Canadian Consortium on Human Security

Robert Muggah*

The flow of arms to, within and out of Sudan does not occur in a vacuum—it is heavily conditioned by regional and domestic factors. Sudan is part of a volatile ecosystem in which geopolitical and economic dynamics outside and within the country shapes the direction and intensity of the arms trade. This partially explains why, despite the emergence of fragile peace agreements in the South, Darfur, and the East, the circulation of arms and munitions persists. The turbulence of this ecosystem serves as a caution against narrowly conceived interventions designed to curb the arms trade.

The vast majority of conventional and light arms in Sudan were originally delivered during the cold war and its aftermath. Stocks ebbed and flowed according to vested interests among the country's nine neighbours: simmering proxy wars ensured that literally hundreds of armed groups acquired weapons with impunity. The cascade of arms and munitions into the hands of competing ethnic factions also fueled a sharp rise in the demand for weapons among civilians as neighbouring tribes competed for stature and resources, often with the tacit support of the Sudanese government. The recent growth in oil extraction triggered a parallel expansion in arms imports and domestic production, frustrating external efforts to keep new weapons from arriving.

Realpolitik and the arms trade

The trade and trafficking of arms in Sudan surged in the years following independence in 1956 and presages the comparatively recent rounds of extreme violence in Darfur and the South. The diffusion of small arms and ammunition can be traced to the occupation of Sudan by Ottoman–Egyptian forces and various colonial powers (Britain and France) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Slavers, along with shifta nomads and pastoralists in the border regions were arguably the region's first brokers. Over time, weapons and munitions were not only more plentiful, but of increasingly powerful calibre.

The vast majority of high-powered weapons flooded into Sudan during the cold war. By the early 1980s, Sudan was receiving USD 100–110 million per year in military assistance from the United States. The country was also the recipient of the largest ever military aid package in Africa from Egypt. Meanwhile, various countries in the Gulf—including Libya and Iran—provided more than USD 2 billion in 'economic assistance' between 1970 and 1980—much of it fungible and used to procure weapons both large and small.

The covert flow of arms was heavily shaped by relations with the country's nine neighbours. No fewer than 30 proxy conflicts have been waged in Somalia, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Chad, Libya, and Sudan since the 1960s—influencing in various ways the availability of weaponry. Each of Sudan's neighbours has at one time or another provided direct military assistance to various (non-state) armed groups or given them sanctuary. In what amounts to regional custom, Sudan also issued arms, munitions, and logistical support to armed groups in neighbouring countries such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda. The results were inevitable—at times massive and devastating convulsions of violence.

Since the early 1990s at least 34 countries have exported small arms, light weapons, and ammunition to Sudan. More recently, an estimated 90 per cent of Sudan's small arms supplies originated in China and Iran, though other countries continue to play a prominent role. Owing to the notoriously porous nature of international borders and the proliferation of armed groups within Sudan and its neighbours, a vibrant illegal trade also continues unabated. By the end of the 20th century Sudan, together with Somalia, constituted Africa's greatest arms bazaar. The range of weapons for sale is impressive, particularly in the sprawling livestock camps lining the Libyan, Chadian, and southern borders with Uganda and Kenya.

The progressive militarization of Sudan led inexorably to a progressive militarization of its civilian population. There are estimated to be between 1.9 and 3.2 million small arms of varying calibre in Sudan—about two-thirds of which are in civilian hands, including armed groups. Approximately one-fifth of the total stockpile is held by a vast network of state security agencies from the army to the intelligence and militia. The ratio of guns to civilians is lower than that of the United States or even Canada, but the majority of guns in Sudanese hands are military-style assault rifles.

Domestic instability and the tribal wars

The emergence of a populist and fundamentalist Islamic regime in the mid-1980s resulted in a dramatic transformation in the politics of the arms trade. A number of countries, including the United States and a host of Gulf states, suspended 'official' aid from the mid-1980s onward. Sudan's pro-Iraq position during the 1991 Gulf War sealed its fate: with the introduction of sanctions and embargoes, official arms purchases plummeted and the government began to experience rising military losses in the South.

Even before the Sudanese government acquired pariah status in the international community, it began to ratchet up local ethnic tensions in various areas of the country. Tribal militias have in fact been common for decades. One of the more high-profile uses of so-called 'self-defence groups' emerged in Kordofan in the mid-1980s, when Misiriyyam, Rizaigat Baggara, and Murahalin militia were deployed by Khartoum to fight the SPLA and others. Other tribal militias such as the Rufa'a (Southern Blue Nile), Fertit (Western Bahr Al-Ghazal), and Toposa, Lotuko, Mundari, Acholi, and Murle have long been armed by the North.

By the early 1990s, Khartoum had encouraged a split in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) that led to still further fragmentation of armed groups in the South. The government's more recent support of the Janjaweed in Darfur is the most visible and highly publicized, but by no means sole, example of a long trend. Such was the effectiveness of this divide-and-rule strategy that many Sudanese military officials boasted about not needing to deploy soldiers to the front at all.

The introduction of high-powered military-style weapons to predominantly pastoral areas throughout the 1980s and 1990s triggered what amounted to localized 'arms races' and raised the stakes in the relentless competition for resources, including slaves and children. Predictably, localized 'security dilemmas' rapidly emerged because minority ethnic groups sought to arm themselves as a means of protecting themselves from competing ethnic groups. With the introduction of the perennial small arm—the AK-47—long-simmering conflicts and livestock raiding practices transformed completely. Instead of highly localized raids with incidental casualties—entire communities were razed to the ground in what amounted to ethnic cleansing.

