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US lost track of hundreds of thousands of weapons given out in Iraq and Afghanistan

Aug 27, 2016 11:07 am By Robert Spencer

Many, if not most, of these weapons ended up in the hands of the Islamic State and other jihad groups. We are arming those who have vowed to destroy us.

jihadis in USAid tent

“How Many Guns Did the U.S. Lose Track of in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hundreds of Thousands.,” by C. J. Chivers, New York Times, August 24, 2016:

…Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are. Meanwhile, the effectively bottomless abundance of black-market weapons from American sources is one reason Iraq will not recover from its post-invasion woes anytime soon….

In all, Overton found, the Pentagon provided more than 1.45 million firearms to various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, including more than 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns. These transfers formed a collage of firearms of mixed vintage and type: Kalashnikov assault rifles left over from the Cold War; recently manufactured NATO-standard M16s and M4s from American factories; machine guns of Russian and Western lineage; and sniper rifles, shotguns and pistols of varied provenance and caliber, including a large order of Glock semiautomatic pistols, a type of weapon also regularly offered for sale online in Iraq.

Many of the recipients of these weapons became brave and important battlefield allies. But many more did not. Taken together, the weapons were part of a vast and sometimes minimally supervised flow of arms from a superpower to armies and militias often compromised by poor training, desertion, corruption and patterns of human rights abuses. Knowing what we know about many of these forces, it would have been remarkable for them to retain custody of many of their weapons. It is not surprising that they did not.

As an illustration of how haphazard the supervision of this arms distribution often was, last week, five months after being asked by The New York Times for its own tally of small arms issued to partner forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon said it has records for fewer than half the number of firearms in the researchers’ count — about 700,000 in all. This is an amount, Overton noted, that “only accounts for 48 percent of the total small arms supplied by the U.S. government that can be found in open-source government reports.”…

One point is inarguable: Many of these weapons did not remain long in government possession after arriving in their respective countries. In one of many examples, a 2007 Government Accountability Office report found that 110,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 80,000 pistols bought by the United States for Iraq’s security forces could not be accounted for — more than one firearm for every member of the entire American military force in Iraq at any time during the war. Those documented lapses of accountability were before entire Iraqi divisions simply vanished from the battlefield, as four of them did after the Islamic State seized Mosul and Tikrit in 2014, according to a 2015 Army budget request to buy more firearms for the Iraqi forces to replace what was lost.

These spectacular losses were on top of the more gradual drain that many veterans of the wars watched firsthand — including such scams as Afghan National Army recruits showing up for training and disappearing after rifles were issued. They were leaving, soldiers suspected, to sell their weapons. On the outposts where American troops and Afghan and Iraqi units worked together, the local units were often a fraction of their reported strength and dwindled as ever more national police officers or soldiers disappeared or deserted, vanishing with their firearms. The American arming of Syrian rebels, by both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department, has also been troubled by questions of accountability and outright theft in a war where the battlefield is thick with jihadists aligned with Al Qaeda or fighting under the banner of the Islamic State.…

The recipients were often manifestly corrupt and sometimes had close ties to the same militias and insurgents who were trying to drive out the United States and make sure its entire nation-building project did not stand. It should not have been a surprise that American units in disaffected provinces and neighborhoods, and their partners, could encounter gunfire at every turn.

The procession of arms purchases and handouts has continued to this day, with others involved, including Iran to its allies in Iraq and various donors to Kurdish fighters. In March, Russia announced that it had given 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles to Afghanistan, already one of the most Kalashnikov-saturated places on earth. If an analysis from the United States’ Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or Sigar, is to be believed, Afghanistan did not even need them. In 2014 the inspector general reported that after the United States decided to replace the Afghan Army’s Kalashnikovs with NATO-standard weapons (a boon for the rifles’ manufacturer with a much less obvious value for an already amply armed Afghan force), the Afghan Army ended up with a surplus of more than 83,000 Kalashnikovs. The United States never tried to recover the excess it had created, giving the inspector general’s office grounds for long-term worry. “Without confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to account for or properly dispose of these weapons,” it noted, “Sigar is concerned that they could be obtained by insurgents and pose additional risks to civilians.”…

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Filed Under: United States, Useful idiots Tagged With: nato


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Comments

  1. linnte says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 11:23 am

    And what of OTHER military products have we left behind or given? Some of those products can take out an airplane or jet fighter. Obama has much to answer for. It makes me crazy that Hillary Clintons actions during the Benghazi attract are only focused on HILLARY. What the heck was Obama doing at that time? He is just as responsible.

    • undrbed cat says

      Aug 27, 2016 at 12:31 pm

      Linnte says”:What the heck was Obama doing at that time?….He is just as responsible.” I agree and add to that nothing gets done in the State Dept., military without the direction from Obama….and aides…..but some retired Generals know and the public has not a clue we are in big very bad trouble….with the fundamental change….and what was the missionof that change that walked in the front door of the house..grinning. He will never answer…Linnte know that.

      This is frightening stuff.

      • linnte says

        Aug 27, 2016 at 4:05 pm

        In a BIG way, Obama has “struck terror into our hearts” as the Qur’an commands. And anyone who is not afraid is buying his abominable agenda to their own demise.

  2. Alvin Woods says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    Use this as “ammo” next time a leftie talks about *gun control*

    • undrbed cat says

      Aug 27, 2016 at 12:39 pm

      How true Alvin Woods, preaching gun control out of the left side of the mouth, but now who has control of the deadliest weapons…left behind, or stolen or given as a gift to the enemy…how convoluted is this situation. At least put a zapper on the gun as it leaves the territory or a gps. Department of Natural resources need to send a crew….

