What Does Viktor Bout Know?

The world’s most notoroious arms dealer is coming to America to stand trial. And that has Russia very worried.

BY DOUGLAS FARAH | AUGUST 20, 2010

It looks like the luck of Viktor Bout, one of the world's premier weapons
traffickers, has finally run out. The surprise
decision Friday of a Thai appellate to overturn a lower-court
decision and allow Bout's extradition to stand trial in the United States on
charges of trying to sell weapons to Colombian guerrillas means he should
finally get his day in court.

Unfortunately for him, the purported buyers for his surface-to-air missiles, unmanned drones,
and sophisticated anti-tank systems -- who he thought were from the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, a designated
terrorist organization -- were informants of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

His arrest in Bangkok in March 2008, where he met with the informants to seal the
deal, set off tremors in many high places, particularly in Russia. The
immediate reaction of the Russian foreign minister and other officials, who
denounced the decision and equated it with an attack on the Russian state,
shows the importance they place on keeping Bout from talking in open court.
Why? What are the Russians so afraid of?

Bout's importance was not just that he exploited the gaping holes in the new world
economic order to reportedly move hundreds of thousands of weapons and millions
of rounds of ammunition to obscure corners of the world to fan conflicts
involving unspeakable human rights atrocities. Nor is it that he was
simultaneously able to reap millions of dollars in profits by flying for the
United States government, the United Nations, the British government, and other
legal entities.

What made Bout unique was his ability to merge private profiteering with state
interests in the new globalized world of unfettered weapons flows. Dubbed the
"Merchant of Death," Bout, often under the protection of his Russian
superiors in the military intelligence structure, created a one-stop shop for
weapons that could be delivered virtually anywhere in the world. His access to
former Soviet arsenals, aircraft, and crews would not have been possible
without state protection.

It was this quantum leap in the ability to provide rag-tag and violent groups like
the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and Charles Taylor in
Liberia that drew the attention of U.S. and European intelligence services in
the mid-1990s. As rebels launched their campaigns of mass amputations and
systematic rape to take over lucrative diamond fields, they used weapons
purchased through Bout and often paid with commodities