(New York Times) C. J. Chivers - The first clues appeared in Kenya, Uganda and what is now South Sudan. A British arms researcher surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias in 2006 found Kalashnikov rifle cartridges he had not seen before. Similar ammunition turned up in 2009 in Guinea. A group of independent arms-trafficking researchers found the source of the mystery cartridges to be Iran. For the past several years, Iran's state-manufactured ammunition has been distributed through secretive networks to a long list of combatants, including in regions under UN arms embargoes. Iranian cartridges have been found in the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the Taliban in Afghanistan and groups affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Niger.
2013-01-14 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive