Both before and after the death of Gadhafi, and before the declaration of the full liberation of Libya by the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), worrying reports surfaced about huge stockpiles of weapons left unguarded. The concerns are that these may end up in the hands of armed groups within, our outside Libya, or even spread to other restive areas in the region. According to some reports, many weapons have already disappeared.
On Nov. 1, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Libyan interim authorities to take action against the proliferation of arms left behind by Gadhafi’s army. The resolution authorized a committee to develop a proposal detailing how to prevent these weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and militants.
Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher of the arms transfer program at the Stockholm-based think tank SIPRI welcomed the resolution and expressed hope that it will lead to further action from both European countries and the United States to prevent more weapons from disappearing. In October, the United States pledged $40 million and sent a number of experts to Libya to help secure and destroy weapons. Canada has pledged CA$10 million ($9.7 million).
“At least up until last week, there were images available of people who were walking around in arms depots where there was clearly no proper security, and where they could take boxes of weapons without any supervision. There is a lot of work to do,” Wezeman told The Epoch Times in a phone interview Wednesday.
A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Oct. 25, also describes how a HRW team witnessed the plunder of two unguarded sites near Sirte, which contained small arms, surface-to-air missiles, aerial weapons, plus tank and mortar rounds.
According to Wezeman, there are mainly two groups of weapons that are a source for concern: the first is small arms, such as assault rifles and machine guns, which are not such a threat individually, but become an issue if they are widely spread and reach armed groups in the area, especially the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The second is the more advanced weaponry such as man-portable, surface-to-air missiles, or MANPADS, which were also highlighted as a threat in the U.N. resolution. These can be used to down civilian passenger aircraft and potentially cause huge casualties. In 2002, someone tried to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Kenya, presumably with a MANPAD.
The older systems were not as reliable and as easy to use as the newer ones that the Russians had sold to Libya in recent years, but a number of them could be combined for a salvo effect to compensate for this, Weseman explained. Reportedly, hundreds of these older systems may already have disappeared in Libya. The HRW team in Sirte also identified at least 14 empty crates that had contained SA-24 missiles, one of Russia’s most advanced surface-to-air missiles.
Sheer Quantity
The case of Libya, although not unique, was troublesome because of the sheer quantities of weapons potentially adrift, according to Wezeman.“Gadhafi had stocked up an enormous amount of weapons, especially for such a small country, in the last 40 years. Much of it was still in working condition,” he said.
He was also critical of how European countries, plus Russia and China, had scrambled to sell weapons to Gadhafi over the last six or seven years. The Libyan leader had over that time become accepted into the international community following a long period of isolation. Their risk analysis must be questioned, he argued.
“It is a question of ‘When will countries learn their lesson?’” he said. “In many cases the national arms industries were supported by their respective governments. So you would see that the prime minister of the U.K. or the president of France personally get involved. We’re talking all kinds of weapons, from small arms to advanced combat aircraft. There was a really aggressive marketing effort.”
Ironically, in a matter of months, not only was an embargo imposed, but also in the end, the same kind of weapons that had been sold to Gadhafi would be used by NATO to help the rebels oust him. And now, the original weapons sold to Gadhafi may end up in the hands of groups hostile to the West.
Wezeman said that western governments should ask themselves if it is a good idea to sell weapons to certain countries. He mentioned the example of how the United States had sold large numbers of weapons to their ally, the Shah of Iran, and when he was toppled, these weapons ended up in the hands of people completely opposed to the United States. Similar, if not identical scenarios may occur in regard to some of the other countries the West was currently providing with weapons, he said, mentioning Saudi Arabia and Algeria as possible concerns.
