Friday, February 22, 2013

German arms to GCC countries

From Don in Berlin:
"Last year there was a short lived discussion in German media and political circles, if the country really should sell tanks to the house of Saud. It was a surprise that this was discussed at all, because such weapon deals are usually kept secret and discussed and approved without Parliamentary control by the Federal Security Council.
Now, after an parliamentarian request for information by the socialist party Die Linke, it turned out that Germany doubled its weapons export to the gulf states in 2012. Best customers and partners in democracy are the GCC countries Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia etc. Saudi Arabia alone bought hardware for 1.2 Billion Euros! Unfortunately there are no details on what exactly was sold to Bahrain, but sales also increased there. Another exemplary democracy profiting from increased weapon deliveries was Algeria..
The story was broken by the Süddeutsche Zeitung
Hypocritical Germany is still the third largest exporter of weapons in the world."