Security analysts say the uprising in Libya poses a long-term security threat ? that weapons looted from government stockpiles could circulate widely, including heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles that could be used against civilian airliners.
Photographs and video from the uprising show civilians carrying a full array of Libyan military’s weapons - like the SA-7, an early-generation, shoulderfired missile in the same family as the more widely known Stinger - that intelligence agencies have long worried could fall into terrorists’ hands.
Past examples of state arsenals being looted by civilians - whether in Uganda in 1979, Albania in 1997 or Iraq in 2003 - have shown that once these weapons slip from state custody they can be sold through black markets to other countries and groups for use in wars where they can present longlasting and destabilizing problems.
Analysts are particularly concerned about the heat-seeking missiles, known as Man-Portable Air- Defense Systems, or Manpads. “The danger of these missiles ending up in the hands of terrorists and insurgents outside of Libya is very real,” said Matthew Schroeder, the director of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “Securing these missiles should be a top priority of the U.S. intelligence community and their counterparts overseas.”
The principal threat, the analysts said, is not the rebels themselves, who want international sympathy and support. Rather, the concern is that because these missiles can sell for at least several thousand dollars on black markets, opportunists will offer them to third parties - pushing them into the underground trade.
Over the decades, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi has spent heavily to equip his forces and amass reserve munitions and arms. He has been accused of procuring weapons to pass on to foreign groups, including Palestinian and Irish fighters, rebel groups and governments in sub-Saharan Africa.
The weapons that have emerged confirm that despite international sanctions, Libya had acquired arms from multiple sellers in the former Eastern bloc, accumulating an arsenal that looks like the bounty of cold war clearance sales.
The rebels’ newly acquired equipment ranges from dilapidated tanks to relatively recent Russian assault-rifle variants. Mixed in are rifles of Romanian, Hungarian and Russian provenance, along with crates of ammunition from Norinco, one of the principal arms-manufacturers in China.
Peter Danssaert, a researcher for the International Peace Information Service in Belgium who covers arms proliferation in Eastern Europe and Africa, said that now that the weapons were out of government custody, few would be recovered. “They are gone forever” from state accountability, he said.
Nic Marsh, who researches the small-arms trade for the Peace Research Institute Oslo , said the weapons could move to Chad or Sudan, to Algeria or to Palestinian fighters.
If the battles in Libya turn into a long war, the two sides might actually import more weapons to sustain their fighting. But once the uprising is resolved, if history is a guide, the weapons stand to be sold off piece by piece.
In these cases, as in Albania in the late 1990s, weapons become commodities, and smuggling rings can form to move them on. Assault rifles in Africa often fetch several hundred dollars. The weapons now circulating in Libya, fresh from arsenals and evidently in good condition, could be worth more - creating an incentive to dump them onto markets later.
The Manpads, analysts said, are much more difficult to acquire and would command significantly higher prices and attract their own subset of buyers. “When the guys outside the country realize that there are Manpads available, they will try to get them,” Mr. Danssaert said. By “guys,” he said, he meant terrorist organizations.
Carried and fired by a single fighter, the missiles travel at supersonic speeds from a shoulder-fired launcher toward the heat emitted by an aircraft engine, where they detonate a highexplosive charge. Many modern military planes use countermeasures to confuse such weapons. But very few civilian aircraft do.
There have been numerous other attacks against civilian aircraft, many of which have been destroyed in flight. Some of the attacks were devastating: an Air Rhodesia plane was downed by an SA-7 in 1979, killing all 59 people aboard; an American-supported guerrilla group claimed that it downed a Boeing 737 flown by Angolan Airways with a missile in 1983, killing 130 people; the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army used an SA-7 to destroy a Sudan Airways passenger plane in 1986, killing 60 people.
In 1994, a plane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda was struck by a Manpads, killing both men and setting off genocide in Rwanda. Manpads can also cause economic ripples, because aviation companies might be unwilling to service routes in areas where terrorist groups are believed to possess them.
As Eric Berman, the managing director of the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, which has researched the missiles’ proliferation, said, “A perceived threat can have an effect.”
By C. J. CHIVERS
