Isis weapons. Where does the ISIS get the weapon from? American missiles go through Turkey

“Habibi! Aluminum!"

A loud exclamation echoes through the cluttered courtyard of a house in the city of Tall Afar, which is located in the far north of Iraq. It's late September now, but it's still hot outside. It seems that the heat is streaming from everywhere, even rising from the ground. The city itself is empty, except for the feral stray dogs and young people in their arms.

"Habibi!" Damien Spleeters shouts again. That is how he affectionately calls out in Arabic to his Iraqi translator and local colleague Haider al-Hakim.

Spliters - EU-funded Field Investigator international organization Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which monitors arms trafficking in war zones. He is 31 years old, he has a Freddie Mercury mustache from the 1980s, and his thin arms, quickly tanned under the southern sun, are covered with tattoos. In a different setting, he could be mistaken for a hipster bartender, rather than an investigator who has been tracking the smuggling of grenade launchers in Syria for the past three years, AK-47 assault rifles in Mali and hundreds of other weapons and ammunition that fall into the war zones in various ways, sometimes in violation of existing international agreements. The work Splitters does is usually done by secret government services such as the War Material Identification Division. Intelligence Directorate Department of Defense, known as Chuckwagon (camp kitchen). But if the word Chuckwagon in Google can be found with great difficulty, then Splitters detailed reports for CAR are always available on the Internet in the public domain, and in them you can find much more useful informationthan all the intelligence that I received while commanding an unexploded ordnance disposal unit in Iraq in 2006.
In that war, militants blew up American soldiers with improvised explosive devices. Those devices that I encountered during my business trips were mostly buried in the ground by the militants or put into action by placing them in a car, which then turned into a large moving bomb. These cars were blown up in markets and schools, and after explosions, gutters were filled with blood. But mostly they were crudely made primitive devices, the parts of which were glued together with duct tape and epoxy. The few rockets and mines that fell to the militants were old, of poor quality, they often did not have the necessary detonators, and they did not always explode.

Many ISIS leaders were veterans of this rebel movement, and starting the war against the Iraqi government in 2014, they were well aware that in order to seize territory and create their independent Islamic state, only improvised explosive devices and Kalashnikov assault rifles will not be enough for them. A serious war requires serious weapons such as mortars, rockets, grenades, but ISIS, being an outcast in the international arena, could not buy them in sufficient quantities. They took something from the Iraqi and Syrian government forces, but when they ran out of ammunition for these weapons, the Islamists did what no terrorist organization had done before them: they began to design their own ammunition, and then began to mass produce them using fairly modern production technologies. The Iraqi oil fields became a production base for them, as there were tools and dies, high-quality cutting machines, injection molding machines - and also skilled workers who knew how to quickly turn complex parts to the specified dimensions. They received raw materials by dismantling pipelines and melting scrap metal. ISIS engineers churned out new fuses, new missiles and launchers, and small bombs that the militants dropped from drones. All this was done and assembled in accordance with plans and drawings, which were made by the responsible ISIS functionaries.

Since the start of the conflict, CAR has conducted 83 inspection visits to Iraq, gathering information on the weapons, and Spliter has been involved in nearly all of the investigations. As a result, a detailed and extensive database was created, which included 1,832 weapons and 40,984 ammunition found in Iraq and Syria. CAR calls it "the most complete collection of weapons and ammunition seized from ISIS to date."

This is how Splitters found himself this fall in a grubby house in Tall Afar, where he sat over an 18-liter bucket of aluminum powder paste and waited for his assistant to show up. Al-Hakim is a bald, well-dressed man, somewhat reminiscent of a sophisticated urban snob, which makes him sometimes appear as a foreign body in a littered ISIS workshop. The men easily established contact and understanding, but Al-Hakim acts as the host, and Spliters is always a respectful guest. Their job is to notice little things. Where others see debris, they find evidence, which Splitters then photographs and examines in search of subtle serial numbers that may reveal the find's origin.

For example, with regard to aluminum paste, ISIS masters mix it with ammonium nitrate and obtain a powerful explosive for mines and missiles. Splitters found similar buckets, from the same manufacturers and vendors, in Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul. “I love it when I see the same material in different cities,” he tells me. The point is that repeated finds allow him to identify and describe various links in the ISIS supply chain. “This confirms my theory of the industrial revolution of terrorism,” Spliters said. "And also why they need raw materials on an industrial scale."

Splitters are constantly looking for new weapons and ammunition in order to understand how the expertise and professionalism of ISIS engineers is developing. Arriving in Tall Afar, he seized on a promising new trail: a series of modified rockets that appeared in ISIS propaganda videos that the organization shows on YouTube and other social media.
Splitters suspected that ISIS engineers had made the fuse tubes, detonation mechanisms and empennage for the new missiles, but he believed that the warheads came from somewhere else. Having discovered several types of similar munitions over the past six months, he concluded that ISIS may have seized warheads from the Syrian anti-government forces, which were secretly supplied with weapons. Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.

But to prove this, he needed additional evidence and evidence. Splitters believes that if he can find more launchers and warheads, he will be able to obtain, for the first time, ample evidence that the Islamic State is using US-supplied powerful munitions against the Iraqi army and its American counterparts. special purpose... ISIS itself could hardly make such modern ammunition. This would mean that he had new and very serious opportunities and aspirations. These circumstances also provide a disturbing glimpse of the future nature of war, whereby any faction anywhere can start home-grown weapons production using materials from the Internet and 3D printing.

