Libyans Loot Weapons From Desert Cache
By SAM DAGHER
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SIRTE DESERT, Libya—Spread across the desert here off the Sirte-Waddan road sits one of the biggest threats to Western hopes for Libya: a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.
By SAM DAGHER
======================================================
SIRTE DESERT, Libya—Spread across the desert here off the Sirte-Waddan road sits one of the biggest threats to Western hopes for Libya: a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.
Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
A fighter from the western Libyan city of Misrata loaded weapons into the back of a pickup truck at a desert site south of Sirte on Wednesday.
In one of dozens of warehouses the size of a single-family home, Soviet-era guided missiles remain wrapped inside crates stacked to the 15-foot ceiling. In another, dusted with sand, are dozens of sealed cases labeled "warhead." Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons are stashed in the back of another. Rockets, antitank grenades and projectiles of all calibers are piled so high they defy counting.
There are dozens of warehouses here, spreading for several miles across the desert 100 miles south of Sirte, in what Libya's interim rulers say is the largest known ammunition storage site in the country.
Convoys of armed groups from all over Libya have made the trek here and piled looted weapons into trailer trucks, dump trucks, buses and even empty meat trucks.
The site represents a major hazard for Libya's security and for hopes for reconstruction and democratization of the country in the post-Gadhafi era.
Across Libya, stores of weapons left behind by Col. Gadhafi's massive military are up for grabs by various former-rebel groups with disagreements that threaten to spill into factional fighting. Many of the region-based armed groups have competing agendas and are only loosely tied to interim authorities in Tripoli—and jostling for power is already under way.
The threat of such a volatile mix is compounded by the absence of a real army or police force capable of reining in the militia-like groups.
In addition, U.S. officials and defense experts have expressed concern that some of the estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles left behind by Col. Gadhafi's military could fall into the hands of terrorists, posing a threat to commercial airliners.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday that the U.S. is sending personnel to Libya to help the country's interim authority, the National Transitional Council, secure conventional-arms storage sites.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), during a visit on Thursday to Tripoli with three other Republican senators, said securing Libya's weapons caches was "a very big topic."
"We have a game plan to secure the weapon caches, particularly biological and chemical weapons," Sen. McCain said, without giving more details.
Weeks after the fall of Col. Gadhafi, the longtime Libya leader remains at large and diverse military factions, with the help of aerial bombardment by North Atlantic Treaty Organization jets, are trying to seize the last loyalist redoubts, such as Sirte, so the NTC can say its victory is complete.
The NTC has also yet to secure at least two border crossings, according to Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the governing body's executive committee.
An end to the fighting would allow the NTC to begin the reconstruction of the country, which was a major oil exporter before the uprising that brought down Col. Gadhafi began more than seven months ago.
Officials from the city and military councils in Misrata, which report to the NTC, played down the danger of proliferation from leftover depots and expressed confidence that arms would be eventually handed over to a new national army, once one is formed.
"The rebels know how to handle it," said Mohammed Abdel-Kafi, a member of both councils. "No problem, God willing."
But weapons are already proliferating from this desert site off the al Ruwagha road, which connects the coastal city of Sirte to Waddan, some 400 miles southeast of Tripoli.
When the NTC announced the "liberation" of the region south of Sirte last week, it added that "one of the largest arms depots" was situated in the area.
Misrata-based forces loyal to the NTC also said at the time that they had secured a chemical weapons facility in al Ruwagha. They said they would guard it until the arrival of United Nations experts.
On a visit to the site his week by The Wall Street Journal, no guard or security of any sort was visible. Ammunition cases, numbering in the thousands, lay spread for miles on the desert floor outside the warehouses.
A Western security contractor who examined photographs of the storage site estimated it contained enough ammunition to enable "an insurgent or an al Qaeda-type group to wage a ground-to-air war" and sufficient explosives to plant roadside bombs every 10 miles along Libya's 1,100-mile coastline.—Muneef Halawa in Tripoli contributed to this article
A fighter from the western Libyan city of Misrata loaded weapons into the back of a pickup truck at a desert site south of Sirte on Wednesday.
In one of dozens of warehouses the size of a single-family home, Soviet-era guided missiles remain wrapped inside crates stacked to the 15-foot ceiling. In another, dusted with sand, are dozens of sealed cases labeled "warhead." Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons are stashed in the back of another. Rockets, antitank grenades and projectiles of all calibers are piled so high they defy counting.
There are dozens of warehouses here, spreading for several miles across the desert 100 miles south of Sirte, in what Libya's interim rulers say is the largest known ammunition storage site in the country.
Convoys of armed groups from all over Libya have made the trek here and piled looted weapons into trailer trucks, dump trucks, buses and even empty meat trucks.
The site represents a major hazard for Libya's security and for hopes for reconstruction and democratization of the country in the post-Gadhafi era.
Across Libya, stores of weapons left behind by Col. Gadhafi's massive military are up for grabs by various former-rebel groups with disagreements that threaten to spill into factional fighting. Many of the region-based armed groups have competing agendas and are only loosely tied to interim authorities in Tripoli—and jostling for power is already under way.
The threat of such a volatile mix is compounded by the absence of a real army or police force capable of reining in the militia-like groups.
In addition, U.S. officials and defense experts have expressed concern that some of the estimated 20,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles left behind by Col. Gadhafi's military could fall into the hands of terrorists, posing a threat to commercial airliners.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday that the U.S. is sending personnel to Libya to help the country's interim authority, the National Transitional Council, secure conventional-arms storage sites.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), during a visit on Thursday to Tripoli with three other Republican senators, said securing Libya's weapons caches was "a very big topic."
"We have a game plan to secure the weapon caches, particularly biological and chemical weapons," Sen. McCain said, without giving more details.
Weeks after the fall of Col. Gadhafi, the longtime Libya leader remains at large and diverse military factions, with the help of aerial bombardment by North Atlantic Treaty Organization jets, are trying to seize the last loyalist redoubts, such as Sirte, so the NTC can say its victory is complete.
The NTC has also yet to secure at least two border crossings, according to Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the governing body's executive committee.
An end to the fighting would allow the NTC to begin the reconstruction of the country, which was a major oil exporter before the uprising that brought down Col. Gadhafi began more than seven months ago.
Officials from the city and military councils in Misrata, which report to the NTC, played down the danger of proliferation from leftover depots and expressed confidence that arms would be eventually handed over to a new national army, once one is formed.
"The rebels know how to handle it," said Mohammed Abdel-Kafi, a member of both councils. "No problem, God willing."
But weapons are already proliferating from this desert site off the al Ruwagha road, which connects the coastal city of Sirte to Waddan, some 400 miles southeast of Tripoli.
When the NTC announced the "liberation" of the region south of Sirte last week, it added that "one of the largest arms depots" was situated in the area.
Misrata-based forces loyal to the NTC also said at the time that they had secured a chemical weapons facility in al Ruwagha. They said they would guard it until the arrival of United Nations experts.
On a visit to the site his week by The Wall Street Journal, no guard or security of any sort was visible. Ammunition cases, numbering in the thousands, lay spread for miles on the desert floor outside the warehouses.
A Western security contractor who examined photographs of the storage site estimated it contained enough ammunition to enable "an insurgent or an al Qaeda-type group to wage a ground-to-air war" and sufficient explosives to plant roadside bombs every 10 miles along Libya's 1,100-mile coastline.—Muneef Halawa in Tripoli contributed to this article
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