NARRATOR: Assault rifles. Machine guns. Hand-held rocket launchers. An estimated 500 million military small arms and light weapons loose in the world, trading hands, fueling wars, killing men, women, and children alike.

MICHAEL KLARE: The United States is one of the largest suppliers of small arms and light weapons to the world.

SECRETARY OF STATE ALBRIGHT: (in speech) All of us whose nations sell such weapons, or through whose nations the traffic flows, bear some responsibility for turning a blind eye to the destruction they cause.

ACTOR MICHAEL DOUGLAS: If these weapons are not properly controlled, peace will become obsolete and so will humanity.

[TITLE SLATE: LIGHT WEAPONS, HEAVY CASUALTIES]

ADM. EUGENE CARROLL, USN (Ret.): For America's Defense Monitor, I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll. The entire world is now in the grip of a virulent epidemic - an epidemic of violence spawned by military small arms and light weapons. All too often, the victims are innocent civilians who die because there are too many of these weapons - 500 million. Today we look closer at this growing crisis, its causes and possible cures.

REPORTER ON THE STREET: When I say the term "major weapons," what kind of weapons do you think those are?

CORY SMITH: (Dallas, TX) I'd really limit that to larger-scale destruction. Large bombs, obviously nuclear...

HELEN PASSARELLI: (Guatemala) A major weapon, I don't know, I would say, atomic.

EDDIE BANKS: (Washington, DC) Nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: What constitutes a "major weapon"? Certainly nuclear weapons are major, with their capability to destroy entire cities. Yet they have not been used since World War II. Aircraft, tanks, ships, and missiles are major weapons, and have caused unspeakable wartime damage. Yet it is small arms and light weaponry - cheap, portable weapons such as assault rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, and landmines - that have killed the most people: an estimated six million killed in the 1990s alone.

These weapons cause nine out of ten casualties in today's conflicts. Most of the victims are civilians, not soldiers - often women and children. Small arms have become the instruments of mass slaughter - ethnic cleansing - genocide.

AXWORTHY: The issue of security is now becoming one that is really focused on the individual.

NARRATOR: Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy has been a leading advocate for government involvement in addressing the scourge of small arms.

AXWORTHY: Innocent people are being victimized. They're the ones who are being killed, humiliated, violated, and therefore we have to provide a new generation of international laws and practices to protect individuals. Whether it's land mines or small arms, it's the vulnerable that pay the price.

NARRATOR: The global glut of military guns transforms group tensions into major wars, minor incidents into massacres, and tranquil societies into battlegrounds of criminal gangs. In terms of killing, small arms may be the most major weapons of all.

DOUGLAS: (speech) The dramatic increase in civilian deaths is a direct result of the ease with which so many people in so many countries supporting so many causes can obtain small arms.

NARRATOR: Actor Michael Douglas, star of Hollywood blockbusters such as "Fatal Attraction" and "Wall Street," was recently named a United Nations Messenger of Peace by Secretary General Kofi Annan. He spoke at the U.N. to bring attention to the small arms crisis.

DOUGLAS: (speech) An AK-47 can be purchased for a few dollars in Albania. It can be exchanged for a chicken in Uganda. It can be bought for a sack of corn in Mozambique. It can be bartered for a loaf of bread in Chechnya. That's why the death and destruction has spread around the world. As it does, it becomes less and less remote as the world grows smaller and smaller. Shrunk by the speed of travel, by the ease of communication, and by the rule of international law, the world has become what Marshall McLuhan called a "global village." A place where we must either learn to live together, or die as victims of violence.

NARRATOR: As the most influential member of that "global village" and its leading arms supplier, the United States is both an accessory to the killing and in a position to be instrumental in stopping it.

LAURANCE: The United States still continues to export arms to countries who have no business getting these arms.

NARRATOR: Dr. Ed Laurance is an expert on small arms at the prestigious Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

LAURANCE: God knows there's enough weapons around the world now that the U.S. doesn't have to send any small arms and light weapons.

