home Pregnancy and children Arming ISIS militants in Syria. Financial Times investigation: who supplies weapons to Islamic State terrorists and how (photo)

Arming ISIS militants in Syria. Financial Times investigation: who supplies weapons to Islamic State terrorists and how (photo)

Where do ISIS weapons come from?

“Habibi! Aluminum!"

A loud exclamation echoes through the cluttered courtyard of a house in the city of Tal Afar, far in northern Iraq. It's the end of September, but it's still hot outside. The heat seems to flow from everywhere, even rising from the ground. The city itself is empty, except for feral stray dogs and young men with weapons in their hands.

"Habibi!" - Damien Spleeters shouts again. This is what he affectionately calls his Iraqi translator and local colleague Haider al-Hakim in Arabic.

During that war, militants blew up American soldiers with improvised explosive devices. The devices that I encountered during my business trips were mostly buried by the militants in the ground or activated by placing them in a car, which in this case turned into a large moving bomb. Such cars were blown up in markets and near schools, and after the explosions, the gutters were filled with blood. But mostly these were crudely made primitive devices, the parts of which were glued together with tape and epoxy resin. The few rockets and mines that the militants received were old, of poor quality, often did not have the necessary detonators, and they did not always explode.

Many ISIS leaders organization banned in Russia - approx. lane) were veterans of this insurgency, and starting the war against the Iraqi government in 2014, they perfectly understood that to seize territories and create their own independent Islamic state, improvised explosive devices and Kalashnikov assault rifles alone would not be enough for them. A serious war requires serious weapons, such as mortars, rockets, grenades, but ISIS, being an outcast in the international arena, could not buy these in sufficient quantities. They took some from the Iraqi and Syrian government forces, but when they ran out of ammunition for these weapons, the Islamists did what no terrorist organization had ever done before: they began designing their own ammunition, and then began mass-producing it. , using fairly modern production technologies. The oil fields of Iraq became their production base because they had tools and dies, high-quality cutting machines, casting machines—and skilled workers who knew how to quickly turn complex parts to specified dimensions. They obtained raw materials by dismantling pipelines and melting scrap metal. ISIS engineers churned out new fuses, new missiles and launchers, and small bombs that the militants dropped from drones. All this was done and assembled in accordance with the plans and drawings made by the responsible ISIS functionaries.

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Since the conflict began, CAR has conducted 83 inspection tours in Iraq, gathering information on weapons, and Spleeter has participated in nearly all of the investigations. The result was a detailed and extensive database of 1,832 weapons and 40,984 pieces of ammunition found in Iraq and Syria. CAR calls it "the most comprehensive collection of weapons and ammunition captured from ISIS to date."

That's how this fall Spleeters found himself in a grubby house in Tal Afar, where he sat over an 18-liter bucket of aluminum powder paste and waited for his assistant to appear. Al-Hakim is a bald, well-dressed man who has the air of a sophisticated urban snob, which at times makes him seem like a foreign body in ISIS's cluttered workshop. The men easily establish contact and understanding, but at the same time Al-Hakim acts as the host, and Spleeters is always a respectful guest. Their job is to notice little things. Where others see trash, they find clues, which Spleeters then photographs and examines, looking for subtle serial numbers that might tell the story of the find's origins.

For example, when it comes to aluminum paste, ISIS craftsmen mix it with ammonium nitrate to create a powerful explosive for mines and rocket warheads. Spleeters found similar buckets, from the same manufacturers and sellers, in Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul. “I like it when I see the same material in different cities,” he tells me. The fact is that repeated discoveries allow him to identify and describe various links in the ISIS supply chain. “This confirms my theory about the industrial revolution of terrorism,” says Spleeters. “And also why they need raw materials on an industrial scale.”

Spleeters suspected that the fuses, detonation mechanisms and fins for the new missiles were made by ISIS engineers, but he believed that the warheads came from somewhere else. After discovering several types of similar ammunition over the past six months, he concluded that ISIS may have captured ammunition from Syrian anti-government forces, which were secretly supplied with weapons Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.

But to prove this, he needed additional evidence and evidence. Spleeters believes that if he can find more launchers and warheads, he will be able to provide, for the first time, sufficient evidence that the Islamic State is using US-supplied high-powered munitions in combat against the Iraqi army and its US special forces partners. ISIS itself could hardly do such things modern ammunition. This would mean that he had new and very serious opportunities and aspirations. These circumstances also provide an alarming glimpse into the future nature of wars, where any group anywhere can begin home-grown weapons production using materials from the Internet and 3D printing.

Almost all military ammunition, from rifle rounds to aerial bombs, regardless of the country of origin, are marked in a certain way. Conventional markings allow one to determine the date of manufacture, the manufacturing plant, the type of explosive used as a filler, as well as the name of the weapon, which is called nomenclature. For Spleeters, this marking is a document “that cannot be falsified.” Stamped impressions on hardened steel are very difficult to remove or alter. “If it says that the ammunition is from such and such a country, it is 99% true,” he says. - And if not, then you can still determine that it is a fake. And this is something completely different. Every detail matters."

One afternoon at the Iraqi military base in Tal Afar, Spleeters was arranging 7.62mm cartridges to photograph the markings on each shell. At this point I told him that I had never met a person who loved ammunition so much. “I take that as a compliment,” he said with a smile.

It was a love affair that began when Spleeters was a newly minted reporter working for a newspaper in his native Belgium. “There was a war going on in Libya at the time,” he says of civil war 2011. He really wanted to understand how Belgian-made rifles got to the rebels who fought against Gaddafi. He believed that if this connection were revealed, the Belgian public would become interested in this conflict, to which they had not shown any attention.

Spleeters began scouring Belgian diplomatic correspondence for more information about secret government deals, but this yielded little. He decided that the only way To understand the essence of what is happening is to go to Libya yourself and personally trace the path of these rifles. He bought a plane ticket using the money from the grant he received and got to work. “You know, it was a little strange,” he says. “I took a vacation to go to Libya.”

Spleeters found the rifles he was looking for. He also discovered that this kind of search gives him much more satisfaction than reading materials about these weapons on the Internet. “There’s a lot to write about guns,” he said. — Weapons loosen people's tongues. It can even make the dead speak.” Spleeters returned to Belgium as a freelance journalist. He has written several articles on the arms trade for French-language newspapers, as well as a couple of reports for think tanks such as the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. However, the life of a freelancer turned out to be very unstable, and so Spleeters put aside his journalistic pen and in 2014 came to work at Conflict Armament Research as a full-time investigator.

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During one of his first deployments with the organization to the Syrian city of Kobani, he worked among dead ISIS fighters whose bodies were dumped on the battlefield to rot and decompose. Spleeters found one AK-47 style rifle with pieces of rotting meat stuck in the curves and recesses of the fore-end and wooden handle. Everywhere there was a sweetish smell of decay and decay. Among the corpses, he also found 7.62 mm cartridges, PKM machine guns and ammunition for the RPG-7 grenade launcher. Some of these weapons were stolen from the Iraqi army. These finds convinced him of the enormous value of field work. He says the information he has cannot be obtained by following news and videos online. “On all this social media, when I see ammunition or small arms from a distance, sometimes it can be like, ‘Yeah, that’s an M16.’ But if you look up close, it’s clear that it’s a Chinese CQ-556 rifle, which is a copy of the M16. But to understand it, you have to look closely," he tells me, adding that the camera hides much more than it shows. And if you look at the weapon in person, it may turn out to be from a different manufacturer, and thus of a different origin. About You wouldn't guess that from watching a grainy YouTube video.

