeks ago, we looked at Spain's military, security and police training package with Colombia, the sale of German rifles to the repressive Nepalese security forces and the British exports to China. This second part centres on the loopholes that allow the sale and trafficking of weapons to states such as Sudan and Israel and at Ireland's role in the weapons industry.

The general and even vague wording of EU rules, together with loopholes in national arms export control legislation in many EU states "allow for many arms transfers to occur with little or no legislation", says Amnesty International.

One of the problems is that the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports has no provisions for Member States to deal with the control of arms brokering, transporting and related financing activities by EU nationals and residents when such activities, and the related arms deliveries, take place through a third country. The same applies to transfers from stocks of surplus arms or the provision of Military Security Police expertise, training or personnel.

That explains why, for example, handguns made by the Italian company Berreta are the second most numerous foreign small arm confiscated by police in Brazil, where both the use of small arms by civilians in crime and misuse of small arms by police are rife. In Brazil, the government's attempts at control have so far been ineffective.

Italian arms dealers are able to export "small civil weapons" to countries devastated by violent conflict and gross human rights violations, avoiding controls as they are categorised as "civil arms". This makes it possible to export handguns from Italy by merely obtaining the permission of a local police commander.

However, the effects of this loophole can be also felt in other EU Member States. For example, Brocock ME38 Magnum air pistols — many of them converted to fire live ammunition — make for over 35% of the firearms recovered by police in Britain. These pistols have been imported from Germany — where they are manufactured by Cuno Melcher — and are distributed by the Birmingham-based company Brocok, as there are no restrictions on the export of air guns and air pistols by the German authorities.

In such cases, Amnesty International finds that "the lack of consistent controls on firearms within the European Union has created a situation where the more stringent controls in one country are undermined by the lack of controls in another".

Similar lack of control applies to other police or security equipment — stun guns, batons, etc, which may be classed as controlled goods in some EU countries but not in others.

Weapons sales

In the past, mostly at the end of the Cold War, some EU states sold off their surplus arms. Nowadays, this is repeating itself, as some of the new Member States, together with other central and eastern European countries, are selling off large amounts of weapons and ammunition. This is particularly true of those countries that have joined or aspire to join NATO. Amnesty International's report finds that these surplus weapons "have sometimes been transferred to conflict zones or to governments with a record of using similar weapons to facilitate human rights abuses".

NATO and its Partnership for Peace programme has made funds available for the destruction of surplus small arms in NATO candidate countries, but some of new EU states with large surpluses of arms have acted for profit. For example, Slovakia's military decided to use the sale of surplus weapons as a way to finance its modernisation. In 2000, nearly two-thirds of all the country's arms exports were surplus weapons, as opposed to new production. Such sales not only spare the government the added expense of storage or destruction, they also earn income for the government. In the first half of 2000, the Slovak MoD reportedly added 73 million SKK (more than $1. 5 million) to its budget from the sale of surplus aircraft and tanks.

According to official data, from 1999 to the end of 2002, Slovakia sold Angola 205 battle tanks, 38 large-calibre artillery systems, and 25 combat planes. Most were direct exports of surplus weapons from Slovak stocks, but a considerable number were re-exports by Slovak companies of weapons from the arsenals of Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

In 1999, a shipment of Polish tanks to Yemen was diverted en route and reportedly delivered to Sudan, sparking an international scandal. The East African country is in the news because of the humanitarian crisis created by pro-government militias that do not allow aid to reach thousands of people displaced by the 40-year-old war. The shipments were part of a deal between Yemen and Poland's state-run Cenzin arms company, reportedly worth $1.2 million. Despite this incident, Poland continued to engage in the arms trade with Yemen.

Exporting to Israel

The government of the Netherlands, a country well known for liberal and advanced social policies, has stated that it prevents the export of equipment that could be used by governments to oppress their people or to attack their neighbours.

However, these concerns do not extent to the state's arms transit policy. Israel was granted export licences worth €1.46 million in 2002. Twenty-one NGOs filed proceedings against this decision. The Dutch Government refused to intervene or act to stop the exports.

Following several publicised cases of arms trafficking, Dutch NGOs and parliamentarians have also raised concerns that their authorities do not have adequate control of the massive flow of cargo through the country. Only 3% of the 20,000 containers that are processed daily in Rotterdam are actually scanned.

Blood money

Amnesty International and other NGOs have repeatedly documented the impact of arms brokers operating from Europe in fuelling human rights abuses in many parts of the world.

From the genocide in Rwanda to the bloody conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, brokers have taken advantage of the lack of effective export controls within the European Union.

Because of the lack of effective controls at national, EU and international level, the brokers, transportation agents, intermediaries and those providing financial services for such third party arms transfers rarely break export laws and can operate with impunity, despite the serious human rights abuses caused by such arms transfers.

Irish neutrality sold through back door

The Fianna Fáil/PD Government's complacency has allowed Irish neutrality to be sold to corporations that are using tax-breaks to set up here and cheaply manufacture essential components for war equipment.

Indirectly, Ireland is contributing to the slaughter of Palestinians and Kurds by Israel and Turkey. However, all this information has been kept from the Irish public by a government that believes such ethical considerations are a small price to pay for a booming economy.

While the government moved quickly to strengthen Irish borders to stop the arrival of asylum seekers and/or migrants, it has not been so diligent in stopping Irish registered companies from participating in illegal arms trading to the conflict zones from which many of those migrants are arriving.

Arms traffickers have taken advantage of Ireland's loose controls when it comes to controlling and/or monitoring the use of companies registered in the country for the export of arms and defence equipment that may contravene EU legislation.

