A third of Isil’s weapons were manufactured in EU

Guns and ammunition intended for rebel fighters in Syria ended up in hands of jihadists, report reveals

NEARLY a third of all weapons used by Isil on the battlefield were manufactured in the European Union, according to the most thorough investigation yet into how the jihadist group acquired its vast arsenal. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants relied heavily on guns and ammunition produced by Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Germany, a report released yesterday by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) revealed.

The biggest producer of weapons used by the group was found to be China, according to CAR, an international organisation that documents weapons trafficking in war zones.

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

The report, based on analysis of more than 40,000 items recovered from Isil over three years, concluded that weapons intended for rebel factions in Syria 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 was 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 were manufactured in Europe, sold to the US and Saudi Arabia, then transported across the Turkish border into Syria. CAR said shipments from Washington and Riyadh to Syrian opposition groups indirectly allowed Isil to obtain a substantial amount of anti-armour ammunition and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW), which were then used against coalition forces.

“Under circumstances such as Syria – where multiple competing and overlapping non-state armed groups are operating – it is difficult to exert effective control over which groups ultimately gain,” the report noted.

In one case CAR tracked 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 transferred to Isil fighters in Iraq.

In another example, in October 2014, Romania sold 9,252 rocket-propelled PG-9 grenades 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.

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