The war between ISIS and Iraqi government forces is a series of intense battles fought on the streets of cities from house to house. In late 2016, as government forces battled ISIS for the northern city of Mosul, Iraqis discovered that the Islamic State was producing high-caliber ammunition in clandestine factories throughout the area. To study these ammunition factories in Mosul, Spleeters went there while the fighting. One day, while Spleeters was photographing a weapon as bullets whizzed by, he saw the Iraqi bodyguard who was supposed to be guarding him trying to cut off the head of a dead ISIS fighter with a butcher knife. The blade of the knife was dull, and the soldier was upset. Finally, he walked away from the corpse.

Spliters brought back some important information from Mosul. But coalition airstrikes destroyed much of the city, and by the time government forces declared victory in July, much of the evidence had already been destroyed or lost. As ISIS began to lose ground in Iraq, Spleeters became concerned that the group's weapons production system might be destroyed before he or anyone else could document its full potential. He needed to get to these factories before they were destroyed. Only then could he describe their contents, understand their origins and identify supply chains.

At the end of August, ISIS troops were very quickly driven out of Tal Afar. Unlike other cities that were razed to the ground, there was relatively little destruction in Tal Afar. Only every fourth house there was destroyed. To find additional evidence and information about the secret production and supply of weapons, Spleeters needed to get to this city very quickly.

In mid-September, Spleeters flew to Baghdad, where he met with Al-Hakim. He then drove for nine hours, guarded by an Iraqi military convoy of machine-gun-equipped trucks, north along a highway that had only recently been cleared of improvised explosive devices. The last stretch of the road to Tal Afar was deserted, pockmarked by explosions. The burnt fields around the road were black.

The Iraqi army controls southern parts of Tal Afar, while Iran-backed, mostly Shiite militias from the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) hold control of the north of the city. The relationship between them is very tense. My driver was Kurdish and he spoke little English. As we approached the first checkpoint and the man saw the Hashd al-Shaabi flag, he turned to me with alarm.

“I am not Kurdi. You are not America,” he said. We were silent at the checkpoint and they let us through.

We arrived in Tal Afar on a hot evening. We made our first stop at a fenced area where, according to Al-Hakim, a mosque could be located. There, at the entrance, lay several shells for a bomb launcher. At first glance, they have a very simple design and are similar to standard American and Soviet mortar ammunition. But while the mines have standard calibers (60 mm, 81 mm, 82 mm, 120 mm, etc.), these shells are 119.5 mm in caliber to match the internal diameter of the steel pipes that ISIS uses as a launcher. This difference may seem like a small thing, but the projectile must fit very tightly into the launch tube so that there is sufficient pressure of the powder gases to eject it. ISIS has very strict tolerances and quality requirements, sometimes down to tenths of a millimeter.

At the back of the building were several tanks connected by a steel pipe, as well as large barrels of black liquid. Something was dripping from one tank, and some disgusting growths had formed on it. “Do you think it’s rust?” Splitters asks Al-Hakim. It is clear that the liquid is toxic. It looks like the vomit of a drunk who threw up on his shirt. But Spleeters cannot take samples and do tests. He has no laboratory instruments, no protective suit, no gas mask.

“It stings my eyes,” says Al-Hakim. There is a pungent, irritating smell in the yard, as if paint had just been spilled there. Nearby are bags of caustic soda for disinfection.

“Yes, everything here is somehow suspicious,” Spleeters agrees with Al-Hakim. We'll be leaving soon. The black liquid could be an incendiary substance such as napalm or some poisonous industrial chemical, but Spleeters can't say for sure what is being produced in these tanks. (He later learns that he could have identified the manufacturing process if he had taken more high-quality photographs of the pressure gauges and their serial numbers. Spleeters says that no matter what information he collects in the field, he always has the feeling that he forgot something .)

After a short drive through quiet, shell-pocked streets, we arrive at an unremarkable building, similar to all the other houses on the block. A stone wall, iron gates, separate rooms around a courtyard, shady trees that provide a welcome coolness. Mortar barrels and artillery shells lie among the abandoned shoes and bedding. Spliters expertly casually pushes them aside.

At the back of the yard, he notices something unusual. A neat hole has been punched in the concrete wall - you can immediately see that it was made by hand, and not by a projectile. Behind the wall is a large open space with many tools and half-collected ammunition. It is covered with a tarpaulin to hide the contents from enemy drones. The smell of machine oil is in the air.

Spleeters immediately understands what kind of place this is. This is not a warehouse, such as he has seen and photographed in large quantities. This is a production workshop.

On the table he notices small bombs, like the ones ISIS makes. Such a bomb has an injection-molded plastic body and a small tail for stabilization in the air. These bombs can be dropped from drones, as we often see in videos on the Internet. But they can also be fired from grenade launchers of AK-47 type assault rifles.

Nearby there is a site for making fuses. On the floor near the lathe lie piles of shiny shavings in a spiral shape. Most often, ISIS fuses resemble a conical silver plug with a safety pin threaded through the body. The fuze design is elegantly minimalist, although it is not nearly as simple as it seems. The uniqueness of this device is its interchangeability. ISIS's standard fuze sets off all of its rockets, bombs and mines. Thus, the militants managed to solve a serious engineering problem. In the interest of safety and reliability, the United States and most other countries create separate fuses for each type of ammunition. But ISIS's fuses are modular, safe, and, according to some experts, they rarely misfire.

Spleeters continues his work at the back of the factory yard. And then he notices something special - those converted rockets he was looking for. They are in various stages of production and preparation, and assembly instructions are written on the walls with a felt-tip pen. Dozens of warheads of dismantled ammunition are waiting their turn to be remade. They lie in a dark outbuilding on a long table next to calipers and small containers for homemade explosives. Each individual workplace itself is a treasure trove of information that provides a clear picture of ISIS's weapons and ammunition program. But there are a lot of jobs here, and so the abundance of clues creates something of a sensory overload. “Oh my God, look at this. And look here. God, come over there. God, God, wow,” mutters the amazed Spleeters, moving from one workplace to another. He’s like Charlie in a chocolate factory.

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However, night falls on Tal Afar, and there is no electricity in the city. This means that Spleeters will no longer be able to study his treasures and photograph samples in natural light. Soon our convoy returns to an Iraqi military base located near the destroyed city airport. It is a small outpost of refurbished trailers, half of which are riddled with bullet holes. In the trailer next to us, two detained militants who are suspected of belonging to ISIS are sleeping. This is a young man and an older man. They appear to be the only ones captured during the Battle of Tal Afar. Spleeters spends the evening impatiently watching satellite television. During all the time we spent together, he did almost nothing except work and eat, and slept only a few hours.

It dawned quite early, and when the soldiers woke up, Spleeters returned, accompanied by a convoy, to the workshop. He pulls out 20 yellow crime scene stickers, one for each table. He then draws a diagram to reconstruct the configuration of the room later. In one place in this diagram it denotes welding electrodes, in another a grinding machine. “No, this is not a continuous process,” he thinks out loud. “Most likely, these are different work areas for making different things.”

