Guns flowing to Mexico from the U.S.

In Mexico City, officers destroy the guns seized from drug cartels. Just in the last four years more than 74,000 guns were seized by the Mexican government that claims the guns were smuggled from the United States.

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Booth, William. "U.S. struggles to stop flow of guns to Mexico." Washington Post. Oct 7 2010. Web.

Eight O'clock Deal

Gauge

                  I run my city. I am entrusted by god to watch over my city. Although I must constantly fight to protect it from the other African nations that wish to tell us how to live, I will do my job before god. It was mine from birth and will be mine even after my blood flows through the streets and I have taken my final breath.  I am Somali and this is Somalia, my people’s country. No Kenyan, Ghanan or South African scum will tell us how to run our country.

Before I knew it was mine, I was just a boy who liked to play soccer, but you can’t just play all day. As this child this city was too much for me to handle or even understand. Hazkeh came to me when I was 15 and told me to work for him with his men. He would teach me how to control my city and work for my people through god. He would teach me to fight the African Union Troops and cast these devils from Mogadishu. He would teach me why this was right. He was the one who gave me my first AK.

This simple machine of metal and wood made me like god but I knew it was a servant of god. I rode the trucks with the big machine guns at first. Until I began to smoke the sound of the machine guns frightened me too much and I was shaky. I had to conquer my fear because there were worse things than the noise. The ones we fought wanted to kill me and the brave men I fought with. I had many fears to conquer in my early days. Mogadishu was always my home and we made sure that any who stood before us met our bullets that were the final judgment from god. The sound of the machine guns began to sounds like the footsteps of god running down my enemies and my fears of the fighting were lifted.

            I remember the day I almost met my maker and was reminded of my humanity. Hazkeh and I were alone in an alley. Everyone in our truck was dead. Even the machine gun was out of ammunition. We were huddled behind the back end of the truck. The shots of our enemies rang out against our truck. A lone man came around the side with his pistol. He fired at us and we did the same to him in return. Hazkeh was hit and fell to the ground. I panicked and tried to return fire but my AK was empty. I fell back in the most fear I had felt from my first ride through the streets on that old truck and ran around the other end of the truck to hide from my attacker. I began to pray and this was when god blessed me. On the ground in front of the truck was a shotgun. I picked it up and with the hand of god as my sword and shield I ran at this man who now stood over my bleeding friend Hazkeh and killed him.

            Hazkeh was going to be okay and he was okay. He gave me a name. From then on people who knew me would call me “Gauge”. It was the word they used to describe different sized shotgun shells. Time would make people respect this name. Men and women move from the streets when they hear Gauge is coming. They know I am a soldier of my god and my countrymen and they know the strength of my men and me. No one will disrespect me or they stand in the way of god’s work. This is not about power, though many think power is all I crave. This is about doing what is right for my people, my city and my country. I will do so until god directs me to something else.

            I am in charge now because I have lost my mentor and we have lost our leader. A Russian man who promised him guns killed Hazkeh. He promised AKs and rocket launchers but only gave him two bullets in his chest. I do not know this man. I don’t need to know him or the scum he lives with and calls family. All I need to know is that I have my instructions from god and I will be there when he takes his last breath. This devil and his blood will be fertilizer for Mogadishu and the fruits it will bring forth for my people in the future when we finally end our struggle.

            Tomorrow I meet with a man from Russia named “Surge” I think his name is Surgeo, but I am not certain. We have made a deal to trade my stolen American dollars for a shipment of weapons.  I am not sure if he is the one who killed Hazkeh but I don’t care. I need the guns for my men. It will only take one question to find out if he is the guilty one.  I can look at any man’s face and tell if he is lying. My time in front of men has made me realize who is good, who is bad and who is lying to me.