Almost all military ammunition, from rifle cartridges to aerial bombs, regardless of country of origin, is marked in a certain way. Conventional marking allows you to determine the date of manufacture, the manufacturing plant, the type of explosive used as filler, as well as the name of the weapon, which is called the nomenclature. For Spliters, this mark is a document "that cannot be faked." Stamping impressions on hardened steel are very difficult to remove or remake. “If it says that the ammunition is from such and such a country, it is 99% true,” he says. - And if not, then you can still determine that it is a fake. And this is something completely different. Every detail counts. "

On one occasion, Splitters at an Iraqi military base in Tall Afar, in the late afternoon, was placing 7.62mm rounds of rounds to photograph the markings on each case. At that point, I told him that I had never met a person who loved ammunition so much. “I take it as a compliment,” he said with a smile.

This love began when Spliters was still a newly minted reporter and worked for a newspaper in his native Belgium. "There was a war in Libya at that time," he says of civil war 2011 year. He really wanted to understand how Belgian-made rifles got to the rebels who fought against Gaddafi. He believed that if this connection was revealed, the Belgian public would be interested in this conflict, to which they did not show any attention.

Splitters began looking through Belgian diplomatic correspondence for more information on secret government deals, but that did little to him. He decided that the only way to understand the essence of what was happening was to travel to Libya himself and personally follow the path of these rifles. He bought a plane ticket using the money from the grant he had received and set to work. “You know, it was a little weird,” he says. "I took a vacation to go to Libya."
Splitters found the rifles he was looking for. He also found that this kind of search is much more satisfying to him than reading materials about this weapon on the Internet. “There is a lot to write about weapons,” he said. - Weapons untie tongues for people. It can make even the dead speak. " Spliters returned to Belgium as a freelance journalist. He has written several articles on the arms trade for French-language newspapers, as well as a couple of papers for think tanks such as Geneva's Small Arms Survey. However, the life of a freelancer turned out to be very unstable, and therefore Spliters put aside the journalistic pen and in 2014 joined Conflict Armament Research as a full-time investigator.

During one of his first missions with this organization to the Syrian city of Kobani, he worked with killed ISIS fighters, whose bodies were thrown right on the battlefield, where they rotted and decayed. Splitters found one AK-47 assault rifle with bits of rotting meat stuck in the curves and grooves of the forend and wooden grip. Everywhere was the sweet smell of decay and decay. Among the corpses, he also found 7.62 mm cartridges, PKM machine guns and supplies for the RPG-7 grenade launcher. Some of these weapons were stolen from the Iraqi army. These findings convinced him of the enormous value of the field work. He says that the information he has cannot be obtained by following the news and videos online. “On all these social networks, when I see ammunition or small arms from a distance, sometimes I get the impression of 'yes, this is M16.” But if you look closely, it becomes clear that this is a Chinese CQ-556 rifle, which is a copy of the M16. But to understand this, you have to look closely, "he tells me, adding that the camera hides much more than it shows. And if you look at the weapon personally, it may turn out that it is from another manufacturer, and thus has a different origin. this can hardly be guessed by watching a grainy YouTube video.

The war between ISIS and Iraqi government forces is a series of intense hostilities that take place on the city streets from house to house. In late 2016, as government forces fought ISIS in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqis discovered that the Islamic State was producing large-caliber ammunition in clandestine factories throughout the area. Splitters traveled there to explore these munitions factories in Mosul while the fighting was taking place there. Once, when Spliters was photographing the weapon under the whistle of flying bullets, he saw an Iraqi bodyguard who was supposed to guard him, trying to cut off the head of a dead ISIS fighter with a butcher's knife. The blade of the knife was dull, and the soldier was upset. Finally, he walked away from the corpse.

Splitters brought back some important information from Mosul. But coalition airstrikes destroyed much of the city, and by the time government forces announced victory in July, much of the evidence had already been destroyed or lost. As ISIS began to lose ground in Iraq, Spliters became worried, believing that the group's weapons production system could be destroyed before he or anyone else could document its full potential. He needed to get to these factories before they were destroyed. Only then could he describe their contents, understand their origins, and identify supply chains.

In late August, ISIS combat units were quickly driven out of Tall Afar. Unlike other razed cities, there was relatively little destruction in Tall Afar. Only every fourth house was destroyed there. To find additional evidence and information about the secret production and supply of weapons, Spliters needed to get to this city very quickly.

In mid-September Splitters flew to Baghdad, where he met with Al-Hakim. He was then guarded by an Iraqi military convoy of trucks with machine guns for nine hours driving north on a highway that had only recently been cleared of improvised explosive devices. The last section of the road to Tall Afar was deserted, pitted by explosions. The burnt-out fields around the road were black.

The Iraqi army controls the southern districts of Tall Afar, while Iranian-backed militias (mostly Shiites) from the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) organization hold the north of the city under their control. The relationship between them is very tense. My driver was Kurdish and he spoke poor English. When we approached the first checkpoint, and this man saw the flag of the Hashd al-Shaabi militants, he turned to me anxiously.

“I am not Kurdish. You are not America, ”he said. We were silent at the checkpoint, and they let us through.