Spleeters then begins to take photographs, but suddenly the entire room is filled with Iraqi intelligence officers who have learned about this small plant. They open all the drawers, take out every electrical board, kick out shavings and scraps of metal, take away papers, and pull handles. Unused ammunition is fairly safe as long as you don't throw it fuze head down, but dismantled shells and mines are quite unpredictable. In addition, there may be booby traps inside the workshop. But that's not what worries Spleeters. He despairs over something else.

“Habibi,” he declares, “they must not touch or take away anything here. It's important to keep everything together because the whole point is to learn it at the same time. If they take something away, everything will be meaningless. Can you tell them that?”

“I told them,” Al-Hakim replies.

“They can do whatever they want when I’m done,” Spleeters says wearily.

In a small room adjacent to the launch tube manufacturing area, Spleeters begins studying dozens of grenades of various models for grenade launchers. Some of them were made many years ago, and each has some kind of identification mark. On Bulgarian-made grenades, the number “10” or “11” is indicated in a double circle. The green dye used by China and Russia varies slightly in shade. “We are at war with the whole world in Iraq,” one soldier had boasted to me two days earlier, referring to the many foreign fighters recruited by ISIS. But exactly the same impression arises when you look at weapons from a variety of countries, concentrated in one room.

Spleeters carefully examines the warheads of the rockets stacked in rows, and finally finds what he needs. “Habibi, I found a PG-9 shell,” he exclaims, looking towards Al-Hakim. This is a Romanian rocket with batch number 12-14-451. Splitters all last year I was looking for this one serial number. In October 2014, Romania sold the US military 9,252 PG-9 grenades with lot number 12-14-451 for grenade launchers. By purchasing this ammunition, the United States signed an end-user certificate. This is a document confirming that this ammunition will be used only in the American army and will not be transferred to anyone. The Romanian government confirmed the sale by providing CAR with an end-user certificate and proof of delivery of the goods.

However, in 2016, Spleeters saw a video made by ISIS that showed a box of PG-9 shells. He thought he noticed the batch number 12-14-451. The ammunition was captured from the Syrian militant group Jaysh Suriya Al-Jadeed. Somehow, PG-9s from this batch ended up in Iraq, where ISIS technicians separated the stolen grenades from the starting powder charge, and then improved them, adapting them to combat in urban environments. Grenade launchers cannot be fired inside buildings due to the dangerous jet stream. But by attaching ballast to the grenade, engineers created such ammunition that can be used when conducting combat operations inside buildings.

So how? American weapons ended up in the hands of ISIS? Spleeters can't say for sure yet. On July 19, 2017, the newspaper reported that U.S. officials had been secretly training and arming Syrian rebels from 2013 until mid-2017, when the Trump administration ended the training program, in part out of concern that U.S. weapons might end up in the wrong hands. The US government has not responded to multiple requests for comment on how the weapons ended up in the hands of Syrian rebels and an ISIS munitions factory. The government has also refused to say whether the United States has violated the terms of its end-user certificate and, by extension, whether it is complying with the terms of the UN arms trade treaty, which it is a signatory to along with 130 other countries.

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It appears that other countries are also buying and reselling weapons. CAR traced how Saudi Arabia purchased various types of weapons, which were later found in ISIS militant groups. In one case, Spleeters checked the flight plan of a plane that was supposed to deliver 12 tons of ammunition to Saudi Arabia. Documents show that this plane did not land in Saudi Arabia, but flew to Jordan. Sharing a border with Syria, Jordan is a well-known point of transfer of weapons to rebels fighting the Assad regime. Although the Saudis could have claimed that the weapons were stolen or captured, they did not. The people in charge of the flight insist that the plane with the weapons landed in Saudi Arabia, although flight documents refute this. The Saudi government did not respond to requests for comment on how its weapons ended up in the hands of ISIS.

“This is war,” Spleeters says. - It's a damn mess. Nobody knows what's going on, and that's why conspiracy theories always arise. We live in a post-truth era, when facts no longer mean anything. And while I do this work, I can sometimes grab hold of irrefutable facts.”

Most of the new generation of terrorism and future war scenarios involve the use of artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles and self-propelled vehicles with explosives. But this is only part of the story, reflecting the fears of American engineers about the many possibilities for using new technologies. The other, much more dangerous part of the story concerns ISIS technicians. These people have already shown that they can produce weapons that are not inferior to those made by the military industry of states. And over time, it will be even easier for them to set up the production process, since 3D printing is becoming widespread around the world. Michigan Technological University mechanical engineering professor Joshua Pearce is an expert on open source hardware, and he says ISIS's manufacturing process has "very insidious features." In the future, schematic drawings of weapons can be downloaded from secret sites on the Internet, or obtained through popular social media with coding, such as WhatsApp. These files can then be loaded into metal 3D printers, which have come into widespread use in recent years and cost less than a million dollars, including setup. Thus, weapons can be made by simply pressing a button.

“Making weapons using layer-by-layer printing technology is much easier than it seems,” says Art Of Future Word project director August Cole, who works at the Atlantic Council. The rate at which ISIS's intellectual capital spreads depends on the number of young engineers joining its affiliates. According to Oxford University researchers, at least 48% of jihadist recruits from non-Western countries attended college, and almost half of them studied engineering. Of the 25 participants in the September 11 attacks, at least 13 were college students, and eight were engineers. Among them are the two main organizers of the attacks, Muhammad Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed received a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Carolina. reported that while he was in an American prison, he received permission to create a vacuum cleaner from scratch. Is this a pointless hobby, as the CIA claims, or the hallmark of an inventor? Mohammed downloaded the drawings of the vacuum cleaner from the Internet.

Spleeters had only two days to study the munitions factories in Tal Afar. On the last evening he was in a hurry, trying to get as much work done as possible. ISIS uses distributed production methods. Each section specializes in a specific task, like a car factory. And Spleeters tried to describe and document all these sites and jobs. “We only have one hour left,” he said, looking at the sun as it inexorably sank towards the horizon. At the first plant, Spleeters found a huge smelting furnace, around which lay raw materials waiting their turn to be melted down: engine units, scrap metal, heaps of copper wire. There were also vices with molds for fuses, and next to them lay the empennage for mortar shells. All this was awaiting its turn for assembly in the next workshop. This work was carried out on the ground floor of a three-story building that was once a market. The stove was also installed on the lower level, because it gave off incredible heat. The entire city of Tal Afar was turned into a production base.

Spleeters quickly finishes collecting evidence. “Is there anything left?” he asks an Iraqi Army major. “Yes, there is,” the major replies, approaching the next door. There is a large stove in the lobby that ISIS fighters covered with their handprints by dipping them in paint. It looked like a first-grader's picture of a child. In the corridors lay clay molds for the mass production of 119.5 mm shells. In the next courtyard there is something like a research laboratory. There is ammunition everywhere, new and old, lighting shells, and cutaway models. The tables are littered with dismantled fuses and huge 220 mm ammunition. This is the largest caliber created by ISIS engineers. In addition, there were large pipes used as launchers. They were the size of a telephone pole.

