FOR 16 years the southern African state of Mozambique, then one of the poorest countries in the world, was on the brink of destruction because of a a civil war. The war was for the most part the work of foreign powers, in this case the Soviet Union and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Both fed the conflict with arms and money. The collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the white supremacist regime in South Africa removed the political stimulus for the conflict and also allowed Mozambicans to work out their own political future.

Today in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, the same external poison is busy doing its worst. It would seem an easy leap of logic then to say that all that is needed to end the divisions in such places is for foreign governments to cease their interfering. Certainly that would go a long way — but it is not as easy as that. In Mozambique, the 1992 peace agreement did not immediately end all violence. It took something far more inspired to do that. The policy of paying people to hand in their guns is one of the great success stories of modern Mozambique. It should be a model for the Middle East.

The harsh political reality that there is never going to be peace in Iraq or Lebanon or Somalia while there are so many arms in private hands. This has been recently highlighted with the report from the US government which states that some 30 percent of rifles and pistols provided to the Iraqi armed forces by the US are missing.

It does not take much imagination to conclude that a good number of those 190,000 missing weapons will be — or are already being — used in sectarian violence or even against the Americans. The Pentagon also admits that of the 40 million items of military equipment ordered by the Iraqi military, only something over a third has been provided and that this is undermining the capacity to take on the insurgents. But if it provides the equipment, what guarantee can the Pentagon give that the equipment will not end up in the wrong hands?

This policy of pouring arms into Iraq with no control over where they go will destroy any hope of a future peace. The evidence is there in Afghanistan; the uncontrolled supply of weaponry during and after the Soviet occupation is what has made it the powder keg it is today.

This week, hundreds of Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank began handing in weapons as part of a security deal between President Abbas and the Israelis. A development such as this one is cause for optimism and will be the envy of Iraqis; it says that peace on the West Bank is possible. Iraq is unfortunately the opposite. Only when the guns have been removed will there be any hope of peace and stability there.

Americans need to ask themselves what they can achieve there if all they are doing is providing the means to continue the killing far into the future.