Viktor Bout, former Russian army officer turned international arms dealer extraordinaire, was this week extradited to the US from Thailand, accused of trying to sell weapons to Colombian rebels as well as supplying many of the guns, bombs and bullets used in conflicts across Africa and the Middle East.
Bout – pronounced “boot” – is very much a man who epitomises the dangerous and mercenary times we live in. Here we have a world-class 21st-century entrepreneur with precious few moral or ideological constraints, who sees war as the ultimate business opportunity. Bout, the global go-getter, makes those international bankers and brokers who play fast and loose with the law look like slouches.
But what they all have in common, of course, is an insatiable greed that needs to be fed, irrespective of the human cost to those caught up in the crossfire of wheeling and dealing. Think Bernie Madoff, the American broker who defrauded investors of billions of dollars, and apply that to Viktor Bout’s air transport and arms dealing empire, and you get some idea of the ruthlessness, scale and sums involved. Not even Madoff’s rapacious plundering, however, could give rise to the kind of wholesale butchery of communities that Bout’s door-to-door arms delivery service made possible.
Flying under flags of convenience or registered in obscure failed states, Bout’s fleet of ageing Russian transport aircraft ferried their lethal cargoes while his bank accounts and business locations remained equally fluid. His client list is said to read like a veritable who’s who of the world’s bogey men. Charles Taylor – of blood diamond notoriety – in Liberia. Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie – of hand-chopping infamy – in Sierra Leone. Mubuto in Zaire, Gaddafi in Libya, the Taliban, al Qaeda – you name the despot or regime and Bout is said to have given them the countless Kalashnikovs, land mines, rocket launchers and other weapons needed to wreak havoc and suffering.
Such was Bout’s near legendary reputation that even a movie, Lord of War, loosely based on Bout’s life, was made, starring Nicolas Cage. I remember once flying into the beleaguered Liberian capital, Monrovia, aboard one of the first humanitarian aid flights during the second civil war there in 1999. One of the Scandinavian crew recounted how a few days before, while landing, they had almost collided with another aircraft that arrived unscheduled and unannounced.
“People say it was one of Viktor Bout’s that came from Libya carrying guns for President Charles Taylor,” the crewman told me. “Surely you must have heard of him. Every cargo pilot in Africa knows of Bout,” the pilot insisted.
Anecdotal as this evidence was, for years until then, electronic intercepts, phone taps, documents and eyewitness sightings of Bout’s planes being unloaded on remote African airstrips, had been gathered by the world’s intelligence services and law enforcement agencies. The United Nations, CIA, US National Security Agency, MI6, Russian FSB, Belgian and other intelligence services, all had Bout’s activities on their radar. Yet, despite this, between them they could only scuttle along in the wake of his trail of destruction, never quite able to catch, let alone convict, him.
Why was this? Could it be that Viktor Bout, far from being some lone wolf, was, in fact, also part of a pack, closer to many of these same organisations than many realised? Certainly, the Kremlin fought long and hard to prevent Bout’s extradition this week, with many believing that he knows all about Russia’s covert arms supplies, both official and unofficial, going back decades. And what about Bout’s American and Iraq war connections? According to Douglas Farah, the Washington Post journalist who penned a penetrating investigative book on Bout’s career, the Russian’s air-freight services were used by the US military and by Halliburton, its subsidiary KBR, Federal Express and other contractors in Iraq, making Bout enormous profits, even though George W Bush has signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout and his companies.
Then there is that 2006 Amnesty International report that details how a Moldovan-registered company linked to Bout obtained a US military contract in 2004 to fly 200,000 Kalashnikov rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition from Bosnia to Iraq, even though Bout was already on a UN and Treasury Department blacklist and was wanted by Interpol. The simple fact is that the international arms trade has always operated in this vague, murky, ambiguous way, where telling the difference between the legal and the illegal has proved problematic, to say the least.
Viktor Bout was a past master at exploiting this. Indeed, much of what Bout did would be difficult to deem illegal such was the mastery with which he manipulated governments, regimes, organisations and individuals alike. For decades, Bout and the world’s weapons merchants have found it all too easy to profit from the shortcomings in international legislation when it comes to arms peddling.
Like mercenary soldiers and the plethora of private security firms that have sprung up as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who run guns have proved as much a benefit to many states as they have a danger – Britain and the US being no exception. As activists such as those from groups like Action Network on Small Arms, and the Control Arms campaign rightly point out, there is a pressing need to tighten standards controlling the international trade in conventional arms. To that end, a tougher Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that would establish strict rules for the international transfer of arms, and hold irresponsible arms suppliers and dealers to account, urgently needs to be realised.
Viktor Bout may know more than enough to embarrass, if not incriminate, a lot of people from Moscow to Washington and far beyond. In a New York City court on Wednesday, he pleaded not guilty to charges including terrorism and arms trafficking. Those who believe his trial will cast any real light on the shadowy world of illegal arms dealing and the extent to which nations collude in its practice may well be disappointed. If nothing else, Viktor Bout has shown himself in the past to be a consummate deal-maker and survivor, and for that reason alone some kind of legal chicanery or pact with America’s spooks may yet get him out of another tight corner. As you read this, countless numbers of people are being killed, maimed, raped and forced to flee their homes as a result of the violence that arms dealers make possible. The so-called Lord of War may for the moment be behind bars, but his disciples are still busy spreading their insidious message.
