Middle East

Weapons supplied to Syrian opposition boosted ‘quantity & quality’ of ISIS arsenal

A new investigation revealed much of advanced weaponry used by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighters came from supplies the US and EU brought to the region. The study of jihadist weaponry claims to be the most comprehensive to date.

The investigation by the London-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) concludes that the weapons supplied to opposition groups “significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to IS forces in numbers far beyond those that would have been available to the group through battlefield capture alone.”

More than half of the IS weapons recovered in the study were produced by Russia and China in between 1960 and 1989 – prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Former Warsaw Pact states such as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria – which are now members of the EU –  manufactured 30 percent of the weapons and 20 percent of the ammunition recovered by CAR. These countries produced the majority of the weapons documented in Iraq. In Syria, most of the weapons recovered from IS were manufactured by Russia, followed by China and the EU states.

“These findings support widespread assumptions that the group initially captured much of its military materiel from Iraqi and Syrian government forces,” the report says.

“This trend is plausibly the result of transfers made during the Cold War and of surplus transfers immediately after its end,” the report says.