Blists Hill, Ironbridge - a reminder of our industrial heritage

March 2012 marked the centenary of the closure of the Blists Hill blast furnaces, which are today iconic ruins at the heart of the award-winning Ironbridge Gorge Museum, showcasing the relics of the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

I am now a volunteer guide at Blists Hill Victorian Town, and this is the story of these remarkable structures and the seismic impact of the shutdown on the local community back in March 1912:

This story was published in the Shropshire Star on 28 March 2012

The Blast Furnaces in the late 1890s (Photo: Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust)

It was 100 years ago this week that the Madeley Wood Company shut down its three blast furnaces at Blists Hill for the last time, after eight decades of iron production at the site.

Now part of the Blists Hill Victorian Town museum, the remains of the furnaces are one of the most defining features of the Ironbridge Gorge, and a major industrial monument.

When they were closed in 1912, several hundred men lost their livelihood, causing major disruption to the local community. The closure happened during a five-week national coal mining strike in support of a minimum wage for miners, adding to the atmosphere of industrial unrest and social discontent. Across Shropshire, hundreds of workers in other industries, such as gasworks and railways, were temporarily out of work because of coal shortages. Weeks of wintry weather added discomfort to their economic distress.

"In consequence of the Blists Hill Furnaces having been blown out, upwards of 200 workmen have been thrown out of employment," the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News reported at the time. Alderman A. B. Dyas, speaking at a public meeting in Madeley on 25^th March 1912, said he was "sorry for the poor people thrown out of work through the blowing out of the furnaces, and he could see nothing but the workhouse staring them in the face".

The furnaces produced iron for 80 years after they were built between 1832 and 1844. The Madeley Wood Company, formed in 1756, had previously operated the two Bedlam blast furnaces alongside the River Severn, a mile west of Blists Hill. The company was run by the Anstice family, influential in the history of the Gorge, and held mineral leases in Madeley Parish.

By the 18th century, the mining of clay, coal and iron ore was well established at Blists Hill. The missing ingredient required for iron-making - limestone – was widely available nearby, with deposits at Lincoln Hill near Coalbrookdale, and further afield at Wellington and Wenlock Edge.

The completion of the Shropshire Canal and the building of the Hay Inclined Plane in the early 1790s provided a means of bringing in limestone and transporting finished goods from Blists Hill. But it was not until four decades later that the Madeley Wood Company built the first blast furnace there in 1832, adding another two in 1840 and 1844.

Originally the furnaces were conical structures, made of refractory brick clad with wrought iron plates, and stood about 50 feet high, on brick and stone bases. Huge blowing engines on either side blasted air into the furnaces. The original engine house, to the north of the furnaces, was demolished around 1873, when the engine house that visitors see today was constructed. The south engine house dates from 1840. 

The Blast Furnaces in February 2012

Each engine blasted 12,500 cubic feet of air (the size of a large detached house) every minute into the furnace, supplying oxygen to the fuel and making it burn with an intense heat. The coke (produced by baking coal at high temperatures), iron ore and limestone were transformed into molten iron and a mix of waste products, or slag. Most of the iron was poured into a large central trench with smaller trenches running off it, resembling a sow and her piglets – hence the term "pig iron" – while the rest was cast on site to make pots and pans.

In their heyday the furnaces would have run continuously day and night, stopping only for repairs or lack of demand. Iron continued to be produced at Blists Hill until 1912, although by then the industry in Shropshire was in decline as steel production had taken over since the 1880s.

A few years after the furnaces were taken out of service, the First World War broke out and Blists Hill lay derelict for decades. In the 1960s, the slag from the furnaces was used as hard core for building Britain's first motorways. The Ironbridge Gorge Museum carried out major repairs on the site in the 1970s and again in 1993.

Today, although only the bases of the furnaces remain, they continue to impress visitors to Blists Hill, and are a striking reminder of the Gorge's rich industrial heritage.