            The meeting will be at the old school outside of the city. Long ago when the Americans were still here the school was open. I am told they used it to spread propaganda to my people teach them the ways of the American Devil. When they left, no one could keep the school safe and it was abandoned. Another militia tried to use it for their base. My close worker Sammy has checked it out and told me it is clear to meet this Russian at 8 o’clock. We will trade on the soccer field and all of my men will wait just over the hill with weapons ready just in case something goes wrong.  They all better hope that it goes perfectly or they will feel the wrath of god and my people. I will kill anyone I need to, to make life better for my people.

By: Dawson Davis

Surge

Being raised on the streets with no mother taught me a lot of things like trusting nobody. It taught me how to be a tougher person and showed me a different way of dealing with life. It showed me the savage way to become a human with bad influence on the world.

I don’t remember having a name or even being given a name, because my mother left me on the streets when I was born. My friends that I grew up with called me Surge. I lived with two other kids, Misha, the oldest, said that I was about two months old when he found me on the corner of the street near the tobacco shop across from the light rail in downtown Petersburg, Russia. Vlad, the other kid I grew up with, said that his mother left him on the street as well. He took care of me when I was a baby. Actually, they both took care of me when I was a baby until I was old enough to take care of my self. We used to live in a tent under the new bridge that they built in Petersburg and we would sell gum on the streets to make money and to buy food. Misha would supply the money to buy the gum so we could sell it. I never asked how he first got the money to start off with, we just took the gum, sold it and brought the money back to him.

He would give us some back to do whatever we want with. It would mostly just give us enough to buy food. After a while, I started to wonder where all his money came from. I’m not saying he had a lot of money, but he had more that all of us and he lived a little better than us. He actually had a small, old, smelly mattress that he slept on while we were sleeping with rough blankets on the cement and no pillows. One day he asked Vlad and me if we would like to make some more money and get into this business with him. We had no idea what it was or where it was. We trusted him though so we both blindly agreed because we needed the money.

He told us to be ready at 8:00pm and would then tell us what we needed to do. I didn’t like the fact that it was at night but I didn’t know what it was and I was curious to find out. Vlad and I were chatting while we were getting ready and we were so happy that were going to work and finally start to make more money. We got ready and Misha came back home.  We all biked to this light rail station and we jumped on the light rail and quickly sat down. Misha then looked at both of us and said, “Listen. When I hand you the bag, just hide it and don’t ask any questions.”  Vlad and I glanced at each other with worried eyes and I could just tell that Vlad was scared from the way Misha was talking. Misha spoke in a rough, quick voice that sounded old to the both of us. We were just little kids, and we had no idea what was in store for us.

A young man, I would say around 23 years old casually walked up to us and sat next to Misha. He quickly handed Misha three cloth bags with a dark box tucked in each bag. Misha passed them down to us in the same, quick manner. The man stood up, exited the light rail, and didn’t speak one word. He got off at the Brooklyn street drop off and we just stayed sitting silently on the light rail until it brought us back to where we came from. The bags were heavy and awkward to carry. We tried to hide the bags the best we could until we got home. When we arrived at our home, Misha took the bags from us and swiftly opened them to check their contents. There were three guns sitting in the boxes. Vlad and I stood stiff, frozen in shock. Misha glanced up at us and then began to explain how he had been making all of his money. He was selling guns to gangs for a little more than what he actually paid for them. He got me into this game and taught me how to start it. Thus began my career. And I started dealing with weapons and selling them and making large profits and a lot of money that helped me move up from being a poor kid selling gum on the streets and not having a mother to a rich man having everything I want at the tip of my fingers. I started dealing with weapons and selling them to different countries around the world. On a cloudy rainy day at 8 in the morning I was meeting up with Gauge a Somalian militia leader that has asked me to supply him with weapons in exchange for some American money that he has stolen. we are meeting at a soccer field near an abandoned school. I am not too worried I’ve worked with his kind before and had to kill someone just like him and I’m not hesitating to kill another one. My pistol is loaded incase he makes the wrong move.

By: Mike Aldaya

Samuel Johnson

It’s 3:00 in the fucking morning and my phone is ringing. I don’t think Chief Ali believes in sleep.

