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November 08, 2007
Weapons that Went Missing in Iraq
Where did the weapons go? During a tour of the Iraqi Interior Ministry compound in eastern Baghdad, Iraqi government officials accepted estimates by American oversight officials that some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005 were unaccounted for, reports James Glanz of The New York Times.
An October 2006 audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction said there was "questionable accuracy" and "incomplete accountability" in the way Multi-National Security Transition Command managed weapons.
Missing weapons and other materiel is not a new development: US officials were frequently aware of little or no accounting of weapons entering the country and being transferred to Iraq's Ministry of Interior, according to an email chain provided to me (contact info deleted for privacy concerns).
One former US official in Baghdad wrote in a chain of email exchanges in 2005 to other officials in 2005:
Diversions and re-allocation of great quantities of materials, including weapons, is the norm here. It is my belief that we cannot account for, and the Iraqi MOI will not account for, over 30% of everything we have issued them.... The Glocks are a prime example and now we have thousands of weapons which neither we or the MOI can account for.
Apparently, supplying police stations were a big problem in record keeping:
I have also recently provided a list of about 60 police station “requirements” which actually was already issued by the coalition but never made it to the units. This requirements list was assembled by Maj. Gen Jassim in his effort to find the “bottleneck” or “Black hole” where all the material was going to.... the Iraqi Logistics system, which does indeed exist, has been thwarted at every level, by our unwillingness to allow it to actually work. The MOI Unit commanders have been conditioned by "US" that they simply have to ask us in lieu of going through their own process.The official was especially concerned about missing armored vehicles:
The MOI is receiving hundreds of vehicles from other sources and not sharing that information us. In this JAPAN shipment there are also 150 busses and 350 sedans. We have no visibility of this stuff and MOI is not sharing the information. (The MOI does not know that this information is being shared with me).
Posted by davidphinney at November 8, 2007 10:27 AM
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