Arms Windfall for Insurgents as Iraq City Falls - NYTimes.com

Arms Windfall for Insurgents as Iraq City Falls 

Arms Windfall for Insurgents as Iraq City Falls

By THE NEW YORK TIMES 

JUNE 10, 2014

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.

But those proxy forces do not always prove equal to the task, and when they buckle, the United States finds itself having unwittingly armed its enemies — a problem the Obama administration has been trying to avoid in Syria by carefully limiting its aid to the opposition there. The militants who swept into control of Mosul on Tuesday are believed to be connected to the main Islamist militant group fighting in Syria.

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the base of automatic rifles, night-vision goggles, vehicles and other equipment, and the American instructors were withdrawn while officials sought a more secure training site.

“You have to make sure of who you’re training,” Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Donahue II, the commander of United States Army soldiers operating in Africa, said in an interview last month. “It can’t be the standard, ‘Has this guy been a terrorist or some sort of criminal?’ but also, ‘What are his allegiances? Is he true to the country, or is he still bound to his militia?’ ”

The United States invested substantial effort over five years to build up and train Mali’s army to fight Al Qaeda-linked separatist militants in the desert north of the country, but army units melted away when the militants and allied Tuareg tribesmen mounted an offensive in late 2012. Hundreds of Malian soldiers defected, including commanders of elite units trained by the United States. The army was already in disarray after a coup in March 2012 by an American-trained officer, which allowed the militants to seize half of Mali’s territory and loot military posts. The fighters were prevented from seizing the whole country only when France and several of Mali’s neighbors sent troops to intervene.

There have been clear signs that American-supplied weapons and munitions have been leaking into the hands of Taliban fighters since the early years of the war in Afghanistan, despite efforts to track and account for matériel supplied to Afghan security forces.

Most recently, Sunni extremists in Iraq have been steadily gaining ground against the Shiite-led government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, routing the American-trained and equipped Iraqi military in Falluja, Samarra and elsewhere and capturing bases, weapons and vehicles.