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"  Chaos helps stock the shelves of criminal arms dealers and terrorists. In Libya, where a civil war has raged since February, fears are growing that weapons inside Muammar Gaddafi&amp;#039;s arsenal could fall into the black market. Perhaps highest on the list of valuable commodities would be shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which terrorists or insurgents could use against military and civilian aircraft outside Libya.  Last week, Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, bluntly told Congress that the issue is serious. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m very concerned about the proliferation of weapons, notably shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, which we assess there were perhaps as many as 20,000 in Libya as the operation began,&amp;quot; he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. &amp;quot;Many of those we know are now not accounted for, and that&amp;#039;s going to be a concern for some period of time.&amp;quot; But by the time Ham spoke to Congress, worries about weapons proliferation were already at fever pitch among Libya observers. In late March, Idriss D\u00E9by Itno, the president of Chad, claimed he was &amp;quot;100 percent sure&amp;quot; that these man-portable air-defense weapons (MANPADs) had been stolen by criminals planning to sell them to Al Qaeda. Itno gave no evidence to back up his certainty, but proof that these arms had at least begun to spread came when Libyan rebels appeared on cable-news networks carrying SA-7s, Russian-made surface-to-air missiles that were designed in the 1960s. The system is old but potent enough to down U.S. helicopters in Iraq. The systems shown on television have markings that dated them to 1977, according to Matt Schroeder, director of the arms-sales-monitoring project at the Federation of American Scientists.  &amp;quot;The number of missiles that we can identify in those photos are maybe a few dozen, but Gaddafi had thousands,&amp;quot; Schroeder says. &amp;quot;If the depots that were looted had hundreds, and all we can see are a few dozen, the big question is: Where are the rest? How many of them are not under rebel control?&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s not all: Recent video from Libya has revealed the presence of more sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles\u2014SA-24s, which have a greater range and better targeting capability. SA-24s can be shoulder-fired or mounted on trucks. Those carried by vehicles are less of a threat\u2014they are harder to smuggle and more difficult to use in a clandestine operation. But shoulder-fired SA-24s are easy to conceal in areas with heightened security. Russia sold the SA-24s to Libya, and did so without having to tell other countries a word about it, thanks to the vague wording of international treaties. &amp;quot;The reporting requirements for the [United Nations Register of Conventional Arms] exempt that system because it&amp;#039;s not man-portable and it does not have a range beyond 25 kilometers,&amp;quot; Schroeder says. &amp;quot;So the Russians did not violate the rules of the register by not reporting those... I&amp;#039;d close that loophole.&amp;quot; Aviation Week&amp;#039;s Maxim Pyadushkin confirmed with Russian arms exporters that the SA-24s were not delivered with grips that enable them to be shoulder-fired\u2014thus, they were exempt from reporting, so there&amp;#039;s no way to know how many were in Libya before the conflict began. In Libya, then, arcane international regulations have made the already difficult task of stopping weapons proliferation after the collapse of a state even harder. Libya&amp;#039;s arsenal contains other weapons that could prove useful to an insurgent or terrorist, including antitank rockets, gun-targeting systems, explosives and chemical-weapon stockpiles. Italy and France sold the most weapons to Libya after an arms embargo ended in 2004; the United States sold hardly any. &amp;quot;I think one could argue that certain countries rushed in too quickly to arm Libya after Gaddafi supposedly renounced terrorism and gave up his weapons-of-mass-destruction capacity,&amp;quot; Schroeder says. &amp;quot;That type of behavior needs to be rewarded, but the French sold them antitank missiles. That was not wise.&amp;quot; Are we seeing the lessons of proliferation forgotten already? Calls in Europe and Washington D.C. to arm the rebels in Libya have grown louder as the civil war drags on and the limits of allied air power become clear. But Ham told Congress that the United States is aware of terrorist ties among anti-Gaddafi rebels and is hesitant to deliver weapons to them. &amp;quot;We have seen intent expressed by Al Qaeda... to partner with the opposition, if you will, in an anti-Gaddafi regime mode,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I think we need to know more about what that means before we were to make a U.S. decision to arm, though I think others are working in that direction.&amp;quot; These concerns about whether to sell weapons and how to keep tabs on them go far beyond Libya: It is just one example of government-arms stockpiles in the Middle East at risk of reaching the black market. Securing weapons in a failed state means the intelligence agencies of outside countries need to know what is stored where, and then politicians must decide a course of action. Any direct intervention\u2014either an airstrike to destroy weapons or a ground operation to go get them\u2014could place other nations in the midst of a war. Bribery and clandestine action are possibilities, too. All these moves are risky, and become riskier when weapons information is incomplete. But once the weapons are dispersed, they are nearly impossible to track down again. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a12398/where-are-libyas-anti-aircraft-missiles-5557406/>