The Islamic State (IS) is now in possession of lethal weapons formerly owned by so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels, as well as large quantities of arms produced in the United States, a new report (PDF) reveals
The study — conducted by Conflict Armament Research, a research organization that tracks weapons proliferation in war zones — documents arms and ammunition captured by Kurdish People’s Protection Units and Peshmerga forces from IS in Iraq and Syria from from mid-June to early August 2014.
The researchers found that M79 anti-tank rockets used by IS in Syria are “identical” to those shipped by Saudi Arabia to Free Syrian Army fighters in 2013. Furthermore, the report states that IS combatants are using “significant quantities of US-manufactured small arms and have employed them on the battlefield” and provides numerous photographs of assault rifles, which were seized by IS, that are engraved with “Property of U.S. Government.”
“This is one more piece of evidence of why military solutions have devastating consequences in the immediate and long terms,” said Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at Institute for Policy Studies, in an interview with Common Dreams. “We see an example of the consequences of the over-arming of the region if we look back at Afghanistan in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet War when the U.S. provided stinger missiles that can bring down aircraft to mujahedin guerrillas who morphed into al Qaeda.”
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