Abstract

The guns of Bosnia

Although Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia, has been subjected to a United Nations arms embargo since September 1991, the various parties to the Bosnian conflict have been able to acquire billions of dollars' worth of munitions through illicit and clandestine channels, making this one of the most heavily armed regions on the face of the earth. Most of the heavier weapons, tanks, artillery and so forth, are in the hands of the Bosnian Serbs, but the Croatian militias and the Bosnian government forces possess large quantities of small arms, mortars, machine guns and other light weapons. As a consequence, any breakdown in the current peace process that results in renewed fighting could do so at relatively high levels of intensity, with the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organizations forces caught in the crossfire. Among the weapons that have shown up in Bosnia are, Kalashnikov rifles of Russian, Eastern European and Chinese manufacture, Soviet-type RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades and AT-3 "Sagger" anti-tank missiles, Chinese "Red Arrow" anti-tank missiles, German-type Armbrust anti-tank rockets and 82-millimeter and 102-millimeter mortars of various origins.