Years of war, “reckless arms trading” and lax control of weapons traveling across borders have provided Daesh with a sophisticated arsenal that it’s used to commit war crimes in Iraq and Syria, according to a new Amnesty International (AI) report released on Tuesday.
The report, called Taking Stock: The Arming of Daesh, details how the extremist group has acquired the weapons used to tighten its grip on the so-called caliphate in both countries. The report found that Daesh is using arms and ammunition from at least 25 countries, including the U.S., China, Belgium, France, Russia and Germany. It also uses weapons from countries that no longer exist, such as the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union.
Daesh wrested most of the weapons from Iraqi military stocks after Baghdad’s forces in the series of military victories across northern and western Iraq beginning in June 2014. That’s when the jihadist group captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and acquired U.S. military vehicles and an array of internationally manufactured arms.
..weapons the Pentagon and NATO sent to Iraq may have indirectly contributed to Daesh´s rise, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Iraq and Syria..
The report’s findings, based on the analysis of open-source information, interviews with Iraqi and Syrian sources and a partnership with the arms monitoring organization Conflict Armament Research, suggest that weapons the Pentagon and NATO sent to Iraq may have indirectly contributed to Daesh´s rise, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Iraq and Syria.
