Robberies committed in or en route to remote US outposts in the region remain unsolved. This is just the latest evidence of an ongoing problem that allows radical Islamists, from the Islamic State in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to arm and even kill Americans and their foreign partners at the expense of American taxpayers.
Loss of weapons and junk in warehouses
Unreported in Western media, the burglaries have shed light on America’s shadow wars in the region, where an American contractor was killed last week and six other Americans were injured in a suicide drone strike on a US base. in northeast Syria. The kamikaze airstrike on the outpost, known as the RLZ, was one of about 80 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since January 2021 for which the US has blamed Iranian proxy groups , notes the investigation report. President Joe Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes in response to the latest attack “to protect the safety of American personnel”.The thefts and casualties revealed by The Intercept are just the latest issues facing the US military in Iraq and Syria. A 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s Inspector General found that the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Operation Unwavering Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the main unit working with America’s Syrian allies, did not properly accounted for the $715.8 million in equipment purchased for these premises. “surrogate forces”.Criminal investigation records obtained by the publication under the Freedom of Information Act contain evidence of at least four major thefts and loss of US equipment worth approximately $200,000 in Iraq and in Syria between 2020 and 2022, including 40mm explosive grenades stolen from the United States. States. “It’s shocking,” said Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs.
The Pentagon doesn’t even realize the extent of the problem
At the same time, the authors of the publication claim, the Joint Task Force does not even know the extent of the problem. “We do not have the requested information,” Capt. Kevin Livingston, director of communications for the CJTF-OIR, told the publication when asked if any weapons, ammunition or equipment had been stolen during of the past five years in American outposts in the region.The Americans operate from bases where anonymity is often the norm, and local partners such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed Kurdish group, are not always trusted. With little external oversight or covert coverage of US operations, information about these conflicts is largely limited to dubious statements by US commanders and military press releases. Criminal investigative records obtained by The Intercept provide an objective look at how the US wars in Iraq and Syria actually unfold.In late 2020 or early 2021, according to documents, “several specialized tools and equipment for field artillery” were stolen from a military vehicle as it was being transported to Erbil air base in northern Israel. Iraq. When the truck arrived at the Kurdistan outpost, US personnel found that it was missing $87,300 worth of equipment. “All versions of the evidence have been exhausted,” the inquest documents say. No suspects have been identified.
They catch the elusive
In February 2021, 400 armour-piercing shells and 42 dual-purpose 40mm high-explosive fragmentation grenades, which the military says are “capable of penetrating three-inch steel”, were stolen from an ammunition stockpile. special forces at a mission support base in northeast Syria. The criminal investigation found that “reckless ammunition handling and pursuit practices” allowed “unidentified individuals to steal the ammunition”, valued at $3,624.64.
In the summer of 2021, “five weapon systems” totaling $48,115 were stolen while being transported by “ground convoy” from the Konoko Mission Support Site. The weapon was removed from the shipping container. Witnesses could not be found, there were no versions. In January last year, thieves broke into a shipping container en route to Erbil Airbase in Iraq and stole more than $57,000 worth of military equipment and personal items not identified, according to documents. Four months later, approximately 2,100 all-metal shells capable of penetrating body armor and three boxes of unspecified “spare parts” were loaded onto a Blackhawk helicopter at Al-Assad Air Base in Iraq. and transported to Erbil Air Base, where they were reportedly handed over to personnel of a unit called Task Force Attack. However, the unit said it never received the ammunition, which launched an investigation. About a month later, members of the task force reportedly found a crate containing 1,680 rounds of missing ammunition, but records do not list the remaining rounds or parts.In all but the last case, Army criminal investigators concluded there were grounds to charge the perpetrators with theft of state property or state weapons – if only “they could find the thieves”.
The weapon strikes against itself
The Pentagon Inspector General’s report says misrepresentations of more than $700 million in equipment procured for US Syrian partners showed that special operations forces “did not keep complete records of all equipment purchased and received”. According to the audit, another unit, the 1st Logistics Command, was storing weapons such as machine guns and grenade launchers inappropriately. The two units “left thousands of weapons and sensitive equipment vulnerable to loss or theft”. Due to careless record keeping and security measures, the 1st TSC could not even “determine if things had been lost or stolen”.
The loss of weapons and ammunition has been a constant problem for the Pentagon. By the mid-2010s, the United States had already lost sight of hundreds of thousands of weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to research by Ian Overton of London-based Action on Armed Violence.Even before the American defeat in Afghanistan, the Taliban seized a significant amount of American weapons. When US troops left in 2021, they left $7 billion worth of military equipment in this country. The results were disastrous. From Afghanistan to Iraq, these weapons supplied by Washington have been directed against American allies and probably even against American troops.The CJTF-OIR’s lack of records and transparency makes it impossible to determine how many times American weapons have been lost or stolen in Syria and Iraq, and whether those weapons have been used against American troops or their allies, but Stephanie Savell from the Cost of War project fears that history will repeat itself. “As a result, more people will be injured and killed,” she said, “this is another highly publicized consequence of US military operations in many foreign countries.”