NARRATOR: For years, government officials dismissed the death and destruction caused by small arms with an attitude of "nothing can be done." But grassroots organizations troubled by the carnage have been leading the call for action. These groups have joined together to form the International Action Network on Small Arms, compelling governments to face the issue.

SMALDONE: There certainly has been a dramatic change in the way government officials, particularly U.S. officials regard small arms issues.

NARRATOR: Joseph Smaldone is a specialist on small arms with the U.S. government's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

SMALDONE: From the very top on down there is a serious recognition that the proliferation and criminal use of small arms is a serious international problem.

LAURANCE: The problem with the United States is the bureaucracy is so huge that they will always have trouble getting a unified policy to deal with this problem. But there's tremendous potential for the U.S. to really contribute to the solution to this problem.

NARRATOR: Before we examine the United States's role, let's take a closer look at the role military small arms play in the world today. Why the focus on these weapons now? Much of it has to do with how conflict itself has changed in recent years.

KLARE: With the changing nature of war we look at what kind of weapons are in use.

NARRATOR: Michael Klare directs the Five-College Program in Peace and Security Studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and is a leading advocate for restraining the light weapons trade.

KLARE: During the Cold War era we were much more concerned with big weapons, tanks and missiles and the like, but in the post-Cold War era we are seeing so many ethnic and internal conflicts we are naturally drawn to the weapons at use in these wars, and these are primarily light weapons.

NARRATOR: Today, about two dozen wars are being fought around the world. The bulk of them are internal conflicts, in which the combatants include ad hoc militias, criminal gangs, even children. In almost all of them, small arms are the primary weapons.

EDDIE BANKS: (On the street: Washington, DC) Any time you get any amount of weaponry, in terms of large masses, and if they are used by a large amount of folks, well, it may not be as quick, but it can be just as damaging.

NARRATOR: No region is more affected than Africa, where at least 8 civil wars are taking place.

GEN. QUAINOO: I actually retired from the military having seen the futility of using weapons as an answer to a political problem.

NARRATOR: Lt. General Arnold Quainoo served 35 years in the army of Ghana and commanded the first West African peacekeeping force to Liberia. After retiring, he founded the Center for Conflict Resolution in Ghana to promote dialogue and negotiation.

GEN. QUAINOO: The conflicts that we have had in Africa, the conflicts we've had in our subregion, West Africa, wouldn't have taken such dimensions, such bloody dimensions, without the easy accessibility and misuse of small arms.

WESSEH: We would like to see an end to the flow of arms from the countries of the North, especially, and from anywhere else to conflict zones.

NARRATOR: In war-ravaged Liberia, Conmany Wesseh runs the Center for Democratic Empowerment, a private group promoting the culture of democracy.

WESSEH: In Liberia, we saw 150,000 people being killed in the period of seven years, seven years of war. And most of those people died from small arms. From the action of small arms, the fear small arms induce, the displacement they cause, diseases, the hunger, and all that.

NARRATOR: There are an estimated 500 million military firearms in circulation today, in addition to hundreds of millions of guns designed for police and civilian use. In Mozambique, the AK-47 assault rifle became so prevalent during the long civil war that it is literally part of "the fabric of society," emblazoned on the national flag. Relatively low-tech and easy to manufacture, small arms are now produced in over 50 countries around the world. Unlike larger weapons such as aircraft, small arms do not become obsolete and rarely break down, so their numbers continue to grow as more are made.

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NARRATOR: During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union poured millions of small arms into proxy wars around the world. Most of those weapons continue to circulate - and to kill. With the end of the Cold War, many armies are shrinking, creating large surpluses of military guns that soon change hands.

KLARE: We have to deal not only with new weapons being manufactured each year, but the hundreds of millions of weapons already in circulation that can be recycled from conflict to conflict.

NARRATOR: In today's free-market world, weapons have become a form of currency, and are often sold into war zones or countries where tensions are high.

SEC. OF STATE ALBRIGHT: (speech) This dirty business fuels conflict, fortifies extremism, and destabilizes entire regions.

NARRATOR: In countries attempting to recover from the ravages of war, the easy availability of light weapons has made peace an elusive goal.

