[NYTr] 30% of Weapons Given to Iraq Gone Missing - GAO

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

See also: US Missing Nearly 200,000 Guns in Iraq (Aug 2, 2007)
https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070730/066249.html

sent by Rick Kissell


The Washington Post - Aug 6, 2006
(No URL supplied)

Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing

GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For

By Glenn Kessler

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 
pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a 
new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have 
fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The report from the Government Accountability Office indicates that 
*U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the 
weapons* the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through 
early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The 
highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a 
report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi 
security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 
billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons 
distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established 
procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was 
led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched 
its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. 
Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the 
United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes 
it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is 
battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.

*"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior 
analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms 
trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means 
that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."*

One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons 
probably were being used against U.S. forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade 
created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned 
its weapons against the Americans.

Stohl said that insurgents frequently use small-arms fire to force 
military convoys to move in a particular direction -- often toward 
roadside bombs that target troops and vehicles. She noted that the Bush 
administration frequently complains that Iran and Syria are supplying 
insurgents but has paid little attention to whether U.S. military errors 
inadvertently play a role. "We know there is seepage and very little is 
being done to address the problem," she said.

Stohl noted that U.S. forces, focused on a fruitless search for weapons 
of mass destruction after Baghdad fell, failed to secure massive weapons 
caches. The failure to track small arms given to Iraqi forces repeats 
that pattern of neglect, she added.

The GAO is studying the financing and weapons sources of insurgent 
groups, but that report will not be made public. "All of that 
information is classified," said Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO's director 
of international affairs and trade.

In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces is 
being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security 
assistance programs are operated by the State Department, the GAO 
reported. The Defense Department said this change permitted greater 
flexibility, but as of last month it was unable able to tell the GAO 
what accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to 
Iraqi forces, the report said.

Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2004, and in 
June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up. No central 
record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a half, until 
December 2005, and even now the records are on a spreadsheet that 
requires three computer screens lined up side by side to view a single 
row, Christoff said.

The GAO found that the military was consistently unable to collect 
supporting documents to "confirm when the equipment was received, the 
quantities of equipment delivered, and the Iraqi units receiving the 
equipment." The agency also said there were "numerous mistakes due to 
incorrect manual entries" in the records that were maintained.

The GAO reached the estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000 AK-47s 
and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of the 
Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records 
Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered. Petraeus's 
figures were compared with classified data and other records to ensure 
that they were accurate enough to compare against the property books.

In all cases, the gaps between the two records were enormous. Petraeus 
reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 
pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security 
forces from June 2004 through September 2005. But the property books 
contained records for 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 pieces 
of body armor and 25,000 helmets.

A military commander involved in the program at the time, speaking on 
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the 
report, acknowledged in an e-mail, "We did issue some items, including 
weapons, body armor, etc. to new Iraqi units that were literally going 
into battle."

But, the commander argued, "there was, frankly, not much of a choice 
early on: We had very little staff and could have held the weapons until 
every piece of the logistical and property accountability system was in 
place, or we could issue them, in bulk on some occasions, to the U.S. 
elements supporting Iraqi units who were needed in the battles of Najaf, 
Fallujah, Mosul, Samarra, etc."

The GAO plans to look for similar problems in the training of Afghan 
security forces.

During the Bosnian conflict, the United States provided about $100 
million in defense equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army, and the GAO 
found no problems in accounting for those weapons.

Much of the equipment provided to Iraqi troops, including the AK-47s, 
originates from countries in the former Soviet bloc. In a report last 
year, Amnesty International said that in 2004 and 2005 more than 350,000 
AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia, 
for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the Pentagon and 
with the approval of NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.