The lucrative business of war

‘Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!’ shouts a Saudi man. There are arms dealers, fixers, military men and gun geeks; tanks, assault rifles, mortars and drones. Jets do aerobatics overhead and a band plays Maroon 5. A Chinese robot dog bangs into delegates. Welcome to the International Defence Exhibition in the United Arab Emirates. Business is booming. On the conference floor, Erik Prince is talking to the Emirati President, Mohamed bin Zayed. People are taking photos of MBZ, who smiles out from a dark robe and aviator sunglasses, but no one seems to recognise Prince. He’s an ex-Navy Seal who sold mercenaries to the Americans in Iraq, trained Somalis to fight pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and allegedly broke arms-trafficking laws shipping weaponised agricultural planes to Libya. After some of his mercenaries killed 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, he left America for the UAE. He became friends with MBZ, they fell out, and now they’re close again. Prince makes deals happen: he’s valuable.

Each exhibitor at the fair has a stand with their weapons on display. Guns are mounted to counters like iPads in John Lewis. You can pick them up, but they’re attached to a thin wire that ties them down. People yank back the bolt and pull the trigger, over and over. There are shooting ranges outside the conference for buyers to try the guns properly. Small companies do business at the back of their stand, with a table, chairs and a bowl of mints. Big companies have two floors of private meeting rooms and some have a buffet. Most of the salesmen are useless. A hapless pair from Norinco, a Chinese defence company, say they’ve never heard of a microchip, and a man from Turkey can’t remember who his customers are. ‘I just sell it. I don’t ask these questions.’ Three salesmen from a British company are sitting around.