In its campaign across northern Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has been using ammunition from the US and other countries that have been supporting the regional security forces fighting the group, data gathered by a private arms tracking organization showed.
The field data, part of a larger sample of captured arms and cartridges in Syria and Iraq, carry an implicit warning for policymakers and advocates of intervention.
The data suggest that ammunition transferred into Syria and Iraq to help stabilize their governments has instead passed to the extremist Sunni group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, helping to fuel its rise and persistent combat power. Rifle cartridges from the US have played a significant role in this, the sample shows.
“The lesson learned here is that the defense and security forces that have been supplied ammunition by external nations really don’t have the capacity to maintain custody of that ammunition,” said James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research, which is gathering and analyzing weapons used by IS.
Providing weapons to the regional proxies is “a massive risk that is heightened by poorly motivated security forces that are facing great challenges,” Bevan added.
IS fighters have proved adept at arming themselves as they expand their territory. Analysts and rival rebels say IS has gathered weapons from other anti-government groups in Syria that have joined its ranks — from purchases from Syrian rebels who get weapons from foreign donors; from battlefield captures; and from deals with corrupt members of security forces in Syria and Iraq.
One Syrian rebel commander said IS has often picked where and when to fight by measuring the potential spoils that might be gained in a local victory.
“When battling against the Syrian army, ISIS [Islamic State] chooses to fight in a specific battle on a specific front only when the investment is appealing: there will be warehouses to capture,” said Fouad al-Ghuraibi, commander of the Kafr Owaid’s Martyrs Brigade in northern Syria.
After the jihadists seized a Syrian air base near Hama last year, al-Ghuraibi said they needed a fleet of heavy trucks to move their haul of captured weapons and ammunition.
He also said that a portion of IS’ ammunition had come from black-market deals with the group’s enemies, including the Syrian army, but added that “the numbers in these deals couldn’t be high, as the officers on the regime side have had to keep it low to keep it hidden.”
Conflict Armament Research’s survey is part of a continuing project funded by the EU to identify the militants’ weapons and their sources to display them transparently on a global online mapping system known as iTrace.
The survey samples included 1,730 cartridges manufactured as far back as 1945 and as recently as this year. Most of the ammunition was for rifles and machine guns, though a small fraction was for pistols too.
The ammunition was captured last summer by Kurdish fighters, or collected by the organization’s investigators at recently abandoned IS fighting positions. Each cartridge’s manufacturing provenance was then established by documenting its markings, known as headstamps.
Once the tallying was done, the investigators had identified 21 nations as sources of cartridges that were once possessed by IS fighters, showing that these militants have diverse sources of supply. A deeper look suggests possible widespread leakage from local security forces.
More than 80 percent of the ammunition was manufactured in China, the former Soviet Union, the US, post-Soviet Russia or Serbia. The analysis suggests that much of this ammunition was held by security forces in the region and then commandeered by militants.
Bevan said that the aged Soviet ammunition appeared to match the contents of the storehouses of the Syrian military, which has long received equipment from the Kremlin.
The findings showed that 323 of the cartridges — nearly 19 percent — were from the US. The ammunition is the standard cartridge for US-made M-4 and M-16 rifles, which, along with these classes of rifles, was widely distributed by the US to Iraqi security forces during the latter years of the occupation of Iraq.
The sample included 147 cartridges with the WOLF stamp used by Sporting Supplies International, a US firms that sells Russian-made ammunition under its own brand. The company has provided bulk military ammunition to the US government, raising the possibility that an additional 8.5 percent of the ammunition documented was sent into the region by the US.
Conflict Armament Research’s investigators also found a small sample of cartridges from Iran in IS’ possession, including some manufactured as recently as last year.
Bevan said the data also showed a large proportion of Chinese ammunition — 445 cartridges, or nearly 26 percent of the total — which he said was not a surprise, as “China is a massive supplier” of military-grade ammunition around the world.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in