Refugee Tides Surge Across Arab World

The Arab Spring - or Arab Awakening, as many in the Arab world prefer to call it - resulted in massive movements of refugees and displaced people across the Middle East and North Africa. More than a million people, most of them foreign workers, fled Libya after the uprising against Colonel Gaddafi’s rule broke out in February 2011.

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE MIDDLE EAST MAGAZINE (LONDON), JAN-FEB 2012 ISSUE

Syrian refugees in Turkey, 2011 - Photo: The Guardian

There have been mass movements elsewhere in the region too. The unrest in Syria has driven refugees to seek sanctuary in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, itself host to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees for the past eight years.  

And according to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 287,000 people fleeing the worsening drought and decades of conflict in Somalia have escaped to neighbouring countries, bringing the total number of Somali refugees in the region to 950,000, while another 1.5 million are internally displaced.

Kassala in eastern Sudan is home to the country's largest concentration of refugees, numbering more than 86,000. As the UNHCR recalls, "many had fled fighting over the past half century between Eritrea and Ethiopia, but the majority were born in Sudan's camps, where they share the ethnicity, language and religion of their host community."

And following the rebellion in the Darfur region in western Sudan in 2003, almost a decade later an estimated 200,000 refugees from Darfur are still languishing in refugee camps in the desert in eastern Chad. According to UN agencies, 83,000 Chadian migrant workers returned from Libya in 2011, and Chad continues to host refugees from the Central African Republic as well as its own internally displaced persons (IDPs) resulting from internal conflict.

In Egypt, where tens of thousands of African refugees live, the UNHCR is assisting more than 41,000 documented refugees and asylum seekers, most of whom arrived from Sudan during two decades of civil war and, since 2003, from Darfur.

Israel, according to the New York-based agency The Media Line, is home to some 27,000 refugees from Eritrea, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire, and Israeli officials estimate that in the first nine months of 2011, about 36,000 Africans crossed the border from Egypt into Israel illegally, some 2,000 of them in August alone.

In January 2012 the Israeli Knesset passed a bill, promoted by the Netanyahu government, that would make refugees and asylum seekers who lack residency status liable to automatic detention without trial for up to three years. Organizations including Amnesty International have condemned the move as a violation of human rights.

"Since 2005, approximately 45,000 people have entered Israel via the Egyptian border to seek asylum, the majority of them Eritreans and Sudanese. For the past few years, Israel has barred Eritreans and Sudanese asylum-seekers outright from having their refugee claims heard, in blatant violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention," according to Amnesty.

There are also much longer established refugee populations across the Middle East and North Africa. Almost 5 million Palestinian refugees are registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. And for more than three decades, refugee camps in Tindouf in southwestern Algeria have been home to an estimated 165,000 Sahrawis, the indigenous people of the Western Sahara, who arrived after the Moroccan occupation of their territory in 1976.

The displacement of people within and across borders as a result of the upheavals of 2011 has hit national economies, undermined regional stability and provoked fears in some European countries that large numbers of migrants and asylum-seekers would flood to their shores.

Syria

In Syria, the crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad’s troops intensified since pro-democracy protests began in April 2011, leading anti-government protesters to step up the use of force, notably by the Free Syrian Army. One consequence has been a steady flow of Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers into southern Turkey, with smaller numbers crossing into Lebanon and Jordan. Those fleeing include whole families as well as defecting soldiers who refused to shoot protesting civilians. According to the Turkish and Lebanese governments, more than 25,000 people fled Syria in 2011, though many have since returned.

By December 2011, there were about 10,000 registered Syrian refugees in Turkey. The number of registered refugees peaked at nearly 20,000 in late summer 2011, according to Turkish officials, but fell as families left the camps, some of them to stay with local Turkish families with whom they shared kinship ties. Most of those registered were in camps in the southern province of Hatay, to which Syria has a long-standing territorial claim which it had shelved in recent years as relations between the two countries warmed. But in 2011 relations deteriorated over Syria’s violent crackdown on protesters. Turkey became one of the most vocal critics of Assad’s rule, and hosts the Syrian National Council, a broad-based opposition coalition formed in September 2011.

