Arms Windfall for Insurgents As Iraqi City Falls

Source: New York Times

The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents.

The problem is not a new one, but it looms larger now that the United States is shifting its counterterrorism strategy away from using American armed forces directly, and toward relying on allied or indigenous troops and security forces supplied and trained by the United States. President Obama proposed last week that a $5 billion fund be set up to finance such efforts.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is an expanded version of Al Qaeda in Iraq that controls a number of cities in northeastern Syria and western Iraq. Its brutal tactics alienated it from the Syrian rebel movement, as did the fact it has emphasized the establishment of an Islamic state over the fight against Mr. Assad. It was officially disowned by Al Qaeda in February.

The Sunni insurgent group has emerged as the leading force for the foreign fighters streaming into Syria, exploiting the chaos of the civil war as it tries to lay the groundwork for an Islamic state. Al Qaeda’s central leadership cut ties with ISIS earlier this year as it rushed to build an Islamic state on its own terms, antagonizing the wider Syrian rebel movement.

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Inadequate or unreliable local allies have allowed American military aid to fall into the wrong hands a number of times in recent years.

In August 2013, an ambitious effort to build up the embryonic Libyan army ended ignominiously when militia fighters overpowered a small guard force at a training base outside Tripoli, the capital. The insurgents looted the base of automatic rifles, night-vision goggles, vehicles and other equipment, and the American instructors were withdrawn while officials sought a more secure training site.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/world/middleeast/mosul-iraq-militants-seize-us-weapons.html

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Seems like American arms to the Middle East end up in the darnedest places.

And the Obama administration wants to send more to the "good rebels" in Syria.