“Yes, sir.”

“Make sure you’re prepared, Samuel Johnson. There is more on the line than just your life. “

“Yes, sir.”

He always was a man of few words.

 I hadn’t realized that beads of sweat were forming on my brow and my hands were shaking. Chief is right, there is more on the line than my life. If my cover is blown, years of work—dangerous work—are lost. The lives of thousands are at stake if all of my work is for nothing. I have to get this right.

            Why does it have to rain on a day like this? The one day I need to wear wires is the day that I cannot wear them. All right, now what? Back up should be near by, then. They will probably have to post somewhere on the abandoned school’s grounds. If I just tell Gauge that I personally checked the school, he will trust me, hopefully. That’s the upside of being his right hand man in all of this. If he needs something, he comes to me. That’s also the downside; he then has more time with me to unscrew my minds hinges. He has a way with that.

            “Don’t fuck with me, Sammy. You better not be fucking with me. I don’t like people who fuck with me, and you know what I do to people who I don’t like.”  He would calmly say.  I sure as hell hope he doesn’t get out of this shit today. I’d just like to escape Mogadishu with at least some sanity. That’s not too likely.

            It’s 3:49 in the morning and I can feel my heart running. I’m nervous, real nervous. Granted, I’m on edge every time I’m with Gauge, but this is just as bad as the first day I met him— if not worse.  I already knew everything there was to know about what makes this prick’s mind tick, but that still didn’t prepare me for what laid ahead of me. I was introduced to him by one of his minions at his house. As soon as I shook his hand he took out a pistol and shot the man that introduced us in the forehead. He said that those who opposed him were opposing the work of god himself. His ideology is very skewed he doesn’t see the torment he puts his own people through every day.

            Without a second glance he spoke, “I don’t like it when people assume I want to meet other people.” The man’s blood covered the front door filling every crack and defect in the wood as it slowly dripped down to the expensive looking, white rug. I watched as his plump, ragged maid slowly walked up to the dead man and gently closed his eyes. She had clearly seen that before. Gauge waved me inside, and thus began our three-year joy ride.

            I never wanted to be a fucking Interpol agent to begin with. Why couldn’t I have just stuck with my job as a professor and kept leading a normal life? I guess I could have seen this coming. I always had a way with words and a mind for a challenge. I should have just stayed with my trophy wife even though she was a fucking idiot and only wanted my money; I loved the dumb broad nonetheless. Maybe it was my own teachings in that life as a professor that would lead me to “practice what I preached”.

            I had it made, but I still wanted more. I had a house on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota during the summer season and a rented condo in Hawaii during Minnesota’s dreadful winters. Now I’m here, in Somalia, living in a shack. What time is it?  It’s only 4:28. Time is slow, but my heart shows no sign of being tired. I’m twacked out and it shows. My hair is dirty, my eyes are bugged and my shirt looks as if I haven’t changed in three weeks—which is true.

            8:00am could not come any slower. I have no clue what this Surge guy is capable of; I need to be prepared. Gauge tells me this guy might have killed his mentor with two bullets to the chest at a gun deal gone sour. He’s a Russian arms dealer, and he’s dangerous. Gauge had me set it up so his men are near by in case Surge tries to pull something. Little does he know that as soon as his men post up, the police will quietly take them down. Let’s just hope they manage to stay quiet otherwise Gauge’s first bullet might be aimed at my head.

            What next? What becomes of me if this all works out in my favor? Fuck, it’s too early to be asking myself these questions. All I need to think about is staying alive. Maybe I’ll get a promotion, or maybe I’ll be transferred back to the United States. Damn it, I’m fucking doing it again. What time is it? 6:30. I’m going to shower, maybe that will slow my heartbeat. I doubt it, though.

