Military
officials with Libya’s UN-recognised government say they have seized US-made
weapons at a base they captured from forces loyal to renegade military
commander Khalifa Haftar in Libya, prompting an investigation by the US Department of State.
The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) on
Wednesday retook Gharyan, a strategic town south of the capital, from Haftar’s
self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).
The GNA said that among the weaponry its forces seized were a
number of US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles packed in wooden crates marked
“armed forces of the United Arab Emirates” (UAE). Libyan media also aired
footage that appeared to show markings that indicated that the US-made weapons
were originally sold to the UAE – a major buyer of US weapons and one of
Haftar’s main international supporters – in 2008.
“The seized weapons and ammunition have been sent to the
specialised experts and have been documented,” Mohammed Qununu, spokesman for
the GNA’s military operation, told reporters on Saturday in Gharyan.
“The military commanders and the political leaders are now fully
aware of these weapons and ammunition to make the right decisions that will be
announced.”
Reporting from Tripoli, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said the
GNA had launched a fact-finding mission with the goal of documenting the seized
weapons and producing a report that would be submitted to international
institutions such as the UN and possibly countries like the US.
“Government forces showed off dozens of US-made anti-tank
missiles. They said [the weapons] were seized from Haftar’s forces in Gharyan …
[and] were supplied by the UAE,” Abdelwahed said, noting that the Gulf country
has long supplied weapons to Haftar, including unmanned drones, as well as
armed vehicles and fighter jets.
There was no immediate comment from the UAE. A New York Times
report said the UAE’s ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, had declined to
answer questions about the provenance of the missiles.
Sale agreement violation?
If the UAE did provide the weapons to Haftar’s forces, it would likely be a violation of arms sales agreements with the US.
If the UAE did provide the weapons to Haftar’s forces, it would likely be a violation of arms sales agreements with the US.
“The rule is that if the US sells [weapons] to the UAE or to
another country, the UAE is not then allowed to sell it to someone else – be
that another country or perhaps a state under UN sanctions, or in this case,
apparently, a strongman who is also under UN sanctions,” Al Jazeera’s Rob
Reynolds, reporting from Washington, DC, said.
A spokesperson from the US State Department said in a statement
sent to Al Jazeera: “We take all allegations of misuse of US origin defence
articles very seriously.”
The statement added: “We are aware of these reports and we are
seeking additional information. We expect all recipients of US origin defence
equipment to abide by the end-use obligations.”
Douglas Ollivant, a defence analyst and managing partner at the
consulting firm Mantid International, told Al Jazeera that the UAE’s support to
Haftar “is a known-known”.
“That the Emirates would choose to violate the terms of US
weapons sales, rather than transferring weapons from China or Russia that don’t
have these terms attached to them, is slightly surprising,” he said from Falls
Church, Virginia.
“That the Emirates would feel, if these reports are true, that
they can transfer these weapons without consequence or believe that they would
be undiscovered, neither of those seems very likely in the long term”, Ollivant
added.
“When the US Congress approves a weapons sale to a foreign
government, it approves a certain weapons system and a number of those systems
to a certain government, being very cognizant of what that does for military
balance in the region. So for a government to take those weapons and then
transfer them to someone else for whom they were not intended, my guess is that
the US Congress will take that very seriously.”
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