Amnesty: Most weapons used by IS were seized from Iraqi army

“In the 1970s and 1980s at least 34 countries, led by Russia, France and China, irresponsibly transferred billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to Iraq”, the reports says.

Amnesty’s report blamed corruption in Iraq’s government and a lack of strict control over its stockpiles for aiding Islamic State militants in carrying out multiple mass weapons seizures.

“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”.

The Islamic State (IS) armoury boasts of Chinese surface-to-air missiles and Russian anti-tank missiles and the arms and ammunition are designed in more than 25 countries. Obama initiated a large coalition of nations to strike ISIS territory in Iraq and Syria in August previous year and has deployed a number of special operations forces to the region to help with vital intelligence and assassination operations against top ISIS targets. Others have shied away from declarations of war on ISIS because a war authorization could include limits on where and how long the US could fight, and they don’t want to restrain the President against a rapidly changing threat.

The first is to maintain and gain terrority in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has the greatest power, the second is to expand its’ influence in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia and the third is to create a terror campaign in the West, she says.

The organisation is demanding therefore a “total embargo on weapons to Syrian governmental troops, as well as to armed opposition groups involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or other grave violations of human rights”. The extremist group has also snatched arms from Syrian forces after capturing military bases there. Roger Cabiness told CNN that the US closely monitors equipment provided to partners in order “to prevent and detect illegal transfers to third parties, in order to protect American technology, and, where relevant, to ensure partner compliance with requirements placed on all recipients of USA defense articles”.

Marco Rubio said on Thursday that if ISIS is defeated by a Western military force as opposed to a predominately Sunni Arab force, “something new will pop up and replace them”.

READ: Will any of Obama’s ISIS proposals succeed?

Using these weapons, it said, the IS has committed serious human rights abuses and violated worldwide humanitarian law.

No we have not contained them, Obama’s own White House now says.

As Iraq’s security forces battle to recapture Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, their task is complicated by IS’ acquisition when it seized the city in May of what Amnesty said were “more than 100 armoured fighting vehicles, including dozens of tanks and armoured personnel carriers”.

Oliver Sprague, Amnesty UK’s Arms Programme Director, said: “Decades of free-flowing arms into Iraq meant that when IS took control of these areas, they were like children in a sweetshop”.

Even if ISIS is uprooted, other armed groups will be there to take their place if the issue of proliferation continues, he said.