The sun begins to set. Spleeters asks again if there is anything else. The major again answers in the affirmative. In 24 hours we visited six enterprises, and I understand that no matter how many times Spliters asks his question, the answer will always be the same. But evening comes, and Spleeters' time is running out. The remaining factories will remain uninspected, at least until next time.

Brian Kastner is an author, former Air Force officer, and Iraq War veteran who worked in explosive ordnance disposal.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

“Habibi! Aluminum!"

"Habibi!" - Damien Spleeters shouts again. This is what he affectionately calls his Iraqi translator and local colleague Haider al-Hakim in Arabic.

Spleeters is a visiting investigator for the EU-funded international organization Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which monitors arms trafficking in war zones. He is 31 years old, has a Freddie Mercury mustache from the 1980s, and his thin arms, quickly tanned by the southern sun, are covered with tattoos. In another setting, he might have been mistaken for a hipster bartender rather than an investigator who has spent the last three years tracking the smuggling of grenade launchers in Syria, AK-47-style assault rifles in Mali and hundreds of other types of weapons and ammunition that they end up in war zones in different ways, sometimes in violation of existing international agreements. The kind of work Spleeters does is typically performed by secret government agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency's Warfare Identification Unit, known as the Chuckwagon. But if the word Chuckwagon in Google can be found with great difficulty, then Spleeters' detailed reports for CAR are always available on the Internet in the public domain, and in them you can find much more useful information than all the intelligence that I received while commanding in 2006 in Iraq Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit.
During that war, militants blew up American soldiers with improvised explosive devices. The devices that I encountered during my business trips were mostly buried by the militants in the ground or activated by placing them in a car, which in this case turned into a large moving bomb. Such cars were blown up in markets and near schools, and after the explosions, the gutters were filled with blood. But mostly these were crudely made primitive devices, the parts of which were glued together with tape and epoxy resin. The few rockets and mines that the militants received were old, of poor quality, often did not have the necessary detonators, and they did not always explode.

Many of the leaders of ISIS were veterans of this insurgency, and when they began the war against the Iraqi government in 2014, they were well aware that in order to seize territory and create their own independent Islamic state, only improvised explosive devices and Kalashnikov assault rifles will not be enough for them. A serious war requires serious weapons, such as mortars, rockets, grenades, but ISIS, being an outcast in the international arena, could not buy these in sufficient quantities. They took some from the Iraqi and Syrian government forces, but when they ran out of ammunition for these weapons, the Islamists did what no terrorist organization had ever done before: they began designing their own ammunition, and then began mass-producing it. , using fairly modern production technologies. The oil fields of Iraq became their production base because they had tools and dies, high-quality cutting machines, injection molding machines - and skilled workers who knew how to quickly turn complex parts to specified dimensions. They obtained raw materials by dismantling pipelines and melting scrap metal. ISIS engineers churned out new fuses, new missiles and launchers, and small bombs that the militants dropped from drones. All this was done and assembled in accordance with the plans and drawings made by the responsible ISIS functionaries.

Since the conflict began, CAR has conducted 83 inspection tours in Iraq, gathering information on weapons, and Spleeter has participated in nearly all of the investigations. The result was a detailed and extensive database of 1,832 weapons and 40,984 pieces of ammunition found in Iraq and Syria. CAR calls it "the most comprehensive collection of weapons and ammunition captured from ISIS to date."

Spleeters is constantly looking for new weapons and ammunition in order to understand how the expertise and professionalism of ISIS engineers is developing. Arriving in Tal Afar, he seized on a promising new lead: a series of modified rockets that had appeared in ISIS propaganda videos that the group shows on YouTube and other social media.
Spleeters suspected that the fuses, detonation mechanisms and fins for the new missiles were made by ISIS engineers, but he believed that the warheads came from somewhere else. After discovering several types of similar munitions over the past six months, he concluded that ISIS may have captured ammunition from Syrian anti-government forces, which were secretly supplied with weapons by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

But to prove this, he needed additional evidence and evidence. Spleeters believes that if he can find more launchers and warheads, he will be able to provide, for the first time, sufficient evidence that the Islamic State is using US-supplied high-powered munitions in combat against the Iraqi army and its US special forces partners. ISIS itself could hardly make such modern ammunition. This would mean that he had new and very serious opportunities and aspirations. These circumstances also provide an alarming glimpse into the future nature of wars, where any group anywhere can begin home-grown weapons production using materials from the Internet and 3D printing.

Almost all military ammunition, from rifle cartridges to aircraft bombs, regardless of the country of origin, is marked in a certain way. Conventional markings allow one to determine the date of manufacture, the manufacturing plant, the type of explosive used as a filler, as well as the name of the weapon, which is called nomenclature. For Spleeters, this marking is a document “that cannot be falsified.” Stamped impressions on hardened steel are very difficult to remove or alter. “If it says that the ammunition is from such and such a country, it is 99% true,” he says. - And if not, then you can still determine that it is a fake. And this is something completely different. Every detail matters."

It was a love affair that began when Spleeters was a newly minted reporter working for a newspaper in his native Belgium. “There was a war going on in Libya at the time,” he says of the 2011 civil war. He really wanted to understand how Belgian-made rifles got to the rebels who fought against Gaddafi. He believed that if this connection were revealed, the Belgian public would become interested in this conflict, to which they had not shown any attention.

Spleeters began scouring Belgian diplomatic correspondence for more information about secret government deals, but this yielded little. He decided that the only way to get to the bottom of what was happening was to go to Libya himself and personally trace the path of these rifles. He bought a plane ticket using the money from the grant he received and got to work. “You know, it was a little strange,” he says. “I took a vacation to go to Libya.”
Spleeters found the rifles he was looking for. He also discovered that this kind of search gives him much more satisfaction than reading materials about these weapons on the Internet. "There's a lot to be written about guns," he said. - Weapons loosen people's tongues. It can even make the dead speak.” Spleeters returned to Belgium as a freelance journalist. He has written several articles on the arms trade for French-language newspapers, as well as a couple of reports for think tanks such as the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. However, the life of a freelancer turned out to be very unstable, and so Spleeters put aside his journalistic pen and in 2014 came to work at Conflict Armament Research as a full-time investigator.

During one of his first deployments with the organization to the Syrian city of Kobani, he worked among dead ISIS fighters whose bodies were dumped on the battlefield to rot and decompose. Spleeters found one AK-47 style rifle with pieces of rotting meat stuck in the curves and recesses of the fore-end and wooden handle. Everywhere there was a sweetish smell of decay and decay. Among the corpses, he also found 7.62 mm cartridges, PKM machine guns and ammunition for the RPG-7 grenade launcher. Some of these weapons were stolen from the Iraqi army. These finds convinced him of the enormous value of field work. He says the information he has cannot be obtained by following news and videos online. “On all this social media, when I see ammunition or small arms from a distance, sometimes it can be like, ‘Yeah, that’s an M16.’ But if you look up close, it’s clear that it’s a Chinese CQ-556 rifle, which is a copy of the M16. But to understand it, you have to look closely," he tells me, adding that the camera hides much more than it shows. And if you look at the weapon in person, it may turn out to be from a different manufacturer, and thus of a different origin. About You wouldn't guess that from watching a grainy YouTube video.

