Aside from the political/ethical discussion here: logistically, how did you arm yourself when abroad as a private citizen in the Middle East?
I'm guessing you get blessing from Iraqi and/or American embassies in advance? How do you ship arms without falling afoul of carrier and export issues? Or are there arms corporations that allow for pickup on location (or on US bases)?
In Iraq in 2003-2004 it was "send one of my guards to the market to see what was on offer". I spent the entire time I was there trying to get a Sig or Glock; had a Browning Hi Power pretty early on, then upgraded to a CZ 97B once I found a way to get .45acp ammo. Also spent the entire time trying to get a decent AKM, never found one, ended up with an RPK. I saw some MP5s as well, but they were $3-5k, and 9mm isn't really a great round in FMJ, so I never got one. Obviously everything remained in country when I left.
I was locally contracted with DOD/etc and had letters from my customers authorizing me to be armed. (There was policy that such authorization had to come from the combatant commander, but in reality it got delegated pretty far down, and even if people in my customer orgs were not individually authorized to sign, no random MP would challenge those orgs.) It was a pretty ambiguous situation, but being American, I was essentially exempt from local law, and private citizens (Iraqis) were allowed one rifle for self defense in any case. There were some US bases where I wasn't allowed to carry, but the commanders were able to authorize that as well. The absolute worst thing that could happen from the US side would be "sent back to the US", but there was really no risk of that, and the most routine thing was at worst "please deposit your weapons with our office until you leave our base, if you don't have weapons authorization" on the biggest bases toward the end of the occupation -- and those are the places where I would have just secured it anyway in an armory because I didn't want to carry it around, and in any serious incident I would have been around professionals or could have picked up M4s off the ground.
Most private contractors were prohibited by their US issued contracts and their insurers from being armed, unless they were security companies. Many outside the wire contractors still armed themselves the same way I did.
The international shipping of arms is really the only problem; within a country like Iraq it really isn't a big deal. I did end up learning to do armorer level maintenance on the AK and Hi Power platforms while there, and made friends with a gunsmith.
I'm guessing you get blessing from Iraqi and/or American embassies in advance? How do you ship arms without falling afoul of carrier and export issues? Or are there arms corporations that allow for pickup on location (or on US bases)?