Yesterday evening I watched as usual the daily news on the internet and it has touched me emotionally to see the current situation of Syria. The newsreader reported that the Syrian government and Russian airstrikes started a new offensive against the rebels in East-Ghouta and even worse than this fact is that there are still thousands of civilians cut off and stuck in the battle zones.

Behind all these victims there are companies making profit with the supply of firearms and other war machineries. Besides the ethical topic of whether supplying weapons to third countries or not, the supply of these products often went wrong and the weapons never reached their customers or planned destinations. There is not enough security which prevents the cargo during the transportation and distribution of robbery for example. There is only a lose track of weapons and often a missing supervision by the delivering party.

The following video will give you an example of how the ISIS got delivered unintentionally by the U.S. air force with shells and other arms (I recommend watch the whole video, it’s short and very illustrative):

But how to ensure the supply chain?

Recently, the German government introduced a pilot project: post-shipment controls for German arms exports. This mechanism supports the actual tracking of the products and ensures that during and after the transportation (shipping) the firearms will be distributed to its destination. It is an inspection with stricter standards that requires certificates of the end-user and on-the-spot checks. The project in details: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Downloads/eckpunkte-einfuehrung-post-shipment-kontrollen-deutsche-ruestungsexporte.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2