Good NYT piece is good – working through the effort to arm Syrian rebels, with Saudi and Qatari money, Croatian surplus warstocks, and Jordanian airlift. Inevitably, the kit is moving aboard Il-76s. This time out, though, the aircraft are Jordanian (and occasionally other) military aircraft that sometimes operate as “Jordan International Air Cargo”, a nationalised freight line.
I don’t have much to offer except that it’s great to see the method applied, and it’s fairly common in that part of the world for an air force to have a semidetached heavy lift operation. Libyan Air Cargo operated their air force’s An124, Maximus is the UAE’s version of the same idea.
Awesomely, someone’s virtual-radar box on Cyprus collected the data. This seems to be well reported, so I’m not going to make a special effort. Hugh Griffiths of SIPRI is anyway involved.
If rule 1 is “just follow the planes”, rule 2 must be “everything is in a dull-sounding database somewhere”. In this case, Comtrade tells you that, while Croatia’s previous arms exports to Jordan consisted of 3 boxes of pistols, in December they suddenly sent off 230 tons of rocket launchers, guns and ammo. Purely by coincidence, I’m sure.
I’ve just written up the details here: https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/ccwatch/cc-watch-indepth/1905-croatia-shipped-arms-to-jordan
I’ve just read that! I thought the 35 tonnes of chocolates were amusing too. fish and flowers are so last decade.