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Caitlin McNally '99 has produced a documentary for PBS about the link between the small arms trade in Congo and China's economic expansion into Africa, which is available online as part of FRONTLINE/World's "Rough Cut" series. "Congo: On The Trail of an AK-47" can be found at www.pbs.org/frontlineworld.
In the spring of 2006, reporter Benjamin Pauker traveled to Congo to discover how small arms are still making their way into one of the world's most deadly conflict zones. Despite a UN peace treaty that officially ended a brutal war in 2003 — and despite a UN arms embargo on parts of the country — guns still show up inside Congolese borders, and violence continues to erupt in Congo's volatile eastern region. There is no shortage of machine guns for rebel hands in the east, but, as a UN expert notes in the film, there aren't any arms factories in Congo — "everything that comes in here is coming from the outside."
From a tour of a UN weapons cache full of dusty machine guns to the purchase of an AK-47 directly from rebel soldiers, Pauker crosses Congo to find the story behind the guns. What he learns is that more and more small arms arriving in Congo are not from Russia or ex-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, but from China. He also learns that Chinese conglomerates are buying up mining rights all over resource-rich Congo. Pauker's journey turns up a crucial connection: the link between China's small arms trade and its ever-quickening economic expansion.
China's involvement in Africa and across the globe is an increasingly important story — one that grabs international headlines, inspires analysis by economists all over the world, and raises concern in many human rights communities. As China scrambles to access resources outside its borders, it threatens to unleash a new wave of economic colonialism. The film takes on this global story through a local focus, and yields an unexpected and hard-hitting look at the dark side of the next superpower's expansion in one of the world's most fragile places.
Congo: On the Trail of an AK-47 appears in conjunction with Benjamin Pauker's upcoming feature article for Harper's magazine on small arms, Congo and China.
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