I et forsøg på at kortlægge strømmene af våben og ammunition til Afrikas konflikter, besøger en britisk organisation krigsskuepladser og oprørsbaser for at registrere hvert eneste våben og stykke ammunition og spore det tilbage til oprindelseslandet.
VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, 13 May 2014 (IRIN): Her job is to track and trace small arms and ammunition in Africa’s conflict zones.
Each bullet, assault rifle, mortar, rocket or other item of military hardware she documents forms a piece of a huge jigsaw being created by the UK-based NGO Conflict Armaments Research (CAR) to map the precise flows of conflict weaponry in Africa.
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.
“There is Sudanese ammunition in the DRC. The Khartoum government supplied a fair bit of it”
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 a lot [of Ugandan ammunition] circulating in the eastern DRC. It’s poor quality. The Ugandan forces did not want it, so [in the past] it was dumped there [eastern DRC]. 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.
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 arm
