During this time, the FMLN had received large shipments of AKs to bolster their struggle against the U.S.-backed right-wing regime. President George H. W. Bush publicly stated that the weapons were coming from Soviet-backed groups in Cuba and Nicaragua, mainly the Sandinistas. These were not trivial shipments. According to U.S. ambassador William Walker, the entire guerrilla force of six thousand to eight thousand was now reequipped with AKs and ready to renew its efforts against the government.
Walker claimed that these weapons came from Cuba, which turned out to be wrong. The White House later amended his statement, saying that the weapons were from Soviet bloc nations but the ammunition came from Cuba through Nicaragua.
As the days progressed, the story changed again. The U.S.-backed government in El Salvador never blamed the Nicaraguans, and the White House offered scant evidence to back its own claim of a Nicaraguan connection.
As it turned out, the weapons came from an unexpected source. Honduran military officials, hoping to cash in on the debris of Nicaragua’s civil war, had raided weapons caches left over by the CIA in their country. These arms originally were intended for the Contras as Congress was preparing to cut off funding. When the Contras faded from the scene, the weapons lay unused but secured. With the assistance of professional arms dealers, they found their way to left-wing rebels in El Salvador.
This influx of AKs bolstered the rebels’ morale and offered them greater firepower over the Salvadoran army, which was outfitted with M-16s from the United States. The FMLN even changed their battle tactics to take advantage of the AK’s intermediate round—7.62 × 39mm models were and are still manufactured in many Warsaw Pact countries like Romania, as well as China—which was heavier and traveled farther than the smaller M-16 round. On election day in March 1989, for example, one battle of a coordinated nationwide push by AK-armed rebel forces held government helicopters at a distance in the village of San Isidro, keeping them just out of range from supplying air support to their ground troops. This tactic was repeated throughout the country.
This and subsequent guerrilla attacks were so successful that the government had no choice but to accept a peace accord that included the FMLN and was brokered by the United Nations in 1991. A nine-month cease-fire took effect on February 1, 1992, and has held since. The last remnants of the FMLN’s military structure were dismantled as it became a legitimate political party and integrated into the government. Unfortunately, El Salvador, like its Central American neighbors, still suffers from domestic violence, gangs, street crime, and high homicide rates as AKs and other weapons remain plentiful despite arms collection and destruction programs.
In a ceremony intended to symbolize a more peaceful era for the region, Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro in September 1990 gave President George H. W. Bush an AK cut in half by a blowtorch. The weapon had been taken from a citizen as part of the country’s efforts to destroy the large numbers of small arms that still existed. (Many of these weapons were distributed wholesale by Sandinista leaders when Chamorro in 1990 beat their candidate, Daniel Ortega.)
Other countries, including Guatemala and Honduras, had similar programs to de-arm their nations, but they, like Nicaragua, met with less than stellar results. Small arms possess too much utility to be turned in. Not only can they be used for hunting and self-protection against domestic crime, but also as a hedge in case of renewed civil war or an oppressive regime taking power. The tradition of people holding small arms and the prestige associated with it was just so strong in the region; government decommissioning programs could not overcome it.
To Chamorro, a disabled AK was the perfect icon of the country’s efforts to stem violence, but despite this gesture, the cold war had left Central America awash in weapons, which were now heading southward to countries like Venezuela, Peru, and Colombia where they were slowly replacing the Belgian FN-FALs that had for decades been popular among rebel groups because of their availability. In addition, because of the now weakened and lawless condition of Central American nations, illegal arms shipments from Europe were streaming through these countries on their way to South America.
Just as it had done in the Middle East and Africa, the indestructible and cheap AK worked its way from country to country, turning small conflicts into large wars.
THESE NEWLY IMPORTED AKS were ending up in the hands of groups like the antigovernment Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Western Hemisphere’s largest guerrilla group; the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN); and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the largest federation of right-wing paramilitaries. These groups have been accused of human rights abuses, kidnappings, bombings, assassinations, drug trafficking, airline hijackings, and extortion.
FARC is by far Colombia’s largest and best-equipped guerrilla group, with almost twenty thousand members. It was formed in 1966 by survivors of a U.S.-supported raid on a Communist Party-inspired cooperative calling itself the Independent Republic of Marquetalia. It controls of about half of the country, mainly in the southeastern jungle areas and plains surrounding the Andes. FARC reached a peak of power in 1999, and the president of Colombia, Andres Pastrana, had offered to give the group a huge tract of land twice the size of New Jersey if it would end its violent activities. These negotiations broke down and fighting between government forces and FARC continued. Although FARC originally received assistance from the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, it now finances itself through kidnapping, drug dealing, and extortion. FARC often uses child soldiers, many impressed against their will, armed with AKs.
