While assumptions based on ethnic ties and availability of small arms suggest otherwise, arms trade between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan is modest. This Small Arms Survey report explores the influence of history, geography and recent conflict on the small arms trade on the border between the DRC and Sudan. Despite the current low demand for weapons, experience has shown that border communities remain vulnerable to the spillover effects of conflict and armed groups.
Several factors suggest that a robust trade in weapons might take place across the 628km border between the DRC and Sudan. Despite borders imposed by colonial powers that cut through ethnic groups, post-colonial Congolese and Sudanese have relied on their shared ethnicity to foster cross-border cultural, economic and trade ties. DRC and South Sudan civil wars in the past thirty years caused the temporary and, in some cases, permanent migration of combatants between the two countries. The border is marked by minimal controls and inaccessible roads and terrain.
Despite assumptions to the contrary, this study finds that arms trade between the DRC and Sudan is modest. General trends in small arms flows in the region include:
- Small arms trafficking occurs in small-scale transactions at markets on the Sudanese side of the border. Any arms movement that exists flows from South Sudan to the DRC.
- Demand is weak on both sides of the border. South Sudanese communities remain saturated with small arms. In the DRC, rigorous civilian disarmament efforts by the army and lack of perceived need for arms among civilians have kept demand low.
- Remoteness of the area and decrepit conditions of cross-border routes restrict all types of trade.
- Armed civilians move easily and, to a large extent, undetected, in and out of both countries. Poachers and nomadic pastoralists, who have crossed the border for years, are tolerated by citizens and rarely hampered by local authorities.
- Current and former soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army have exploited their ethnic links in the DRC to trade in guns and other merchandise.
- The presence of armed groups on the border, including Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), acts as a check on arms trade.
Despite the current low demand for weapons, border communities remain vulnerable to the spillover effects of conflict and armed groups. The following recent armed group activity highlights this vulnerability:
- In 1998, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army crossed the border and ransacked parts of northern DRC. Because border controls barely existed, they remained, unencumbered, for years.
- Seven years after its arrival, the LRA nearly brought a conflict originating in Uganda into northern DRC.
- The recently-renewed Juba peace negotiations have not eliminated the potential LRA threat to communities on both sides of the border. Should the LRA decide to go on the offensive, there is currently little or no military presence to oppose the group.