We arrived in Tall Afar on a hot evening. We made our first stop in a fenced-in area where, according to Al-Hakim, a mosque could be located. There, at the entrance, lay several shells for the bomb launcher. At first glance, they have a very simple design and are similar to standard American and Soviet mortar mines. But if mines have standard calibers (60 mm, 81 mm, 82 mm, 120 mm, and so on), then these shells have a caliber of 119.5 mm to match the inner diameter of the steel pipes that ISIS uses as a launcher. This difference may seem like a trifle, but the projectile must fit very tightly into the launch tube so that there is sufficient pressure of the powder gases to eject it. ISIS has very strict tolerances and quality requirements, sometimes up to tenths of a millimeter.

Ammunition confiscated from ISIS fighters (banned in Russia) near Mosul

At the back of the building were several tanks connected by a steel pipe, as well as large barrels of black liquid. Something was dripping from one reservoir, and some disgusting growths formed on it. "Do you think it's rust?" - asks Spliters Al-Hakim. It is clear that the liquid is toxic. It looks like the vomit of a drunk who vomited right on his shirt. But Splitters can't take samples and test. He has no laboratory instruments, no protective suit, no gas mask.

“My eyes sting,” says Al-Hakim. There is a pungent, irritating smell in the yard, as if paint had just been spilled there. There are sacks of caustic soda for decontamination nearby.

“Yes, everything is somehow suspicious here,” agrees with Al-Hakim Spliters. We are leaving soon. The black liquid can be an incendiary such as napalm or some noxious industrial chemical, but Splitters cannot say for sure what is being produced in these tanks. (He later learns that he could identify the manufacturing process if he took more high-quality photographs of the pressure gauges and their serial numbers. According to Spliters, no matter what information he gathers in the field, he always has the feeling that he forgot something. .)

After a short drive through the quiet, shell-poured streets, we arrive at an unremarkable building similar to all the other houses in the block. Stone wall, iron gates, separate rooms around the courtyard, shady trees that give a pleasant coolness. Among the discarded shoes and bedclothes lie the barrels of mortars and artillery shells... Splitters expertly pushes them aside casually.

At the back of the courtyard, he notices something unusual. A neat hole was punched in the concrete wall - you can immediately see that it was made by hand, and not by a shell. There is a large open space behind the wall, where there are many tools and half-collected ammunition. It is covered with a tarp to hide the contents from enemy drones. The air smells of machine oil.

Splitters immediately knows what this place is. This is not a warehouse as he has seen and photographed in large quantities. This is a production workshop.

On the table, he notices small bombs like ISIS makes. This bomb has a plastic injection-molded body and a small tail unit for stabilization in the air. These bombs can be dropped from drones, which we often see in videos on the Internet. But they can also be fired from the grenade launchers of AK-47 assault rifles.

Nearby is the area for the manufacture of fuses. On the floor near the lathe are heaps of shiny shavings in a spiral pattern. Most often, ISIS fuses resemble a silver conical plug with a safety pin threaded through the body. The fuse design is elegantly minimal, although not nearly as simple as it seems. The originality of this device is in its interchangeability. A standard ISIS detonator sets off all of its rockets, bombs and mines. Thus, the militants managed to solve a serious engineering problem. In the interests of safety and reliability, the United States and most other countries create separate fuses for each type of ammunition. But ISIS has modular fuses, safe, and according to some experts, they rarely misfire.

Splitters continues to work at the back of the factory yard. And then he notices something special - those converted rockets that he was looking for. They are at various stages of manufacture and preparation, and assembly instructions are written on the walls with a felt-tip pen. Dozens of disassembled ammunition warheads are waiting for their turn to be reworked. They are in a dark annex on a long table next to calipers and small improvised explosive containers. Each individual workplace is itself a treasure trove of information that provides a visual representation of ISIS's weapons and ammunition program. But jobs are plentiful, and so the abundance of evidence creates a kind of sensory overload. “My God, look at this. And look here. God, come over there. God, God, wow, ”mutters the amazed Splitters, moving from one workplace to the next, He’s like Charlie in a chocolate factory.

However, night falls on Tall Afar, and there is no electricity in the city. This means that Splitters will no longer be able to study their treasures and photograph specimens in natural light. Soon, our convoy returns to the Iraqi military base, located near the destroyed city airport. It is a small outpost of refurbished trailers, half of which are riddled with bullets. In the trailer next to us, two detained militants who are suspected of belonging to ISIS are sleeping. This is a young man and an older man. They appear to be the only ones captured during the Battle of Tall Afar. Splitters spends the evening eagerly watching satellite TV. In all the time that we spent together, he did almost nothing except work and food, and only slept for a few hours.

It dawned early enough, and when the soldiers woke up, Spliters returned with a convoy to the shop. He pulls out 20 yellow crime scene stickers, one for each table. He then draws a diagram to reconfigure this room later. In one place in this diagram, it denotes welding electrodes, in another a grinding machine. “No, this is not a flow process,” he muses out loud. "Most likely, these are different work areas for making different things."

Splitters then begins taking photographs, but suddenly the entire room is filled with Iraqi intelligence officers who have learned about this small factory. They open all the drawers, take out every electrical board, kick the shavings and scrap metal, take the papers, pull the handles. Unused ammunition is quite safe if you don't throw it with the fuse head down, but disassembled shells and mines are quite unpredictable. In addition, there may be booby traps inside the workshop. But this is not what worries Spliters. He becomes desperate because of something else.

