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The day after Inner City Press asked both US Ambassador Samantha Power and UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric about the UN Mission in South Sudan giving automatic weapons to warlord James Koang, who killed civilians, a new UN outrage was brought to the attention of Inner City Press and after its publishing and asking about it (video here), was confirmed by the UN.
Since the UN covered up its arming of South Sudan warlord Koang, and refuses to answer written questions including about its use of public funds, we published this report on this we'll follow up:
The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, UNAMI, under the authority of the UN Department of Safety and Security (DSS), have "lost" 25 weapons from their armory in their base in the Green Zone in Baghdad.
The loss includes 18 Glock 9mm pistols, 5 G36 assault rifles, and 2 G36 sniper rifles. Sources say that 10,000s of thousands of rounds of ammunition are also missing.
DSS only discovered or internally acknowledged this months after the fact and cannot account for their loss. The UN's Fijian Guard Unit have had to start patrolling inside the base.
Source: Inner City Press
Related: Small Arms Survey Sudan [PDF]
Washington Post: Report: U.N. gave arms to South Sudan rebels later implicated in massacre
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:32PM
I'm confused as to the scale. Thats about the right amount of loot for a medium to large sized street gang in Detroit. The problem this corner of Africa seems to have is entire armies of lunatics killing each other, not "some gang broke in to the armory and looted an insignificant amount of stuff". I mean, hundreds of thousands of refugees and stuff like that, not two dozen guys got pistols and rifles.
Like add about three zeros to the end of those missing goods and you have something logistically important to a bush war.
A glock 9mm, OK wonder if its an old G17 or a new G43. Don't matter much. Your local police officer probably has one on his belt. Its not exactly a star wars blaster. I remember when they were rolled out to replace .45s and there was a lot of complaining that its not big enough, but extensive practice by American police officers show a 9mm is quite effective at killing people of African descent so I guess that answers that old question.
The G36 is interesting. First of all its a real assault rifle. Usually assault weapon means stupid gun grabber BS, but it actually a pretty decent close quarters short range high rate of fire heavy and controllable as hell rifle. The kind of thing you'd clear a building with, not so much deer hunting. The "sniper mode" just means they stuck a scope on it which is pretty stupid for a rifle that doesn't really work controllably past 100m or so. Maybe a night vision scope makes minimal level of tactical sense. The G36 is funny because politician idiots like to totally slander the thing as a piece of shit not knowing they're describing what a freaking assault rifle actually is. Lots of bitching and moaning about how its not a 50cal or M2 designed to fire belt fed rounds for 45 minutes straight or not a "real" sniper rifle capable of hitting things 300M away like a M16 can. It is full auto so it gulps down ammo unlike a modern M16A2, exactly what you need in an assault rifle. Its basically a full auto shotgun that shoots really little slugs that sometimes hit a barn door if you're close enough, but the point is having a multi-man fire team so there's plenty of lead in the air and then its pretty decent when clearing buildings or discouraging someone at close range.
10K rounds isn't shit. I used to work in what amounts to an ammo dump when I was in the army and that's a bit more than 5 crates. In basic training I shot probably 2K or so rounds and every six months qualification takes (well, a quarter century ago, took) 40 rounds per try and most people shot off a pair of magazines before trying to verify zero and practice a bit, and I was a pretty good shot although I missed qualifying expert by one round, and some people take a few tries to zero and some take a few tries to qual so 200 rounds per soldier makes a barely REMF qualified soldier for a year, so 10K rounds will keep a fat platoon of REMFs minimally qualified for about a year. I would imagine infantryman 11B a platoon could burn thru 10K rounds in two battles. Figure 500 mags, 50 dudes, two battles, thats 5 mags of ammo per dude, which isn't really all that much during an attack. Again from a logistical standpoint 10K is about 5 crates and that will very easily fit in a car trunk.
The ammo count reminds me of "fake news" about FEMA or whatever buying 1e6 rounds of ammo implying they intent to shoot 1e6 civilians in the back of the head, but it really means more like 50 rounds every quarter for qualification thats 200 rounds per year that 1e6 rounds is 5000 person-years of peacetime ammo, it don't mean nutthin. 10K rounds is nothing.
