Weapons pumped into Syria war end in IS armoury: Amnesty

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.

A majority of Americans say the USA should send ground troops to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to a CNN/ORC survey released Sunday night.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) joined a group of Senate Republicans on Tuesday in calling on President Barack Obama to pursue additional military options as a means of degrading and destroying ISIS overseas and protecting U.S. citizens from attacks at home.

The extent of the armoury available to Isis reflects decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq, a danger compounded by lax controls over military stockpiles and endemic corruption by successive Iraqi governments, says Amnesty.

“Poor regulation and lack of oversight of the enormous arms flows into Iraq going back decades have given IS and other armed groups a bonanza of unprecedented access to firepower”, Patrick Wilcken, an arms control researcher with Amnesty.

IS fighters and other armed groups have also resorted to forging their own improvised weaponry in crude workshops.

Weapons supplied by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to rebel groups fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also routinely end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, when rebels defect or are captured. The report also said governments haven’t done enough to ensure the arms they supply to militaries and security units won’t fall into enemy hands.

A lot of the weapons obtained by IS are not unlikely to have already been given by various western states between 2007 and 2003, the report claims, before falling to the terrorists’ control as soon as they seized Iraqi military compounds.

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq is specifically criticized in the report.

Other weapons have been acquired during battle, through illicit trade as well as through defection of fighters across Syria and Iraq.

The huge supply of weaponry has enabled ISIS to carry out its abominable abuses of human rights and violations of worldwide humanitarian law, resulting in a mass exodus of people and forcing them to become refugees.

A leaked dossier of Islamic State terror group published today in a leading newspaper show the sophisticated plans of the militant group in building a state in Iraq and Syria complete with government departments, a treasury and an economic programme for self-sufficiency.

Besides its massive haul in Mosul, the terrorist organisation also captured vast quantities of military equipment when it seized army and police bases in Fallujah, Tikrit, Saqlawiya, and Ramadi as well as in Syria.