As was described above, countries in this region, par-ticularly Bulgaria, were used extensively to traffi c arms during the Cold War. Kintex, Bulgaria’s offi cial arms export company was closely aligned with the secret service, and supplied arms to Libya, Syria, and Iraq.
Nationality of those apprehended for illegal border crossing in South East Europe in 2006 Figure 81:
(data not available from Albanian and Moldovan border control authorities)
Source: International Centre for Migration Policy Development287
16 19 32 35
730
89
256
16 64
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Bulgaria Kosovo (Serbia) Others Romania FYR Macedonia Croatia Albania Serbia &Montenegro Bosnia & Herzegovina
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83 The real problem: Organised crime and corruption
Arms production was the cornerstone of the Bulgarian economy, employing over 100,000 people in 1989 and valued at up to US$5 billion annually.296 There were ap-proximately 120 arms companies in Bulgaria in the late 1980s and early 1990s.297 In the 1990s, Bulgaria was accused of exporting artillery guns to Iraq, transferring US$ 25 million in light weapons to Croatia, violating the UN arms embargo on Rwanda by exporting guns to the Hutu, and arming the Burundian Armed Forces. As late as 2001, Bulgaria sold weapons to Angola’s UNITA in violation of the UN embargo.298
Outside Bulgaria, other countries in the region were also involved in arms traffi cking, sometimes through offi cial government channels. Albanian arms were also sold to the former Rwandan Government forces in Eastern Zaire through a UK fi rm, during and after the Rwandan geno-cide.299 Croatia is believed to have been the most impor-tant source of arms for IRA.300 Romanian fi rearms were allegedly transferred to Rwanda (1997), UNITA rebels in Angola (1996-1999), and rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2001).301 There have also been questions about some recent and large offi cial transfers from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Afghanistan and Iraq, involving hundreds of thousands of weapons.302
Great numbers of fi rearms were imported into the region during the Yugoslav confl icts, and more fl ooded into Albania and Kosovo (Serbia) after the armouries were looted during the 1997 crisis. At least as recently as 2001, it was said to be possible to buy almost anything in the region, including handguns, assault rifl es, explo-sives, heavy machine guns and anti-tank weapons. The
The Protocol against Firearms Traffi cking The Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Traf-fi cking in Firearms, their Parts and Components and Am-munition was adopted by General Assembly resolution 55/255 of 31 May 2001. It entered into force on 3 July 2005. The objective of the Protocol is to strengthen coop-eration among States Parties in order to prevent the illicit manufacturing of and traffi cking in fi rearms. By ratifying the Protocol, States make a commitment to adopt a se-ries of crime-control measures and pass legislation:
criminalising the illegal manufacturing or
•
traffi cking of fi rearms
creating a regulatory system regarding licit
•
manufacturing and dealing in fi rearms, and instituting a standardised regime for marking
•
and identifying fi rearms
Under the convention, ‘fi rearms traffi cking’ means :
…the import, export, acquisition, sale, delivery, movement or transfer of fi rearms, their parts and components and ammunition from or across the territory of one State Party to that of another State Party if any one of the States Par-ties concerned does not authorize it…
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the former Yu-goslav Republic of Macedonia have not yet adopted the Firearms Protocol, while the other countries all acceded it between 2002 and 2006 (except Montenegro, which rati-fi ed it in 2006).
Registered and unregistered civilian fi rearms per 100 citizens in 2007 (high end estimates) Figure 82:
Source: Elaborated from Small Arms Survey 2007 and SEESAC 2006306
* Does not include an estimate of unregistered fi rearms
0.3 3
8 9 10
18 21 22 24
29 30
34 36 40
61 69
0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0
Romania* Moldova England&Wales Bulgaria Albania Kosovo (Serbia) Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina Serbia Montenegro FYR Macedonia France Germany Sweden Switzerland Finland
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84
price of AK47 could be as low as US$ 300, and Bulgar-ian Makarov pistols were said to have sold for as little as US$ 100-200 each.303 But there have also been major weapons destruction programmes in many countries in the region, including Albania (230,000 weapons and 18 million rounds of ammunition),304 Bulgaria (77,516 sub-machine guns), and Serbia (51,000 small arms and light weapons).305
Similarly to the fl ow of drugs, however, fi rearms emanat-ing from the region seem to have left a relatively small imprint on it. Estimates of the number of registered and unregistered weapons held by civilians in the region suggest that South East Europe has fewer small arms per capita than many countries in West Europe (Figure).