Around 5,500 refugees have fled their homes in Syria to border towns in Jordan. While Jordan has not offered asylum to Syrians, authorities near the northern border were providing emergency medical attention and shelter to displaced Syrians, "with preparations in place for any potential large-scale humanitarian crisis," the Jordan Times reported on 28 November.

Although they have been made welcome because of the long-existing tribal and family ties that predate and transcend the common border, the continued presence of displaced Syrians poses problems for many Jordanians whose livelihood depends on cross-border border trade with Syria.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Jordan’s national resources have also been strained by an influx of Iraqi refugees, who now comprise 15 per cent of the population. Meanwhile, some of the estimated one million Iraqi refugees who fled to Syria since 2003 have returned to Iraq. In mid-January 2012, more than 5,200 Syrian refugees were registered in northern Lebanon with the UNHCR and Lebanese relief bodies.

According to Israeli press reports, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has prepared for extreme scenarios in which Syrians fleeing turmoil at home could even try to storm the border with Israel and seek political asylum, as they have done on Syria's borders with Turkey and Jordan.

Israel's military chief Lt-Gen Benny Gantz said in January 2012 that Israel was making contingency plans in the event that President Bashar al-ASsad was ousted from power, and the possibility that refugees from his minority Alawite sect would flee into the Golan Heights (which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war).

Libya

When conflict erupted in Libya, the country was home to between 1.5 million and 2.5 million foreign nationals, many of them refugees, although the authorities treated them as irregular migrants. According to the UNHCR, in February 2011 there were around 8,000 registered refugees and approximately 3,000 asylum seekers in Libya who had come from countries including Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan.

As the unrest spread during the summer, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced within Libya itself, while over a million men, women and children escaped to neighbouring countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Algeria.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people had been internally displaced in Libya at the height of the conflict, before some began to return home after Gaddafi was ousted from Tripoli in August. OCHA said it had "serious protection concerns" for about 50,000 internally displaced people from minority groups, owing to direct threats to their physical security as well as social discrimination.

Humanitarian organisations were also concerned about the situation of third-country nationals, including migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, who had become more vulnerable to violence and human rights violations since the outbreak of the conflict, OCHA added.

"Sub-Saharan Africans, especially those from Niger, Chad and Sudan, were targeted by both sides after it became known that some sub-Saharan Africans had worked as mercenaries for the Gaddafi regime," the UNHCR noted.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, said the crisis in Libya had primarily been one of migration, and not a refugee crisis.

"Overwhelmingly, the hundreds of thousands of people who fled Libya were migrant workers, employed mostly in the informal sector or in some cases contract workers from South Asia," he told The Middle East.

The ripple effects of the Libyan crisis hit countries south of Libya hard as well, Chauzy added: "At the moment there is very little focus on the impact on about 100,000 Chadians who have returned to Chad since the Libyan uprising started, and maybe 80-90,000 citizens of Niger who have returned to their country. Those returning migrants are going home empty-handed, with very little employment opportunities, and families who formerly relied on remittances from these migrants are now going without. Vast areas of Chad and Niger are also currently facing food insecurity. The lifeline that these former workers in Libya provided has been cut."

At the end of November, the IOM noted that "despite the end of hostilities in Libya which have seen more than 764,000 migrants flee the country, including more than 200,000 Africans," many migrants still wanting to leave Libya required assistance. Stranded African migrants still faced arbitrary detention, harassment and persecution, while the lack of diplomatic representation for many African nationalities made it difficult to verify their citizenship and issue travel documents, the organization added.

According to the governments of Egypt and Tunisia, over 200,000 Egyptians and 82,000 Tunisians have returned to their respective home countries as a result of the conflict in Libya, "in most cases, losing their sole source of income," the IOM said in January 2012.

