The Illicit Arms Trade: Forever Wars in the Global South

The illicit arms trade, worth billions annually, continues to destabilize conflict-prone regions by arming insurgents, terrorists, and criminal groups. Weak governance, geopolitical rivalries, and porous borders ensure its persistence, making effective international cooperation more urgent than ever.

The trafficking and proliferation of illicit arms that began during the proxy conflicts of the Cold War show no signs of slowing. Whilst legal arms sales are a key part of geopolitical force projection and relationship-building between allies, illegal flows of weapons across international borders have wreaked havoc in conflict-afflicted countries in the Global South. Nothing other than immediate international cooperation—currently in short supply—will be capable of halting the flow of illicit arms to conflict zones, insurgent groups, and organized criminal organizations.

The Origin of Illicit Arms

The illicit arms trade, worth $1.7–3.5 billion per year, is comprised of small arms and light weapons (Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2025). Small arms such as assault rifles, submachine guns, and pistols are operated by a single user. Light weapons such as anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers, intended for use by a small crew, have proliferated alongside small arms (OSCE). Small arms and light weapons are produced in far greater quantities and are easier to smuggle than tanks, fighter jets, and other large weapon systems.

Small and light arms proliferation occurs when powerful states provide weapons to their preferred factions in civil wars. Alternatively, politico-economic crises or state collapse leave governments unable to effectively control their arms stockpiles (Transparency International, 2019). Amid the chaos, arms are traded for drugs, money, and natural resources, resulting in them illicitly moving around conflict zones and into insecure border areas. Abetted by money laundering, the dark web, and globalized finance, billions of dollars’ worth of illicit arms sales are made by terrorist and organized crime groups each year (Geopolitical Monitor, 2011).

Letting the Genie out of the Bottle

“Third World” proxy conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union led to a wave of illicit arms proliferation in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. For instance, small arms intended for the Afghan Mujahideen eventually flowed into Pakistan and other neighbouring countries (RUSI, 2007). The illicit arms trade expanded as the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and Yugoslavia disintegrated at the end of the Cold War. Economic collapse and the loss of state control over Soviet arms stockpiles created opportunities for East European governments and criminal organizations to sell arms to conflict-afflicted countries in East and West Africa (IISS, 2000, p. XXXI).

American military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the conflicts arising from the Arab Spring, worsened the proliferation of illicit arms in Central Asia and the Middle East. Weapons and non-state armed groups spread across the Levant during the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, a factor worsened by Iran arming the militant groups that comprise its Axis of Resistance (Global Initiative, 2024). The fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi destabilized the West African Sahel when his now-unemployed Tuareg mercenaries returned to Mali with their weapons (UNODC, 2022). Meanwhile, small arms manufactured in Brazil and the United States circulate widely among Latin America’s cartels and non-state armed groups (Global Organized Crime Index, 2023).

Future Illicit Arms Hotspots

Ungoverned spaces in Latin America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa will remain hotspots of illicit arms. Future proliferation will be driven by areas of weak state capacity—the Amazon, the Sahel, and the Iraq–Syria border—as well as cooperation between non-state actors such as Latin America’s cartels, Somalia’s al-Shabaab, and Yemen’s Ansarullah (Jalal and Al-Jabarni, 2025). Taking East Africa as an example, the conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan have resulted in illicit arms flowing between non-state armed groups and into neighbouring states, as evidenced by trafficked arms fueling criminality in northeastern Uganda (IISS, 2024, p. 267).

Legally manufactured weapons from Europe and North America will continue to find their way onto black markets. Russian veterans and criminal organizations are bringing small arms from the Russo-Ukrainian war into Russia, leading to increasing violent crime and fears that, like 1990s Yugoslavia, Russia and Ukraine will become sources of illicit arms used in conflicts in the Global South (Global Initiative, 2025; Goble, 2025). The American arms industry will remain a source of trafficked weapons—both to established criminal groups in Mexico and emerging organizations in Haiti and Trinidad (Al Jazeera, 2024).

Policy Recommendations

Multinational cooperation is necessary to prevent illicit arms trafficking. Unfortunately, geopolitical tensions between the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members have reduced the likelihood of large-scale responses similar to Resolution 1816, which authorized action against pirates in Somali territorial waters (Security Council Report, 2025). Progress could be made at a regional level, where organizations like the Caribbean Community or the Economic Community of West African States could receive law enforcement training and military intelligence from third-party states (ECOWAS, 2021).

External support for states most affected by the illicit arms trade would contribute to reducing the spread of weapons. Structured support for local law enforcement and state-building initiatives could increase the ability of conflict-afflicted states to police remote areas of territory and suppress the non-state actors responsible for weapons trafficking (US Department of State, 2011). Source countries—namely Russia and the United States—would need to enact politically divisive restrictions on civilian weapon ownership to prevent legal arms from entering the black market (Rodríguez-Domínguez, 2021).

Effective capacity-building and law enforcement support are highly challenging. Allegations of American neocolonialism, corrupt linkages between state officials and non-state groups, and local politicians in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries utilizing terrorism to gain international attention have beset previous bilateral relationships (Kasinof, 2017). Effective cooperation is rendered even more unlikely by the deadlocked UNSC and the inability of Western states, China, and Russia to reconcile their geopolitical interests.

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