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Researchers: Islamic State uses some U.S.-made weapons

U.S.-produced equipment accounts for less than 5 percent of the weaponry found in the hands of ISIS fighters, said Jonah Leff, the director of operations at Conflict Armament Research.

"We have documented some U.S. equipment, but we also wanted to set the record straight," Leff said.

During on-field investigations in conflict zones, Leff said researchers documented approximately "30 to 35 U.S. M16 or M4 rifles, about 500 rounds of ammunition and a couple of tanks and armored personnel cars."

He said the insurgents might have captured most of these items during the attack on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which ISIS overran last year.

Although some Americans may be concerned about U.S.-made weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups, most equipment found in the Middle East has been Soviet-style weapons, according to Shawn Harris, one of the field investigators.

Leff added that newly manufactured Chinese, Iranian, Russian and Sudanese ammunition is prevalent in Syria.

"We are still looking into the exact chain of custody of all this ammunition," he said.

Leff shared his group's findings Tuesday at the Stimson Center, a global security think tank based in Washington, D.C. Conflict Armament Research launched the program last July to aggregate data on weapons and ammunition used by terrorists.

The team consists of 10 members with research and investigative backgrounds, according to Leff. They are gathering data in 14 countries, including Iraq and Syria.

"We have local contacts within the government that give us information about weapons that have been captured" from Islamic State militants, Leff said.

After getting tipped off, the team hurries to the site and documents the items by taking detailed pictures of the equipment, noting serial numbers, manufacturing stamps and fire selectors, all of which help in tracing the objects back to manufacturers.

To date, they have recorded 30,000 weapons, munitions and vehicles.

The program also consists of a European Union-funded project launched in September called iTrace. The website features data on the illegal weapons the team has discovered in various regions, and supports "governments, law enforcement agencies and security forces in identifying illicit weapons."

The program is entering a second phase, sending trace requests to armament manufacturers asking for more information about who purchased the weapons found in conflict zones. Leff said this would help the team understand the chain of custody.

Conflict Armament Research has a couple of goals, Harris said.

"One is to make manufacturers more accountable for making sure the end users are who they intend it to be," he said. "And second is to expose factories that divert weapons … [to] organizations like ISIS."
 
This article states that the masses of Sunnis in Iraq have been rejecting to accept power-sharing since 2003 and have refused to fight IS in June 2014 as they felt they weren't obliged to defend a regime they aren't in rule of, many also believed that revolutionaries rather than IS were active due to media propaganda whom in reality don't exist.

This also explains why IS terrorism has been active in the north whereas it's not non-existent in the South. When half your population works with them there's not much you can do about it even with the most hardened force. Now they're realizing what mistakes they did, they cry for help and non-Muslims have to clean it up, many people die for their behavior.

Truth is, if Iraq had no Muslims there wouldn't be ISIS, there wouldn't be terrorism in the country and the country would head to progress with it's new democratic system. It would be better if they convert to Christianity or something else, less beheading less bombing.

When Daesh came, the Sunni Arabs did not join in the battle because Daesh was threatening a government that was not theirs,”

After Minority Rule, Iraq’s Sunnis Refuse Minority Role - WSJ

Iraq’s Sunnis Don’t Accept Minority Role
Rejection of demographic reality hinders power-sharing agreement
BAGHDAD—Ask anyone in Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Aadhamiye about life under Iraq’s Shiite majority, and you’re likely to get a puzzled reply: “What Shiite majority?”

“Sunni Arabs aren’t few. We are at least half the population of Iraq,” said Fares Ali Karim, a 55-year-old who runs a travel agency near the Aadhamiye mosque, where Saddam Hussein made his last public appearance as president in 2003.

That is a common refrain, heard from ordinary Sunnis and the community’s most senior politicians alike. And that is what really makes the Iraqi crisis—which spawned the Sunni militant group Islamic State, with all its atrocities—so intractable.

A minority that dominated or ruled Iraq for centuries until the U.S. invasion brought Shiites to power 12 years ago, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs aren’t just refusing to accept their loss of status. They also, by and large, reject the basic demographic reality on which any feasible power-sharing deal could be built.