The war between ISIS and Iraqi government forces is a series of intense battles fought on the streets of cities from house to house. In late 2016, as government forces battled ISIS for the northern city of Mosul, Iraqis discovered that the Islamic State was producing high-caliber ammunition in clandestine factories throughout the area. To study these ammunition factories in Mosul, Spleeters went there while the fighting was still going on there. One day, while Spleeters was photographing a weapon as bullets whizzed by, he saw the Iraqi bodyguard who was supposed to be guarding him trying to cut off the head of a dead ISIS fighter with a butcher knife. The blade of the knife was dull, and the soldier was upset. Finally, he walked away from the corpse.

“I am not Kurdi. You are not America,” he said. We were silent at the checkpoint and they let us through.

We arrived in Tal Afar on a hot evening. We made our first stop at a fenced area where, according to Al-Hakim, a mosque could be located. There, at the entrance, lay several shells for a bomb launcher. At first glance, they have a very simple design and are similar to standard American and Soviet mortar shells. But while the mines have standard calibers (60 mm, 81 mm, 82 mm, 120 mm, etc.), these shells are 119.5 mm in caliber to match the internal diameter of the steel pipes that ISIS uses as a launcher. This difference may seem like a small thing, but the projectile must fit very tightly into the launch tube so that there is sufficient pressure of the powder gases to eject it. ISIS has very strict tolerances and quality requirements, sometimes down to tenths of a millimeter.

Ammunition confiscated from ISIS fighters (banned in the Russian Federation) near Mosul

“It stings my eyes,” says Al-Hakim. There is a pungent, irritating smell in the yard, as if paint had just been spilled there. Nearby are bags of caustic soda for disinfection.

Spleeters immediately understands what kind of place this is. This is not a warehouse, such as he has seen and photographed in large quantities. This is a production workshop.

Spleeters continues his work at the back of the factory yard. And then he notices something special - those converted rockets he was looking for. They are in various stages of production and preparation, and assembly instructions are written on the walls with a felt-tip pen. Dozens of warheads of dismantled ammunition are waiting their turn to be remade. They lie in a dark outbuilding on a long table next to calipers and small containers for homemade explosives. Each individual workspace itself is a treasure trove of information that provides insight into ISIS's weapons and ammunition program. But there are a lot of jobs here, and so the abundance of clues creates something of a sensory overload. “Oh my God, look at this. And look here. God, come over there. God, God, wow,” mutters the amazed Spleeters, moving from one workplace to another. He’s like Charlie in a chocolate factory.

However, night falls on Tal Afar, and there is no electricity in the city. This means that Spleeters will no longer be able to study his treasures and photograph samples in natural light. Soon our convoy returns to an Iraqi military base located near the destroyed city airport. It is a small outpost of refurbished trailers, half of which are riddled with bullet holes. In the trailer next to us, two detained militants who are suspected of belonging to ISIS are sleeping. This is a young man and an older man. They appear to be the only ones captured during the Battle of Tal Afar. Spleeters spends the evening impatiently watching satellite television. During all the time we spent together, he did almost nothing except work and eat, and slept only a few hours.

It dawned quite early, and when the soldiers woke up, Spleeters returned, accompanied by a convoy, to the workshop. He takes out 20 yellow crime scene stickers, one for each table. He then draws a diagram to reconstruct the configuration of the room later. In one place in this diagram it denotes welding electrodes, in another a grinding machine. “No, this is not a continuous process,” he thinks out loud. “Most likely, these are different work areas for making different things.”

“I told them,” Al-Hakim replies.

“They can do whatever they want when I’m done,” Spleeters says wearily.

In a small room adjacent to the launch tube manufacturing area, Spleeters begins studying dozens of grenades of various models for grenade launchers. Some of them were made many years ago, and each has some kind of identification mark. On Bulgarian-made grenades, the number “10” or “11” is indicated in a double circle. The green dye used by China and Russia varies slightly in shade. “In Iraq, we are at war with the whole world,” one soldier had boasted to me two days earlier, referring to the many foreign fighters recruited by ISIS. But exactly the same impression arises when you look at weapons from a variety of countries, concentrated in one room.

Spleeters carefully examines the warheads of the rockets stacked in rows, and finally finds what he needs. “Habibi, I found a PG-9 shell,” he exclaims, looking towards Al-Hakim. This is a Romanian rocket with batch number 12-14-451. Spleeters has been looking for this exact serial number for the past year. In October 2014, Romania sold the US military 9,252 PG-9 grenades with lot number 12-14-451 for grenade launchers. By purchasing this ammunition, the United States signed an end-user certificate. This is a document confirming that this ammunition will be used only in the American army and will not be transferred to anyone. The Romanian government confirmed the sale by providing CAR with an end-user certificate and proof of delivery of the goods.

So how did American weapons end up in the hands of ISIS? Spleeters can't say for sure yet. On July 19, 2017, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had been secretly training and arming Syrian rebels from 2013 until mid-2017, when the Trump administration ended the training program, in part out of concern that U.S. weapons might end up in the wrong hands. The US government has not responded to multiple requests for comment on how the weapons ended up in the hands of Syrian rebels and an ISIS munitions factory. The government has also refused to say whether the United States has violated the terms of its end-user certificate and, by extension, whether it is complying with the terms of the UN arms trade treaty, which it is a signatory to along with 130 other countries.

It appears that other countries are also buying and reselling weapons. CAR traced how Saudi Arabia purchased various types of weapons, which were later found in ISIS militant groups. In one case, Spleeters checked the flight plan of a plane that was supposed to deliver 12 tons of ammunition to Saudi Arabia. Documents show that this plane did not land in Saudi Arabia, but flew to Jordan. Sharing a border with Syria, Jordan is a well-known point of transfer of weapons to rebels fighting the Assad regime. Although the Saudis could have claimed that the weapons were stolen or captured, they did not. The people in charge of the flight insist that the plane with the weapons landed in Saudi Arabia, although flight documents refute this. The Saudi government did not respond to requests for comment on how its weapons ended up in the hands of ISIS.

Most of the new generation of terrorism and future war scenarios involve the use of artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles and self-propelled vehicles with explosives. But this is only a part that reflects the fears of American engineers about the numerous possibilities for using new technologies. The other, much more dangerous part of the story concerns ISIS technicians. These people have already shown that they can produce weapons that are not inferior to those made by the military industry of states. And over time, it will be even easier for them to set up the production process, since 3D printing is becoming widespread around the world. Michigan Technological University mechanical engineering professor Joshua Pearce is an expert on open source hardware, and he says ISIS's manufacturing process has "very insidious features." In the future, schematic drawings of weapons can be downloaded from secret sites on the Internet, or received through popular social networks with encoding, such as WhatsApp. These files can then be loaded into metal 3D printers, which have come into widespread use in recent years and cost less than a million dollars, including setup. Thus, weapons can be made by simply pressing a button.

