Zagreb sold a record amount of aging weapons and ammunition to Saudi Arabia in 2016, ignoring evidence the arms are regularly being diverted to Syria.
Croatia has drastically increased its sales of decades-old arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia despite mounting evidence that the deliveries are being diverted to Syria in breach of European Union (EU) and international law.
Though it has one of the best and most expensively equipped armies in the Middle East, the Gulf Kingdom imported US$ 81.7 million in aging ammunition, including bullets, mortars, rockets, and rocket and grenade launchers worth $5.8 million from Croatia during the first nine months of 2016. This total is already double Croatia’s sales to Saudi Arabia over the previous four years, and the final value will likely be higher, as figures for the last quarter have not yet been published.
Igor Tabak, a Croatian defense analyst, said that the country does not currently produce ammunition. “It is quite likely that the exports come from old ammunition,” he said, “possibly from the inventory of the former Yugoslavia and Eastern [Bloc] production.”
While Croatia has consistently refused to acknowledge that it is profiting from liquidating its old stocks on the Syrian battlefields, defense ministry documents reviewed by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) show a major surge in sales from its stockpile coinciding with the start of the civil war in 2012.
According to those reports, the Ministry of Defense, which has a stockpile of around 18,000 tons, sold at least 5,000 tons of surplus ammunition in 2013 and 2014—as much as it had sold in the preceding decade.
The Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for additional information on who bought the armaments and whether additional sales were made in 2015 and 2016.
Arms Exports: A State Secret
Croatia was among the first countries to supply weapons to Syrian rebels in the winter of 2012. The shipment was routed via Jordan with logistical support from the CIA and paid for by Saudi Arabia, according to a 2013 investigation by the New York Times.
Following a flurry of embarrassing news coverage, Croatia abruptly started removing key information, such as the final destination of its exports, from official reports in an attempt to keep the details of this trade out of the headlines.
The Ministry of Economy, which is responsible for issuing import/export licenses for weapons and ammunition, told BIRN and OCCRP that a 2012 law on personal data protection prohibits it from giving out this information. This is disputed by the Croatian Data Protection Agency, which said the legislation applies only to individuals, not to companies or governments.
Five non-governmental organizations described the removal of information as a “troubling decline in transparency” in their submission to a United Nations (UN) Human Rights Panel on Croatia in March 2015.
Reporters, however, obtained the data via a little-known UN database, Comtrade, which contains annual international trade statistics from more than 170 countries.
The UN database revealed that Croatia exported $36 million worth of ammunition to Jordan in the two years since the Syrian conflict began in 2012. After Croatia’s role became public, Saudi Arabia took over importing more than $124 million worth of ammunition since 2014 – two thirds in the first nine months of 2016 alone.
The two countries also imported more than $21 million in weapons, including rocket and grenade launchers, since 2012.
Prior to 2012, the arms trade between Croatia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia was virtually nonexistent. Since 2012, all but a few hundred thousand dollars of Croatia’s ammunition sales have gone to Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
A spokesperson of the Croatian Ministry of Economy said that the latest exports took place in accordance with licenses approved in 2015. He also added that some export licenses to Saudi Arabia were rejected in 2015, and none were issued in 2016 but refused to provide any further detail.
An earlier investigation by BIRN and OCCRP revealed that Croatia approved $302 million worth of arms export licenses over this period. Unless these licenses are revoked, millions of dollars in future exports are approved to go forward.
Falling Into the Wrong Hands
While experts have previously highlighted video and photographic evidence of Croatian-made RBG-6 grenade launchers and RAK-12 multiple-launch rocket systems in Syria, Croatian officials have disputed their origin, pointing out that similar weapons are produced elsewhere.
However, new analysis by BIRN and OCCRP of the social media profiles used by brigades fighting in Syria, as well from online enthusiasts who monitor the spread of weapons, provide clear evidence that these weapons are Croatian-made.
Source: http://hetq.am/eng/news/76018/croatia-sells-record-number-of-arms-to-saudi-arabia-in-2016.html