Call it a sign of the turbulent times but Iraq has a big market for guns these days and a black market where pilfered government weaponry is for sale. According to the International Herald Tribune, weapons prices are surging:
"The Kurdish security contractor placed the black plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the nine-milimeter pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi Army and police force.
"Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more buyers push prices to levels several times higher than those that existed at the time of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn, have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption — the migration of army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.
"All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.
"But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther nine-milimeter pistols, and pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries. These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by the United States for Iraqi security forces, a program that was criticized by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to properly account for the arms.:
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