“Making weapons using layer-by-layer printing technology is much easier than it seems,” says Art Of Future Word project director August Cole, who works for the Atlantic Council. The rate at which ISIS's intellectual capital spreads depends on the number of young engineers joining its affiliates. According to Oxford University researchers, at least 48% of jihadist recruits from non-Western countries attended college, and almost half of them studied engineering. Of the 25 participants in the September 11 attacks, at least 13 were college students, and eight were engineers. Among them are the two main organizers of the attacks, Muhammad Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed received a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Carolina. The Associated Press reported that while in an American prison, he received permission to create a vacuum cleaner from scratch. Is this a pointless hobby, as the CIA officials claim, or the hallmark of an inventor? Mohammed downloaded the drawings of the vacuum cleaner from the Internet.

Spleeters had only two days to study the munitions factories in Tal Afar. On the last evening he was in a hurry, trying to get as much work done as possible. ISIS uses distributed production methods. Each section specializes in a specific task, like a car factory. And Spleeters tried to describe and document all these sites and jobs. “We only have one hour left,” he said, looking at the sun as it inexorably set on the horizon. At the first plant, Spleeters found a huge smelting furnace, around which lay raw materials waiting their turn to be melted down: engine units, scrap metal, heaps of copper wire. There were also vices with molds for fuses, and next to them lay the empennage for mortar shells. All this was awaiting its turn for assembly in the next workshop. This work was carried out on the ground floor of a three-story building that was once a market. The stove was also installed on the lower level, because it gave off incredible heat. The entire city of Tal Afar was turned into a production base.

Spleeters quickly finishes collecting evidence. “Is there anything left?” he asks an Iraqi army major. “Yes, there is,” the major replies, approaching the next door. There is a large stove in the lobby that ISIS fighters covered with their handprints by dipping them in paint. It looked like a first-grader's picture of a child. In the corridors lay clay molds for the mass production of 119.5 mm shells. In the next courtyard there is something like a research laboratory. There is ammunition everywhere, new and old, lighting shells, and cutaway models. The tables are littered with dismantled fuses and huge 220 mm ammunition. This is the largest caliber created by ISIS engineers. In addition, there were large pipes used as launchers. They were the size of a telephone pole.

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US foreign policy in the 2000s was a belated reflection on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Its defining motives were: 1) awareness of the vulnerability of even its own territory; 2) hence the fear of losing the status of the only superpower in the world with all the ensuing consequences; H) the desire to demonstrate one’s superpower to the fear of enemies, and especially subordinate allies; 4) the image of the main enemy in the everyday consciousness is now assigned to terrorists from the Middle East.

The consequence of this was a revision of its strategic line in this region, when a significant part of the countries there formed the notorious “axis of evil”, and another part, including regimes loyal to Washington, began to be considered sympathetic to the enemy.

When selecting candidates for the role of the “axis of evil,” the criteria of the Cold War era were dominant: if a country is not oriented towards the United States, then it is hostile. The actual extent of the country’s involvement in the sphere of influence of radical Islam was practically ignored, because Iraq and Syria, the two most secular powers of the Arab world, were included in the category of “bad” without good reason.

To justify this, top-level American politicians did not stop at outright falsification of facts, publicly declaring information allegedly obtained by intelligence about connections between local regimes and the terrorist organization "". The concept of the “axis of evil” has evolved into a larger program. This ambitious project was called the “Greater Middle East”. Its essence was the need to democratize political processes within the Middle Eastern states using any available means.
means. According to the authors, this should have contributed to the creation of political regimes in the Islamic world that were sincerely loyal to the United States, which would lead to the elimination of the influence of militant Islamists. The United States would thus expand the number of its satellites and at the same time protect itself from the influence of radical ideas and from armed attacks by Islamic extremists.

In fact, as obvious as it is dubious, the “achievement” of the “Greater Middle East” project was a severe blow to the established system of interstate relations in this region, which actually disavowed the concept of “balance of power” from being applied to it. The natural political play of local actors in their region is disrupted, and the natural process of forming local poles of power is undermined, without which the normal political configuration of any region is extremely difficult.

A catastrophe in the eastern direction of American policy has not yet arrived, but if events on the fronts of Iraq and Afghanistan (even if the aggression does not spread to Syria and Iran) unfold according to the current scenario, its prospect is very likely. It is noteworthy that in this sense the presence of US troops in Muslim countries, which became the catalyst for this process, is currently objectively delaying the moment of dramatic denouement. However, not only does it not prevent it, but most likely aggravates the consequences.

ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) demonstrates impressive military leadership and tactical skill in large-unit operations using heavy weapons, and there is no doubt that the militants of this group have learned a lot from the Americans. It is worth clarifying: the Americans acted this way for reasons of momentary political expediency, and not with medium-term intentions.

Popular sayings about ISIS

US Army General D.P. Bolger writes: “Coupled with a surge in American troops in Baghdad in the summer of 2007, the Sunni Awakening effectively ended the sectarian bloodshed. This movement split the Sunni resistance, and it remained divided for the remainder of the American campaign. It was not a victory by any of the criteria that optimistic Americans had set for themselves back in 2003—in what seemed like another lifetime. But it was something like progress... The Sunni Awakening was spreading rapidly... Always concerned with marketing, [Iraq commander General David] Petraeus and his inner circle settled on a more inspiring name. With the approval of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Sunnis began to be called the “Sons of Iraq.”

While the "wave" was news in America, in the country itself the "Sunni resurgence" provided a real and lasting difference in the rate of attrition... The Sons of Iraq were overwhelmingly loyal. With a force of nearly a hundred thousand men, half of whom were located near Baghdad, the Sahwa movement allowed Sunnis to legally bear arms and paid them, effectively removing much of the incentive for “noble resistance.” It was by far the most successful and widespread job creation program in Iraq... However, Sahwa paid tens of thousands to Sunni Arabs to kill each other, not to Americans. No matter how cynical it may seem, the results cannot be disputed.

The Sons of Iraq fielded nearly six times as many armed Sunnis on the battlefield as their enemies, the highest estimate of enemy strength. This shows the potential depth and motivation of the Sunni insurgency."

A more straightforward assessment is that by funding and training the Sons of Iraq, Petraeus and his team assembled the elements of a new Sunni insurgency that now calls itself the Islamic State (aka the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). A 2007 report by Andrew McGulley for France-Presse describes the first meeting of Sunni tribesmen near Baghdad with Petraeus and his team.

“Tell me, how can I help you?” asks Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of American troops in central Iraq... One [of the tribal leaders] talks about weapons, but the general insists: “I can give you money on the condition that the situation in the territory be normalized. What I can’t do—this is very important—is give you a weapon.”

The seriousness of the war council in a tent at the forward military base at Camp Assassin is briefly broken when one of the local Iraqi leaders says, jokingly but knowingly: “Don’t worry! Weapons are cheap in Iraq." “Right, absolutely right,” Lynch grins in response.

Having armed all sides in the conflict and kept them apart only by the threat of guns, the United States is preparing to withdraw, leaving in place a government of national reconciliation that will seek to ensure that well-armed and well-organized militants play by the rules. This is probably the stupidest thing that empires have ever done. The British played on division and subjugation, while the Americans propose to divide and disappear. At some point, this whole pathetic structure will collapse, and no one knows this better than Petraeus.

The proto-ISIS structure was created by experienced Saddam Hussein intelligence officers, including members of the powerful Ba'ath party intelligence agency. Therefore, ISIS is distinguished by a fairly high professional level of the officer corps, management personnel, propaganda mechanism, and management of the sphere of ensuring internal security.

