Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
I don't have much time, but here are some sources for now:
http://www.thelocal.se/20140520/swed...e-exports-soar
http://www.politico.eu/article/neutr...xtraordinaire/
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/2...sweden_a_major
http://www.sipri.org/research/armame...r%20Sweden.pdf
(page 15)

https://krautreporter.de/1161--warum...zeuge-lieferte

The last one is in German and explains how the Swedish government managed to circumvent the restrictions (partly because the office responsible to enforce them is not very powerful) in order to sell airplanes to the military dictatorship in Thailand. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Pakistan are probably not the safest spots to send weapons to in order to end war and refugee streams from their region. Or just look at the list of users of the 40mm Bofors guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_40_mm_gun#Users
Maybe they didn't all buy them directly from Sweden, but it's an impressive list.
Thanks for the links.
The plans to build an arms factory in Saudi Arabia is of course far from acceptable. But I cannot see any trace in your sources (good that they are for the matter they discuss), for Sweden supplying offensive military equipment to states which are party to the conflict in Syria. There is no flood of refugees from Pakistan, Egypt or Thailand, though I will agree that we should not sell them weapons either. One of your articles writes about technology transfers and sales to India, which I would consider a good thing if anything. As for the Bofors guns, it is simply so that once a weapon has been sold there is very little that the Swedish state can do to control where they go next.

As a fun tidbit, are you aware that Bofors was founded as a way to circumvent restrictions on Nazi German weapons production and export?