I'm not terribly surprised but let's hope there are reductions of arms sales.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...?ocid=msedgntp

Scores of documents obtained by U.N. experts in an 18-month investigation have shed new light on the unusual 2019 attempt by private security companies to insert Western military experts and weapons into Libya on behalf of Khalifa Hifter, the commander of a rebel army in eastern Libya who is seeking to take control of the country with the backing of Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

The plan, the subject of a U.N. report, underscores a weapons-proliferation challenge that Biden administration officials have vowed to confront: the flow of U.S. arms and equipment into Middle Eastern war zones, aided at times by U.S. allies as well as soldiers of fortune. Among other lines of inquiry, U.N. officials have investigated the role of Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder and private military contractor who officials allege tried to use his personal influence to help secure the release of military equipment bound for Libya.

Any transfer of U.S.-made military aircraft and heavy weapons to a third party is a potential violation of U.N. arms embargoes as well as U.S. laws governing foreign military sales. But U.S. and U.N. investigators are examining multiple incidents involving different types of American-made military hardware, including C-17 transport planes and Javelin antitank missiles, that ended up in Libya or Yemen, according to current and former U.S. and U.N. officials familiar with the investigations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

Some of weapons have been traced directly to governments that received the arms from the United States. But often, the transactions involved middlemen, including private security contractors seeking to profit from civil wars and insurgencies from South Asia to North Africa, the officials said.

According to U.S. and U.N. officials familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, Hifter had approved a plan to acquire helicopters and experienced, Western-trained military experts to bolster his efforts to storm Tripoli. Among the options under consideration, the officials said, was a plan to use a private commando force to kill or capture top political and military leaders, some of whom had been identified on a hit list as potential targets.

Around April 2019, Hifter procured the services of a group of private security and logistics contractors based in the UAE, and they collectively referred to themselves in the documents as the “Opus Team.”