Us Weapon Buy-back Amid Fears That Missing `stingers' May Sting Back
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday April 24, 1999
They were the equaliser in Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union - "Stinger" missiles, doled out generously by a United States government determined to inflict a humiliating blow on the former communist superpower.
From 1986 to 1989 the US Central Intelligence Agency distributed more than 1,000 Stingers to the Afghan mujahideen, who used some to bring down 270 Soviet aircraft, but hoarded others.
The Russians are gone, but Washington is still looking for its heat-seeking, shoulder-fired missiles, fearing they may find their way into the hands of Islamic extremists such as Osama bin Laden, or hostile foreign governments.
Under a covert buy-back scheme funded by the US Congress, the CIA has offered up to $US175,000 ($269,000) a piece, five times their original cost, to secure the return of the supersonic missiles that bring down aircraft by homing in on their exhausts.
The scheme initially provoked a flood of responses from Afghan warlords and shady Pakistani middlemen. It is not known how many were returned, but hundreds are believed still to be unaccounted for.
If the CIA would like a hint about where to start looking, it might try this isolated village on the fringes of the Hindu Kush mountains, a military base for one of the legendary figures of the Afghan war. Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, now leading forces opposed to the Islamic Taliban militia, admits he has six of the high-tech missiles.
"They gave me only eight Stingers. We fired one at a communist aircraft, and it missed. With another we hit an SU-25. The rest are with us," Commander Massoud said in an interview with the Herald at Farkhar in northern Afghanistan.
Weighing a mere 15 kilograms, the easily concealed "man-portable surface-to-air missiles" (MANPADS) were carried on foot across Afghanistan's rugged terrain.
Commander Massoud is not saying how he would respond to American overtures to return his Stingers, but most of the missiles went to another mujahideen leader, and former Afghan prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now living in exile in Iran.
Osama bin Laden has previously boasted that he too has Stingers, and has used some to bring down US military aircraft operating in Somalia.
Concerns about MANPADS were raised early in 1994 in a report by the US State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security: "There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the threat to civil aircraft emanating from terrorist groups, rebel militias and even criminal enterprises possessing MANPADS is an increasing possibility".
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald