It’s been 10 months since Obama submitted to Congress a draft authorization to use military force, asking them to give him specific power for the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
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Patrick Wilcken, researcher on arms control, security trade and human rights at Amnesty International, said ISIS’ stolen arsenal is a “textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale”.
“In a letter to President Obama sent on Tuesday, the Republicans suggested embedding US military advisers with Iraqi, Kurdish and Sunni tribal forces, reviewing the process for approving airstrikes and creating safe zones for Syrian refugees”. Also artillery systems made by Russia, China, Iran and the U.S. Expert observers state ISIS possesses guided anti-tank missiles and surface to air missiles. “And it won’t require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil”.
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. “By 2014, the U.S. had delivered more than US$500 million worth of small arms and ammunition to the Iraqi government”.
According to the report, IS fighters are now equipped with large stocks of mainly AK variant rifles besides the United States military’s M16, Chinese CQ, German Heckler and Koch G3, and Belgian FN Herstal FAL type rifles.
The report from the American Enterprise Institute estimated that, under President Obama’s current strategy and military and diplomatic efforts, the terrorist groups could control “at least twice as much territory and population-in Iraq, Yemen, North Africa (especially Libya), the Sinai, and Syria-and with an army of regular and irregular fighters at least twice as large within two years”.
While the bulk of weapons were taken from the Iraqi military, others came in seizures from the Syrian military as well as opposition groups that have received shipments from Western supporters.
And while Obama says he will take the fight to ISIS, he is against deploying large-scale ground troops in the Middle East. “We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria”, Obama said.
At the same time, however, Obama’s Republican critics have made sure that just about any aspiring, self-radicalized terrorist inside the US can easily get weapons and ammunition uniquely suited to mass murder. Deliveries had been ongoing as part of the U.S. Department of Defense’s $1.6 billion budget.
“And a lot of old Warsaw Pact stock has been transferred by the USA, the United Kingdom, other coalition members, during the occupation of Iraq and post-2003”. The report concludes that the majority of ISIS’ weapons were stolen from Iraqi military stores, which have been built up over the past five decades.
In its bombing campaign, Moscow has fired cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea that passed over northern Iraq en route to their targets in Syria.
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Obama says the U.S.is also working with allies to cut off the group’s financing and will continue to enhance intelligence gathering and sharing.
