Criminology

It has been said that arms smuggling is a much underrated and poorly understood form of transnational organized crime. While I agree that arms smuggling is underrated and poorly understood in some respects, it is not simply a black-and-white answer, as contextually, the issue of arms smuggling and its evaluation and understanding is complex. There are arguably just as many ways in which arms smuggling is not overrated and greatly understood, and these differences must be discussed to form a full picture.  To discuss the aspect of arms smuggling being overrated, it must be examined from the perspectives of both developed and developingunder-developed countries. Subsequently, to evaluate if arms smuggling is a poorly understood form of trends in organized crime, what must be examined is not only what is poorly understood, but also what is greatly understood, largely on the grounds of complicity in the activity. The grey areas surrounding arms smuggling for not just organized crime but also nation states and transnational bodies, both governmental and non-governmental, must be examined. While arms smuggling has been overrated in some regions, it is not in many others, and while some aspects of arm smuggling is poorly understood, this is just as much understanding of other aspects, particularly in the business of illicit arms.

DISCUSSION OF ARMS SMUGGLING BEING UNDERRATED
In order to evaluate whether or not arms smuggling is an underrated form of transnational organized crime, two spheres must be examined, with each having separate perspectives, although both spheres are connected in the flow of illicit arms  the developed (Western) world and the developing and under-developed (Second and Third) world.

Arms Smuggling is Not Underrated in Developing and Under-developed Nations
Arms smuggling is underrated in developing and under-developed countries because it is an extremely pervasive entity that is at once a scourge on the civilian population of these nations and an economic cog due to poor socioeconomic conditions. An aspect of why arms smuggling has such a large presence in these nations and is not combated is the simple matter of the cost being too high to end the illicit arms trade when other socioeconomic issues must be met first. A second, more complex answer as to arms smugglings pervasiveness has to do with corruption. Corruption at various levels of government and military keep arms smuggling alive, and many of these developing and under-developed nations are corrupt. Rob McCusker found a cycle of cumulative impact that perpetuates arms smuggling in these nations, which begins with the characteristics of a region (poverty, political instability, cultural diversity etc.) which are exacerbated by corruption and the Transnational crime response of illicit trafficking of arms is only facilitated by corruption.1 Because corruption is so entrenched in the political and military machinery of these nations, arms smuggling is easily facilitated and highly profitable. There appears to be a hierarchy of sorts in these levels of corruption, as the illicit arms industry in these nations is usually state-owned and managed by former army officers and former and current politicians, indicating a sort of personnel exchange between the government and military and the illicit arms industry.2 This complicity between governments, military and organized crime shows

1 Rob McCusker, Transnational Crime in the Pacific Islands real or apparent danger (2006) 308 Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 1, 3-3.

2 Vincenzo Ruggiero, Criminals and service providers cross-national dirty economies (1997) 28 Crime, Law  Social Change 27, 32-4.

how successful a trend arms smuggling is. Suggestions made as to the requirements of eliminating or restricting arms smuggling include considerable resources and an incorruptible enforcement and policing, which are nearly impossible achievements in developing and under-developed countries.3 From how deeply entrenched arms smuggling is in the machinery of developing and under-developed countries, it is obvious as to the pervasiveness of this trend of organized crime.

B Arms Smuggling is No Longer Overrated to Developed Nations
Arms smuggling may have been overrated to developed nations in terms of its domestic effects, but that attitude has changed recently as the dangers of arms smuggling have been seen at the doorstep of these nations. 911 and the War on Terror have brought the fear of arms smuggling into the Western World. Toine Spapens points out that after September 11, 2001, the threats of Islamic terrorism and arms trafficking for terrorist groups have been a great concern in the EU.4   This transnational crime has gotten the attention of developed nations in the post-911 political climate by holding the threat of the spread of small arms and even larger-scale weaponry into the nations for terrorist attacks. Another circumstance that indicates a change in

3 Stefan Markowski, et al. Channels of small-arms proliferation policy implications for Asia-Pacific (2008) 3(1) Economics of Peace and Security Journal 78, 83-5.

4 Toine Spapens, Trafficking in Illicit Firearms for Criminal Purposes within
the European Union 2007 European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 359, 360-4.

attitude towards arms smuggling is the championing of the cause by the UN following the threats to UN peace-keeping forces due to illicit small arms trafficking.

