“Global Arms Markets as Seen Through the Syrian Lens is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By Scott Stewart

The many and diverse efforts to arm the various actors in the Syrian civil war are really quite amazing to watch. These efforts are also quite hard to decipher — and intentionally so — since many of the arms transfers occur on the murky gray and black arms markets. Indeed, it is quite doubtful that anyone, whether Syrian intelligence, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or the CIA really has a complete picture of all the channels used to funnel arms into the conflict. Certainly, I cannot hope to catalogue all of them here. However, the efforts to arm all of the factions fighting in Syria do provide a great opportunity to discuss the global arms trade and its various facets.

The Nature of Weapons

To understand the global arms markets we must first understand some critical things about the nature of weapons. First of all, it is important to realize that weapons are durable goods. While certain types of weapons and weapon components have a limited shelf life — such as battery-coolant units for the FIM-92A Stinger missile — numerous other weapons remain functional for many decades. It is not unusual to find a militant or a soldier carrying an AK-47 assault rifle manufactured before he was born — and in many cases even before his father was born. Read the rest of this entry »