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Many M-16s, the conventional wisdom goes, entered Syria after militants seized thousands of them from Iraq’s struggling security forces, which in turn had received the guns — along with armored vehicles, howitzers and warehouses’ worth of other equipment — from the Pentagon before American troops left the country in 2011. The militants’ abrupt possession of former American matériel was part of the battlefield turnabout last summer that led Julian E. Barnes, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, to tweet a proposed name for the Pentagon’s anti-militant bombing campaign: Operation Hey That’s My Humvee. And yet by this year, for all the attention the captured weapons had received, M-16s were seemingly uncommon in Syria. The expected large quantities had eluded researchers.
The investigator urged his host, a local security official, to rush after the Kurd and ask if he would allow the rifle to be photographed and its origins ascertained. Soon the investigator (who works for Conflict Armament Research, a private arms-tracking organization in Britain, and who asked that his name be withheld for safety reasons) found a surprise within his surprise. The rifle, which its current owner said had been captured from the Islamic State last year, was not an M-16. It was a Chinese CQ, an M-16 knockoff that resembles its predecessor but has a starkly different arms-trafficking history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/magazine/where-the-islamic-state-gets-its-weapons.html
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:18PM
Two points not discussed in the article which are interesting:
AFAIK the financial resources of IS are basically infinite. I mean they make the Saudi's look impoverished. Well, technically the Saudi's could spend more if they wanted but they don't. Anyway given a seemingly infinite supply of cash all doors open. They aren't your daddies contras in the 80s using whatever they can scrounge for free.
The other unmentioned point is where are the small arms? I mean its hard to hide a humvee and they're out there sorta. So if we left them an immense pile of small arms they're out there somewhere unless someone de-milled them on the way out (a thermite grenade on every armory rack or whatever). Its an interesting question. Even if demilled they'd at least show up in the scrapyards or something. I mean, we did leave the former Iraqi state small arms, not just tanks, right? Or did we? If we didn't, then we set them up to fail. Or, being man portable, everyone who cut and run is keeping/selling them as an army retirement bonus (LOL) but even so, they should be showing up "somewhere", shouldn't they?
I mean conservation of mass and all that shit, the point being the "physics" of the article are assuming they got no dough and existing M16 M4 whatever stocks can just disappear. The M16s, like the truth, are out there. Somewhere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @09:51PM
> AFAIK the financial resources of IS are basically infinite.
Which explains why many of their soldiers fight - a regular paycheck in an area with 30% unemployment is enough to make a lot of young men mouth empty prayers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kadal on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:19PM
How do you know about their finances?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:48PM
How do you know about their finances?
He works for CIA. He wrote the checks.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snotnose on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:08PM
How do you know about their finances?
He sold cookies for them a few months ago.
It was a once in a lifetime experience. Which means I'll never do it again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:39AM
Wow, they must be selling a lot of expensive cookies. I need to start my own cookie business.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:42PM
If we're talking about the CIA selling, "cookies" is a euphamism for "cocaine and heroin".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:24PM
> How do you know about their finances?
I dunno about VLM, but the director of the terrorism center at george mason university thinks they operate like a crime syndicate putting money ahead of ideology. [spiegel.de] She never spells it out, but it does not sound like they have anything like the kind of money VLM is claiming. They aren't destitute, but they only have so many sources of income.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:26PM
Same way everyone else knows. Follow the money trail. A clear path can be drawn from halal certification to IS through mosques.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @12:32AM
clear path can be drawn from kosher certification to IS
Corrected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:35PM
Are you new here? VLM knows everything.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pherenikos on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:57AM
In addition to the usual sources of funding for these types of organizations, ISIS is rumored to have acquired $1.5 billion from the capture of Mosul. This is a very informative report. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/14/how-does-isis-fund-its-reign-terror-282607.html [newsweek.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:25AM
Newsweek?
I can't take them seriously. 30 years ago when I was teen I figured out that they were the tigerbeat of news magazines.
I might as well get my news from kathy lee and hoda.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:27AM
Yes and this is the basically infinite part. Take 1500 million and divide it by the relatively small number of active boots on the ground, even if the crooks in charge embezzle half of it they have a remarkable pile of money for infantry gear.
This is before you get into the sectarian support issues. They're not pirates or mercenaries. They got friends. Friends with oil money.
They're not poor by any stretch of the imagination. Under those conditions it would be surprising if shipping containers from China were NOT falling from the sky.
It would be interesting to compile some kind of list of rebellions by inflation adjusted $ per rebel. They are the wealthiest rebel force I can think of. Usually the rich guys buy their way into power without all this messy beheading stuff, but, hey, if it works they're not gonna fix it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:37PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:22PM
Its a bizarre situation. They control the land and population a $400M bank sits on in Mosul, and everyone without an axe to grind sees that as "they got themselves a bank full of cash and gold" yet like two Iraqi officials in an "iraqi information minister" style rant will insist they technically have no money at all and don't look into our branches finances because that would be really bad for me and a couple agitprop pieces in the mass media trying to stir the pot.
True the bank continues to operate and supposedly is physically undamaged. Also true the when the army walks up to a teller and asks for their "tax" payment if the bank doesn't just open the door the bankers probably get the "strap to chair and ignite" treatment that ISIS likes so much.
What can't be debated is there's no logical reason to think they would be hurting for money by any interpretation of mental gymnastics and rationalization and no evidence they're actually hurting for money observationally, and the point being that plenty of revolutions have been great successes without much money anyway. So other than socking money away in Switzerland, they're spending it on food and stuff, so where's the brand new name brand stuff instead of chicom ripoffs?
I mean I've looked into revolutions involving extreme poverty and this ain't it, and I've seen revolutions where they got no friends, and again this ain't it, so where's the shiny? Maybe they're hyper disciplined or something like warriors out of the Dune books traveling the desert on sandworms. Probably not, but ?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:20PM
What can't be debated is there's no logical reason to think they would be hurting for money by any interpretation of mental gymnastics and rationalization and no evidence they're actually hurting for money observationally, and the point being that plenty of revolutions have been great successes without much money anyway. So other than socking money away in Switzerland, they're spending it on food and stuff, so where's the brand new name brand stuff instead of chicom ripoffs?
Aside from the natural expense of waging war, which is by any measure the most efficient way of squandering wealth man has yet devised.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:44PM
Intriguing. Care to offer some arguments?
(not saying that's not so, I'm just curious what reasoning/info support to this assertion)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:19AM
The other unmentioned point is where are the small arms? I mean its hard to hide a humvee
The whole story is about small arms, Chinese knockoffs.
Also, remember that the US equipped the Iraqi army mostly with AKxx derivatives (about 300,000), and only about 80,000 M16s.
7.62 ammo is far more plentiful in that part of the world than is 5.56.
Also Semi trained troops do better with a more dirt tolerant weapon.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.