Global Policy Forum

By Leslie Adler

A 12-year-old U.N. arms embargo in Somalia is being routinely violated, fueling the cycle of violence that has killed hundreds in recent months and supplying arms to an insecure region of neighboring Kenya, a U.N. monitoring group said in a report released on Monday.

The report was by the Nairobi-based monitoring group. The U.N. Security Council established it in December 2003 to look into violations of the embargo established in 1992. It chronicled the flow of arms into and out of Somalia via sea, air and road. Counterfeit currency, loopholes in financial regulations and illegal drug sales help finance the trade, it said.

It painted a picture of free-wheeling arms markets that do a brisk business selling arms ranging from machine guns and mines to anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank weapons. The monitoring group said the arms violations could threaten peace efforts in Somalia, carved into a patchwork of rival fiefdoms run by warlords since the overthrow of a military leader in 1991.

Thousands Dead

Kenya has been hosting peace efforts for more than a year aimed at ending bloodshed and chaos in Somalia, an East African country of about 7 million people, which has seen hundreds of thousands killed by war and famine in the past decade.

The monitoring group, referring to a "never-ending cycle of violent and deadly confrontations," said its work "clearly suggests a strong relationship between this cycle of violence and the ready availability of armaments offered through the large and pervasive Somali network of arms markets."

While describing a continual flow of arms flowing into Somalia and circulating within and moving out of the country, it said there had been a recent shift in the players. "While in the past, warlords were known to have been the main importers of arms and weapons, arms traders and other businessmen are increasingly playing a more active and bigger role in the traffic," it said. The report offered fresh detail on smuggling into Kenya, saying a steady flow of light arms was carried into Somalia's western neighbor by fishing boats and trucks.

Al Qaeda In Somalia

A U.N. report issued last November found that a deadly 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned resort hotel in Kenya and a failed simultaneous assault on an Israeli airliner were organized by al Qaeda fighters armed and trained in Somalia.

Somalia's 2,000-mile (3,200-km) coastline, the second-largest in Africa, the unregulated movement of small boats and the lack of a customs authority complicate efforts to track the illegal arms trade, the monitoring group said. While the monitoring group traveled to seven countries in the region -- including Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen -- it did not visit Somalia because of security concerns.

While the Security Council wanted the group to draw up a list of embargo violators for possible punitive action, the monitors said a longer investigation was needed. In the meantime, it recommended drafting a confidential watch list, and that any individuals placed on it be investigated further for violations. The group said it could not recommend any measures for tightening the embargo until the "patterns and systems of violation" were better understood.

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