5 There has been a much greater focus by developed countries on combating the issue with forming transnational bodies, both government and non-governmental, and the passing of legislation. A report by the IPI highlights the need for the focus, as illicit arms are among the cheapest and most easily accessible instruments for participating in violence and have transnational effects on fueling conflict, crime, and terrorism.6

1 Policy, Legislation and Concerned Organizations
Since the late 1990s, there has been a focus on battling arms smuggling with the formation of many governmental and non-governmental organizations, whose goals are the cessation of the trafficking of illicit arms, such as man-portable weapons, such as assault rifles, mortars, and grenades.7 In response to domestic threats from arms smuggling, the UN, EU, NATO, OSCE and the Stability Pact for South-eastern Europe introduced initiatives to combat illicit arms trafficking. One example of such legislation by a transnational body is the EU Code

5 Peter Lock, Armed conflicts and small arms proliferation Refocusing the research agenda (1997) 30 Policy Sciences 117, 117-3.

6 International Peace Institute, Small Arms and Light Weapons, IPI Blue Paper no. 5 2009 xii.2

7 Lorna Lumpe, Curbing the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (1999) 30 Security Dialogue 151, 151-1.

of Conduct, which is designed to install harmonized export policies and responsible licensing of arms export by member states.8

2 The Ineffectiveness of Policy, Legislation and Concerned Organizations
Unfortunately, while intended for the movement of change transnationally and within nations regarding arms production and exports, the EU Code of Conduct is an example of in the ineffectiveness of such legislations around the world. A member states obligations, for instance, are broadly defined, as a state must only apply the code when issuing export licenses for arms and in regards to information exchange of such activity, but how member states conduct this obligation and if it is even included in national legislation is at their discretion.9 Such broad legislation, formed transnationally but with expectations of national adherence, cannot be effective. Changes to decision-making processes on a domestic level cannot be achieved if the framework to achieve such is strictly enforced, along with legislation that is definite in its expectations.

Ineffective and broad language and definitions are only a few of a myriad of problems that beset legislative attempts at slowing or eliminating arms smuggling. These ineffectual NGOs and transnational and national legislation provide a porous means for organized crime to

8 Mark Bromley, The Impact on Domestic Policy of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports The Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Spain, SIPRI Policy Paper No. 21 2008
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute 1, 1-2.

9 Ibid 11-2.
operate the illicit arms trade by allowing for loopholes in legislation and by governments holding permissive attitudes10 to such activity within their nation and across their borders. A wide net is needed to catch arms smuggling by organized crime, which requires multi-national co-operation, but the current landscape of legislation and policy is largely national, or even regional. Another aspect to consider is that legislation and a focus on legal constructs such as borders is counter to how organized crime operates. Organized crime does not see legislation, policy or borders as a legal construct their constructs are of an illegal plane of operation, quite separate from what is being attempted by such forms as the EU Code of Conduct.

Following trends of organized crime is just as difficult as it is to combat organized crime activity that operates outside the law with legal means. While organizations such as INTERPOL exist to investigate, track and suppress transnational organized crime, it has amounted to limited success in that regard inasmuch as the effect on the illicit activity by authorities has been negligible. Transnational organized crime appears to be out of the grasp of understanding because it is largely difficult to combat with legal channels. It is a matter of it being an uneven match of wielding the law against those that flaunt it. Legislation, policy and enforcement is black and white and tangible, while organized crime and the trends by which they operate are intangible smoke and mirrors to those who seek to suppress or eliminate them. Another aspect to the ineffectiveness of measures against arms smuggling by organized crime is that while organized crime operates across borders with co-operation built on the corrupt desire for profit, the nation states and NGOs that seek to combat the illicit arms trade do not have the same simple.

10 Philip Alpers and Connor Twyford Small Arms in the Pacific, Geneva, Occasional paper no. 8 2003 Small Arms Survey i, xvii-6. operation. Although they are ultimately seeking the same goal, a common and universal strategy has not been achieved and is nowhere in sight.
The crux of the problem with combating this trend of organized crime is that arms smuggling factors largely into regional conflicts that require a global consensus to combat, which is nearly impossible in any regard, let alone with something as complex as arms smuggling. The problem facing transnational reaction to arms smuggling is stated simply and effectively by Owen Greene Although illicit arms trafficking takes place on a global scale, each region and sub-region experiences and perceives the problem in different ways.11 Until some sort of consensus among concerned nations can be reached, little will be achieved in the war against organized crimes trend of arms smuggling.

