Lords of War

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.

According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient...

From the Pentagon's perspective, it doesn't matter who gets the guns. As long as the war is endless, the blank checks keep coming in. The Guardian article doesn't have a link to the Amnesty International report. So I've included it here.

But back to the more concise story from the Guardian:

...European administrators in Bosnia, as well as NGOs working to oversee the stockpiling and destruction of weapons from the Bosnian war of the 1990s, are furious that the Pentagon's covert arms-to-Iraq programme has undermined the disarmament project.

"It's difficult to persuade people to destroy weapons when they're all holding back and waiting for Uncle Sam to arrive with a fistful of dollars," said Adrian Wilkinson, a former British officer overseeing a UN disarmament programme in former Yugoslavia.

The international administration running Bosnia repeatedly sought to impose an arms export moratorium, but under US pressure it was suspended several times to enable the arms shipments to go ahead. The British government is funding a programme to destroy 250,000 small arms, a legacy of the Bosnian war, but the project is faltering because people are reluctant to surrender weapons that might mean money.

Nato and European officials confirm there is nothing illegal about the Bosnian government or the Pentagon taking arms to Iraq; the problem is one of transparency and the way the arms deals have been conducted.

"There are Swiss, US and UK companies involved. The deal was organised through the embassies [in Bosnia] and the military attaché offices were involved. The idea was to get the weapons out of Bosnia where they pose a threat and to Iraq where they are needed," the Nato official said.

Mr Wilkinson said: "The problem is we haven't seen the end user."

A complex web of private firms, arms brokers and freight firms, was behind the transfer of the guns, as well as millions of rounds of ammunition, to Iraq at "bargain basement prices", according to Hugh Griffiths, Amnesty's investigator.

The Moldovan air firm which flew the cargo out of a US air base at Tuzla, north-east Bosnia, was flying without a licence. The firm, Aerocom, named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is now defunct, but its assets and aircraft are registered with another Moldovan firm, Jet Line International.

Some of the firms used in the Pentagon sponsored deals were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago.

"The sale, purchase, transportation and storage of the [Bosnian] weapons has been handled entirely by a complex network of private arms brokers, freight forwarders and air cargo companies operating at times illegally and subject to little or no governmental regulation," says the report.

The 120-page Amnesty report, focusing on the risks from the privatisation of state-sponsored arms sales worldwide, says arms traffickers have adapted swiftly to globalisation, their prowess aided by governments and defence establishments farming out contracts.

The US shipments were made over a year, from July 2004, via the American Eagle base at Tuzla, and the Croatian port of Ploce by the Bosnian border.

Aerocom is said to have carried 99 tonnes of Bosnian weaponry, almost entirely Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, in four flights from the Eagle base in August 2004, even though, under pressure from the EU, the firm had just been stripped of its operating licence by the Moldovan government because of "safety and security concerns". Amnesty said there was no available record of the guns reaching their destination...

About on that private contractor the Pentagon loves, the international criminal Victor Bout:

More than nine months ago the State Department asked the rest of the government to cut off contracts with companies associated with Viktor Bout, the world's largest arms merchant who is alleged to have supplied weapons to the Taliban and al Qaeda. It took five months for Defense Department to begin to respond and cancel some of his contracts to fly ammuniton and contract personnel into Iraq and around the region. Bout was dubbed the "Merchant of Death" by a senior British official because, through his web of airplanes and weapons-buying contacts Bout supplied hundreds of tons of weapons to some of the most unsavory characters on the planet, many connected to terrorism. These include Charles Taylor in Liberia, who sold diamonds to al Qaeda; rebels in the Congo and Angola, the drug-trafficking FARC in Colombia, Abu Sayef in the Philippines, and others. Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, recently called Bout "arguably the largest private arms dealer in the world today," willing to supply "guns and bullets by the ton, as well as advanced equipment such as attack helicopters, to anyone willing to pay his price."

Yet, astoundingly, the Pentagon remains among those willing to pay his price. Airplanes from Bout-controlled Aerocom company, using the call sign "MCC," continue to fly for private contractors and Pentagon clients there. And he may be getting help from some others in the murky world of Private Military Companies.

While there are responsible and honorable PMCs out there doing dangerous and necessary work, the one that got the biggest contract is a British mercenary and friend of Bout who is not of that character. Last year Aegis Defense Services Ltd, a British firm, signed a three-year contract is worth $293 MILLION, to coordinate security groups in Iraq and provide security to diplomats and others. Aegis is run by Tim Spicer, a familiar name in the world of African mercenaries and illegal gun runners and an acquaintence of Bout. His long and rather checkered past seem to have been ignored by the Pentagon, including his blatant violation of international arms embargos. But the Pentagon says the Brits, to whom Spicer is very well known, raised no objections...

Money makes friends, no? Just ask MZM, Inc.

More on Bout here from that cautious pessimist.