“Khabibi,” he declares, “it is necessary that they do not touch anything here or carry it away. It's important to keep everything together, because the whole point is to learn it at the same time. If they take something, it will be pointless. Can you tell them that? "

“I told them,” Al-Hakim replies.

“They can do whatever they want when I'm done,” Spliters says wearily.

In a small room adjacent to the launch tube site, Splitters begins to study dozens of different models of grenade launchers. Some of them were made many years ago, and each has a certain identification mark. On Bulgarian-made pomegranates, there is the number “10” or “11” in a double circle. The green paint used by China and Russia has slightly different shades. “In Iraq, we are at war with the whole world,” a soldier boasted to me two days earlier, referring to the many foreign fighters recruited by ISIS. But exactly the same impression arises when you look at weapons from the most different countriesconcentrated in one room.

Splitters carefully examines the stacked rocket warheads, and finally finds what he needs. “Habibi, I found a PG-9 shell,” he exclaims, looking in the direction of Al-Hakim. This is Romanian missilewith lot number 12-14-451. Splitters spent the past year looking for this particular serial number. In October 2014, Romania sold 9,252 PG-9 grenades with batch number 12-14-451 to the US military for grenade launchers. By purchasing this ammunition, the United States signed an end-user certificate. This is a document confirming that this ammunition will only be used in american army, and will not be shared with anyone. The Romanian government has confirmed the sale by providing CAR with an end-user certificate and delivery document.

However, in 2016, Splitters saw ISIS footage showing a crate of PG-9 shells. He thought he noticed the batch number 12-14-451. The munitions were seized from the Syrian militant group Jaysh Surya Al-Jadid. Somehow, PG-9s from this batch ended up in Iraq, where ISIS technicians separated the stolen grenades from the starting powder charge, and then improved them, adapting them to combat in urban conditions. Grenade launchers cannot be fired inside buildings because of the dangerous jet stream. But by attaching ballast to the grenade, the engineers created such an ammunition that can be used when fighting inside buildings.

So how american weapons ended up in the hands of ISIS? Splitters cannot say for sure yet. On July 19, 2017, the Washington Post wrote that US authorities secretly trained and armed Syrian rebels from 2013 until mid-2017, when the Trump administration ended the training program, in part fearing that American weapons might end up in the wrong hands. The US government did not respond to numerous requests for comment on the situation and how given weapon ended up with the Syrian rebels and at the ISIS ammunition factory. The government also declined to say whether or not the United States has violated the terms of its end-user certificate and, accordingly, whether it is complying with the terms of the UN arms trade treaty, which it signed along with 130 other countries.

Other countries seem to be buying and reselling weapons too. CAR monitored Saudi Arabia buying various types of weapons, which were then found in ISIS militias. In one case, Spliters checked the flight plan of one plane that was supposed to deliver 12 tons of ammunition to Saudi Arabia. Documents show that this plane did not land in Saudi Arabia, but flew to Jordan. Sharing a common border with Syria, Jordan is, as is well known, a point of transfer of arms to the rebels fighting the Assad regime. While the Saudis could claim that these weapons were stolen or seized, they did not. The people in charge of the flight insist that the plane with the weapon landed in Saudi Arabia, although the flight documents refute this. The Saudi Arabian government did not respond to requests for comment on how its weapons ended up in ISIS hands.

“This is war,” says Spliters. “This is a fucking mess. Nobody knows what's going on and that's why conspiracy theories always arise. We live in an era of post-truth, when facts no longer mean anything. And while doing this work, I can sometimes grab onto irrefutable facts. "

For the most part, next-generation terrorism and future war scenarios involve the use of artificial intelligence, unmanned aircraft and self-propelled vehicles with explosives. But this is only a part reflecting the fears of American engineers about the many opportunities to use new technologies. Another, much more dangerous part of this story relates to ISIS technicians. These people have already shown that they can manufacture weapons that are not inferior to what the military industry of states does. And over time, it will be even easier for them to establish a production process, since 3D printing is widespread in the world. Joshua Pearce, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, is an expert on open hardware, and he says ISIS's manufacturing process is "very subtle." In the future, schematic drawings of the weapon can be downloaded from secret sites on the Internet, or received through popular social networks with coding, such as WhatsApp. These files can then be uploaded to metal 3D printers that can last years are widely used and cost less than a million dollars, including adjustment. Thus, the weapon can be made with a simple push of a button.

“Making weapons using layer-by-layer technology is much easier than it sounds,” said August Cole, director of the Art Of Future Word project, of the Atlantic Council. The rate at which ISIS's intellectual capital spreads depends on the number of young engineers joining its affiliates. According to researchers at the University of Oxford, at least 48% of non-Western jihadist recruits went to college, and almost half of them studied engineering. Of the 25 participants in the 9/11 attacks, at least 13 went to college and eight were engineers. Among them are the two main organizers of the attacks, Mohammed Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Carolina. The Associated Press reported that while in an American prison, he received permission to build a vacuum cleaner from scratch. That this is a pointless hobby, according to CIA officials, or distinctive feature inventor? Mohammed downloaded the drawings of the vacuum cleaner on the Internet.