Such a deal is indispensable to eradicate Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The group seized most of Iraq’s Sunni belt last summer, riding a wave of discontent with the Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad. Despite recent advances by Shiite militias and government forces on Tikrit, most of that Sunni belt—including Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul—remains under Islamic State’s sway.

“ISIS is a problem, but it is a symptom of a bigger problem between Sunnis and Shiites,” said Robert Ford, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington who served as a U.S. diplomat in Iraq between 2003 and 2010, and then as American ambassador to Syria. “If there is no reconciliation, you will never control Islamic State. Wherever the Sunnis are, the Islamic State will be there.”

Nobody knows for sure how Iraq’s population is divided between its three main components: the Arab Shiites, the Arab Sunnis, and the predominantly Sunni Kurds, who control an autonomous region in the north. The political implications of this question have repeatedly scuttled plans to hold a census after Saddam’s downfall.

‘Sunni Arabs aren’t few. We are at least half the population of Iraq.’
—Fares Ali Karim, a 55-year-old travel agent
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 60% to 65% of Iraqis are Shiite, with the remainder split more or less evenly between Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Only three of Iraq’s 18 provinces are solidly Sunni Arab and Shiite politicians also estimate that Sunni Arabs account for between 15% and 20% of the population of 35 million.

Iraq’s Sunni leaders, of course, dismiss all these numbers as a conspiracy against their community. One of the country’s main Sunni politicians, Vice President Osama al-Nujaifi, points to data from the latest census, carried out by the Saddam regime in 1987, as the right basis for sharing power in Baghdad.

Those figures, dismissed by Shiites as doctored, show Sunni Arabs at 38% of the population and Shiite Arabs at 42%.

“The percentages of the Sunni and Shiite Arabs are still very close to each other. You can’t really describe the Sunni Arabs as a minority. We are a senior partner in this country,” Mr. Nujaifi, who until last year served as Iraq’s parliament speaker, said in an interview. The much lower Sunni vote recorded in Iraqi elections “doesn’t provide the genuine picture” because of insurgent violence, election boycotts and emigration, he added.

The dominance of Iraq’s Sunni elites goes back to the Ottoman Empire, in which what is now Iraq was a borderland abutting the rival Shiite empire in Iran. The privileged role of Sunni Arabs was strengthened by the British colonial powers and, with the Sunni preponderance in the officer class, continued through the history of independent Iraq.

By empowering the Shiite majority for the first time, the 2003 U.S. invasion upended what many Sunnis have come to see as Iraq’s natural order—and sparked violent resistance to the new Baghdad authorities that continues until now.

“When the Americans came, they put the Shiites in power and the Sunnis in prison,” said Mehdi al-Sumeidaie, the imam of Baghdad’s Sunni Umm al-Tuboul mosque who was jailed together with Islamic State’s current leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention facility in south Iraq.

The pursuit of a Shiite sectarian agenda by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki following the U.S. withdrawal in 2011 was a key reason why Islamic State, also known under its Arabic acronym Daesh, managed to sweep through Sunni areas of the country last summer, encountering little resistance.

“When Daesh came, the Sunni Arabs did not join in the battle because Daesh was threatening a government that was not theirs,” said Dhiaa Najm al-Asadi, a prominent Shiite lawmaker. Today, he added, the Sunnis should “be represented in government as they deserve, and more than they deserve.”

Mr. Maliki’s successor, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, has moved in that direction. Yet, change is slow—in part because of widespread Shiite fears that, no matter how much they concede to the Sunnis, anything short of yielding power won’t be enough.

“The problem is that the Sunni project in Iraq is not an autonomy project,” said Ezzuldin al-Hakim, the son and official representative of Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s main Shiite religious leaders. “The Sunni project is the project of strong central government—because they want to come back and rule it.”
 
It should be this " No Sunnis"

That's what I meant.

The youth of the country should realize this religion is their cancer. Nowadays Islam has been hijacked by political active clerics, whenever the government is absent in Muslim countries the people turn towards terror mostly suicide bombings all influenced by the same ideology. We've seen this on large scale in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Afghanistan. Fall of governments in other Arab states would result in the same hence Arab armies are mostly built to deal with their own internal enemies rather than foreign states, many Arab states rely on the US to deter foreign military conflict as seen in 90's history. I'm talking Sunni Islam here, it's the version which has been hijacked to say it nicely.

