Arms bizarre

A curious piece in the Christian Science Monitor examines the flow of weapons from the Balkans to Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Bosnian and US governments are discussing gifting a shipment of Bosnia's familiar Soviet-type weapons to Afghanistan. But small arms experts would like to see Bosnia's weapons destroyed rather than exported, and to end the ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

A curious piece in the Christian Science Monitor examines the flow of weapons from the Balkans to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

A curious piece in the Christian Science Monitor examines the flow of weapons from the Balkans to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The Bosnian and US governments are discussing gifting a shipment of Bosnia's familiar Soviet-type weapons to Afghanistan. But small arms experts would like to see Bosnia's weapons destroyed rather than exported, and to end the post-cold war flow of arms from Eastern Europe to conflict zones around the world."

I understand the concern about the rampant small arms trade, but if the choice is between buying brand new weapons for Afghan security forces and recycling weapons quickly from the Balkans, why is this such a bad outcome? The Afghan police, let's remember, are badly outgunned as they attempt to protect towns and schools from marauding Taliban.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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