Splitters had only two days to explore the Tal Afar munitions factories. On the last evening, he was in a great hurry, trying to get as much work as possible. ISIS uses distributed production methods. Each site is specialized for a specific task, like an automobile plant. And Splitters tried to describe and document all of these sites and jobs. “We only have one hour left,” he said, looking at the sun, relentlessly leaning towards the horizon. At the first plant, Splitters found a huge melting furnace, around which lay raw materials waiting for their turn to be remelted: engine units, scrap metal, heaps of copper wire. There was also a vice with molds for fuses, next to them lay a plumage for mortar shells. All this was waiting for its turn to be assembled in the next workshop. This work was carried out on the ground floor of a three-story building that was once a marketplace. The stove was also set on the lower level, because it gave off incredible heat. The entire city of Tall Afar was turned into a manufacturing base.

Splitters quickly finishes collecting evidence. "Is there anything else left?" he asks a major in the Iraqi army. “Yes, there is,” the major replies, walking to the next door. There is a large stove in the foyer, which ISIS fighters covered with handprints by dipping them in paint. It looked like a child's picture of first graders. In the corridors lay clay molds for the mass production of 119.5 mm projectiles. In the next courtyard there is something like a research laboratory. Everywhere there are ammunition, new and old, lighting shells, cutaways. The tables are littered with disassembled fuses and huge 220 mm ammunition. This is the largest caliber ever produced by ISIS engineers. It also contained large pipes used as launchers. They were about the size of a telephone pole.

The sun begins to set. Splitters asks again if there is more. The major again answers in the affirmative. In 24 hours we visited six factories, and I understand that no matter how much Splitters asks his question, the answer will always be the same. But evening comes, and Splitters' time is running out. The rest of the factories will remain unexplored, at least until next time.

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It turns out that ISIS has surface-to-air missiles at its disposal.

The question of why ISIS is not using it against combat aircraft - neither in Iraq nor in Syria - remains open.

Syrian rebels, for example, still manage to shoot down at least military helicopters, although they do not possess missiles of this type.

In the first years of the revolution, they even shot down several of Assad's warplanes, since they ended up with Igla MANPADS from the depots captured from the regime.

Amnesty International has produced a Report on how ISIS seized huge arms depots from the Iraqi government army.

The human rights organization concludes that a significant portion of ISIS's arsenal includes weapons "looted, seized or illegally purchased from poorly defended Iraqi military depots."

According to Amnesty, "ISIS fighters now have large stocks of AKs, as well as American M16s, Chinese CQs, German Heckler & Koch G3s, and Belgian FN Herstal FAL rifles ..."

“Experts also talk about: Russian (Dragunov) and Austrian (Steyr) sniper rifles; Russian, Chinese, Iraqi and Belgian machine guns; anti-tank shells produced by the former USSR and Yugoslavia; Russian, Chinese, Iranian and American artillery installations. "

"Plus, ISIS captured more sophisticated devices such as ATGMs (Russian Kornets and Mestizos, Chinese HJ-8s, European MILAN and HOT missiles) and surface-to-air missiles."

Hassan Hassan of the British think tank Chatham House confirms that most of ISIS weapons were captured from the Iraqi and Syrian armies.

But he also says that ISIS buys weapons on the black market.

Context

The Amnesty report focused on the fact that most of the weapons ISIS seized as a result of the chaos in the Iraqi government army in recent years.

Iraqi military arsenals expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, when 34 states (including the USSR, France, China) transferred billions of dollars worth of weapons to Iraq.

It was a period of extreme instability when Iraq was openly at war with Iran.

The Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, leading to the disbandment of the Iraqi government army.
Some of the arsenals were simply taken home by former soldiers.
Many small and not very armed formations were formed. They attacked the warehouses of the police and the occupation forces.

Missing weapon

“Between 2003 and 2007, member states of the American-led coalition donated over a million infantry weapons and ammunition to the new Iraqi government forces. Although everyone knew that new army poorly organized, poorly disciplined and corrupted. "

“Hundreds of thousands of units of this weapon disappeared in an unknown direction and are still listed as such. During this period, the black market of the arms trade flourished. The problem was exacerbated by the secret arms shipments from Iran. "

The report accuses the American occupation coalition of inaction, failure to prevent human rights abuses, poor control of arms depots, and disarming Iraqi soldiers following the disbandment of the Iraqi government army.

In general, analysts noted that the American plan in Iraq failed, although it went through several stages of evolution.
The United States tried several forms of organizing the armed forces, even incorporated some of the rebel groups that emerged after their invasion of Iraq.

However, it was not possible to establish real control over Iraq. Nevertheless, the country continued to be pumped up with weapons, not caring about where it was spreading further.

A time bomb was also laid by the undercover cooperation of the occupation administration with Iran, which alienated the overwhelming majority of the Sunni population from the normalization policy.

Endless purges and repressions, along with massive human rights violations, provoked natural resistance.

With such a large mass of protests and the uncontrolled proliferation of weapons, the emergence of groups like ISIS was inevitable.

In a fairly short time, a previously unknown terrorist organization was able to seize power over a territory larger than the territory of Great Britain. The leader of the self-styled caliphate, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, loudly declares that the army of faithful warriors is increasing every day and each soldier receives excellent training and then is equipped in the best possible way. But is this true? Not really. This is how ordinary ISIS fighters are armed.

