The US Army failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment in Iraq and Kuwait according to a now declassified Department of Defense (DoD) audit, obtained by Amnesty International following Freedom of Information requests.
The government audit, from September
2016, reveals that the DoD “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location”of a vast amount of equipment pouring into Kuwait and Iraq to provision the Iraqi Army.
“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,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Arms Control and Human Rights Researcher.
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.
Who are Amnesty? Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is a London-based non-governmental organization. Amnesty is focused on human rights. The organization says it has more than seven million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a
world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments."
What is Iraq? Iraq, officially known as the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse
ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians and Kawliya. Around 95% of the country's 37 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
What is ISIS? The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, Daesh, and other names) is a Salafi jihadist terrorist organisation. It is a former unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIS gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out
of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
DISCLAIMER
All news articles are shared for educational purposes only. The news content is hosted on the external news website. News articles titles are derived from the original news title, news content, dialogue, speech or general content theme. The news title may be edited and optimized for SEO, keyword density, information and internal website search purposes. You are advised to view the original news article for a better understanding. If you spot any mistakes, errors or omissions kindly contact us.