From memory a crate of M16 ammo is not a significant weight unless you drop it on your foot or have to stack them all day or hold it over your head as punishment. Ammo is very financially valuable per pound, a crate of MREs is going to weigh "about the same" yet be larger and worth less than a tenth as much money.
Everything stolen probably would fit in one pickup truck.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:16PM
Just because it's not the largest weapons theft in history doesn't mean it's not relevant or important.
I'm not OK with saying it's acceptable or should be seen as inevitable that the UN of all organizations to have lower standards of security and inventory control than a small business does with it's stock of staplers.
When the weapons markets are full of old and poorly maintained soviet surplus, a few well maintained rifles and good quality ammunition is valuable. Unless of course we're acknowledging coalition forces routinely 'lose' and 'mis-allocate' large amounts of weapons in the region to level the playing field. And the more direct cases of 'arming the rebels' through allocations to Libya and Turkey.
10k rounds isn't a lot when they're being used at a shooting range or whatever, but in countries like Iraq and Sudan that are quite literally in the midst of civil war... The people who do end up with these weapons and ammunitions are not going to be using them for sport.
If the peace-keepers of the world lose a pickup truck load of weapons every so often, it's something that should be reported on. There should be more effort to hold the UN accountable and place their operations under scrutiny rather than the framing that they are an overly-bureaucratic organization that has some reasonable intentions in their mission statement. They do make actions and those actions have consequences, like bringing cholera to Haiti, which coincidentally killed 10,000 people without using any ammunition.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:42PM
Unless of course we're acknowledging coalition forces routinely 'lose' and 'mis-allocate'
I agree that drives the story, if this is one armory once, vs if it happens every month at every site.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @03:23AM
Ooga-boogas aren't exactly accurate or precise warriors. They spend ammo like they spend their EBT and welfare -- all up-front and as fast as they can. If they get their ashy hands on a full-auto capable rifle and ten goat-horns* full of ammo, they're gonna use full-auto and run through all ten goat-horns just to take down one or two dudes at close range, and just waste all their ammo without any kills at medium range.
* "Cuernos de chivo" in Mexican
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Codesmith on Wednesday December 21 2016, @09:45PM
The G36 is interesting. First of all its a real assault rifle. Usually assault weapon means stupid gun grabber BS, but it actually a pretty decent close quarters short range high rate of fire heavy and controllable as hell rifle. The kind of thing you'd clear a building with, not so much deer hunting. The "sniper mode" just means they stuck a scope on it which is pretty stupid for a rifle that doesn't really work controllably past 100m or so.
Odd that'd you'd look at it that way. With the caveat that I never handled one (I left the service about the exact time Germany was bringing them in) a friend of mine who stayed in trained with them on several occasions. He felt they were equivalent to the C7s we used, but he disliked the folding stock and the higher mount scope. He easily requalified out to 300m with one, and felt that if they flat-topped the receiver like the C7A2, it would be an excellent piece of gear. (I was not aware of the full floating barrel until I read the wiki article, nice!)
In basic training I shot probably 2K or so rounds and every six months qualification takes (well, a quarter century ago, took) 40 rounds per try and most people shot off a pair of magazines before trying to verify zero and practice a bit, and I was a pretty good shot although I missed qualifying expert by one round, and some people take a few tries to zero and some take a few tries to qual so 200 rounds per soldier makes a barely REMF qualified soldier for a year, so 10K rounds will keep a fat platoon of REMFs minimally qualified for about a year.
We budgeted 800 rounds per person for Basic, and 1500 for rifle on the Infantry course. Requals varied depending on the length of time we had the range, but 250 to 500 rounds yearly. Please note that we probably expended another 2000 or 3000 on live fire exercises, and I'm not including support weapon counts at all.
When I joined up, we were still firing 7.62mm, so you certainly felt it after a 250 round day.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @07:24PM
For those not in-the-know:
C7 and C7A2 are Canadian-made Colt versions of the AR-15/M16.
"7.62mm" is referring to 7.62x51 mm aka 7.62 NATO. Last of the full-power battle rifle rounds. That would have been used in the C1, Canada's version of the superb FN FAL battle rifle. That also means we know Codesmith joined the Canadian forces prior to 1988.