II UNDERSTANDING OF ARMS SMUGGLING
While I argue that there are many more aspects of arms smuggling that are understood by NGOs and nation states than those that are not, attention must be given to what is poorly understood in order to see the true complexity of arms smuggling and to lead to what is greatly understood about the organized crime activity.

A What is Poorly Understood Regarding Arms Smuggling

11 Owen Greene, Examining international responses to illicit arms trafficking (2000) 33 Crime, Law  Social Change 151, 156-4.

While what is understood regarding the form of trends of organized crime that is arms smuggling, what is poorly understood is of great consequence. What is poorly understood are the exact numbers involved in the flow of goods  how many there are, exactly where they are coming from, exactly where they are going. There are some frameworks that have been developed to calculate these numbers, but they are largely theoretical at this point. Alpers and Twyford point out that by definition, illicit weapons are virtually impossible to count12 and that evidence of arms smuggling is rare and circumstantial.

13 Because of this lack of quantitative evidence, preventing the flow of illicit arms has proven an impossible task it is incredibly difficult to defeat an unseen enemy.  The flow of illicit arms is a constant battle for law enforcement, as the mechanisms of arms smuggling are so closely tied with the flow of legal goods and services. Arms are smuggled across borders using concealment and deceit with false declarations and documentation and movement by means such as large-scale shipment and small-scale operations of carrying arms across the border with the flow of legal traffic.14 This difficult task of enforcing borders and the flow of goods and services on a global scale creates an environment that is to the advantage of organized crime. While what is poorly understood has considerable consequences to the safety of people around the world, the weight of what is greatly understood about arms smuggling is overwhelming. The power of organized crime and the trend of arms smuggling is not something can go unnoticed.

12 Philip Alpers and Conor Twyford, above n 10, xvi-7.
13 Ibid xvi-9.
14 Ibid 11-1.
B What is Greatly Understood Regarding Arms Smuggling

While the empirical data on the true pervasiveness of organized crimes arms smuggling is poorly understood, what is greatly understood by many nation states is the illegal means and methods of trafficking arms and how much profit there is to be made in the industry. This is where understanding of arms smuggling comes into the forefront, as this understanding is due to many nations of the developed worlds knowledge and complicity of the dirty business of arms smuggling. While arms smuggling is a considerable portion of organized crime activity, its origins come from the very nations that are attempting to combat it today. These nations started the arms smuggling racket during the Cold War to fight the ideological battle by proxy, and now organized crime is using those covert operations of bodies such as the CIA as a business model to profit from arms.

How Developed Nations Are Wittingly Complicit with Arms Smuggling 
Arms smuggling started on the Cold War battlefield, with the West and Eastern powers providing arms to regional conflicts in attempts to sway the Cold War in their favor. What has occurred since then is what Mark Pythian describes as the amateurization of arms trafficking, whereby organized crime is operating by the same covert methods as nation states, and is speculated to even involve former CIA operatives. 15 The supply of arms during conflicts by

15 Mark Pythian, The illicit arms trade Cold War and Post-Cold War (2000) 33 Crime, Law  Social Change 1, 2-1.developed nations is well documented, despite the cloak-and-dagger activity. For example, during the conflict in Bosnia in the early to mid 1990s, Bosnian Serbs were supplied with arms from Serbia, Bosnian Croats received arms from Croatia, Bosnian Muslims received arms from Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the largest arms contingent that entered the Bosnian conflict was part of a secret program to support the Bosnian Army.16 Such activity still continues, underlining the understanding of arms smuggling by bending the rules to the edge of the breaking point. For example, in 1999 the British Government lifted an embargo on the supply of spare parts to Zimbabwe for their fighter aircraft, which were involved in the conflict in the DRC, and Britain technically kept their hands clean while supporting the Zimbabwean military.17    In terms of complicity of nation states with organized crimes arm smuggling, they have provided the business model by which the illicit trade flourishes. Jana Arsovska and Panos Kostakos point out that organized crime is often depicted as an illicit enterprise that shares many characteristics with legitimate business but it is on the wrong side of the legal spectrum.18 The creation the market and the methods by which the goods are trafficked by developed nations, makes the understanding of the inner-workings of the industry rather complete. Not only did developed nations provide a business model for organized crime, but they also provided a clientele of governments facing embargos or trade bans, militant and revolutionary groups

16 Jana Arsovska and Panos Kostakos, Illicit arms trafficking and the limits of rational choice theory the case of the Balkans (2008) 11(4) Trends in Organized Crime 352, 361-2.