The internal structure of ISIS, in accordance with the traditional rules of functioning of the mukhabarat (“secret services” in Arabic), combines open, semi-official and completely closed organizational components. At the highest level, the interests of the Americans and the former Baathists coincided to a significant extent, albeit temporarily. The US military-intelligence community, which seeks to form a new system of balance of power (a new system of checks and balances) in the “Greater Middle East”, makes a strategic bet on the Islamic Republic of Iran, at the same time it is necessary to create a significant regional counterbalance to its partner, so as not to fall into depending on it as a regional superpower.

Neither Turkey, nor especially Saudi Arabia or Israel, for various reasons, can become such an effective counterweight to Iran. And in this regard, ISIS turned out to be an effective tool for dragging Iranian security forces into a series of flaring regional conflicts. Some US intelligence agencies quite actively used ISIS in 2014 against the then Iraqi government of Nourial-Maliki, which was supported by the leadership of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps).

Soon, ISIS weakened the IRGC, and through it Iran, by taking control of vast territories of Syria and Iraq, Iran’s allies. The former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency openly admitted that ISIS appeared in Syria thanks to Washington's decision. The investigation proved that the activities of the West and some Arab states have become an important factor in the success of a number of extremist groups; ISIS is just one of them, currently the most famous, but also its rival Al-
Qaeda has not disappeared at all, but continues to be active through its affiliates, such as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. There is evidence that even before the “Arab Spring” of 2011, US intelligence agencies participated in secret operations against the authorities of Syria and Iraq, and the consequence of this was again the strengthening of Islamist groups in both countries.

German journalist Ken Jebsen cites documents that were classified until now; they directly confirm the US role in the creation of ISIS. The journalist also reported on the participation of a number of other states in the same dangerous games. All this from the very beginning was explained by the intention to oust Bashar al-Assad (in any case, this was Israel’s goal, and certain forces in Washington always supported it). Subsequently, control over ISIS was lost by its creators.

It is known that 17 of the 25 largest field commanders and leaders of ISIS in the period from 2004 to 2011 were in American military prisons, having direct contacts there with both law enforcement and US intelligence.

Former US Air Force security officer and commander of the Camp Bucca prisoner of war camp, D. Gerrond, admitted to reporters that there was “brainwashing” at the camp, special recruitment sessions were held with former jihadists and supporters of Saddam Hussein in order to involve them in pro-American armed groups . It is also well known that in 2013, in the province of Idlib in Syria, Senator John McCain not only met with al-Baghdadi, but negotiated. This meeting was captured in photographs. Moreover, neither ISIS nor Senator McCain’s office denied this information.

Investigations conducted by the Times and Garden newspapers showed that British and French intelligence in many cases control both individual recruiters and entire offices involved in transferring residents of Great Britain and France to training camps for ISIS militants. Currently, there are at least 1,200 French and almost 1,000 British in the ranks of the combat units of the “Islamic State” (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation).

During the investigations, it was also discovered that private intelligence companies from Britain and France, closely intertwined with state ones, also interact with ISIS.
Initially, these were contacts for the release of certain persons and their removal from territories controlled by ISIS. However, in the future the scope of business cooperation
extended to the smuggling of oil and petroleum products, unique works of art, etc.

A radical transformation occurred in 2011, when former high-ranking officers of the army and intelligence services of Saddam Hussein, released from American prisons in Iraq, actually led the Islamic State of Iraq. At that time, the entire initial leadership of the IGI died. Of the approximately forty leaders, financiers, high-ranking liaisons and moderators of the Iraqi underground network, only eight remained alive. Two key leaders were also killed - Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-
Masri. Saddam's military professionals managed to occupy places in the highest and middle hierarchy of the organization.

At the same time, the main efforts were focused on two important innovations. First, the leader of military experts, Haji Bakr, quickly and very harshly reorganized and reformatted the disparate regional groups operating in Sunni territories, creating a flexible umbrella command structure with a single headquarters center, the role of which was performed by a shura (council) of commanders. It is quite natural that the majority in the shura was occupied by former military men, and Haji Bakr managed to push through the election to the post of leader
actually new organization Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who at that time was only one of the territorial leaders of the group.

Secondly, Special attention was devoted to the formation or reconstruction of an agent network and organizational cells in various state institutions and institutions in Iraq, primarily in the security forces. Later, such an agent network began to spread throughout the Middle East. Thus, the main elements of the ISIS structure were largely modeled on the Ba'athist corporation by experienced former officers of the army and intelligence services of Saddam Hussein (he had nine intelligence agencies),
including representatives of key Ba'ath party intelligence. As you know, this intelligence system was one of the most effective in the Middle East. And it is precisely this experience of the special services and state building in general that largely explains why IS differs so sharply from other numerous radical jihadist organizations: first of all, the high professional level and discipline of the officer corps, management personnel, propaganda mechanism, and management of the sphere of internal security.

The special psychological appearance of the Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) is in many ways reminiscent of the echeloned underground specificity of the Iraqi Baath. The desire for secrecy, so characteristic of the IS intelligence services, is reminiscent of the paradoxical behavior of the Baathist structures. After all, even when it was already in power, being the ruling party, the Baath Party continued to operate as if in deep underground. For example, when the next Baathist congress was held, few of the uninitiated knew about it. And the results of such a congress are usually
were announced a few weeks after the completion of party events.

Indirect confirmation that the United States is involved in the successes of the Islamic State is the following observation. The territory in which IS is now active (north-eastern Syria and north-western Iraq, also along the Syrian-Turkish border), in an interesting way coincides with territory where the United States has been arming moderate groups for several years.

The US authorities do not deny that their (allegedly former) partners support extremists. The dropping of weapons and ammunition by American planes for Islamists is confirmed by many testimonies, photographs, etc. Despite the fact that later the United States, as we know, created and led a large coalition to fight the Islamic State, this fight of theirs looks very unconvincing (but there is data on the supply of weapons to various more than dubious forces through which they reach the Islamic State, and also remember the attempt to introduce a ban on airstrikes on targets belonging to “good” terrorists).

The fact that the United States is funding IS is already clear to everyone. They do this to confront Iran and Syria, longtime adversaries of the United States. But now IS has become uncontrollable. Americans have no idea how to deal with it. Yes, airstrikes are carried out against Islamist targets. But this has been going on for quite some time. Apparently, the actions of the Americans are completely ineffective.

We have to conclude that the United States is not going to destroy ISIS, which it created, but still plans to use this structure for its own purposes (however, it is believed that ISIS is the creation of not only the United States, but also Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from which it is precisely and the main funding is received). The true goal of the United States in the Middle East is not pacification and a return to stability, as they claim. Quite the contrary: through the destruction of the existing balance of power in the region, the Americans intend
disorganize all local spheres of life (political, military, economic and other components) and transfer a number of countries (not only Syria) into a state of chronic chaos, a war of all against all, just as was done in Libya.

The first, highest, level of command in the Islamic State is the military-political shura and specialized headquarters centers. The second level is the community of field commanders. According to some sources, there are approximately seven hundred to nine hundred such commanders in IS. It is this group that represents the most passionate component of the Islamic State in ideological, political and military terms. Actually, it is the IS field commanders who have a decisive influence on the everyday real power in the controlled territories.

