Amnesty International reports that ISIS has obtained the majority of its weaponry from the Iraqi army stating ISIS “looted, captured or illicitly traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks”.
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ISIS terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria may be using weapons exported to the Middle East by the United Kingdom, according to a new report. “Further capture of state military equipment by Daesh remains a possibility, until we can carry out the action to deny them space and safe haven”. By 2014, Washington had delivered more than $500 million worth of small arms and ammunition to the Iraqi government, Amnesty said.
Amnesty International asked countries to stop sending weapons to the Syrian rebel groups and to conduct risk assessment prior to sending weapons to the Iraqi government. “In Iraq and Syria, airstrikes are taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil tankers, infrastructure”, he explained as part one of a four-step global plan to fight ISIS.
“Poor regulation and lack of oversight of the vast arms flows into Iraq going back decades have given ISIS and other armed groups a bonanza of unprecedented access to firepower”, Patrick Wilcken, researcher on arms control at Amnesty International said.
The Amnesty International report, however, concluded that it was these local forces that had inadvertently contributed arms to IS.
Although Daesh fighters have an essential stock of weapons – consisting mainly of Kalashnikov assault rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers but also including Russian armored vehicles and tanks and U.S. Humvees – Wilckin said the main issue was not its conventional armory but improvised weapons.
IS, which was born out of al Qaeda in Iraq before being disavowed by the terror network, has seized territory and military installations across Iraq and Syria since 2013. Indeed, they’ve built up a chilling arsenal of weapons including sniper rifles, Kalashnikovs, machine guns, guided anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles and armoured fighting vehicles.
Carson said he would focus on “using the banking system and all the monetary mechanisms available” against terrorists, but he didn’t elaborate on how he would differ from Obama’s policy.
Although Soviet Kalshnikovs are the most commonly used, the oldest piece of kit in the IS arsenal is believed to be a British World War One rifle.
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq is specifically criticized in the report. “The preparatory camp is the first home and school of the mujahid in which his military and jihadi training sessions take place and he undergoes sufficient education in matters of his religion, life and jihad”, says chapter three titled “Administration of the Camps”. It said the “IS” was using arms and ammunition from at least 25 nations.
– At least 34 countries supplied Iraq with weapons during its war with Iran in the 1980s.
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The group is now calling on countries to adopt a “complete embargo” on Syrian government forces – as well as on armed opposition groups “implicated in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights abuses”.
