ISIS’ Ammunition Is Shown to Have Origins in U.S. and China
By C. J. CHIVERS

In its campaign across northern Syria and Iraq, the jihadist group Islamic State has been using ammunition from the United States and other countries that have been supporting the regional security forces fighting the group, according to new field data gathered by a private arms-tracking organization.

The data, part of a larger sample of captured arms and cartridges in Syria and Iraq, carries an implicit warning for policy makers and advocates of intervention.

It suggests that ammunition transferred into Syria and Iraq to help stabilize governments has instead passed from the governments to the jihadists, helping to fuel the Islamic State’s rise and persistent combat power. Rifle cartridges from the United States, the sample shows, have played a significant role.

“The lesson learned here is that the defense and security forces that have been supplied ammunition by external nations really don’t have the capacity to maintain custody of that ammunition,” said James Bevan, director of Conflict Armament Research, the organization that is gathering and analyzing weapons used by the Islamic State.

Providing weapons to the regional proxies, Mr. Bevan added, is “a massive risk that is heightened by poorly motivated security forces that are facing great challenges.”

The Islamic State fighters have proved adept at arming themselves as they have expanded their territory. Analysts and rival rebels say the group has gathered weapons from other antigovernment groups in Syria that have joined its ranks, from purchases from Syrian rebels who receive weapons from foreign donors, from battlefield captures and from deals with corrupt members of the security forces in Syria and Iraq.

One Syrian rebel commander said the group, which is also called ISIS or ISIL, has often picked where and when to fight by measuring the potential spoils that might be gained in a local victory.

“When battling against the Syrian Army, ISIS chooses to fight in a specific battle on a specific front only when the investment is appealing: there will be warehouses to capture,” said Fouad al-Ghuraibi, commander of the Kafr Owaid’s Martyrs Brigade, in northern Syria.

After the jihadists seized a Syrian air base near Hama last year, Mr. Ghuraibi noted, they needed a fleet of heavy trucks to move their haul of captured weapons and ammunition.

He also said that a portion of the Islamic State’s ammunition had come from black-market deals with the group’s enemies, including the Syrian army, but he added that “the numbers in these deals couldn’t be high, as the officers on the regime side have had to keep it low to keep it hidden.”

Conflict Armament Research’s field survey is part of a continuing project funded by the European Union to identify the militant group’s weapons and weapon sources, and display them transparently on a global online mapping system known as iTrace. It appears to confirm and add layers of detail to what has been reported anecdotally.

Its samples included 1,730 cartridges that had been manufactured as far back as 1945 and as recently as this year. Most of the ammunition was for rifles and machine guns, though a small fraction was for pistols, too.

The ammunition was captured last summer by Kurdish fighters or collected by the organization’s investigators at recently abandoned Islamic State fighting positions. Each cartridge’s manufacturing provenance was then established by documenting its markings, known as headstamps.

Once the tallying was done, the investigators had identified 21 nations as sources of cartridges that were once possessed by Islamic State fighters, showing that these militants, like many rebel or insurgent groups, have diverse sources of supply.

A deeper look pointed to what would seem to be widespread leakage from local security forces.

More than 80 percent of the ammunition was manufactured in China, the former Soviet Union, the United States, post-Soviet Russia or Serbia. The organization’s analysis suggests that much of this ammunition was held by security forces in the region, and then commandeered by militants.

Mr. Bevan said that the aged Soviet ammunition appeared to match the contents of the storehouses of the Syrian military, which has long received equipment from the Kremlin.

Another sizable fraction of the cartridges matched ammunition that the United States supplied to Iraq’s military and police units for nearly a decade during the occupation after the American-led invasion in 2003.

“We have a lot of ammunition that comes from Iraqi security forces, which was captured on the battlefield, and a lot of ammunition that previously came from Syrian defense forces, which would be captured on the battlefield as well,” Mr. Bevan said.

Among Conflict Armament Research’s findings were that 323 of the cartridges — nearly 19 percent — were from the United States. These were typically 5.56-millimeter cartridges manufactured from 2005 to 2007 at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri.

The ammunition is the standard cartridge for American M-4 and M-16 rifles, which, along with these classes of rifles, was widely distributed by the United States to Iraqi security forces during the latter years of the occupation.

The sample also included 147 cartridges bearing the distinctive WOLF stamp used by Sporting Supplies International, an American company that sells Russian-manufactured ammunition under its own brand.

The company has provided bulk military ammunition to the United States government for distribution to security forces under its training, raising the possibility that an additional 8.5 percent of the ammunition documented in the Islamic State‘s possession was sent into the region by the United States.

Conflict Armament Research’s investigators also found a small sample of cartridges from Iran in the Islamic State’s possession, including ammunition manufactured as recently as 2013.

Iran has been a sponsor of Iraq’s beleaguered Shiite-led government. Ammunition from Iran, the organization noted, if deliberately transferred to Iraq, would be a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1737, which in 2006 prohibited Iran from exporting arms.

On one matter, Mr. Bevan said, the data pointed to a familiar puzzle: the large proportion of Chinese ammunition — 445 cartridges or nearly 26 percent of the total.

This was not a surprise, Mr. Bevan noted, as “China is a massive supplier” of military-grade ammunition around the world, and the presence of its ammunition is a common feature in modern conflicts.

The Chinese ammunition used by the Islamic State fighters, he said, could have originally been provided to Syrian forces, to Iraqi forces or to any number of other countries that then retransferred Chinese-made cartridges to the region.

Determining its routes into the conflict, he said, would require further research, as China’s ammunition exports often “are not transparent in any way.”

各國軍援抗IS 反成IS武器來源

紐約時報報導，研究顯示，國際社會為了協助伊拉克、敘利亞政府打擊激進組織「伊斯蘭國」（IS）而提供的軍火，反而流入伊斯蘭國手中，這對各國決策者和主張軍事介入者不啻是警訊。

執行研究的英國追蹤武器流向組織「衝突軍備研究所」所長貝文說：「我們由此學到的教訓是，接受外國軍援的這些政府軍無法善加保管軍火。」

與IS為敵的民兵團體和分析家指出，IS的武器來源有四：從投靠IS的敘利亞反政府團體取得、向獲贈外國武器的敘利亞反抗軍購買、在戰場上撿拾敵方遺留的武器、向伊拉克和敘利亞部分貪汙腐敗的政府軍採購。

一名敘利亞反抗軍指揮官說，IS常常會預估戰勝後能取得多少武器，據此決定開戰的地點和時機，「只有在可以拿到軍火的前提下，IS才會跟敘利亞政府軍作戰」。

指揮官說，IS有些軍火是跟敘利亞政府軍私下交易而來，「不過這部分軍火不會太多，因為敘利亞軍官得控制數量，以免東窗事發」。

衝突軍備研究所今年夏季透過庫德族戰士或所內調查人員，在IS作戰過的地點取得一千七百卅個彈殼，大多來自步槍和機槍，少數來自手槍，統計後發現，這些曾為IS所有的彈殼來自廿一國，其中超過八成在中國大陸、蘇聯、美國、俄國和塞爾維亞製造。

貝文指出，年代久遠的蘇聯彈殼似乎與敘利亞政府軍一向從俄國接收的彈藥相符；另外，三百廿三個、將近百分之十九的彈殼，似乎與伊拉克軍警從美國接收的彈藥相符。

貝文還指出，四百四十五個、將近百分之廿六的彈殼由大陸製造，不令人意外，因為大陸是全球各地軍用級軍火的「超大供應商」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/world/isis-ammunition-is-shown-to-have-origins-in-us-and-china.html

2014-10-07．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯李京倫