Islamic State armed with U.S. weapons, Amnesty International says

PanARMENIAN.Net - A new report from a prominent human rights group has found that ISIS has built a substantial arsenal, including U.S.-made weapons obtained from the Iraqi army and Syrian opposition groups, CNN News reports.

Amnesty International's 44-page report, released late Monday, December 7, found that much of ISIS' equipment and munitions comes from stockpiles captured from the U.S.-allied Iraqi military and Syrian rebels.

The Amnesty International report, however, concluded that it was these local forces that had inadvertently contributed arms to ISIS.

After analyzing thousands of videos and images taken in Iraq and Syria, Amnesty determined that a large proportion of ISIS' current military arsenal is made up of "weapons and equipment looted, captured or illicitly traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks."

ISIS has also gained access to weapons from other sources through the capture or sale of Syrian military stocks supplied to armed opposition groups in Syria by countries including Turkey, the Gulf States and the U.S., according to the organization.

By failing to account for the weapons that have been transferred to Iraq over the last several decades, the U.S. and other supplier nations have allowed them to freely flow through the region and fall into the hands of ISIS and other armed groups in the region, the human rights group charged.

"The main suppliers of Iraq historically have been Russia, China and the U.S.," Patrick Wilcken, the report's author, told CNN.

The bulk of ISIS' arsenal, he said, is made up of older Soviet-era weapons, brought into Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War and the U.S. occupation between 2003 and 2007.

One of the most common types of weapon used by ISIS fighters is the Russian-made AK automatic rifle, but ISIS forces are also equipped with U.S. military-issue M-16s and guns manufactured in China, Germany, Croatia and Belgium, according to the report.

It also said that ISIS has captured large numbers of U.S.- and Russian-made armored vehicles in addition to mortars, anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles from the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces.

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