17 Mark Pythian, above n 15, 44-2.

18 Jana Arsovska and Panos Kostakos, above n 16, 357-2. involved in armed conflict, insurgencies, terrorist groups, criminal organizations and frightened civilians.19 Developed nations cannot plead ignorance on the issue of arms smuggling, since they originated and perpetuate what Vincenzo Ruggiero calls the grey market of arms.

20 This grey market is one that has been taken over as a transnational organized crime. An important aspect of trends of organized crime is that trends originate and are propagated much as legitimate business operates  with supply and demand. Arms smuggling as a form of a transnational crime is a result of the demand for illicit arms and the means to meet this demand with the supply of illicit arms. This demand is a constant one, with conflicts brought about by cultural, political and economic factors being an inherent facet of humanity. So while the demand for illicit arms is certainly there, arms smuggling has become such an enormously successful trend of organized crime because they are in the position as the dominant supplier on the market. The influence of developed nations on conflicts during the Cold War is long over, and while the activity of arms smuggling still takes places between nation states, it is organized crime that has capitalized on the market that the Cold War created with an awareness of supply. Trends in organized crime are based on the profit that is available, and arms smuggling appears to be an unending supply of profit from all over the world. Arms smuggling is a Billion dollar industry, and organized crime has gotten an enormous slice of the pie as it were, with accountability and increasing awareness of the issue making nations lean away from even illicit arms trade.

19 Owen Greene, above n 11, 153-5.
20 Vincenzo Ruggiero, above n 2, 33-5.

How Developed Nations Are Wittingly Complicit with Arms Smuggling 
Another aspect of the understanding of arms smuggling as a form of trends of organized crime is that developed nations realize a large number of arms involved in the illicit industry come from their own caches. A great number of illicit arms that are trafficked around the world come from surplus military stocks made available by corrupt officials.21 The prevalent belief about the spread of illicit arms from military stocks and trades is that it occurs in developing or under-developed countries whose corrupt governments and military profit. The opposite, however, has been found, with the legal proliferation of arms by responsible governments to be just as damaging. Indra De Soysa, Thomas Jackson, and Christine Ormhaug found this to be true in an examination of what role Globalization plays in the illicit arms industry, due to seepage of arms through legal shipments to illegal markets.22 Example of these leakages as a result of arms trafficking by nation states is seen in the Reagan administrations support of the Nicaraguan contras, the IRAs supply of Libyan arms and The Red Armys stocking of East Germany, where at the end of conflict, the arms ended up in the illicit market.23 The developed nations understand the implications of their legal trade of weapons becoming profit for organized crime, as arms

21 Ian Davis, Chrissie Hirst, Bernardo Mariani, Organized Crime, corruption and illicit arms trafficking in an enlarged EU Challenges and perspective (2001) Saferworld, 26-4.

22 Indra De Soysa, Thomas Jackson, and Christine Ormhaug, Does Globalization Profit the Small Arms Bazaar (2009) 35 International Interactions 86, 100-3.

23 Aaron Karp, Uncertain prognosis There is no easy way to prevent small shipments of small arms (1999) 55(1) Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 66, 67-9.
transfer from, as Toine Spapens says, the licit to the illicit domain.24

III CONCLUSION
The appearance of attitudes towards the trend of organized crime of arms smuggling and the lack of success despite widespread attempts at transnational and national policy and legislation is that little is known or respected of the illicit activity. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. While there is a large knowledge gap in terms of the quantitative scope of organized crimes illicit arms industry, there is a wealth of knowledge as to the machinery, as it was invented not by organized crime, but by nation states. If these nations truly crackdown on arms smuggling of organized crime, they will have to stop their own arms also have to acknowledge the role that civilians within these nations play in the propagation of the illicit arms trade. Studies suggest that 60  of the global stockpile of small arms belongs to civilians, and that a great number of these weapons are entering the organized crime arms smuggling industry due to theft and sale.25 The complicity, whether wittingly or unwittingly, of nation states and even the citizenry in the illicit arms trade shows how powerful and successful a trend of organized crime arms smuggling is. While organized crime is the representation of the bad guys that perpetuate arms smuggling, the black and white perspective must be revealed as the grey that it is.