The Virulence of Violence: Seeds of Destruction

Washington Post , February 4, 2001

Yugoslavia - a Slovenian defense soldier stands guard (courtesy Associated Press)

The proliferation of light weapons is seriously impeding political and economic reforms in developing countries from Congo to Colombia, the author argues, and the resulting downward spiral could threaten U.S. national security.

When wars are waged with tanks and bombers, peace treaties stand a chance of bringing peace. But the conflicts characterized by small arms and light weapons can leave a legacy of everyday criminal violence, researchers say.

"Societies awash in weapons often find themselves caught in a culture of violence even after the formal conflict ends," Jeffrey Boutwell and Michael Klare wrote last June in Scientific American magazine. "For young ex-combatants who have known little else besides war, their weapons become a status symbol and a means for making a living. . . ."

To quantify the effect of weapons after a war is over, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did a case study in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, where it has provided care to the injured since 1983. Kandahar was the site of protracted conflict among rival combatant groups in the 1980s and 1990s; but by March 1995 the region had come under the uncontested control of a single faction, the Taliban. The relative peace allowed many refugees to return to their homes, but no attempt was made to disarm the population.

The ICRC analyzed its Kandahar surgical database from January 1991 to March 1995 and compared it with the period from September 1995 to March 1997. All people injured by weapons during either the "conflict" or the "post-conflict" periodand admitted to a hospital within 24 hours of the wounding were included in the study.

After controlling for population growth, the study showed that the annual incidence of weapons injuries dropped by only 33 percent after the conflict period. "This case study reveals how misleading the term 'post-conflict' can be," the ICRC said in its 1998 report on small-arms proliferation. "Although the politico-military rationale for using weapons would have ostensibly disappeared . . . rates of weapon injury underwent only a modest decrease."

Furthermore, the study showed, mortality rates for weapon injuries actually increased during the post-conflict period, from 2.5 percent to 6.1 percent. In practical terms, this meant that more people died per month from weapon injuries during the time when Kandahar was supposedly at peace than when it was at war.

It would have been less significant if the post-conflict injuries were due to leftover, unmanned weapons such as land mines, but most were inflicted by guns and other weapons requiring active intent. Boutwell and Klare say that, in many post-conflict societies,as many as 70 percent of all civiliansown military-type firearms, mainly assault rifles.

"From El Salvador to South Africa, the story is depressingly similar," they write. "Years of internal conflict are followed by high rates of social and criminal violence made possible by the easy access to small arms and light weapons."

In another article, Peter Herby of the ICRC noted how the proliferation of small arms "threatens to undermine the fabric of international humanitarian law."

"[T]his body of law assumes that military-style arms are in the hands of armed forces with a certain level of training, discipline and control," he wrote. "When such weapons become available to broad segments of the population, including undisciplined groups, bandits, mentally insecure individuals and even children, the task of ensuring basic knowledge of humanitarian law among those in possession of such arms becomes difficult if not impossible."

This article appeared in the Washington Post, February 4, 2000

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