It apparently surprises some people that U.S. weapons are falling into Somali terrorists’ hands:
Bad news in America’s five-year-old proxy war against al-Qaida-allied Somali insurgents. Half of the U.S.-supplied weaponry that enables cash-strapped Ugandan and Burundian troops to fight Somalia’s al-Shabab terror group is winding up in al-Shabab’s hands.
The kicker: it’s the cash-strapped Ugandans who are selling the weapons to the insurgents.
This revelation, buried in U.N. reports and highlighted by controversial war correspondent Robert Young Pelton at his new Somalia Report website, raises some unsettling questions about Washington’s plans to out-source more wars in the future.
The M16, if this is one of the weapons referred to, will not be a long-term benefit to the insurgents, since it is quite labor intensive. Maintenance requires partial disassembly and lubrication, and that alone makes it an inferior choice compared to the AK47. They, the insurgents, do not appear to be brainiacs.
I’m afraid the weapons falling into Somali terrorist hands aren’t just hard-to-maintain American assault rifles: