A group of UN experts recently disclosed that it has found evidence for the existence of “well-established network” of weapon suppliers in Eastern Europe and the Middle East transferring weapons to South Sudan. The report, which was submitted to the United Nations Security Council, described the arms deals are being made involved, among others, Israeli and Bulgarian firms. The Security Council had previously threatened imposing an arms embargo on South Sudan in an attempt to end the fighting taking place in that country’s bloody civil war.

President of South Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel (Photo: Israel Government Press Office)

According to Attorneys Itai Mac and Idan Landau, who studied the issue, Israel’s involvement today in southern Sudan is excessive relative to the history of Israeli defense exports. In an article they published last year, Mac and Landau stressed that the extent of the exports is not just a matter of greed. Israel is grabbing the horns of the altar and fighting for the continuation of a project that it has invested not a little in over many years; a project whose failure could damage its credibility in the eyes of dictators and other regimes across the continent who receive military aid assistance from it.” An official publication by the Ministry of Defense from November 2014 – almost a year after the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan – boasts the success the ministry’s Defense Export Department in a “cyber security” exhibition attended by 70 delegations from around the world, including a delegation from South Sudan. According to Mac and Landau, there is evidence of Galil Ace automatic weapons in the arsenal of the Army of South Sudan. A year and a half before the outbreak of the civil war a Sudanese newspaper reported an “airlift” from Israel to South Sudan containing rockets, military equipment and African mercenaries – after training in Israel. Israeli procurement delegations also visited the African country.

Mac and Landau wrote in their article: “Think about it for a moment: a country in whose territory crimes against humanity are being carried out today using foreign weaponry, one with which Europe and the United States have suspended all military trade, this country sends a military procurement delegation to Israel, and is received with open arms.”