WESSEH: The arms are still in our society, and they're being used by security forces who themselves require some training. Therefore with that presence, with that fear, it undermines democratic building, democracy building.

NARRATOR: In societies saturated with small arms, the weapons make the resort to violence easy and natural.

DOUGLAS: Wherever arms flow, the violence follows. Bullets replace ballots as the solution to political disputes. Violent revenge replaces open discussion as the solution to religious disputes.

NARRATOR: The combination of poverty and guns has spawned cultures of violence in which the distinction between political struggle and crime has become blurred.

WESSEH: We see a situation of criminalization of political issues, or the politicization of criminals.

KLARE: You have lots of young men and teenage boys without employment, without skills but with weapons left over from the war, and a lot of them have joined criminal gangs, continued the killing and looting that went on before without any political purpose at all.

NARRATOR: In El Salvador, more people have been killed in criminal violence since the cease fire than died during the 12-year civil war. Although South Africa made the transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994, crime and gang violence have escalated as poverty and guns remain throughout the society.

FADE DOWN / FADE UP

NARRATOR: Let's look at how the business of small arms sales works. Small arms trade hands both through legal, government-approved deals, and illegally, through a burgeoning black market.

KLARE: We are concerned both with the illicit, illegal trade in small arms as well as the licit, government-sanctioned trade, both in my mind contribute to the problem of proliferation of these weapons around the world.

(On the street)

INTERVIEWER: What country do you think sells the most weapons around the world?

WOMAN ON THE STREET: I would say, umm...

2^nd WOMAN: Maybe Saudi Arabia?

3^rd WOMAN: I don't know; I would say Iraq.

1^ST WOMAN: Maybe in, I don't know...

MAN ON THE STREET: I think probably the U.S. and China.

1^st WOMAN: I have no idea, I don't know. I wouldn't speculate.

INTERVIEWER: You might be surprised to find out it's the United States.

1^st WOMAN: (laughing) I was going to say that, but then I said, 'no no no,' I might be so wrong.

NARRATOR: The U.S. government is the world's top overall weapons merchant, and sanctions millions of dollars worth of small arms sales every year. In 1996 alone, the State Department licensed nearly $500 million worth of small arms sales abroad. The Commerce Department authorized nearly $70 million in shotgun sales. While not all licenses lead to actual sales, the low price of these weapons means that the U.S. is selling tens of thousands of light weapons abroad each year. Many of these deals are military-brokered sales to foreign armies, such as the 1997 sale of over 40,000 assault rifles to the Thai military.

JONATHAN WOLK: (On the street, Rockville, MD) We want to make the money, and our government doesn't want to get themselves knocked out of the sales market. If they can take those dollars, they're going to do it. Our government has proven over and over that its morals are limited when it comes to such things.

NARRATOR: In addition to government sales, many more deals are direct commercial sales from private U.S. arms brokers to private foreign buyers. U.S. government personnel in our embassies abroad are instructed to encourage small arms sales, acting as promoters and facilitators for American businesses. Deals involving less than $14 million worth of weapons -- which can buy over 20,000 assault rifles -- do not require Congressional notification, and occur without any public scrutiny. Once sold, these weapons can exchange hands many times. The U.S. does not conduct routine inspections to see if the arms are being illegally diverted.

KLARE: Some of the regular customers for U.S. weapons, light weapons on a large scale have been countries like Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, and it's claimed that this is in the interest of U.S. national security. What we find is that often these guns are used for purposes other than the stated purpose. Many of the generals in Thailand and Indonesia are corrupt and they sell these weapons on the black market and they wind up in conflicts elsewhere, or they end up in the hands of death squads or private warlords.

NARRATOR: In 1993, U.S.-supplied assault rifles to Thailand were found in an arms depot run by the Khmer Rouge, the radical militants responsible for killing over a million fellow Cambodians.

The Pentagon also gives away thousands of weapons it calls 'excess', including small arms and ammunition. Since 1995, the U.S. military has given away over 300,000 light weapons to dozens of countries. The Pentagon claims it is cheaper to give away these weapons than to destroy them.

