Index on Censorship

The media have been laggard in mobilising public opinion against the arms trade —but wars make better copy than peace

A member of the BBC Panorama team gives one woman's view of the ludicrous lengths to which the arms world will go to preserve its secrecy

The 'uncrowned king' of the arms bazaar talks to Caspar Henderson of detente, dictators and the hardships of the business

The failure of past attempts at arms control leaves little ground for optimisim, argues a former director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who asks if governments have learned anything from the conflict they fuelled in the Gulf

What the arms trade needs is regulation not registration

Political and commercial interests ensure the arms trade is unchallenged by impertinent questions

Fake licences, compliant civil servants and devious routes ensure that the arms reach their destination — somehow

Meir Vanunu, himself a wanted man, tells of his brother's courage in breaking the silence on Israel's nuclear arsenal — and the price he still pays

Britain's former ambassador to Iran reflects on the compulsions that keep the arms exporters in business — and argues for a change of heart among the Big Five

The obsessive secrecy that has always surrounded Soviet military matters is succumbing — but very slowly — to what one critic of his country's policy calls 'the healing ray of glasnost'

War reporters in the Gulf proved unequal to the challenge of disentangling military fact from fiction

Arms expenditure costs Africa its health, education and long-term development

There is no shortage of weapons to feed the civil war and famine that rage in Africa's biggest country, and the pariah regimes that supply the military government are assured of secrecy at any price

When South Africa was subjected to sanctions it built a domestic arms industry under the UN's nose

When arms embargoes hit your country, change its name and puzzled dealers will come running back. So thought Burma's generals. They were right

In Pakistan, as in India, the army exploits the people's fear of the enemy across the border

India's unbridled military spending has gone unchallenged and ruined the economy

Beijing shows litle sign of cutting its arms exports — unless the USA turns the screws

The value of weapons traded in Colombia strengthens the grip of the drug barons