Iraq a ‘black hole’ for billions in US arms

The US army has lost track of over $1 billion worth of arms and military equipment in Iraq and Kuwait, according to a declassified audit from the US Department of Defence (DoD), revealing severe shortcomings in monitoring the flow of weapons in volatile conflict zones.

The audit was obtained by Amnesty International and shows that the DoD did not maintain "accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location" of the vast amount of US military equipment being transferred to the Iraqi army via Kuwait and Iraq.

Incomplete records meant those responsible for the military equipment could not ascertain its location or status, Amnesty said, while critical information was logged across multiple databases and spreadsheets, and in some circumstances, even on hand-written receipts.

"This audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army's flawed – and potentially dangerous - system for controlling millions of dollars' worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region," Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International's Arms Control and Human Rights Researcher, said.

The transfers included tens of thousands of assault rifles, worth up to $28 million, hundreds of Humvee armoured vehicles, and mortar rounds destined for the Iraqi army, the Popular Mobilisation Units, and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

The huge arms stockpiles were transferred under the Iraq Train and Equip Fund (ITEF), a centrepiece of US-Iraqi cooperation, with the US congress in 2015 approving $1.6 billion for the program to combat the Islamic State group.

This audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army's flawed – and potentially dangerous - system for controlling millions of dollars' worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region

The audit released by Amnesty International claimed that the DoD was not responsible for tracking ITEF transfer after delivery to Iraqi authorities, despite being mandated to carry out post-delivery checks.

A DoD audit from 2015 had already highlighted careless stockpile monitoring procedures by Iraqi forces, with military equipment stored out in the open in shipping containers. In some cases, the Iraqi army was not even aware what was stored in its own warehouses.

Weak controls and record keeping in Iraq has resulted in US-manufactured arms ending up in the hands of armed groups documented to be committing war crimes, such as the Islamic State.

In other cases, US arms have wound up with paramilitary forces which operate under the umbrella of the Iraqi army.

The US pledged to tighten its procedures for tracking future arms transfers in response to the audit, but the DoD had made similar commitments in 2007 and failed to follow through.

"It makes for especially sobering reading given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group calling itself the Islamic State," Amnesty’s Wilcken said.

"Sending millions of dollars' worth of arms into a black hole and hoping for the best is not a viable counter-terrorism strategy; it is just reckless."

In 2007, the Pentagon admitted it could not track over 30 percent of weapons distributed to Iraq over the previous three years, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles and 80,000 pistols. At that time, the US had spent over $19.2 billion on Iraqi security forces.

An Amnesty International report in 2015 found that much of the Islamic State's equipment and munitions came from stockpiles captured from the U.S.-allied Iraqi military and Syrian rebels.

The US-made weapons were either captured or illegally traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stockpiles.