Impact on Arab world and beyond

There has been scaremongering in some European countries, with anti-immigration parties seeking to make political capital by talking about the trickle of illegal migration from North Africa possibly escalating into a tsunami.

Amnesty International in September said European countries had "shamefully" failed to help about 5,000 mainly African refugees living in grim conditions at the Saloum border post and Choucha camp on Libya’s frontiers with Egypt and Tunisia respectively, who would face persecution or conflict if returned to their own countries.

Nicolas Beger, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said: "This failure is particularly glaring given that some European countries, by participating in NATO operations in Libya, have been party to the very conflict that has been one of the main causes of the involuntary movement of people."

By October 2011, only seven EU countries had pledged to resettle refugees, along with Norway, the US, Canada and Australia.

A spokesman for the British Department for International Development said in response to the Amnesty report that the UK had been one of the first governments to provide humanitarian support to those affected by the conflict in Libya. "However, we are under no international obligation to bring asylum seekers or refugees to the UK from Libya and do not believe it would be desirable to do so. In our view humanitarian and refugee issues are best dealt with in the region of origin, or by asylum seekers claiming protection in the first safe country they reach," he added.

Boats each carrying hundreds of illegal immigrants, who have made long and perilous journeys not just from Africa but as far afield as Pakistan and Afghanistan, continue to arrive regularly on Italy's southern coasts.

IOM spokesman Chauzy said that there was no denying that substantial numbers of people had arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa - about 53,000 by late September, including about 26,000 from Tunisia, and others from Libya. But he said this could not be compared with the hundreds of thousands of migrants who had crossed from Libya into Egypt and Tunisia.

"The European response when the crisis began was a knee-jerk reaction aimed at controlling the potential flows of illegal migrants from Tunisia and Libya. Little has been done in the way of providing alternatives, especially for young Tunisians who want to emigrate – that would involve entering into new partnerships with governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and Libya when it stabilises, to create wealth and job opportunities in those countries," Chauzy said.

However, there is no accurate record of how many hundreds or thousands of would-be migrants drown when their small, overloaded craft sink off the shores of southern Europe.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Arab world, the prospects of more refugees from Syria being dispersed across the region, and of Yemenis fleeing the conflict in their country to seek refuge in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, have heightened fears of growing humanitarian crises that would lead to prolonged destabilization across the region.

Battle of the bulbs

Cutting domestic bills with energy-efficient lighting

More affordable prices and an increasing range of energy-saving light bulbs are driving consumer take-up of energy-efficient lighting for the home, particularly in Western Europe, North America and some Asian markets.

Read the full article in the December 2011 edition of e-tech, published by the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Invest in Jordan 2011

Invest in Jordan 2011 - published by Newsdesk Media (London)

Spreading economic growth around the country

A series of tax and other incentives are attracting companies to new business hubs across Jordan.


Connecting Jordan to the world

As a leading manager of Arabic-language content on the internet, Jordan is in a powerful position online.

Flurry of Media Laws in Wake of Arab Spring

Across the Arab world in 2011, governments from Mauritania to Syria have passed new laws to regulate the media, whether liberalising formerly state-controlled sectors or tightening control and extending it to news websites and electronic media.

Algerian newspapers

This article was first published in The Middle East, November 2011

Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, this flurry of legislation came as a reaction to the growing use of online media by political activists, and the erosion of the state’s monopoly of broadcasting as pan-Arab satellite TV enters its third decade.

In Tunisia and Egypt, which have both enjoyed a post-revolution media boom, old attitudes towards freedom of expression persist among the remnants of the former regimes. Nevertheless, some countries appear to be discarding draconian media laws and moving towards genuine media liberalisation.

Plans by Algeria and Mauritania to open up their media sectors have provoked a mixture of approval and scepticism.

In September, Mauritania said it would allow the setting-up of five private commercial radio stations and five TV channels. The head of the Union of Mauritanian Journalists, Houssein Ould Imedou, said the move would enable citizens "to own media outlets that would represent their views and express their desires without any censorship or dictates".