Looking just at illegal fi rearms, the countries with the highest murder rates (Moldova, Albania) have some of the smallest numbers of illicit fi rearms (Figure).
The impact of fi rearms is highly dependent on social con-text, but as Section 2 above showed, rates of violence in this region remain low, even by European standards.
In addition to low murder rates overall, a large share of the murders that are committed in many countries in the region do not involve a fi rearm. In Romania, a country of 22 million, only three people were shot to death in 2004.
Albania is exceptional in this regard, and has one of the highest rates of fi rearm homicide in Europe. By global standards, however, this rate is still low – on the order of some of the safer countries in the Americas. Further, the data on the Albanian fi rearm homicide rate comes from 2002, and indications are that the situation has im-proved considerably since that time.
Today, there remain many arms manufacturers in the region, particularly in Bulgaria and Serbia, and some fi rearms traffi cking continues. In June 2006, for exam-ple, Croatian and Slovenian police forces investigated some fi fty fi rearms traffi ckers and discovered a fac-tory in Croatia with huge stocks of weapons. Firearms were exported through Slovenia to Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.307 Accord-ing to SEESAC, “…durAccord-ing 2005/6...some [media] stories alleg[ed] the involvement of registered SALW producers and law enforcement offi cers in traffi cking on more than one occasion.” However, in their 2006 survey of Croatia, they note, “The relative saturation of the Croatian market means there is little domestic demand for fi rearms from abroad with the partial exception of ‘boutique’ fi rearms.
There is no evidence of high-volume, state-facilitated traffi cking with the majority of interceptions classifi ed as
‘ant’ [low volume] traffi c.”308
The situation has certainly much improved since the time of active confl icts. Firearms traffi cking is not even mentioned in the Council of Europe’s situation reports on organised crime in the region. According to an as-sessment of the Southern Adriatic region (Croatia, Bos-nia and Herzegovina, Montenegro) by SEESAC in 2003,
“…high levels of weapons are not present in this transit area any more… if weapons are smuggled across the border, it is in small numbers and mainly pistols now.”309 SEESAC also reports of Romania in 2006, “The Roma-nian authorities consider the involvement of organised crime in the traffi cking of fi rearms in Romania to be lim-ited, and few cases have been reported.”310 In Moldova in 2006, volumes of traffi cking are low due to “…the cur-Estimated illicit fi rearms per 100 citizens in 2007 (estimate for Romania not available)
Figure 83:
Source: SEESAC estimates 1
3
8
11
13 13
15 16
22
0 5 10 15 20 25
Moldova Bulgaria Albania Serbia Bosnia & Herzegovina Croatia Montenegro Kosovo (Serbia) FYR Macedonia
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85 The real problem: Organised crime and corruption
rent lack of appreciable demand in Moldovan govern-ment controlled territory and the probability that Moldo-va is not a signifi cant land transit point…”311 In Kosovo (Serbia), “Improved border control and law enforcement, together with often diffi cult transport links, make it un-likely that SALW have been transited through Kosovo in large numbers in recent years.”
In the end, the argument made by UNDP and Saferworld with regard to Serbia in 2005 could probably be applied to much of the region:
A combination of an improvement in the security environ-ment, a reduction in ethnic confl ict, weakened demand owing probably to market saturation and an increase in law enforcement capacity has contributed to a decrease in traffi cking levels, as witnessed by a decrease in bor-der interceptions.