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Title: Taliban Fighting With US Ammo
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URL Source: http://www.military.com/news/articl ... g-with-us-ammo.html?ESRC=eb.nl
Published: May 21, 2009
Author: International Herald Tribune
Post Date: 2009-05-21 15:02:35 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 86
Comments: 3
Taliban Fighting With US Ammo May 21, 2009 International Herald Tribune Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior U.S. and Afghan forces. Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents' corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with U.S. officers and arms dealers. The presence of this ammunition among the dead in Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near the Afghan border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against U.S. troops. The scope of that leak remains unclear, and the 30 magazines represented a single sampling of fewer than 1,000 cartridges. But military officials, arms analysts and dealers say it points to a worrisome possibility: that because U.S. and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict have been spotty, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied. The United States has been criticized, as recently as February by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces. Some of these weapons have been documented in insurgents' hands, including weapons in a battle last year in which nine U.S. troops died. In response, the Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan, the U.S.-led unit tasked with training and supplying Afghan forces, said it had made accountability of all Afghan police and military property a top priority and had taken steps to locate and log rifles issued even years ago. The Pentagon has created a database of small arms issued to Afghan units. No accountability system as thorough exists for ammunition, which is harder to trace and more portable than firearms, readily changing hands through corruption, illegal sales, theft, battlefield loss and other forms of diversion. U.S. forces do not examine all captured arms and munitions to trace how insurgents obtained them, or to determine whether the Afghan government, directly or indirectly, is a significant Taliban supplier, military officers said. In this case, the rifle magazines were captured last month by a platoon in Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry, which killed at least 13 insurgents in a nighttime ambush in eastern Afghanistan. The Soldiers searched the insurgents' remains and collected 10 rifles, a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, 30 magazines and other equipment. Access to Taliban equipment is unusual. But after the ambush, the company allowed the items to be examined by this reporter, who photographed the weapons' serial numbers and markings on the bottoms of the cartridge casings, known as headstamps, which can reveal where and when ammunition was manufactured. The headstamps were then compared with ammunition in government circulation, and with this reporter's records of ammunition sampled in Afghan magazines and bunkers in multiple provinces in recent years. The type of ammunition in question, 7.62 by 39 millimeter, colloquially known as "7.62 short," is one of the world's most abundant classes of military small-arms cartridges and can come from dozens of potential suppliers. It is used in Kalashnikov rifles and their knockoffs and has been made in many countries, including Russia, Ukraine and the other former Warsaw Pact nations, China, North Korea, Cuba, India, Pakistan and the United States. Several countries have multiple factories, each with distinct markings. The examination of the Taliban's cartridges found telling signs of leakage: 17 of the magazines contained ammunition bearing either of two stamps: the word "WOLF" in uppercase letters, or the lowercase arrangement "bxn." "WOLF" stamps mark supplies from Wolf Performance Ammunition, a company in California that sells Russian-made cartridges to U.S. gun owners. The company has also provided cartridges for Afghan soldiers and police officers, typically through middlemen. Its munitions can be found in Afghan government bunkers. The "bxn" marking was formerly used at a Czech factory during the Cold War. Since 2004, the Czech government has donated surplus ammunition and equipment to Afghanistan. A.E.Y., a former Pentagon supplier, also shipped surplus Czech ammunition to Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Army, including cartridges bearing "bxn" stamps. Most of the Wolf and Czech ammunition in the Taliban magazines was in good condition and showed little weathering, denting, corrosion or soiling - suggesting it had been removed from packaging recently. There is no evidence that Wolf, the Czech government or A.E.Y. knowingly shipped ammunition to Afghan insurgents. A.E.Y. was banned last year from doing business with the Pentagon, but its legal troubles stemmed from unrelated allegations of fraud. Given the number of potential sources, the probability that the Taliban and the Pentagon were sharing identical supply sources is small. Rather, the concentration of Taliban ammunition identical in markings and condition to that used by Afghan units indicated that the munitions had most likely slipped from state custody, said James Bevan, a researcher specializing in ammunition for the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group in Geneva. Mr. Bevan, who has documented ammunition diversion in Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, said one likely explanation was that interpreters, soldiers or police officers had sold ammunition for profit or passed it along for other reasons, including to support the insurgency. "Same story, different location," he said. The majority of cartridges in the remaining 13 Taliban magazines bore headstamps indicating they were made in Russia in the Soviet period. Several rounds had Chinese stamps and dates indicating manufacture in the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. military did not dispute the possibility that theft or corruption could have steered Wolf and Czech ammunition to insurgents. Capt. James C. Howell, who commands the company that captured the ammunition, said illicit diversion would be consistent with an enduring reputation of corruption in Afghan units, especially the police. "It's not surprising," he said. But he added that in his experience this form of corruption was not a norm. Rather than deliberate diversion, he said, the more likely causes for leakage would be poor discipline and oversight in the Afghan national security forces, or A.N.S.F. "I think most A.N.S.F. don't want their own stuff coming back at them," he said. In the U.S. ambush last month, all of the 10 captured rifles had factory stamps from China or Izhevsk, Russia. Those with date stamps had been manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s. This reporter provided photographs of the weapons and serial numbers to Brig. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, the deputy commander of the transition command. Upon checking against the Pentagon's new database, the general said one of the Chinese rifles had been issued to an Afghan auxiliary police officer in 2007. How Taliban insurgents had acquired the rifle was not clear. Speaking about the captured Taliban ammunition, General Ierardi cautioned that the range of headstamps could indicate that insurgent use of U.S.-procured munitions was not widespread. He noted that the captured ammunition sampling was small and that munitions might have leaked through less nefarious means. "The mixed ammo could suggest battlefield losses, it could suggest captured ammo," he said. He added, however, that he did not want to appear defensive and that accountability of Afghan arms and munitions was of the "highest priority." "The emphasis from our perspective is on accountability of all logistics property," he said. Leakage of Pentagon-supplied armaments to insurgents was an "absolutely worst-case scenario," he said, adding: "We want to guard against the exact scenario you laid out."
Poster Comment: This explains the sudden ammo shortage, but what the hell, we did create these folks, why not properly arm them.
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#1. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.
The US-supplied ammo was mainly Russian and Czech made. The Chinese ammo was old.
They got them from Mexicans who bought them from a ussa border ammo seller, or maybe they just ordered them over the internet.
I've already said too much.
#2. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
I've already said too much.
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#0)
(Edited)
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