New meaning for an old relationship: Serbia’s arms deals during Gaddafi’s reign

Abandoned and captured military warehouses and depots in Libya revealed that the now ousted Mohammed Gaddafi kept his arms inventory exceptionally high. It should be no wonder that the civil war in this North African country was as brutal and bloody as it was. Countries like China, Russia and Italy found Libya to be a good customer for their military products. But what is often overlooked is that, even a small country like Serbia left an imprint in the Libyan civil war as a result of its weapon export policies. The most recent Amnesty International report revealed that Serbia exported a significant stock of small arms and ammunitions to Libya in the last five years. The question remains, how did Serbia manage to establish itself in the Libyan weapons market? One explanation is that Serbia inherited a large military industrial complex, well established during the Yugoslav era. More importantly, however, Belgrade profited from an old Yugoslav political legacy reflected in an obsolete, but not completely defunct, movement known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).