The activities of the Islamic State terrorist group are prohibited in Russia.

Army size

The adherents of the Caliphate themselves proudly declare an army of up to one hundred thousand capable fighters. According to rumors, unlike the regular armies of states, the formations of fighters are evenly distributed across the territories of Iraq and Syria. American intelligence says that a much smaller group of twenty to twenty-five thousand people is fighting on the side of ISIS.

Weapon

Like many other banned organizations in the world, ISIS fighters are almost universally armed with variations of the AK-47. gets here through different channels - mainly the battered Chinese localization of Kalashnikov, but there are also trophy specimens captured at military bases in Iraq and Syria. In addition, the operations of ISIS militants in Iraq have provided fighters with a number of American assault M-16A4s - more modern and more reliable machine guns.

Steel arms

ISIS fighters have great respect for edged weapons. Almost every soldier carries a knife with him. Again, the American M9 Bayonet combat blade, supplied in large quantities to the Iraqi government forces, is very popular. Some fighters are armed with the most real swords: in the fight from them, of course, little sense, but it looks impressive.

Anti-tank complexes

RPG-7 grenade launchers have become the main anti-tank weapons of the soldiers of the self-styled caliphate - they are cheap and easy to operate. The fighters in black also possess a number of Konkurs and Fagot anti-tank guided complexes, but they can be called rather rare. When retreating, the Syrian army enriched opponents with Chinese HJ-8 ATGMs, capable of hitting targets for three kilometers.

Light armored vehicles

As if revisiting Mad Max, the jihad warriors are converting ordinary pickups into very, very effective "gantrucks." Installation of a large-caliber machine gun in the back turns the car into a mobile ambassador of death, and the fuel consumption of the "gantruck" is much lower than that of any armored vehicle. However, the Caliphate also has enough useful trophies: from American Humvee jeeps and armored MRAP trucks to old Soviet armored personnel carriers.

Aviation

And yes, the Islamic State even has its own aircraft fleet. The Caliphate militants captured a number of American UH60 Black Hawk helicopters and even several MiG-21 fighters. However, they still will not be able to use them: the aviation of Russia and the NATO countries exercises complete air supremacy.

Air defense

At the destroyed bases, ISIS soldiers managed to capture a small number of American Stingers. In addition, the Russian Arrow and Igla MANPADS are widespread in the ranks of ISIS. The adherents of radical Islam have already been able to shoot down several helicopters serving in service in the Iraqi army.

Their success lies in their capture of military equipment from the fleeing Iraqi soldiers. When ISIS took over Mosul, they seized weapons, which allowed them to hold a full-fledged, not a rabble of rebels.

“Equipment was lost for three divisions,” said Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A large number of weapons that were taken away in Mosul were supplied by the United States to the Iraqi army. The terrorists are also armed with weapons produced in the USSR (Russia) China, the Balkans, and Iran.

Tanks T-55

The T-55 series of tanks were produced by the Soviet Union from the end of World War II until the 1980s. It is estimated that ISIS has about 30 of these tanks, but it is not known how well the organization can maintain and manage them.

Despite their age, these tanks are still used in about 50 armies around the world. They have heavy armor, as well as a 100mm cannon and a 7.62mm machine gun.

Tanks T-72

The T-72 tank is a second generation Soviet battle tank. The tank first entered production in 1971, and they are still being produced today. ISIS has five to ten T-72 tanks, although it is not known whether the terrorists will be able to keep them in working order and cope with repairs. The T-72 is securely armored and has a 125mm cannon.

Hummers

ISIS took possession of the Hummers during the assault on Mosul, the United States provided them to the Iraqi army. Hummers allow you to move quickly and efficiently over rough terrain. Their heavy armor also protects forces from small arms fire as well as the collateral damage from indirect explosions. There is also little protection against landmines or buried improvised explosive devices.

ISIS does not have a large selection of rifles, the AK-47 has become their standard assault rifle due to its low cost, durability, affordability and ease of use.

The AK-47 was originally developed by Soviet designers but quickly spread to other armies and irregulars around the world.

M79 Wasp

The M79 Wasp fires a 90mm round that is very effective against tanks and fortified positions. The journalist Elliot Higgins, better known as Brown Moses, believes that these weapons originated in Croatia before they were supplied to the Syrian rebels by Saudi Arabia. ISIS used these destructive missiles against the armored vehicles of the Iraqi security forces.

RBG-6 grenade launchers

This semi-automatic grenade launcher is lightweight and designed for infantry. Saudi Arabia has imported Croatian RBG-6s into Syria, according to Brown Moses. Eventually RBG-6s fell into the hands of ISIS, and are now also being used in Iraq.

Iraq is backed by RPG-7 grenade launchers, as are the Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and ISIS. RPG-7 portable, shoulder-launched anti-tank grenade launcher. These systems are durable, easy to use and relatively low cost. Grenades can reach up to 920 meters, but at a very long distance they can self-destruct without hitting the target.

Howitzers M198

The M198 medium-sized howitzer was developed for service in the US Army after World War II. The M198 can launch projectiles at a distance of at least 22 km. This howitzer can fire a variety of ammunition, including explosives, rockets and white phosphorus... ISIS probably captured howitzers in the Iraqi army after they left their bases.