But sociologist Ibrahim Ould Sidi expressed fears that private broadcasting would be dominated by tribes, "at the expense of professionalism and efficiency", while writer Said Ould Habib voiced concerns that the state would retain control by other means.

In Algeria, which has a long history of press pluralism, the cabinet appeared to meet a key opposition demand when it passed a draft law in September to open up the television sector to private channels by 2012.  Private stations would be regulated by an official  body and need a government licence. "The move appears to have come under the pressure of pro-democracy popular uprisings that have swept across several Arab countries over the past few months," the BBC commented.

Algeria’s leading Arabic daily Al-Khabar and the French-language daily Al-Watan, both long-standing critics of government policy, plan to launch TV and radio stations. But journalist Larabi Zeouak was cautious, predicting that only government allies and loyalists would receive licences to operate TV stations.

The draft media law also envisages a regulatory body to "strengthen press freedoms", as well as decriminalising press offences. But the Algerian journalists' union said the latter provision was merely a "return to normality", and dismissed the draft law as "containing nothing new".

In the run-up to Tunisia’s constituent assembly elections in October, an independent media reform committee criticised the interim government for failing to endorse two draft laws regulating the press and the audiovisual sector. Some journalists fear that elements of the old guard are conspiring with senior media figures to block the development of genuinely free media, and that the former regime's restrictions could be reimposed. There is still no clear and specific legislation relating to digital media, which played a central role in Tunisia’s political transition. On a positive note, 12 licences have been granted for new FM radio stations.

In Libya, until a stable government with nationwide authority is formed, dozens of daily and weekly publications, FM radio stations and satellite TV channels continue to operate in a free but unregulated and chaotic media environment. The challenge in drawing up post-conflict legislation will be, in the words of Paris-based media freedom organisation Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), to enable resistance media that have been combating disinformation and propaganda to evolve into media for political stability.

In Egypt, amidst claims that some media have abused the new climate of free expression that followed the ousting of former President Mubarak in February, there have been calls for greater regulation. While partisanship and campaigning in the media for Islamist, secular or progressive groups is hardly unexpected, several newspapers and TV channels stand accused of rumour-mongering and disseminating false and unverified news likely to cause social unrest.

However, critics have questioned how a body such as the Information Ministry - associated with decades of authoritarian rule and abolished days after Mubarak’s downfall, then reinstated in July – could play any role in future media reform. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) described the reinstatement of the Information Ministry as "a substantial setback for media freedom in Egypt".

In September, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the cabinet suspended the issuing of new licences to private satellite TV channels. Officials insisted the move was temporary, but said action was essential to confront channels that "instigate sedition and violence and cause instability at such a critical phase".

Speculation since June that the SCAF would pass a new media law has proved unfounded. Nevertheless, self-censorship remains common among Egyptian journalists, and some observers fear that censorship and intimidation of journalists are creeping back to Mubarak-era levels.

American academic and veteran Middle East correspondent Lawrence Pintak argues that Egypt is a unique case. "There has been an explosion of new media, particularly TV, outlets in the regulatory chaos following Mubarak's overthrow. Many of those outlets have proven irresponsible in their coverage, others effectively aggressive, and both are creating a backlash from the military," he told The Middle East.

Jordan

Despite the Jordanian government’s stated aim of increasing freedom of the press through proper regulation, journalists fear that two draft laws approved by parliament this summer will have the opposite effect.

In August, the lower house endorsed amendments to the press and publications law which would treat news websites as "newspapers" for legal purposes.

Electronic media would have a choice between registering officially with the government and benefiting from "guarantees" specified in the press law, or remaining unregistered and being subject to the provisions of other laws such as the Penal Code and the Cyber Crimes Law.

While some MPs called for more monitoring of electronic media to curb alleged defamation, character assassination and false reporting, others maintained that controlling websites was unfeasible.