The impact of these newly introduced weapons on local custom was dramatic. There is a tradition in parts of the Dinka- and Nuer-populated areas of southern Sudan, for example, that seeks to spiritually fuse the 'spear' with its owner. 'Spear masters', usually local elders, condoned violence only in extreme cases and in a more limited way during cattle raids. This conflict management technique was designed to ensure that the spear-holder was unambiguously connected to those ultimately wounded or killed. It ensured that responsibility and rights to compensation and restitution could be readily discerned. The introduction of the gun fundamentally changed the equation. With bullets, accountability was lost. In a hail of gunfire, few could attribute direct responsibility. Compensation and reconciliation systems collapsed, social control deteriorated and the rule by the gun fast became the norm.

Oil-fuelled arms flows

With the discovery of oil in the mid-1990s, Sudan experienced a windfall to prosecute its various wars. By 2001, the government was spending about USD 1 million per day on the civil war in the South—60 per cent of the estimated half billion it was earning in oil a year. Even despite controversies involving Canada's Talisman and the withdrawal of various firms, oil production trebled after the building of a pipeline from Port Sudan up in the northeast to the 'transitional provinces' of Kordofan from where oil is extracted. The redoubled efforts to extract oil coincided with a Khartoum's escalation of the war effort and scorched-earth policy.

In what amounts to 'petro-diplomacy', China, Russia, Malaysia, Iran, and a few other countries are now the chief suppliers of weaponry to the country. With Chinese, Pakistani, Bulgarian, and Russian expertise, Sudan is also now allegedly manufacturing small arms and ammunition. There is mounting evidence that arms are produced in the Al-Shajara/Yarmuk and GIAD industrial complexes outside Khartoum, though these reports are not easily verified. Even so, it appears that it is not just foreign, but also Sudanese-manufactured weapons and munitions that are turning up in the arsenals of the armed groups and cattle camps dispersed throughout the country.

The growth in oil production has facilitated Sudan's capacity to wage war on at least two fronts: in the South and Darfur. The formal cessation of hostilities between the SPLA and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in 2005 altered the dynamics of arms flows, but weapons acquisitions persist. Meanwhile, simmering conflict in Dafur has increased arms flows to Sudan's western region, with the SAF deploying conventional and light weapons to garrisons across the region and arming paramilitary and militia groups. Despite the imposition of a UN embargo to halt international and domestic transfers to Darfur, Khartoum continues to arm rebel groups as part of its divide-and rule-tactics. Likewise, it is unable to contain flows into Darfur from Chad, Libya, Eritrea and South Sudan, as has been documented by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. Not surprisingly, persistent insecurity has also increased demand for arms among rebel groups and civilians in neighbouring states, among other armed factions, and in private arms markets.

War without end?

There are diverse transfer and trading routes for arms and ammunition into and out of Sudan. The acquisition of arms is not limited to formal and illegal state-to-state transfers, but involves a huge array of entry points and suppliers. The complexity of the arms trade can only be understood in the context of the regional and local ecosystems and the country's domestic political and economic context. These factors invariably demand and equally comprehensive response.

At a minimum, multilateral and bilateral commitments are required to reduce arms transfers and ultimately keep the existing stock of arms from growing further still. At the international level, key suppliers such as China and Iran need to be brought into line. Although respect for sovereignty and non-interference are acceptable principles, they also entail that sovereign states act responsibly toward their citizens. Similarly, a regional approach to containing arms flows is imperative—as evidenced by the fact that narrow efforts focusing exclusively on border control and unilateral embargoes in Sudan (or simply on Darfur) yield comparatively modest dividends. Countries of manufacture, transit, and end use must adopt transparent approaches to monitoring, verifying, and enforcing arms transfers to the country.

While targeted national interventions designed to curb the activities of known brokers and merchants are potentially effective, they will only generate marginal returns. Given the sheer dispersion of armed groups, splinter factions, militia and paramilitary actors, and civilians, unilateral embargoes and targeted sanctions are only part of the solution. Enhanced border management, security sector reform, stockpile control, and domestic regulation are indispensable components of a coherent arms control system.

Perhaps the trickiest and most urgent issue is unregulated arms ownership among non-aligned armed groups and civilians. While the principle peace agreements in Sudan emphasize the value of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of 'combatants', they have virtually nothing to say about voluntary disarmament of civilians. Given the fact that certain groups are readying themselves for war and that coercive disarmament in the South has produced mixed results—including horrific violence and looting following episodic disarmament in Jonglei—there is a clear need to formulate a credible and robust mechanism to promote domestic arms control in tandem with the formation of legitimate security services and security guarantees for those choosing to disarm.

Ultimately, arms control can only proceed successfully as part of a credible and comprehensive governance strategy that ensures the protection of civilians. The various peace agreements in the South, Darfur, and the East were expected to guide this process, but most are perilously close to collapse. Without enhanced transparency on the part of the government of Sudan, and on that of the nascent government in the South, arms flows will continue. Confidence-building mechanisms that might go some way to repairing lost faith could include transparency around domestic arms production, domestic transfers, imports and exports. Unfortunately, however, prospects for enhanced governance seem more remote than ever.

Please consult www.smallarmssurvey.org/sudan for comprehensive research on the arms trade and armed groups in Sudan.

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