Field Cannon 59-1

The Type 59-1 is a Chinese copy of the Soviet M-46 M1954 towed field gun. The M-46 was first released by the Soviet government in 1954. At one time, the M-46 was the farthest artillery system in the world with a maximum firing range of 27 km. The 59-1 type is a licensed Chinese copy, much lighter than the M-46. Both Syrian and Iraqi military personnel used the Type 59-1

Anti-aircraft guns ZU-23-2

ZU-23-2 - Soviet anti-aircraft automatic cannons, produced from 1960 to today... It fires 23mm rounds at 400 rounds per minute. The ZU-23-2 can effectively fire at 3 km, and is designed to strike low-flying targets and armored vehicles. These weapons were used in the Syrian civil war and are also in the arsenal of the Iraqi army.

"Stinger"

The Stinger is a surface-to-air infrared homing missile for shoulder-firing. Originally developed in the United States, it entered service in 1981. These MANPADS are extremely dangerous and can effectively demolish helicopters and aircraft.

Stingers require specialized maintenance and care. Most likely FIM-92 went to ISIS from Iraqi military bases.

The HJ-8 is an anti-tank missile that has been manufactured in China since the late 1980s. The HJ-8s have a range of up to 6,000 meters and their system is based in part on the US BGM-71 TOW missile.

HJ-8s are highly effective against armor, bunkers, and fortifications. The Free Syrian Army has used these missiles with great success against the Syrian Arab Army since June 2013.

DShK 1938 machine gun

DShK 1938 is a Soviet heavy machine gun dating from 1938. This machine gun was the standard Soviet Union during World War II and it is still in production around the world. The DShK has several uses: as an anti-aircraft weapon and as a support weapon for heavy infantry. It can fire 600 rounds per minute. The machine gun is also installed on cars for ease of use and maneuverability. ISIS likely stole these machine guns from either the Syrian or Iraqi armies.

One of the most effective weapons of ISIS is their media success. The group regularly churns out propaganda videos. They have their own propaganda magazine on english languageand tweets with hashtags for trending events to maximize engagement with the audience. ISIS is armed for conventional warfare - and has many years of campaigning experience in Syria and Iraq. With such an arsenal, ISIS can certainly dictate its own rules in the Middle East, but it is difficult for them to resist the high-tech armies of Russia, the United States and other European countries.

Today, combat units of the extremist IS group (banned in a number of countries around the world, including Russia) use different types of weapons. A wider range of weapons, ammunition and military equipment can hardly be found in any army. Often in the same unit of the "Islamic State" weapons of different calibers, produced in different states, are used, which can create inconvenience in the conduct of hostilities and replenishment of ammunition. Nevertheless, the Islamists continue to attack.

Kalash and M16 in one company

During the fighting, IS militants captured many warehouses of the government armed forces of Syria and Iraq.

This happened during the 2014 military campaign.

Assad's army then used Soviet, Chinese and, to a much lesser extent, Yugoslav-made weapons. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime by American troops, Iraqi soldiers received weapons made in the United States. Thus, in one combat group of the "Islamic State" there can be fighters armed with a Soviet or Chinese AKM, american rifle M16 or Belgian FN-FAL.

Also at different times from different sources a small number of Czech-made Scorpion submachine guns, German Heckler & Koch MP5 and Israeli Uzi came to the militants. In some photographs, IS fighters are armed with exotic types of small arms, for example, a Mosin-Nagant rifle with a telescopic sight.

A similar "hodgepodge" can be observed in the artillery and armored vehicles of the Islamists. On the one hand, they have Soviet T-55 and T-62 captured from the Syrian military, as well as at least 20 BMP-1 combat vehicles. On the other hand, during the summer 2014 campaign, the Islamic State was able to get hold of many samples of American military equipment as trophies. This includes about 20 american tanks Abrams, over 40 M1117 armored personnel carriers and over 2,300 HMMWV armored vehicles (or the legendary Humvees, as they are often called). The loss of the latter in large numbers in 2014 was recognized by the Prime Minister of Iraq. According to him, these cars were captured by IS during the assault on Mosul. The militants captured several samples of American weapons systems during battles with fighters of the so-called moderate Syrian opposition - the "Syrian Free Army" (), which was supplied with weapons by the United States.

Syrian sources claim that the fighters of the "Islamic State" received at least three MiG-21 fighters of the Syrian Air Force, about six Iranian drones "Muhajer-6" and several Mi-8 helicopters as trophies. Representatives of the Syrian military command say the army shot down at least two Islamists and at least three UAVs during the fighting near Kobani.

Boris Chikin, an expert on armaments for the Russian private military company Moran Security Group, believes that the presence of weapons of various calibers in military formations is gradually ceasing to be a problem. According to him, the situation with the variety of weapons dates back to the 1930s, when manufacturers of small arms from different countries created cartridges of different calibers.

“This was done on purpose: if a war breaks out and the enemy manages to capture a certain number of barrels that are in service with your army, he has no chance of using weapons against you for a long time. But now the Americans are making cartridges for our samples, we are doing the same. Moreover, under a different name they make our RPG-7 grenade launchers. So if the manufacturer has not sold you ammunition for a certain type of weapon, you can try to buy it in another state, "Chikin said in an interview with Gazeta.Ru.

