Shashank Joshi: Arming rebel groups could backfire on the West, as it has done in the past
[Shashank Joshi is an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.]
The trickle of arms to Libya may have already begun, with the reported cargo of Britain's ill-fated task force including both weapons and explosives. The question is now whether this will turn into a flood.
The White House is mulling over whether or not to funnel weaponry to the rebels in earnest, even if it yesterday insisted that sending weapons to Libya would be illegal. The obvious precedent would be American support – in concert with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – to arm the anti-Soviet mujahedin during the Afghan jihad. That had as its legacy the civil war of the 1990s and the insurgency that rages today. Nearly 1,000 heat-seeking Stinger missiles provided to the resistance played a key role in countering Soviet helicopters, but these later found their way to Croatia, Iran, and North Korea.
Libya's rebels would benefit from more anti-aircraft weapons, particularly as they advance westwards across open ground. Yet it is precisely these that pose the greatest risk if used against Western forces in other theatres, or by terrorists. Two such surface-to-air missiles were fired at a passenger aircraft in Mombasa in 2002...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
The trickle of arms to Libya may have already begun, with the reported cargo of Britain's ill-fated task force including both weapons and explosives. The question is now whether this will turn into a flood.
The White House is mulling over whether or not to funnel weaponry to the rebels in earnest, even if it yesterday insisted that sending weapons to Libya would be illegal. The obvious precedent would be American support – in concert with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – to arm the anti-Soviet mujahedin during the Afghan jihad. That had as its legacy the civil war of the 1990s and the insurgency that rages today. Nearly 1,000 heat-seeking Stinger missiles provided to the resistance played a key role in countering Soviet helicopters, but these later found their way to Croatia, Iran, and North Korea.
Libya's rebels would benefit from more anti-aircraft weapons, particularly as they advance westwards across open ground. Yet it is precisely these that pose the greatest risk if used against Western forces in other theatres, or by terrorists. Two such surface-to-air missiles were fired at a passenger aircraft in Mombasa in 2002...