Christian Caryl wrote yesterday on the possibility that the collapse of Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime in Libya -- and the flood of suddenly available weaponry that resulted -- may be at the root of Mali's current crisis. Not surprisingly, as Reuters reports today, the Tuareg rebels may not be the only armed group in North Africa that has come into a post-Qaddafi weapons windfall:
"We found that Libyan weapons are being sold
in what is the world's biggest black market for illegal gun smugglers,
and Somali pirates are among those buying from sellers in Sierra Leone,
Liberia and other countries," said Judith van der Merwe, of the
Algiers-based African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism.
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