  3. Angemon says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 12:34 pm

    Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Let me guess: these “battlefield partners”, like “Syrian” “refugees”, went through, and successfully passed, extensive vetting processes…

    • linnte says

      Aug 27, 2016 at 4:09 pm

      It’s perfect isn’t it? They learn how to use a gun, come to America, become a citizen, then buy guns to fight Americans with if Civil Unrest happens.

  4. Havoc says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 1:49 pm

    Insanity.

  5. Berengaria says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 2:12 pm

    Are we actually vetting members of the BO Military anymore. Who gives the order for Servicemen to hand over their weapons to any Muslim, Partner or Enemy Combatant? Or is this done by (Buck Sergeants) etc.? Our future Military, under another CIC, will be at the mercy of Islam, because of the BO Military gifting the enemy.

  6. Ed Lee says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 2:37 pm

    Very similar to Fast and Furious.

  7. SoCalMike says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 2:42 pm

    The government view Middle Americans as enemies and in no small way they are our most dangerous enemy.
    They are and fund people waging war on us pretending they are conducting foreign policy as they seek to disarm Americans of our right to defend ourselves even as they invite more potential jihadis here.
    Obama, Hillary, Paul Ryan and the vast majority of members of both parties are on board with this policy making treason.

    • SoCalMike says

      Aug 27, 2016 at 2:43 pm

      *arm and fund…

  8. billybob says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 2:49 pm

    I suppose if the plan was to ensure that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria remain destabilized for many years to come, it was a good one. If the plan was to provide sales for US arms merchants and manufacturers who would then kick back some of those profits to the government officials promoting the distribution of said arms, it was a good one. If the plan was population control via promoting and enabling perpetual warfare, it was a good one.

    What do we care of these countries anyhow? Iraq is a Shiite satellite of Iran. Let it burn! Afghanistan is somewhere between 99% and 100% Islamic. Nothing good can ever come of it. Syria contains a large number of Islamic fundamentalists. Let them use these arms to kill each other for the glorification of their evil Allah. Sorry but somehow I just don’t care.

  9. J-A palmaer says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 4:03 pm

    A car without gasoline is of no use…a gun without ammunition is like a “toy”… And who is providing with the ammunition? Words and threats – who is providing the “eminent religion” (that is: power structure of Islam) with “ammunition” for all these things? Maybe a book, written by men long, long ago…? I suggest that still working governments of the “World” stop providing with, not only the “guns and cars”, but also the things making them “useful”…The governments building the system needs to control the system – I don’t think “democracy” as it looks like now (it is not educated enough for dealing the issues of “terrorism” or “religion”) an not handle this situation… Think it over, tomorrow may be too late – it takes only one bullet to pop off a brain…

  10. mortimer says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 6:54 pm

    When ever I see standard American army weapons in the hands of Islamic terrorists, my blood boils. My reaction to this betrayal of the West as a former soldier is that ‘HILLARY DID THIS’.

    • David says

      Aug 28, 2016 at 2:09 pm

      It’s not just Granny Clinton, there are THOUSANDS of political humans just like her in the D.C. area. I think it will be near impossible to sweep out all of this TRASH. Even if we had many elections and several decades to do it!

  11. BlueRaven says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 7:35 pm

    Hillary R Clinton is a clueless piece of t…d. When she was the SOS, she was absolutely clueless about her staff and staffers. She did the most damage to the credibility of the US. She is simply lying piece of misfit if there ever was one. The information in this article has upset me no end. I think during the Bush’s terms, the things were not different.

    I hope Trump is different than these morons. Only time will tell.

  12. desidude2 says

    Aug 27, 2016 at 11:23 pm

    Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex whose main job is to continue war and war making all over the world to sell weapons.

  13. David says

    Aug 28, 2016 at 1:59 pm

    Do you really think that the diabolical TRAITOR in the White House has “lost track” of anything?
    Those weapons are right where he wanted them to be.
    YES! I might be a cynic, but I’m also a realist too.
    To quote the “TRAITOR’S own words:
    “I will side with the Muslims, should the political winds blow in an ugly direction. ”
    You can google this. It’s in his own biography.

    • linnte says

      Aug 28, 2016 at 8:06 pm

      I agree, and I heard him say these words myself. He is a traitor.

  14. abbas says

    Aug 29, 2016 at 2:24 am

    Death to Israel/ USA ,sooner the better for whole world

    USA destruction is coming soon

    American are native nation killers ,,most violence loving people on earth ,love violent movies ,violent games ,guns

    billybob comment for love of innocent families lives + future destruction proves it .

    USA has killed more than 30 million common people since ww2 ,destroyed lives and future of even more millions people by attacking Vietnam ,Afghanistan ,Iraq ,Libya ,Syria ,drones in Pakistan + Yemen etc …
    atom bomb and Isis are both creation of USA ,so I hope they both find way in USA with hand in hand , and get rid of this self appointed ” police man of whole world ”
    destruction of USA is like race for trophy hunting between china ,Iran ,Russia ,Isis ,North Korea and some internal or natural disaster
    by the way Jews are controlling USA not
    Americans who are just bunch of gays,lesbians ,swinger ,drug addict etc

    • eagle says

      Aug 29, 2016 at 7:54 pm

      The Muslim war against the infidels started 1400 years ago. America was not born. Muslims need to get their rotting asses off America and take their Muslim president with them.Vote for Trump if you want to save America from the rotting asses.

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