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Gun-Running Probe Uncovers Pipeline of Weapons & more
[PJ] A report issued this month tracking the flow of weapons across Libya and the Sahel revealed that terror groups operating in West Africa are getting much more than just inspiration from terror hubs in Iraq and Syria.The study by UK-based Conflict Armament Research, an independent organization that tracks the flow of conventional weapons and materiel, found that weapons stockpiles remaining from the nearly 42-year dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi have migrated as far as Mali and Syria. But investigators found that the unstable country awash in more than 100 militia groups with around 125,000 fighters -- some support the unity government, some don't -- is not the only source of illicit weapons in the region. "The profile of illicit weapons in the region reflects the consequences of other state crises, particularly in Mali, and of weak control over national stockpiles in the Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire," states the report. "The prevalence of Ivorian-origin small arms across the region is a particularly unexpected finding of this investigation." And even through the flow of weapons out of Libya has been decreasing, importation of arms and ammunition into Libya has been increasing -- particularly from Sudan. The report highlighted "a new set of weapons" now in use among Islamist armed groups in the southern Sahel, noted when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Mourabitoun attacked hotels, restaurants and resorts this year and last, killing Americans among other foreigners and locals, in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast with "a common set of small arms unlike any previously documented in the sub-region." "These include Iraqi-origin assault rifles and a batch of Chinese rifles manufactured in 2011 whose serial numbers interleave with matching rifles that Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) seized from IS fighters in Syria in 2015. These findings indicate that the Islamist groups responsible for the Sahelian attacks have a common source of supply or constitute a single cell, and point tentatively to possible links or commonalities of supply sources between Islamist fighters in West Africa and those operating in Iraq and Syria." Con't. Posted by: Besoeker 2016-11-18 |
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