Citation(s) from the GunPolicy.org literature library
Florquin, Nicolas, Sigrid Lipott, and Francis Wairagu. 2019 ‘Excerpts on Trafficking - Central African Republic.’ Weapons Compass: Mapping Illicit Small Arms Flows in Africa, pp. 42-59. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. 1 January
Relevant contents
While local actors who are involved in ant trafficking in firearms tend do so as a sideline to their main activity of smuggling legal commodities, in some cases, in order to maintain a low profile, criminal syndicates outsource the transport of weapons and drugs to local actors. In the Sahara–Sahel, conflict in Mali and Libya and the subsequent proliferation of armed groups in border areas led to the militarization and increased criminalization of traditional trading routes, which fell under the control of powerful armed actors. Participants in the present study noted that the general population, including migrants and refugees, are sometimes used as 'mules' to transport weapons. For instance, Uganda noted the involvement of women in such trafficking, while in the Central African Republic in 2014 a woman accompanied by her child attempted to smuggle shotgun ammunition from Cameroon in a bag of onions; the ammunition was intended for anti-Balaka militia. (p.42)
The Small Arms Survey extracted information from these reports relating to the Central African Republic, Libyan, Somalian/Eritrean, South Sudanese, and Sudanese sanctions regimes in order to carry out trend analysis on the reported small arms flows that have occurred since 2011. Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that the largest cases of transfer diversions have been directed to Libya, and notably before the strengthening of the arms embargo on that country in mid-2014. (p. 47)
In Chad and Niger sizeable convoys of combatants and weapons were regularly intercepted between 2011 and 2013 transiting to other countries such as Mali and Sudan. Among the looted materiel, hundreds—if not thousands—of man-portable air defence systems capable of downing commercial airliners escaped from state control, with many subsequently being retrieved in Libya and several others in Mali, Tunisia, Lebanon, and possibly as far as the Central African Republic. (p. 50)
…weapons originating from Ivorian stockpiles have been recovered in a range of countries in the Sahel, and possibly as far as the Central African Republic, while weapons originating from Malian stockpiles have also found their way elsewhere in the Sahel. Ghana reported a case related to the 14 December 2015 seizure of a cache of firearms and ammunition in Kumasi, which included 21 weapons (including 11 AK-pattern rifles) and 9,450 rounds of ammunition of various calibres. Five of the AK-pattern rifles had ECOWAS markings on them that enabled the Ghanaian authorities to quickly determine that the weapons had been recently diverted from Côte d'Ivoire, which the Ivorian authorities confirmed in response to a tracing procedure. (p. 51)
In the Central African Republic weapons formerly belonging to government forces of the DRC and Chad have been documented. (p. 51)
For example, in February and April 2014 customs authorities in the Central African Republic, supported by the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic, seized several boxes of Spanish-manufactured 12-gauge ammunition at the Cameroonian border that were apparently intended for anti-Balaka militia fighters. Investigations by the UN Panel of Experts revealed that the ammunition had been shipped from Spain as part of a lot of 528,000 cartridges to a registered firearm retailer in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 9 January 2014. Although the retailer had signed an end-user undertaking for exclusive use in Cameroon, some of the cartridges were being seized in the Central African Republic only weeks later. (p. 54)
The proliferation of readily convertible imitation firearms was initially particularly significant in Northern Africa, and notably in Libya, where both merchants and end users, including armed groups, are converting them. Major shipments of readily convertible alarm weapons were intercepted from Turkey in or on their way to Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. This included the previously mentioned seizure of no less than 25,000 Turkish alarm pistols in 2017 at the Port of Kismayo, Somalia. From these locations they appear to have been smuggled by land and seized in converted form in a range of neighbouring countries, including in Kenya, Niger, and Somalia. Other Small Arms Survey inquiries have revealed the circulation of imitation handguns in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Mauritania, and Zimbabwe. (pp. 58-59)