ELN was founded in 1964 by Cuban-trained Colombian students inspired by the Cuban revolution. Currently the group has fewer than four thousand members and has been dealt military setbacks by right-wing paramilitary groups such as AUC. ELN finances itself by kidnapping and holding for ransom wealthy Colombians. It has also extorted from oil companies by threatening to bomb their pipelines and facilities. It is estimated that FARC and ELN take in $200 to $400 million annually, at least half of it from drug dealing, including protection money paid by growers and other dealers.
The last major group, AUC, grew from the consolidation of other right-wing paramilitary groups in 1997, expanded rapidly to about eight thousand members, and is still growing. The group has a stronghold in northern Colombia, where it receives funding from wealthy landowners and drug traffickers, but operates throughout the country. The AUC engages in drug smuggling itself. It attacks leftist guerrilla groups as well as trade activists and human rights organizations. It often recruits from citizens who have been victims of attack from left-wing groups. Although Colombia’s army does not officially support AUC, various human rights groups have documented ties between them.
The one thing that all these groups have in common is their need for more inexpensive weapons, mainly AKs, which now are the preferred firearm because of their low cost and durability in jungle conditions. Unlike the mujahideen in Afghanistan, South American fighters and their counterparts in Central America have favored the heavier 7.62mm bullet instead of the lightweight 5.56mm or 5.45mm rounds because it tends to penetrate jungle foliage better and has a longer range to fend off government helicopters. Culturally, these fighters have been “brought up” on the larger round and are used to it.
The illegal trade in AKs and ammunition in Latin America offers intriguing views of how difficult it is to stop small-arms smuggling because of the layers of middlemen and corrupt government officials. The deals are further obfuscated by the inclusion of legal elements of arms purchases that turn illegal at some point in the transaction. By then, however, it often is too late to stop the deal. While the vast majority of illegal arms deals go unnoticed by authorities, some well-documented cases have been made public, and they offer a glimpse into the shady world of gun-running.
One incident in October 1999 began simply and legally enough but evolved into the illegal transfer of three thousand AKs and two and a half million rounds of ammunition from offic
ial Nicaraguan government warehouses to the AUC guerrilla group in Colombia. Originally a deal was cut for the legitimate transfer between the Nicaraguan National Police and a private Guatemalan arms dealer, Grupo de Representaciones Internacionales S.A., known as GIR S.A. GIR S.A. offered to trade new Israeli pistols and Uzi submachine guns for five thousand surplus AKs and two and a half million rounds of ammunition. This was a good deal for the Nicaraguan police, because they wanted the pistols and Uzis, which were more useful for police work than the AKs.
GIR S.A. found Shimon Yelinek, an Israeli arms dealer based in Panama, to buy the AKs. Yelinek said he was representing the Panamanian National Police, but his papers later turned out to be forgeries. After inspecting the weapons, Yelinek decided that the weapons were not satisfactory and threatened to scuttle the deal. After some negotiation, Yelinek and Nicaraguan army officials decided to exchange the 5,000 weapons that Yelinek deemed unsatisfactory for 3,117 AKs. Yelinek arranged for a Panamanian cargo company to pick up the weapons in Nicaragua on their ship the Otterloo, whose manifest stated it was sailing to Panama.
Instead of sailing to Panama, the ship landed in Turbo, Colombia, in November 2001—customs officials conveniently disappeared for several days while it was unloaded—and the arms ended up in the hands of the AUC, which controlled the area. The ship’s captain disappeared, and the company was dissolved several months later. The ship was later sold to a Colombian citizen.
Not knowing about this diversion, GIR S.A. started another deal with Yelinek using the same purchase order, but when authorities discovered that the first shipment had gone astray they organized a sting operation to find those responsible. GIR S.A. officials learned about the first shipment and canceled the deal before any sting could take place.
Panamanian authorities arrested Yelinek and tried him for arms diversion. His case was thrown out, though, because the court determined that his actions did not harm Panama; they took place in Nicaragua, outside of their jurisdiction.
This is a classic example of what is known as the “gray market” in small-arms trading, which rests, as you might expect, between white- and black-market arms sales. White-market trading is the legal and transparent sale of small arms. Documentation is honest and official and includes state-to-state sales as well as private sales to individuals. Black-market trading is the extreme opposite. These are completely illegal sales with no accountability or documentation and often with individuals or groups who are prohibited from buying arms under local laws or government or UN sanctions. In gray-market trading, two legitimate parties may arrange what they think is a legitimate sale—in this case the Nicaraguan National Police and GIR S.A.—but the weapons were diverted through forged documents and a series of confusing but seemingly benign tangent deals.
What makes the above example even more intriguing is that the whole operation would have remained hidden except that Carlos Castano, head of the AUC, boasted in April 2002 to a reporter from the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo that he bought the guns carried by the Otterloo from Nicaragua. In fact, he said he bought even more weapons. “This is the greatest achievement by the AUC so far,” he bragged. “Through Central America, five shipments, 13,000 rifles.” The other shipments were never discovered.