            Okay, now that I’m wearing new clothes, shaven, and clean its time to set the final arrangements. Goddamn, the sound a phone makes when calling someone has always pissed me off. “Muhammad, make sure when you take Gauges men out you are as silent as possible. My life relies on it. Also, I need you to have men in the abandoned school near by, since I obviously can wear the wires in this. As soon as you see the deal, send you men. If you see anyone pull a gun besides me, snipe.”

            “Got it, Johnson… Oh, and good luck. Whatever happens out there, know that your work will not go to waste as long as I’m around.” He said, in a firm but gentle voice.  I hung up the phone without another word. What time is it? 7:30. 

By: Keely Hackett

Ajiib

       It started raining two hours after I got back from school then I ate some bread and took a nap. When I got up from the nap the rain had gone down. Bad weather had stormed the seasons out of order, and Mogadishu sat in a low flood and the clap of thunders woke me up. I went outside and I had seen my mother walking slowly home from work. She had shoes under her arms and her cloth is wet from the rain this afternoon. I rushed to her and gave her a hug, then went to sit in the hallway. I had not seen her for a while, as another man hard ruined the relationship between us. But this afternoon my mother smiled at me as she came up the hallway. She examined my head, back and legs. She was about to do something, when her boyfriend came out. She looked away, and then at her boyfriend, who pretended not to see me. They quietly left me and went to the bedroom. I held back my tears and left the hallway to meet by best friend “Soccer ball.”

         I found my best friend by the river when I went to take a morning shower by the river three years ago. And ever since then, we’ve been best of friends. My best friend is the only thing I run off too whenever am having a bad day or whenever I feel everything around me is going wrong.

        I left the house with my best friend and jumped into a canoe and sadly waved to our friends as the canoe pulled away from the shores of Mogadishu, more and more people were arriving in haste. I started walking with my best friend, we saw a young boy walking with his shoes on his head. Hey what’s wrong with you? I asked. He responded a group of young guys had just walk into the village with guns in their hand. I jumped back into the canoe and waved back to the house. With what I saw, I stopped and stood few blocks from my house.

        I have only seen something of this nature in the movie but now am seeing it in person. Young men slightly older than me with blood dripping all over there body. Some of them are walking around with gallon of gasoline and some walking around with gun on their neck. They burn down houses including my mother’s house. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do than to stand by a small hut with my soccer ball crying waiting to see what’s going happen next.. After killing almost everyone visible, the young men sat down on the ground and smoke cigarette and also talk about how people jumped on each other. I also heard them talk about how fun it is to burn down the house and how no one escape. A Little that the young guys know I am standing in the corner listening to their conversation with my heart pounding really hard.  Couple hours later, the young men left with gunshot in the air and song.

        While standing on the same spot, I remembered the good memories of my after. When I was younger, I use to ride on my father wide shoulders. We were on our way to the river to take a shower one morning, when my father told me a wonderful story about my mother. My father told me when he first met my mother, she was about my age, and they played together on this same road we are on. They both went to the same elementary school and same high school but they never made it to college because it was too expensive. On the road, you can see clouds moving away, like incense in a church. Mogadishu is full of winds, and by the river they blow at your eyes until tears stain you checks. If you get away from the city, it’s more than just a simple escape. You can find the large area of grass that was once a painted soccer field. The old goals still stand a little bit rusted, but we use them anyways. When the ball passes through them the triumph is as if we have been lifted from this world. My father was a strong and well respect man in the neighborhood. Every body knows that my father will attack them if they mess with me. Even when he is drunk on gin, my tears sober him.  So, I walk around the neighborhood with big ego.  He uses to tell me how my mother’s parent didn’t want him to marry my mother. Each time I do something that pleases my father; he would say “Getting married to your mother was the best thing I ever did in my life.” One evening, a young male shot and killed my father then he ran away from the city and never returns. His reason for killing my father was, “My father slapped him.”

I gently walked to see what’s left and all I could hear and see is people dead on the ground and birds singing. I walked to mother’s house and I saw my mother lying dead on the ground. Her boyfriend is nowhere to be found cried so hard but I could not touch her but held my soccer ball really tight because it’s the only thing I could run off to when things are wrong around me.

