Decades of wars, reckless arms trading and lax control of weapons have allowed the Islamic State group (ISIS) to build a massive arsenal of weapons, many manufactured in the US, which the extremists are using “to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity on a massive scale in Iraq and Syria”, human rights group Amnesty International said in a new 44-page report released Tuesday.
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Drawing on expert evaluation of a large number of videos and pictures, the report concludes THAT’S combatants have use of a “large arsenal” of arms and ammo designed or made in more than 25 states. They determined that the weapons originated in more than two dozen countries, including Russia, China, the US and European Union states.
The U.S. Government will also continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces and fighting ISIS on the ground, Mr. Obama said.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 meant the country was flooded with more weapon imports once again – but most were never secured or audited by the coalition forces or the re-formed Iraqi army. “The consequences of reckless arms transfers to Iraq and Syria and their subsequent capture by IS must be a wake-up call to arms exporters around the world”, said Wilcken.
Weapons exported from Bosnia and Serbia in 2005 and 2006 may have ended up in Isis’s hands, according to a new report. It also called countries to impost an embargo for sending weapons to Syrian government forces as well as armed opposition groups implicated in committing war crimes.
The huge supply of weaponry has enabled ISIS to carry out its abominable abuses of human rights and violations of global humanitarian law, resulting in a mass exodus of people and forcing them to become refugees.
In the near term, the senators offered four suggestions to seize territory in Iraq from ISIS, which they said would “effectively undermine the ISIS narrative”. “It’s been possible to accumulate weapons because for years and years there has been an absolutely irresponsible, out-of-control process of arming that region”, says Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada”.
Obama confirmed the enhanced efforts to combat ISIS in his Oval Office address on Sunday night, stating, “In Iraq and Syria, airstrikes are taking out ISIL leaders…”
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In order to avoid further proliferation to armed groups in the region and the misuse of these weapons by groups like ISIS, Amnesty International is calling for supplier states, including the US, to work with Iraqi authorities to quickly implement stricter controls on the transfer, storage and deployment of arms. Meanwhile, Germany, France and the United Kingdom also announced they would become militarily involved.
