Those Guns Look Familiar

By Nadia Mustafa Monday, Mar. 01, 2004
    • Many soldiers in the main force of Haitian rebels attempting to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide are armed with American M-1 and M-14 rifles given to Haiti in the 1980s. The turncoat militia — the Artibonite Resistance Front, formerly known as Aristide's loyal Cannibal Army — is hardly the first foreign military force to get its hands on a stockpile of U.S. weapons. Here are some conflicts of the past few years that the U.S. has unwittingly armed.

    Turkey
    Turks got 100 Black Hawk and Cobra helicopters from the U.S. before Gulf War I and used them against the Kurds.

    Afghanistan
    In the 1980s anti-Soviet mujahedin got Stinger missiles and Chinese-made AK-47s, later used by the anti-U.S. Taliban.

    Colombia
    M-16s that the U.S. gave to the Colombian army in the 1990s to combat drug trafficking are now in the hands of terrorists engaged in human-rights abuses.

    Nicaragua
    American arms transferred to anti-Sandinista contras in the '80s are being used by active death squads across Central America.