"News websites have been the main vehicle for pro-reform popular movements that have sprouted up across the country," Oraib Rintawi of the Al Quds Centre for Political Studies told the Jordan Times. A survey by the Centre found that 65 per cent of Jordanian journalists were against the amended law.

Jordan’s Centre for Defending the Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) said the amendments "posed a new threat to e-reporters as they added more constraints to the electronic media". The CDFJ added that the law would not prohibit the arrest of journalists, who still faced the threat of trial in the State Security Court and imprisonment under other laws such as the Penal Code.

Media freedom concerns grew in September after MPs endorsed the Anti-Corruption Commission draft law, which journalists regard as a setback to efforts to expose and combat corruption.

Syria

In August Syria adopted a new law setting out "media principles, journalists' duties and rights, and licensing procedures for launching audiovisual, printed and electronic media," in the words of the official Syrian news agency SANA. A National Council of Information will be set up, which will have "administrative and financial independence". SANA added that the new law was part of Syria’s continuing process of "comprehensive reform". At its core was the principle that media should be "independent and fulfill their mission freely, and are only restricted by the constitution and the law".

Freedom of expression should be exercised "with responsibility and awareness," the law cautions. It also bans the publication of any content "that affects national unity and national security, harms the holy religions and beliefs, or incites sectarian or confessional strife… [or] acts of violence and terrorism".

Syrian pro-regime journalists hailed the new legislation, but critics said that while it tried to give the impression that media freedom was being expanded, it lacked any credibility. "A harsh crackdown has been going on for the past six months, many journalists and free speech defenders have been jailed, and the number of citizens being killed grows by the day," RSF said on 29 August.

Journalists Sceptical

The media landscape in every Arab country has its own characteristics. But the tide of change and the calls for reform that have swept through the Arab world in the past 12 months have been a common factor in driving governments to bring in these new media laws.

Mohamed Ahmad, a Cairo-based analyst of the Arab media, said: "The passing of media laws in several Arab countries is definitely related to the upheaval sweeping across the Arab world, but the intentions and motives vary from one country to another. For example, in the case of Algeria, the planned opening up of the audiovisual sector is clearly an attempt to absorb anger and send a message that a greater measure of media freedom, together with promised political reforms, are on the way."

Most Arab journalists feel a mix of suspicion blended with cautious welcome. In the words of Lawrence Pintak, "they are pleased with their newfound power, but concerned about the backlash and sceptical about the future."

London Arms Fair Shrugs Off Economic Gloom

Protests in Bahrain 2011

First published on Technorati on 16 September 2011

One of the world's biggest arms exhibitions ends in London today after four days of weapons salesmen touting their wares, ranging from guns that can shoot around corners to an "invisible" tank.

With no respite in sight to the economic gloom on both sides of the Atlantic, major defense cutbacks are under way in the UK and the United States.

The British government plans to reduce defense spending by 8 per cent by 2015, and the US is cutting at least $350 billion from previous project spending.

So exhibitors at this week's Defense Security and Equipment International arms fair are looking instead to markets such as India and Africa to boost sales.

And with the continuing unrest in many Arab countries, the Middle East arms market remains extremely lucrative, and unaffected by the international outcry about the violence that governments such as Syria and the Gaddafi regime in Libya used against protesting citizens during the Arab Spring.

Human rights activists and anti-arms campaigners held a series of events across London in protest against the presence of delegates from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, both accused of using weapons bought from the UK to suppress demonstrations.

Of the 65 national delegations attending the arms fair, 14 were from what human rights groups called "authoritarian regimes".

Libya was not invited, but Western arms dealers will be buoyed by National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil's statement that Tripoli was not planning to buy Russian weapons, and would review arms contracts with Russia signed by the former Libyan government. Russia said earlier this year that it stood to lose as much as $4 billion in existing and potential deals with the Gaddafi regime.

