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This report provides an overview of DSEi, including short profiles of some of the main companies attending and information on many of the damaging aspects of the arms trade. The companies are presented in alphabetical order throughout the report and the main issues and countries are considered in information boxes near relevant companies (see Contents for an alphabetical list).
DSEi
From 9th-12th September 2003, East London will be taken over by arms dealers. Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi) is a weapons fair and conference of enormous proportions and is likely to be one of the world's largest ever arms exhibitions.
The ExCel centre, a modern complex in London's docklands, will host over 1,000 arms companies, selling small arms, missiles, planes, tanks, military electronics and warships, as well as surveillance and riot control equipment to buyers from all over the world. One in three of the world's governments will be at the arms fair, shopping for military equipment. Adversaries will shop side-by-side for weapons to use against each other. All this will take place in secret, behind heavily protected security fences and police lines.
DESO - the government's arms dealer
DSEi is run in association with the MoD's Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), whose mission is 'to maximise legitimate UK defence exports in co-ordination with industry'. DESO is central to the UK government's support of the arms trade. It is responsible for the promotion of UK arms exports and co-ordinates arms trade support within Whitehall and the MoD.
The Defence Sales Organisation (DSO), as the DESO was then known, was set up by the Labour government in 1966. Denis Healey, Minister of Defence at the time, said: 'While the government attach the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market.'1 The DSO changed its name to the Defence Export Services Organisation in 1985 to 'more accurately reflect its role' 2, namely to 'assist British defence industries to promote and sell their goods abroad'.
Today, DESO has over 600 staff in London and in its overseas offices.3 Its net cost was £11,077 million in 2001/2.4 It is headed, as it always has been, by a secondee from an arms company, giving the industry a powerful voice inside the government. The current incumbent is Alan Garwood, whose career has been with BAE Systems.
DSEi's forerunners
Prior to 1999, DESO organised the government's military export exhibitions. From 1976 until 1991 the British Army Equipment Exhibition (BAEE) and the Royal Navy Equipment Exhibition (RNEE) were held in alternate years in Aldershot and Portsmouth respectively. In September 1993 the first combined Royal Navy & British Army Equipment Exhibition was held in Aldershot and others followed in 1995 and 1997. Overseas delegations attended by invitation only. Some of the visiting delegations came from governments with poor human rights records such as Indonesia and Chile, or from countries in conflict. In 1986 Iraq was represented at the BAEE by a five-strong delegation led by its Director of Armaments and Supplies, despite having already been at war with Iran for almost six years.
On display at these exhibitions was everything that might be of use to the armed forces, from tanks and frigates to footwear and musical instruments, as well as support services like banking.
DSEi - public or private?
With the arrival of 'New' Labour and its obsession with privatisation, the Royal Navy & British Army Equipment Exhibition was pushed out to the commercial sector. An exhibitions firm called Spearhead Exhibitions Ltd launched DSEi 1999 at Chertsey in Surrey, with boats on display at London docklands. Though run by a private firm, the government arranged invitations and contributed £250,000 and hundreds of military personnel to help run the show. DSEi 2001, which took place at the Excel centre, London docklands, received even more government support, with Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in attendance.
This year's DSEi shows no let up in government assistance. The MoD estimates that DSEi will set it back £400,000 in 'direct costs', and 'in addition, representatives of Her Majesty's Government may carry out activities associated with the exhibition, as part of their normal duties, which could be identified only at disproportionate cost.'5 DESO activities at DSEi include 'conducting Army equipment and waterborne demonstrations'.6
DSEi is still very much the UK government's arms fair, and the government's responsibility.
The invitation lists
The official invitation list is entirely a product of the UK government. As DESO states in its introduction to this year's official list, 'the Defence Export Services Organisation prepares the list of countries to receive official invitations. In doing so they take account of current marketing campaigns and longer-term prospects for business with the countries concerned. Political issues, arms embargoes and current international relations imperatives are considered in the process.'7
There is also a second invitation list, provided by Spearhead. The extent to which the MoD is involved in discussions and decisions about the content of this list is unclear. What is clear is that the MoD does not object to the presence of any of the governments invited. The Spearhead lists have contained around 20 more countries than the official lists, some of which are highly controversial. (DSEi invitation lists are collated in Table 1 overleaf.)
On August 28th 2003, Spearhead stated that it would not be hosting international delegations this year, and that it had produced '1/2 million flyers to be inserted in defence journals to generate the 20,000 visitors expected to attend DSEi'.8 However, the following day a list of countries became available from Spearhead, introduced with the sentence 'Invitations to attend DSEi 03 were sent to the following London based Embassies by the organizers of DSEi 03'. The countries included Afghanistan and Israel, neither of which were on the official list.
Human rights abuse, conflict, terrorism... in association with DSEi
Eighty countries have received invitations to DSEi 2003. These have been sent to governments of some of the world's worst human rights abusing states, including Colombia, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Inviting delegates to arms exhibitions like DSEi provides countries with not only the opportunity to buy the weapons and tools with which they can perpetrate human rights abuses, but also gives moral and political support to their actions.
DSEi is also directly engaged in fueling conflict around the world, allowing arms companies to sell weapons to countries on the brink of, and actually in, conflict. Without the international arms trade, countries could not go to war on the scale they do, civilian and military casualties would be far less, and the world would simply be a safer and better place. India and Pakistan have both been officially invited to this year's DSEi. Angola, Namibia, Uganda and Zimbabwe have received invitations to previous DSEi exhibitions regardless of their involvement in the horrors of the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict.
As if this acceptance of conflict and human rights abuse was not shocking enough, DSEi appears to be ambivalent about terrorism. Though the US and the UK may have accused countries like Syria and Pakistan of sponsoring or supporting terrorism, both of these countries were invited to previous DSEi exhibitions and have both received official invitations for DSEi 2003.
On 11th September 2001, just as terrorists were flying airplanes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the United States, 11 different Middle Eastern nations were shopping for weapons at DSEi 2001, side by side with the US, Israel, Australia and the UK. While thousands of other events across the world were cancelled out of respect for the dead, arms dealers carried on selling weaponry at DSEi for three more days.
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