Now the U.S. military is planning to introduce a new, more destructive weapon to replace the M-16 assault rifle as the standard infantry weapon. Once this occurs, we can expect a flood of M-16s to be handed out to foreign armies - including those defending repressive regimes.

Beyond the obvious profits for U.S. corporations, the government claims that the purpose of foreign arms sales is to strengthen friends and allies.

SMALDONE: If one analyzes the total arms flow from the United States, is very clear that historically the predominance of those has been to countries that are allies and friendly to us. The enduring patterns of U.S. national security and foreign policy interests remain attached to those countries to build strong defense and political relationships with them and inevitably involves a close defense relationship including arms transfers.

NARRATOR: Just in the 1990s, the U.S. has sold or given arms to a long list of countries with either ongoing conflicts, a history of human rights abuses, or both: (TEXT SCROLL:) Algeria, Bosnia, China, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates.

LAURANCE: There's still a problem, as there's been for many years, in the U.S. selling weapons where they simply don't do any good, and add to the problem.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most destabilizing small arms dispersal practice by the United States has been secret shipments to insurgent groups - especially in Angola, Central America, and Afghanistan, where it's estimated a whopping $6 Billion worth of light weapons were sent in the 1980s to help the Afghan guerrillas fight the Soviets.

KLARE: Many of these are still in use today, intact, in camps, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and what we are finding is that these weapons are now being used to support insurgencies and terrorist operations around the world.

NARRATOR: In Angola, U.S. taxpayers paid for an estimated $300 million in secret arms shipments to rebel forces during the Cold War. Today, over half a million deaths later, some 40 percent of Angolans are amputees due to war-related injuries. Awash in weapons, a tentative peace is sliding back into war once again.

The global spread of small arms also threatens U.S. interests.

SMALDONE: The United States does recognize that the proliferation and misuse of weapons, particularly small arms, in many areas of the world, does pose serious threats to national security and particularly international security.

NARRATOR: The widespread availability of light weapons has put aid workers at risk, strengthened drug traffickers and terrorists, and led to long-term instability in some regions that weakens the global economy. In today's world of internal wars and collapsed governments, U.S. troops are increasingly called on to intervene. As they did in Somalia, American forces may find their own lives threatened by the proliferation of small arms. In the 1980s, the Pentagon sold 5000 assault weapons to Somalia. In 1993, 17 U.S. Rangers were killed and 84 wounded in a single firefight with Somali gunmen.

FADE DOWN / FADE UP

NARRATOR: While the legal, government-sanctioned dispersal of small arms is difficult enough to track, the illegal trade is by its very nature secret. Lax gun laws in the U.S. have made it a gun-runner's paradise.

KLARE: Historically, it's been so easy to purchase weapons in the United States compared to most other places in the world, very often criminal groups and insurgent groups in Latin America for instance, will come to the United States to buy weapons from gun stores and then smuggle them across the border.

NARRATOR: Even as we claim to be fighting a "war on drugs," U.S.-bought guns go to drug traffickers in Latin America, where they in turn strengthen the drug trade back into the United States. In 1997 alone, Mexican officials seized over 23,000 firearms from criminals that were originally bought in the United States. In response to pressure from Latin American governments weary of U.S. guns turning up in crimes, in 1997 the United States joined in a treaty sponsored by the Organization of American States in an attempt to slow illegal trafficking in small arms.

,b>SEC. OF STATE ALBRIGHT: We negotiated a convention at the Organization of American States that criminalizes the unregulated manufacture and sale of firearms and related materials.

NARRATOR: U.S. government efforts to stem the flow of small arms have focused on illegal, black market trafficking, while ignoring the government-sanctioned legal trade.

KLARE: They are beginning to take steps to shut down or to curb the illicit trade in weapons, and we support those initiatives. We find that governments are much less inclined to impose new controls on the legal commercial trade in guns.

NARRATOR: While Joe Smaldone disputes this contention ...

SMALDONE: The United States considers both the combating illicit trafficking as well as effective regulation of the so-called "legal trade," both to be essential elements of the international approach to controlling small arms proliferation and misuse.