Minister says UK follows strict export rules

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox told delegates at the arms fair that Britain's weapons manufacturers should tailor their products for overseas markets, to protect defense and security jobs and profits during a period of spending cuts at home.

Exports of UK-made weapons would help drive the country's economic recovery, Fox said. But he insisted that Britain would not arm repressive regimes, describing the UK's export-licensing guidelines as being among the toughest in the world.

"Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are mandatory considerations for all export license applications, which we consider on a case-by-case basis… When conditions change we act swiftly to revoke licenses that do not meet our strict criteria - just as we did earlier this year as the events in the Middle East and North Africa unfolded," Fox said.

A group of British parliamentarians have called on ministers to stop arms sales to authoritarian regimes around the world. They said that UK Trade and Investment, the government body responsible for promoting British defense exports, had countries including Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as "arms export priority markets" for 2010-2011.

With the exception of Libya, sales efforts were continuing, causing concern over "the inherent conflict between the government's promotion of military exports and its stated desire to help protect human rights overseas", the MPs added.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas noted that in 2010 the UK had issued over £200m ($318 million) worth of equipment requiring export licenses to Libya, "providing Colonel Gaddafi with resources including tear gas, crowd control equipment, and ammunition for wall and door-breaching projectile launchers."

A government spokesman in London commented: "The British position is clear: we will not issue licenses where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or which might be used to facilitate internal repression."

Britain has the world's second-largest defense industry after the United States, which generated more than 22 billion pounds ($35 billion) in sales in 2010, according to a survey published on 12 September by ADS, the trade group that promotes the UK aerospace, defense, security and space industries. UK defense exports contributed 9.5 billion pounds ($15 billion), about 43 per cent of turnover, with three-quarters of sales generated by the aerospace sector.



Impact of Arms Embargoes in the Middle East and North Africa

Protests in Syria, June 2011

This article was first published in Defence Management Journal, August 2011

Four UN arms embargoes are currently in force in the Middle East and North Africa, targeting Libya and Iran as well as non-government forces in Lebanon and Iraq. A European Union (EU) arms embargo is also in place against Syria.

On 26 February 2011 , UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1970 imposed an arms embargo against Libya and put in place sanctions on members of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's inner circle, while Resolution 1973 adopted on 17 March authorized a no-fly zone over Libya. Previous UN and EU sanctions on Libya, including arms embargoes, had been lifted in 2003 and 2004 after Libya announced that it had ended its nuclear, biological and chemical weapon programmes.

A range of UN sanctions is in place against Iran, including bans on arms sales and transfer of technology. In June 2010, the UNSC approved fresh restrictions, including prohibiting Iran from buying heavy weapons such as attack helicopters and missiles.

The EU imposed an arms sales embargo on Syria on 9 May 2011, as part of efforts intended to force Damascus to end violence against anti-government protesters. The embargo covers weapons, military vehicles and equipment, spare parts and ammunition, and equipment that could be used for internal repression.

Libya embargo violations

The UN and EU arms embargoes are impacting the two countries targeted in 2011 in different ways.

In Syria, whose main arms suppliers are Iran, Russia and China, troops already have plenty of military equipment to use since pro-democracy protests flared in March 2011. The effects of the EU arms embargo are limited, and events are more likely to be affected by international diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions.

However, there are reports that the smuggling of small arms from the black market in Lebanon to Syria has soared. Lebanese arms dealers, most of them working under the protection of political parties, have supplied light and medium weapons not only to Syrians but also to Lebanese fearful of violence spilling over into their country. Syrian activists, for their part, have denied using weapons during protests against government troops.

Tensions have escalated between Syria and its neighbour Turkey, which opened its borders to Syrian refugees fleeing embattled border towns. As a NATO member, Turkey has contributed naval vessels to patrols enforcing the UN arms embargo in Libyan waters, although it not taken part in air raids.

The UN arms embargo on Libya has been more controversial than the EU-Syria one. It has produced sharply opposed views over interpretation, as well as confusion over its precise scope. While some sides maintain that arming the anti-Gaddafi opposition technically violates the embargo, others argue that the UN sanctions apply only to the government.