Tomorrow I will escape. At 8:00, my best friend and I will rule the world. I will make it fly as I cant. I am stuck in this place, but my dreams are from another world. The pain I have here leaves me when I am on this field. 

By: Dee Lasisi

Pro-Government Militia

2009 was host to the same fighting between pro government militia groups and Islamic militant groups that occurs today. In one day alone the fighting ended the lives of over twenty individuals. Pictured below is a group of pro government militiamen brandishing their small arms. This is a typical unit of these militias. Small trucks are employed to carry the soldiers to their battles in which the most commonly utilized weapon is the AK-47 (a Russian product).

 

Photo: Daniel Wallis, "Q+A What is behind the latest fighting in Somalia", Wosenseged Mersha,  Aug 2009, Web

AK-47 Commentary "Lord Of War"

Nicholas Cage's character in the lord of war gives disturbing commentary on the AK-47. Set to motion graphic typography. Though part of a work of fiction many of the views expressed in the commentary are true. In parts of the world the AK-47 is as a pair of shoes is here. In many parts of the world it is used by children. It fires a 7.62mm round with much more stopping power than the NATO 5.56 round. This I know from personal experience with both weapons during my  military service. The seemingly romantic tone his character uses during this monologue is not misplaced. The weapon is extremely useful, profitable and just as dangerous as it's reputation would lead you to believe.


Video: Brmmz, "Lord of War Typography", OCT 2008, Web
Audio: Director Andrew Niccol, "Lord of War", SEPT 2005, Lions Gate Entertainment, Film




Mozambique's Flag

Arms Trade in Dollars

Below the top two nations involved in arms trades  to developing nations numbers are exposed. Guess who's still number one? Chant with me now.... U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!.... Why would a nation that set up the U.N. (a peacekeeping body) be the main arms supplier to the developing world?

Chart: Richard Grimmett, CRS Report for Congress, "Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations", August 2005, Web

Somali SSC Militia

Aljazeera English explores and interviews a militia in Somalia. This militia also brandishes various types of small arms from rocket launchers, AK-47s and light machine guns.




Video: Aljazeera (English), July, 2010 Web

"Little Weapon" by Lupe Fiasco

Song: "Little Weapon", The Cool, Atlantic Records, December 2007

The lyrics in this song paint a vivid picture of small arms at use. The story told is of children wielding small arms in militia activities. The truth of children being used in armed conflict is documented by the 2008 Child Soldiers Global Report. 2008 Child Soldiers Report The song also offers a contrast in the way first and third world countries view small arms violence. For the children in the beginning of the song it is a way of life it what can only be imagined as a developing nation. For the children in the end of the song the violence is only a game on thier video game consoles.

Small Arms At Work In Somali

A group of Al-Shbab Militants stood ready during what was described as a training exercise in Mogadishu on Oct of 2010. Al-Shabab has been fighting African Union backed troops in Mogadishu for some time now. Somalia has no means of weapons manufacturing but there is no shortage of small arms in this photo. The entire front line of this platoon can be seen brandishing RPGs.

                                Photo: Press TV, "35 Die in battle for Mogadishu", December 2010, Web

Viktor Bout: Controversial Extradition

Video: France 24(English), November 2010, Web

In Nov. 2007, an 18 year old boy living in Finland shot and killed seven fellow students along with the school's principal. The Washington Post printed this graphic soon after:

Source: Whitlock, Craig. Small Arms Survey. The Washington Post Foreign Service. 8 Nov 2007. Web. 5 Dec 2010.

Viktor Bout: "Merchant of Death"

He is arguably the most notorious arms dealer in the world. Recently he plead not guilty to charges of terrorism. He remains firm on the idea that he used his cargo company to fly legal cargo into "conflict areas" but he is suspected of flying small arms and ammunition around the world.

Photo: DEA-AP, Published with "Getting to Bout", By John Barry, Nov, 2010, Web