Extremists of Shi'a Islam can be retarded but not to that extent. Iran doesn't have to fear it's own Shi'a extremists will blow themselves up whereas the Sunni extremists in Saudi, Gulf states, Egypt, Pakistan etc. are a ticking time bomb, have blown up often and do so now and then. Had Ukraine been a Muslim country people would be blowing themselves up en masse since the instability.

Now i'm talking about fixing the new & youth generation of the country, the old generation brainwashed during the Saddam era cannot be fixed, they're too ignorant & 'proud' to admit the faults in themselves. More proper schools less mosques unless we want another generation of terrorists.

--

400 tons of explosive TNT captured from IS.
 
US policy had been fascinating. Worth studying. It sides with Iran against ISIS arabs in Iraq. It sides with Israel against Palestinians/arabs. It however sides with Gulf arabs against Houthi arabs in yemen and with arab FSA against Assad in Syria both of whom are supported by Iran.The strategy, it seems, is to play all sides against each other.

Washington is essentially helping all sides and in the process selling a lot of weapons to Middle Eastern oil money.Either way, it seems like a win-win for US.
 
I've heard bead news from Ramadi .
Like what please?. I know the Iraqi shiite is a joke still don't believe they are the majority yet and this guy Ammar Alhakeem keep talking about Iraq can't be ruled by one groupe of people so we have to share power with terrorists and their supporters!!!!.
 
Like what please?. I know the Iraqi shiite is a joke still don't believe they are the majority yet and this guy Ammar Alhakeem keep talking about Iraq can't be ruled by one groupe of people so we have to share power with terrorists and their supporters!!!!.

ISIS is advancing in Ramadi and villages around it .

Why so much hostility against Shias ? . They sacrificed many great men to take Tikrit yet bunch of brainwashed dick head Sunnis have accused them of looting and other BS coming from AlJazeera and other Saudi - Western propaganda .

They should have been left alone to be raped and beheaded by ISIS .

The same shit is happening in Anbar , where Shia forces were not allowed to enter and here is the result , Ramadi is falling and Sunnis are running to hide behind Rfidah , pagan grave worshipers .
 
ISIS is advancing in Ramadi and villages around it .

Why so much hostility against Shias ? . They sacrificed many great men to take Tikrit yet bunch of brainwashed dick head Sunnis have accused them of looting and other BS coming from AlJazeera and other Saudi - Western propaganda .

They should have been left alone to be raped and beheaded by ISIS .

The same shit is happening in Anbar , where Shia forces were not allowed to enter and here is the result , Ramadi is falling and Sunnis are running to hide behind Rfidah , pagan grave worshipers .

IA advanced in Garma ( near Fallujah ) and had setbacks in Ramadi. IS sent many suicide bombers to attack in Ramadi yesterday though now after Tikrit reinforcements are heading to Anbar to clear up some parts of it. IS knows it and is sending suicide bombers from Syria into Anbar. 10K locals from Anbar joined the fight against IS so we should see proper results lateron.

The hostility against Shias taking Tikrit is because the old generation feel they lost their pride, they wanted to take the city back themselves so they can claim the achievement and call themselves the warriors. I'm talking the old generation speaking on TV etc. For them their fake pride is more important than achieving the objective.
 
IA advanced in Garma ( near Fallujah ) and had setbacks in Ramadi. IS sent many suicide bombers to attack in Ramadi yesterday though now after Tikrit reinforcements are heading to Anbar to clear up some parts of it. IS knows it and is sending suicide bombers from Syria into Anbar. 10K locals from Anbar joined the fight against IS so we should see proper results lateron.

The hostility against Shias taking Tikrit is because the old generation feel they lost their pride, they wanted to take the city back themselves so they can claim the achievement and call themselves the warriors. I'm talking the old generation speaking on TV etc. For them their fake pride is more important than achieving the objective.

I read that Shia forces are heading towards Hawija not Anbar .

Check these maps :

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