NARRATOR: ...Secretary of State Albright would appear to confirm the point:

SEC. OF STATE ALBRIGHT: (speech) The culprit is not the legitimate international trade in arms, nor the sale of individual weapons to sportsmen, collectors, businesspeople and homeowners. The problem is the unregulated and illegitimate sale of large quantities of weapons, often via middlemen, to places unknown, for purposes unasked, to end users whose identities are not investigated.

NARRATOR: Secretary Albright's reference to "sportsmen" and "collectors" in the context of the global light weapons problem reflects the influence of the domestic firearms industry and its chief lobbying group, the National Rifle Association. The NRA views any movement to curb the global spread of military small arms as a threat to domestic gun ownership. U.S. policy statements on small arms now include this NRA-authored line:

"This agreement protects the legal trade in firearms, and does not discourage or diminish the lawful ownership and use of firearms."

DOUGLAS: When I was growing up, I was told that the United States should set an example for the world. In the realm of small arms control, that example is not a good one. The statistics rain down in a torrent of unnecessary death and destruction.

NARRATOR: With nearly 200 million firearms in private hands, the U.S. suffers over 34,000 shooting deaths a year. Millions of military style-assault weapons remain legal in the U.S., and the firearms industry has proven adept at exploiting loopholes in the laws to continue producing them. As with many other consumer products, guns are marketed by emphasizing sex appeal, as in this ad for a device that allows your semi-automatic weapon to mimic full-auto fire -- legally, of course.

With its extensive gun culture and the clout wielded by the firearms industry, the U.S. may have a tough time convincing the world of its commitment to stopping the global bloodshed caused by small arms.

FADE DOWN / FADE UP

NARRATOR: People in regions long plagued by war have begun to take action.

WESSEH (Liberia): We are active in removing, campaigning for the removal of the kinds of arms we're talking about. We'd like to see a society where our children will not be inundated and be addicted to arms.

NARRATOR: A group of West African nations has recently adopted a region-wide ban on the import, export, and manufacture of small arms. In a ceremony marking the ban, thousands of guns were destroyed. In El Salvador, the government has been offering former combatants desirable consumer products in exchange for their weapons. The Canadian government has recently pledged support for expanding these programs.

AXWORTHY SPEECH: If you want to buy the new couch, or VCR turn in your AK-47. I mean that's not a bad slogan. And the fact is, it's been working extremely well.

NARRATOR: The United States could take a number of steps on its own to reduce the number of small arms in circulation, starting with stricter tests on which countries may get the weapons.

KLARE: That is to say that there is no record of persistent human rights violations by the government, that the government is able to demonstrate that weapons in its possession will not disappear into the black market through corruption, or loose management of weapons, that there is no history of the government being in cahoots with an ethnic militia in the country, or political armed gangs or death squads.

NARRATOR: The U.S. military could also stop selling or giving away excess weapons. Factoring in the long-term costs from their potential diversion and misuse, the cost of scrapping them may become more reasonable. The U.S. could also use its influence to put pressure on other countries to do the same. More broadly, the U.S. could make a greater investment in fostering good governance and economic development in countries where repression and poverty fuel the demand for weapons.

Due to public pressure, the U.S. government is begrudgingly beginning to turn its attention to global small arms crisis. What remains to be seen is whether the U.S. will take on the leadership role that goes with superpower status.

ADM. CARROLL: As you have seen, the violence inflicted by military small arms and light weapons falls mainly on innocent civilians in the world's smaller countries. Arms left over from the Cold War are part of the problem, but new weapons from many nations, led by the United States I regret to say, are adding to the problem. This flow of deadly weapons must end to reduce the tragic toll of death and injuries which afflict the world. This can happen only if the United States takes the lead in a humanitarian effort to control and reduce the destructive trafficking in small arms. It is long past time to urge all our governments to take the moral responsibility to end what is truly a crime against the weakest and most helpless people in the world today. For America's Defense Monitor, I'm Eugene Carroll.

Produced by the Center for Defense Information
Scriptwriter: Glenn Baker
Segment Producer: Glenn Baker
Show Number: 1216
Special Funding Provided by The MacArthur Foundation