A military expert, writer, veteran of hostilities in Yugoslavia believes that the diversity of the calibers of ammunition is a problem, but it is still being solved in IS at the expense of seized warehouses with shells and mines of a certain type. He gave an example from the times of his service in Yugoslavia (1993-1995). According to him, in those days, artillery systems of both Soviet and NATO standards were used - 105, 122, 130, 152, 155 mm.

“When I was there, the problem of ammunition was solved by using stocks from warehouses created during the times of socialist Yugoslavia. I believe that the situation is the same here: apparently, IS has seized a lot of warehouses with shells from the Iraqi and Syrian armies. Often this is ammunition for Soviet cannons, howitzers and mortars, ”the expert told Gazeta.Ru.

According to him, ammunition for artillery systems fighting in Syria can also be purchased abroad, supplying the "Islamic State" through Turkey.

“I can only guess, but there was information about the supply of ISIS through other countries of a certain amount of foreign ammunition. It is possible that they were purchased somewhere in Eastern Europe and supplied to ISIS, ”Polikarpov said.

“In addition, the intensity of the fighting there is now not very high - and the consumption of shells is not so great,” he said, noting that this is confirmed by footage from the unblocked airbase of the Syrian government forces in Kuveyris.

“It can be seen that the battles for it were fierce, but the sides used mainly small arms and anti-aircraft guns. There are no traces of heavy artillery shells hitting, ”the expert said.

Union of French and Uzbeks

Another problem for the combat units of the "Islamic State" is the presence in them of a large number of fighters from around the world. In early December, The Soufan Group, an international think tank, released a report detailing the ethnic makeup of the group's militants.

The document says that currently, from 27 thousand to 31 thousand foreigners who came from 86 countries of the world are fighting on the side of IS. This report also states that the number of citizens of countries fighting on the side of IS Western Europe doubled, citizens of Russia and Central Asia tripled.

Citing official sources, The Soufan Group reports that 2,400 Russians are fighting in the ranks of the IS (this data was recently confirmed by), 300 Kazakhstanis and 386 citizens of Tajikistan.

According to unofficial sources of the research center, there are 500 citizens of Uzbekistan, 500 citizens of Kyrgyzstan and 360 citizens of Turkmenistan in the ranks of the extremist group. Total number citizens from the CIS countries, fighting in the ranks of the Islamists, is 4.7 thousand people.

According to the report, the most large group foreigners came to IS from Tunisia (7 thousand people), Jordan (2.5 thousand people), Saudi Arabia (2.5 thousand people), Russia (mainly from Chechnya and Dagestan - 2.4 thousand people) , Turkey (2-2.2 thousand people), Morocco (1.5 thousand people) and Egypt (1 thousand people). The IS also includes citizens of New Zealand, Qatar and Portugal. In addition, the document says that the group includes about 5 thousand militants from Western Europe - mostly from France, Great Britain and Germany.

At the final board of the RF Ministry of Defense on December 11, 2015, the head of the department announced that the zones of influence of the "Islamic State" are expanding. “The militants have captured about 70% of the territory of Syria and most of the regions of Iraq. The number of terrorists is more than 60 thousand people, "Shoigu said, stressing that there is a" threat of transferring their actions to Central Asia and to the Caucasus ”.

Military expert Mikhail Polikarpov believes that it is rather difficult for the extremist command to solve the problem of the presence of a large number of militants from other countries, whose residents do not speak Arabic, in IS units. “Firstly, each such unit may have an Arab translator. Secondly, most likely, there are divisions composed according to ethnicity. For example, an Uzbek company as part of an Arab battalion. And I do not exclude that many of these Mujahideen use broken Russian as a working language, ”Polikarpov said.

American missiles go through Turkey

From various sources in the media, information is received that, in addition to trophies, IS also receives weapons purchased specifically for this organization.

According to Vladimir Yevseyev, head of the department for Eurasian integration and development of the SCO at the Institute of CIS Countries, Saudi Arabia buys foreign weapons for IS, and sends them to militants in Syria from Turkey.

“They buy not only small arms, but also American anti-tank missile systems TOW.

Recently, a Russian journalist was injured by a missile explosion. In addition, there was information about the supply of portable anti-aircraft missile systems... Most likely, they were previously stolen from the warehouses of Gaddafi's army, these are Soviet-made weapons, ”the expert said.

Yevseev noted that weapons are supplied from Turkey to Syria via two main routes, both of which are in the Aleppo province. He believes that if the aircraft of the international coalition subject these routes to more intense bombing, it will seriously complicate the acquisition of various types of weapons and ammunition by IS. “Of course, they will transfer something to Syria by secret routes in small batches, but the amount of weapons and components received by the Islamists military equipment will decrease significantly, ”the expert said.

According to him, the Syrian special services, which have their agents among the Islamic State, can provide serious assistance in locating the warehouses and transport routes of IS. “However, IS has serious counterintelligence, which complicates the creation of an agent apparatus within the Islamic State. Former officers of Saddam Hussein's special services serve in this counterintelligence service, and they are not bad specialists in their field, ”Yevseev summed up.

According to the expert, IS members produce part of the ammunition and ammunition themselves at the enterprises that they managed to seize in Syria and Iraq. This applies, in particular, to cartridges for certain types of small arms. In addition, many videos on the actions of the Islamic State show how the militants of this organization use homemade systems salvo fire and homemade mortars.