In 2002, the involvement of an Irish registered company with an international arms smuggling operation was revealed. The company, Balcombe Investments Ltd, owned the aircraft operated by Renan Airways of Moldova to fly several shipments of illegal arms to Liberia in December 2000. This was highlighted in a UN report that also detailed how Renan Airways had worked with another company, Central African Airlines — owned by former KGB officer Viktor Bout — to ship illegal arms to Sierra Leone.

Balcombe Investments was registered in Ireland in 1992 by a Dublin-based company formation agent on behalf of an Isle of Man company, Portman Consultants Ltd. Company formation agents are not generally aware of the activities of their client companies and would have had no knowledge of Balcombe's arms trade link.

However, 'real' Irish companies have also found a way around EU controls on weapons exports through the use of what is called licensed production overseas (LPO), which consists of a company selling the license to replicate items on their production line to other companies. Amnesty International has expressed concern in its annual report "at the lack of progress or political will from the Irish Government on this issue".

On 22 June 2000, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment — the government department responsible for the administration of the export licensing system in Ireland, in a response to a question about the government's views on licensed production, noted that there are no harmonised EU controls on licensed production agreements. The Junior Minister said that "while I have no reason to believe Irish companies avail of licensed production agreements to avoid our export controls system, I would, in principle, support the introduction of uniform controls on licensed production within the EU".

In fact, Ireland has at least one company making extensive use of such LPO agreements. The Timoney Technology Group, based in Navan, County Meath, designs and develops a variety of armoured vehicles for military and commercial applications. Timoney's range of high mobility vehicles includes armoured personnel carriers, combat support vehicles, heavy transporters, and airport crash fire rescue vehicles.

Timoney has licensed ADI Ltd to build the Bushmaster troop carrier. ADI has recently won a contract from the Australian Government for 350 armoured troop carriers. How Australia may use that vehicle is not cause for immediate concern. However, the possibility that the same company can manufacture and market this vehicle to other governments in the area — think Indonesia or Burma — is another matter altogether.

A similar situation applies to the prototype Terrex AV8I armoured fighting vehicle, exhibited for the first time in 2001, the product of collaboration between Timoney Technology Ltd and the Singapore company, ST Kinetics. Shortly after the exhibition, ST Kinetics announced that it would take a 25% shareholding in Timoney Holdings Ltd, the parent company for Timoney Technologies.

It was also announced in October 2003 that ST Kinetics and Turkey's Otokar Otobus Karoseri Sanayi AS had concluded co-operation agreements for two vehicles aimed at meeting the requirements of the Turkish Land Forces Command.

Amnesty points out that "Timoney's technology, licensed to ST Kinetics, may well be used in the production of a range of vehicles for the Turkish military, which in the past have used such equipment to facilitate human rights violations. At the Kurdish New Year celebrations in March 2002 in Mersin, for example, Mehmet Sen was killed by a tank that crushed him against a wall."

The Dáil has literally no idea of the number and scale of such agreements. "If Irish parliamentarians relied solely on the information gained from export licenses issued, they would get a limited and highly misleading picture of Irish involvement in the manufacture of armoured vehicles and the possible impact on human rights," says Amnesty.

Hi-tech weapons systems

In the technology industry, in many cases companies have no association with weapons manufacturing as such, but are very much involved in areas of strategic development. In Ireland, where many high-tech companies have found a tax heaven, the so-called "dual use (military and civilian)" exports — valued at €4.5 billion in 2002, clearly exceeds the €34 million in direct "military exports in the same year.

A clear example of this kind of work is the activities of the US Data Device Corporation (DDC), which has production facilities in Cork. DDC states on its website that its MIL-STD-1553 Data Bus products are used in the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters. The company describes the important role that their product plays in enabling military aircraft and helicopters to function, as "the lifeline of the aircraft".

Amnesty International has vigorously opposed the transfer of a range of military helicopters from the US to both Israel and Turkey because these governments permit their armed forces to use the helicopters for gross human rights violations. There are plenty of examples of how the Israeli army has used the helicopters to carry out what they call "targeted killings". To the illegality of this action under international law has to be added the numerous civilian casualties caused by the missiles fired by the Apache helicopters.

It is still not known whether DDC Ireland is supplying military standard data-bus components for incorporation into Apaches. To establish whether export licenses were being granted for this type of product, Amnesty contacted the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The then Minister, Tom Kitt, stated in a letter that "the question of the appropriate control category code (which should apply to any product), is in the first instance a matter for the producer/exporter to determine". Amnesty International is still awaiting an answer to the letter it wrote to both DDC Ireland Ltd and DDC (USA) in 2001.

However, even if the DDC components were subject to controls within the EU, they could still be used in the Apache helicopters if these components travelled through the US for incorporation into the helicopter. So there would appear to be nothing to prevent the export of the DDC data bus from Ireland to the US for incorporation into Apache attack helicopters.

Following an earlier report by the Irish Section of Amnesty International the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment did make some improvements to the export license information published on its website, including a section entitled "End-use of Item". But in the list of dual-use licenses issued since January 2002, every single item had "civilian" in the "end-use of item" column, which raises serious questions.

Previously, when Amnesty International has tried seeking information from the government regarding the dual-use category codes for specific types of dual-use equipment it was told to ask the company.

However, the companies seldom oblige. This lack of transparency is the first hurdle to effective parliamentary or public scrutiny. If the Dáil and public cannot understand what has been licensed, they cannot examine where it has been exported to and judge reasonably whether such exports endanger human rights.