Most ISIS Weapons Manufactured In EU, Report Claims

A bombshell report reveals that over a third of all weapons used by ISIS militants were manufactured in the European Union.

In one of the most thorough investigations to-date by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), guns and ammunition used by ISIS were traced back to Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Germany.

Telegraph.co.uk reports: The only bigger producer of weapons used by the group was found to be China.

The revelation sits uncomfortably with the EU’s effort to degrade the group’s military capacity, CAR researchers say, and highlights how easily weapons can end up in the wrong hands in “messy” conflicts.

Their 200-page report provides the most comprehensive, verified study of the group’s weapons to date, presenting an analysis of more than 40,000 items recovered from Isil forces over three years.

It concludes that international weapon supplies intended for rebel factions in the Syrian conflict ended up with Isil, “significantly augmenting the quantity and quality of weapons in its arsenal”.

In the early phase of the conflict, most of the group’s cache had been captured from Iraqi and Syrian forces. But from the end of 2015, CAR started to see another significant source – factories in Eastern Europe.

The weapons and ammunition was being manufactured in Europe, sold to the US and Saudi Arabia, and transported across the Turkish border into Syria.

They said supplies of weapons by Washington and Riyadh to Syrian opposition groups indirectly allowed Isil to obtain a substantial amount of sophisticated anti-armour ammunition and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW), which have then been used against coalition forces they support.

“Time and again, states that seek to accomplish short-term political objectives supply weapons to groups over whom they exert little to no control,” said James Bevan, the executive director of CAR. “These weapons often gravitate to the most organised and effective rebel and insurgent forces.”

In one case CAR tracked a number of advanced ATGWs. Using their production numbers they discovered they were manufactured in the EU, sold to the US, which supplied them to an opposition group in Syria, where they were then transferred to Isil fighters in Iraq.

The full chain of transactions occurred within two months of the weapons’ dispatch from the factory.

In another instance, in October 2014, Romania sold 9,252 rocket-propelled grenades, known as PG-9s, to the US military.

The grenades were sent by the US to Jaysh Suriyah al-­Jadid, a Syrian militia armed and trained by America to fight Isil in the east of the country.

But somehow, PG-9s from this same shipment made their way to neighbouring Iraq, where Isil experts separated the stolen warheads from the original rocket motors before adding new features that made them better suited for urban combat such as the battle for Mosul.

It is not clear in each case whether the weapons were willingly traded by rebel groups, or plundered by Isil.

CAR also recorded a number of weapons finding their way to Syria and Iraq from other conflicts, including Libya, Yemen and South Sudan, transferred through bordering countries Turkey and Jordan.

They warn that while the Isil has lost most of its territory, evidence shows the jihadists gained advanced weapons knowledge that can be used in future.

The researchers found several factories in northern Iraq and were surprised by the level of production and sophistication of their work.

“They have a demonstrated ability to manufacture improvised weapons on a large and sophisticated scale; and are able to tap into regional and international commercial markets to acquire chemical precursors for the development of ‘new’ weapons,” they reported.

“Combined with global reach, demonstrated logistical and organisational capacity, and willing recruits around the world, these factors translate into an exportable capacity to conduct insurgency and terrorism well beyond the region.”