Amnesty report: ISIS armed with USA weapons

When arms are transferred, Amnesty says there must be pre- and post-delivery controls to manage their use.

Amnesty International’s 44-page report, released late Monday, found that much of ISIS’ equipment and munitions comes from stockpiles captured from the U.S.-allied Iraqi military and Syrian rebels.

The human rights organisation drives home that illicitly acquired fire-power enabled ISIL to carry out horrific acts, with devastating consequences for civilians.

Isis seized most of the weapons from the Iraqi army, though they may have also gotten some through battlefield capture, illicit trade or defections of Iraqi and Syria soldiers, Amnesty reports.

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 USA, to work with Iraqi authorities to quickly implement stricter controls on the transfer, storage and deployment of arms.

ISIS “will attract more recruits from overseas, but they may differ from the earlier wave of hopefuls who were attracted by the prospect of a brand new state that would provide them what they could not find at home”, the report concludes.

It said most of the conventional weapons being used by IS fighters date from the 1970s to the 1990s, when Iraq was engaged in a massive military buildup ahead of and during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Wilcken said: “This shows again that arms export risk assessments and mitigation measures to unstable regions require a long term, root-and-branch analysis”.

These weapons have not only increased ISIS’ effectiveness on the battlefield against U.S.-backed local forces, but have been used in human rights abuses and violations of global humanitarian law across Iraq and Syria by ISIS, according to the report.

Even more disastrous was the fact that a stockpile of weapons given to the US-trained rebels ended up in the hands of terrorists, after the so-called “moderates” willingly handed it over to groups such as Al-Nusra Front soon after crossing into Syria. Daesh’s operations in Iraq and Syria have unfolded from the backdrop of a permissive security environment where a large number of vehicles and arms have flowed for decades. Meanwhile Iraq’s then-President Saddam Hussein oversaw the development of a robust national arms industry producing small arms, mortar and artillery shells.

It is emphasized that most of the weapons that the terrorists now use have been manufactured recently, but that there are also some pieces over 25 years old.

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.

“Hundreds of thousands of those weapons went missing and are still unaccounted for”.