Backyard Bomb Business

Nato member since 1999, the Czech Republic hosted this year’s Nato summit, which welcomed seven new members – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

– Export of arms from the Czech Republic has been influenced to a certain extent by our joining the Nato, says Milan Stefanec, of the Czech Independent Social Ecological Movement.

– Thanks to Nato, the Czech armed forces had to review their weapons and arms, so that was a huge rearmament, and it is especially the old arms and weapons that were eliminated from the armed forces which become the object of trading and export.

There is evidence that some Czech weapon’s ended up in Iraq earlier this year. In interviews with the U.K. newspaper, The Guardian, Iraqi defectors reported that anti-aircraft rockets, missiles, and guidance systems for long range missiles were licensed for sale from the Czech Republic to Syria and Yemen – but ended up in Iraq.

Tanks, planes, guns

In October, Bulgarian armored personnel carrier parts were intercepted in Syria, on route to Iraq. The Bulgarian government scrambled to resolve the scandal before the Nato summit, firing the chief executive of the state-owned company that produced and shipped the parts. Other evidence suggests Bulgaria shipped parts and engines for T-55 and T-72 tanks to Iraq.

According to Stefanec, besides Syria and Yemen, Czech weapons have ended up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other countries.

The group Human Rights Watch released a report detailing sales of surplus tanks, planes, guns, armored vehicles, and other heavy weapons from Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.

The group sent an open letter to the Heads of State and Government of Nato in November, urging them to take responsibility of widespread illegal arms trading in recent and future Nato member states, especially as Nato is preparing to modernize the militaries of these countries.

By Patrick Beckett

Read the Human Rights Watch report