This incident of arms smuggling signaled a new, more terrible era for South America that continues today. Previously, arms imported to Colombia had been arriving in small shipments, tens or hundreds of rifles at a time, often on board private fishing vessels, speedboats traveling through swamps and rivers, or by light planes landing on dirt fields or dropping containers filled with arms. This bulk shipment proved that the combatants were becoming more sophisticated in their gun procurement, intent on rearming current members and adding recruits.
Many of these new recruits were children. More than eleven thousand child soldiers have been fighting in Colombia’s conflicts, one of the highest totals in the world, according to Human Rights Watch. At least one of every four was under eighteen, and thousands were younger than fifteen, the minimum age permitted for armed forces recruitment under the Geneva Conventions (still below the minimum age for many countries). About 80 percent of child soldiers belong to FARC or ELN, with AUC using fewer children. Most children join voluntarily, although many were recruited by force, drugged into enlistment, or saw no other opportunities for safety, food, and shelter.
A major difference between African guerrilla forces that used children and those in Colombia was the high number of girl combatants, comprising as many as one-quarter to one-half of guerrilla units, especially in FARC. Some were as young as eight years old. The reasons they joined were similar to those of boys, with sexual abuse at home being an additional factor. (A guerrilla group with an even higher girl population is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka.) One reason why girls were acceptable in combat was that Marxist ideology (as practiced in South America) embraced equality of the sexes and female liberation, which extended to the armed revolutionary struggle.
These left-wing groups, children and all, became the seeds of large-scale narcoterrorists that today control large swaths of South America, especially in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil, and threaten the stability of the Western Hemisphere.
One impetus for the increased interest among these groups in larger arms shipments during this particular time frame may have been Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar U.S. initiative begun in the spring of 2000. The plan had been in the works for some time and everyone knew it would be instituted. Its intention was to help Colombian authorities eradicate drug cultivation and smuggling. Insurgents considered this as a threat to their trade and began seeking larger AK purchases and increasing recruitment.
Despite its size, this instance was relatively simple compared to another case that occurred around the same time and had further-reaching implications. This involved the CIA’s top asset in Peru—that country’s chief intelligence officer—who planned to funnel AKs to FARC rebels in Colombia with the help of one of the world’s largest arms dealers. This broker was the same man who supplied weapons to Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran at the behest of the Reagan administration. The incident involved the sale of ten thousand AKs—a huge shipment for the time—and eventually led to the downfall of Peru’s government and the exile of its president to Japan.
GROWING IN SIZE AND SCOPE, FARC wanted to standardize their rifles. The group owned a mixture of weapons including different versions of AKs and FN-FALs. By outfitting most of their eighteen thousand fighters with one type of weapon, they hoped to save money by buying only one type of ammunition. Even a few pennies per round translated to big savings.
FARC had no experience handling such large shipments, so they sought help through intermediaries from Vladimiro Montesinos, commonly known as “Peru’s Rasputin” for his puppetmaster control of President Alberto Fujimori. Montesinos began his career in the army in 1965 as a cadet and studied at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (now Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning, Georgia. The school, dubbed the “School of Assassins” by its opponents, had long been criticized as a training ground for military officers of repressive right-wing Latin American nations who used techniques they learned from U.S. instructors to torture and kill political foes.
In September 1976, Montesinos stole a blank army travel form and visited the U.S. embassy in Lima, where he received a free flight to the United States. Saying that he was an aide to Prime Minister General Guillermo Arbulú, he met with State Department and CIA officials. A Peruvian general saw him give a talk at the Inter-American Defense College and reported him. Upon his return to Peru, authorities immediately arrested Montesinos, and he was placed in prison for one year for desertion and lying.
Shortly after his release in February 1978, Montesinos enrolled at San Marcos University to study law. Only a few months later, using a forged degree, he registered as a lawyer with the Superior Court of Lima and became a member of the Colegio de Abrogados d
e Lima, an organization similar to a bar association. His clients were Colombian drug dealers, and he became involved in the trade himself through ownership of warehouses and manufacturing facilities used by drug dealers. He also sold classified documents in 1984 to Ecuador about Peru’s weapons purchases from the Soviet Union.
Montesinos achieved a reputation as the “go-to lawyer” for anyone involved in high-level crime and corruption, and this is how he met Alberto Fujimori, a candidate in the 1990 elections accused of underpaying his taxes by undervaluing real estate sales. The accusations were so massive that the attorney general was preparing criminal charges against him. Through Montesinos’s contacts and influence, at least one witness was persuaded to change his testimony, and files that would have indicted Fujimori were altered. Montesinos also helped Fujimori produce a birth certificate proving that he was born in Peru and not Japan so he could run for president.
When Fujimori was elected president, Montesinos became his right-hand man and was secretly put in charge of the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), Peru’s intelligence service. By convincing Fujimori that his life was in continual danger from enemies of the state, Montesinos fed the president’s paranoia and did away with opponents who stood in their way. Through a death squad known as Grupo Colina, he solidified his position, eventually controlling Peru’s military. He undoubtedly became the most powerful person in Peru and arguably all of South America.
AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War Page 13
