15 05 14 IRIN – Chasing bullets in the DRC

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

A
small arms and ammunition investigator sifts through military materiel
at a captured militia base in the DRC's Virunga National Park

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, 13 May 2014 (IRIN) – Her job is to track and trace small arms and ammunition in Africa’s conflict zones.

Moving within the ebb and flow of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s
(DRC) conflict, the investigator, who asked not to be identified, tells
IRIN: “Ideally, it’s best to be following up the fight, so you can get
there as soon as it is over [to verify the types and origin of
ammunition and small arms].”

The UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC’s (MONUSCO) Force Intervention Brigade
(FIB) has been handed a “robust” UN Security Council mandate to
neutralize the country’s armed groups, in partnership with the DRC’s
national army (FARDC), and operations are in progress against a variety
of militias.

The Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda
(FDLR, Rwandan Hutu rebel group) position in the Virunga National Park
was recently overrun by FARDC and Malawian FIB elements. Two FDLR
fighters were killed, FARDC told IRIN, and the remainder, about 20 or
so, were thought to have scattered into the bush.

Juggling two cell phones, the investigator makes a flurry of calls and
is granted permission by some of the FARDC military hierarchy – and
denied it by others – to visit the captured FDLR bush camp, known as
Kilometre Nine.

“It’s best to just go there and speak with them [FARDC],” she says. “We
need to get there before the [FDLR] ammunition is taken by the FARDC.”

Documenting the find as quickly as possible in situ is imperative. Armed
groups and national armies, more often than not, share the same
firearms. After military positions are captured, any weaponry and
ammunition is often distributed among the victors and a link lost in
piecing together the supply chain.

From the volcanic rock road there are no signs of the militia base that
provided FDLR an income from the US$0.21 toll for travellers bisecting
the park from Kalangera and Tongo in Rutshuru Territory, North Kivu
Province.

In search of “head stamps”

However, a few metres into the dense brush, an area opens up revealing
the detritus of living: Bush meat hangs from trees, the smell of poor
sanitation pervades; there is a bed made from branches, with straw as a
mattress, and a poncho strung above it as a barrier to the rain – and an
ammunition box.

Taking each round, she begins photographing the “head stamp” on the base
of the cartridges. To the untrained eye the ammunition markings may
appear meaningless. For the investigator, it reveals a telling story.

A cartridge head stamp is impressed at the point of manufacture and
“more often than not there is the country of origin and date of
manufacture,” James Bevan, director of CAR, tells IRIN.

“For example, the Bulgarian identity number is 10. Uganda’s Luwero Industries
use Chinese manufacturing equipment, so have the same font. LI at the
12 o’clock position and the two digit year at the 6 o’clock position,”
he said.

The identity for Zimbabwean munitions is ZI, while some in Sudan carry an SU or SUD moniker.

There are other tell-tale signs on the head stamp that may help confirm
origin – but are not sufficient on their own to determine it – such as
the colouring of the primer annulus lacquer, or the “primer stakes”
configuration – small indents around the primer (the ignition point at
the base of the cartridge).

"There is Sudanese ammunition in the DRC. The Khartoum government
supplied a fair bit of it. M23 [an alleged proxy force of neighbouring
Rwanda] also had a lot of it. We are trying to resolve how it got there.
It’s also not great quality,” Bevan said.

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

The head stamp shows the ammunition belonging to
DRC national army troops was manufactured in Novosibirsk, Russia. One of
the bullets was produced in 2008 and the other two in 1988.

CAR, established in 2011, is monitoring arms flows in Mali, Somalia,
Sudan and South Sudan, and recently begun doing the same in the Central
African Republic.

“[From initial research] it appears Sudan is supplying state and
non-state forces across the region, from east to west Africa,” Bevan
said.

The report on arms flows from Sudan is expected for release in June
2014. The NGO will also launch an open-source database at the UN in New
York the same month, called iTrace. It is envisaged the publicly
available information will be used by national arms export control
authorities, NGOs and investigative journalists, among others.

A report published by the Small Arms Survey in May 2014, Following the Thread: Arms and Ammunition Tracing in Sudan and South Sudan
found during the research period between April 2011 and July 2013 that
“Sudanese security forces are the primary source of weapons to non-state
armed groups in Sudan and South Sudan, through deliberate arming and
battlefield capture.”

Arms treaty

The UN General Assembly on 2 April 2013 adopted the Arms Trade Treaty
(ATT) to regulate the estimated US$70 billion annual trade in
conventional weapons. Iran, Syria and North Korea voted against the
treaty. By the first anniversary of the adoption of the treaty, 118
states had signed and 31 had ratified it. The ATT enters into force
after ratification by 50 states. 

CAR is documenting both militias and government forces’ armouries, as
“the illicit and legal trade [in weapons and munitions] is linked. The
primary legal conduits feed into [the] illicit market,” Bevan said.

Allison Pytlak, campaign manager for the London-based NGO Control Arms Coalition (CAC), told IRIN the ATT had “no monitoring mechanisms built into the treaty”.

She said “studies estimate that the trade in ammunition for small arms
and light weapons is worth $4.3bn per annum – more valuable than the
trade in small arms and light weapons themselves, an estimated $2.68bn.”

Pytlak said controls over ammunition
in the ATT were opposed by many states “and it is now only included
when it is an export – on the grounds that it is too difficult to
implement and manage…The overwhelming majority of states that export
military equipment already have controls for ammunition through their
arms export control systems.”

CAC is planning to establish a civil society watchdog publication to monitor the ATT’s implementation, similar to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, which provides oversight for the Mine Ban Treaty. 

In Tongo, FARDC soldiers were cleaning their weapons ahead of a planned
offensive against FDLR. Among the array of weaponry was a recoilless
rifle, captured from an M23 position during fighting last year.

A FARDC unit had commandeered the weapon, something that illustrates how
materiel can be quickly lost as weapons change hands within such fluid
environments. Documenting the weapon provides another point to determine
at a future time – how the weapon may have moved through a maze of
military actors, both government and militia.

CAR published a report in 2012 following a nine-country investigation entitled: The Distribution of Iranian Ammunition in Africa
and found “African governments appear to be the main vectors in the
supply of Iranian ammunition [and weapons] to illicit markets in Africa –
whether as a result of loss, theft or deliberate policies of arming
civilians and insurgent forces.” 

In one incident “there is clear evidence of direct, illicit supply by
Iran to the continent,” in violation of the 2007 UN sanctions on export
of Iranian weapons. “Transfers of Iranian ammunition also contravened UN
sanctions on Cote d’Ivoire and plausibly violated UN embargoes on the
DRC and Darfur. There is no evidence to suggest the direct involvement
of Iran in these violations,” the report said.

The report notes that “African arms markets are evolving, with new
suppliers and new supply vectors – both legal and illicit. However, the
international community is currently hampered in its responses to
illicit weapons’ proliferation, primarily because it lacks the
monitoring capacity to understand illicit transfers fully, and on this
basis, to develop appropriate counter-proliferation strategies.”

Bevan said the ATT “is strong on export controls, but there is currently
no independent monitoring component to it. That is what we [CAR] are
doing.”

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

A recoilless rifle in use with the FARDC and
captured from the DRC armed group M23 during operations in 2013. The
weapon is now being deployed for use against the FDLR in Tongo, Rutshuru
Territory, North Kivu province