Despite NATO AWACS planes and more than 20 ships patrolling the Central Mediterranean to enforce the embargo, there have been many reports of rebels bringing weapons into Libya, including within supposed aid shipments, or in small consignments across the border from Tunisia. The rebel forces have also been supplied with weapons by France and Qatar, among others. The French military confirmed that in June, it had air-dropped weapons to rebels fighting government forces in the highlands south of Tripoli, the first time France admitted arming the rebels.

Russia accused France of committing a "crude violation" of the UN weapons embargo by arming the rebels. The UK said diplomatically that, in its view, "the UN resolutions allow, in certain limited circumstances, defensive weapons to be provided".

The UK, along with France and Italy, has deployed military advisers with the rebels, and has sent body armour, uniforms and communications equipment to police officers in rebel-held areas. There have also been reports of US teams operating covertly inside Libya. As for the pro-Gaddafi forces, they have reportedly received missiles and grenade launchers from Iran, as well as 500 "military grade" vehicles supplied by Algeria.

The lack of security across large parts of Libya has also raised fears over weapons falling into the hands of hostile forces in the wider region. The US, other Western governments and Libya's neighbours, notably Algeria, are concerned that stockpiles of weapons and ammunition at former military bases in eastern Libya abandoned by Gaddafi's troops after NATO air strikes could be sold on to militant groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), or organized crime cartels.

Political difficulties

Enforcing arms embargoes invariably involves political as well as practical difficulties.

There are very few provisions for the UN to punish violators, other than normative condemnation. Christian Le Mière, Research Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said: "This is particularly true for the world’s major arms exporters, who are all coincidentally the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, with veto power." Generally, veto wielders Russia and China are reluctant to agree with UN sanctions.

In the Libyan case, the sanctions were imposed in great haste and the UNSC did not anticipate the stalemate and potential partition of the country.

With hindsight, "it was not the best idea to impose an arms embargo on the entire country which technically prohibits support to the anti-Gaddafi forces", said Thomas Biersteker, Professor of International Security and Conflict Studies at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

Arming the Libyan rebels might possibly be defensible in law, based on the letter of the relevant UN resolutions, but doing so is politically very questionable, in the vierws of Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). "It will undermine the chances of getting China and Russia to agree on future UN arms embargoes if such a legalistic approach is taken. If it was the intention of the sanctions to allow rebels to receive arms, that should have been stated clearly in the resolutions," he added.

As regards enforcement of embargoes in practice, many prohibited arms are likely to get through controls undetected. Weapons, particularly small arms and light weapons, can easily be hidden in shipments. The volume of global trade makes it impossible to verify the content of every shipping container, while air transport can use falsified documents to mislead regulators about the destination of a particular cargo.

Professor Peter Wallensteen of Uppsala University, one of the authors of a 2007 report on the impacts of UN arms embargoes, believes that they are a good instrument that the international community should save for the right conditions where they are likely to succeed.

"There is often a tendency with this kind of sanctions, as well as with other kinds of sanctions, that they are generated more for domestic reasons, to appeal to public opinion and so on, rather than thinking whether they will be an effective tool," he argues.

Biggest losers

The UN arms embargo on Libya could prove costly to the global arms industry if NATO's campaign is scaled down and Libya becomes mired in a low-intensity civil war.

Russia's Interfax news agency quoted military sources as saying that Russia could lose up to 3.8 billion dollars in confirmed or possible orders as a result of the ban on arms sales to Libya.

According to EU figures, in 2009 member states granted export licences worth 490 million dollars to Libya. Italy was a prime source for border surveillance and security equipment, and several Italian firms had signed or lined up deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The UK was not a major supplier of weapons to Gaddafi's forces, even before the British government revoked arms export licences this year. Since January 2011, more than 160 export licences for Middle East countries have been revoked, mainly for Libya and Bahrain.