Especially taking into account the fact that in the conditions of a combination of hierarchical and network principles of organizing an organization, decision-making processes in the IG proceed simultaneously from the top down and from the bottom up. The third level is growing mass social support for the Islamic State. Moreover, such support is increasing not only in Syria and Iraq themselves, but throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world.

During the attack on a police patrol in Riyadh, an attempt to import a significant load of explosives by the owner of a car that arrived in Saudi Arabia from Bahrain was simultaneously prevented. In this Arabian country, a new radical extremist cell was discovered, which included sixty-five people,
planning several terrorist attacks. These operations were intended to create the impression of the beginning of an open sectarian war. Despite preventive arrests, the first explosion occurred at a Shiite mosque killing dozens in the Eastern Province, and the second occurred not far from the first site.

All this forces us to once again focus on some of the features of ISIS, which crystallized as a result of the combination of the ideology of radical jihadism and the specific experience of Saddam’s mukhabarat. First of all, we are talking about the creative use of network-centric warfare technologies. For example, in the spring of 2015, the Americans announced the liquidation of the deputy leader of the Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) Abdel Rahman Mustafa al-Kaduli, as well as the serious injury of the Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself. However, even if these events really took place, they could not have any serious and immediate impact on the combat capability of the Islamic State (further events, in fact, confirmed this).

Within the framework of network-centric wars, even physical liquidation the leader or his deputy has almost no effect on the effectiveness of the activities and combat operations carried out by such an organization. An important place in the IS model of network-centric wars is occupied by the technology of formation and deployment of agent networks, primarily on an Ideological basis.

IS most likely has the most extensive agent network in the Middle East with a tendency to expand into other geopolitical zones. At the very beginning, a network of voluntary sympathizers and informants is formed, who only collect the necessary information, primarily about representatives of the enemy’s power structures, military and security services, representatives of social classes, clans and tribes hostile to ISIS, mass enemy agents, etc. .

Such information makes it possible to almost immediately deliver a decisive blow to the enemy’s intelligence network, as happened in the spring of 2015 in Ramadi and Palmyra, and prevent the deployment of sabotage and guerrilla operations behind ISIS lines.

Further, at the next stage, in work in the deep underground, as is currently happening in Baghdad, on the territory of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, based on a network of ideologically motivated informants, it becomes possible to begin the formation of separate cells and groups capable of individual sabotage and guerrilla actions for the purpose of socio-political destabilization.

At the third stage, such cells gradually begin to reunite into some common subregional or national networks. In the spring of 2015, Al Jazeera polled its television audience and found that nearly 70 percent of viewers (most likely Arabic-speaking only) approved of IS's goals. In individual Arab countries, this figure can sometimes reach 90-95 percent.

ISIS targets

Behind closed doors, IS supports a significant number of Sunni, primarily Arab, elites. In any case, it is the financial flows of these elite groups. Essential fact: in Syria initially main goal IS was not about overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but rather about forming its own special state. As is known, the implementation of the idea of pan-Arab unity, as it was formulated in the Baathist party documents, was supposed to begin initially precisely through the unification of Iraq with Syria, including through the consolidation of the Baathist party structures of both countries.

Throughout the captured territory, IS controls and manages numerous oil and gas facilities, power plants, other operating economic enterprises, banks, and continues to receive subsidies from its various external supporters. The economy of these territories is gradually starting to work for the new state structures of the “caliphate”, providing goods for filling the markets and tax revenues. The currency on the territory of the Islamic State remains the dollar and existing national monetary units; it is planned to introduce its own currency into circulation - dinars and dirhams.

The main focus of current state building is on the restoration and formation of traditional Muslim social infrastructure. Advocating for a fair distribution of resources, IS is building hospitals, new roads, schools, and improving transport links. Where possible, the “caliphate” seeks to restore the administrative infrastructure so that all government institutions responsible for social support function smoothly, and
officials went to work in a disciplined manner.

Social life in the territories controlled by IS is built in accordance with the laws and norms of Sharia. Thieves have their hands cut off, unfaithful wives are stoned, drunkards and adulterers are whipped, drug dealers have their heads cut off, and homosexuals are thrown from the roofs of multi-story buildings. Religious police units - the Hizbah - travel through populated areas and monitor the maintenance of fair prices and compliance with Sharia law. Sharia judicial and executive bodies operate everywhere.

The leadership of the Islamic State pursues a policy of stimulating social support in different directions simultaneously. This includes direct targeted support for disadvantaged segments of the population, for example, mass distribution of food and medicine, provision of medical care, as happened immediately after the capture of Palmyra. This is a ramified, large-scale religious and ideological work. This includes the reconstruction of state life support structures. There are also significant measures to ensure social justice in the controlled territories.

Success lies in their capturing military equipment from fleeing Iraqi soldiers. When ISIS captured Mosul, they seized weapons, allowing them to hold a full-fledged government rather than a rabble of rebels.

“Three divisions worth of equipment was lost,” said Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A large number of weapons that were seized in Mosul were supplied by the United States to the Iraqi army. Terrorists are also armed with weapons produced in the USSR (Russia), China, the Balkans, and Iran.

T-55 tanks

The T-55 series of tanks were produced by the Soviet Union from the end of World War II until the 1980s. Experts estimate that ISIS has about 30 of these tanks, but it is unknown how well the organization can maintain and operate them.

Despite their age, these tanks are still used by about 50 armies around the world. They have heavy armor, as well as a 100 mm cannon and a 7.62 mm machine gun.

T-72 tanks

The T-72 tank is a second generation Soviet battle tank. The tank first entered production in 1971, and they are still being produced from the production line. ISIS has between five and ten T-72 tanks, although it is unknown whether the terrorists will be able to keep them operational and cope with repairs. The T-72 is heavily armored and has a 125mm cannon.

Hummers

ISIS took possession of Humvees during the assault on Mosul, and the United States provided them to the Iraqi army. Hummers allow you to move quickly and efficiently over rough terrain. Their heavy armor also protects the forces from fire small arms, as well as from collateral damage from indirect explosions. There is also little protection against landmines or buried improvised explosive devices.

ISIS doesn't have a large selection of rifles, the AK-47 has become their standard assault rifle due to its low cost, durability, availability and ease of use.

The AK-47 was originally developed by Soviet designers, but quickly spread to other armies and irregular forces around the world.

M79 Wasp

The M79 Wasp fires a 90mm round that is very effective against tanks and fortified positions. Journalist Elliot Higgins, better known as Brown Moses, believes the weapons originated in Croatia before being supplied to Syrian rebels by Saudi Arabia. ISIS has used these missiles with devastating effects against armored vehicles of the Iraqi security forces.

RBG-6 grenade launchers

This semi-automatic grenade launcher is lightweight and designed for infantry use. Saudi Arabia imported Croatian RBG-6s into Syria, according to Brown Moses. The RBG-6 eventually fell into the hands of ISIS and is currently also being used in Iraq.

Iraq is provided with RPG-7 grenade launchers, as are the Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and ISIS. The RPG-7 is a portable, shoulder-launched anti-tank grenade launcher. These systems are durable, easy to use and relatively low cost. Grenades can reach up to 920 meters, but at very long distances they can self-destruct without hitting the target.

M198 howitzers

The M198 is a medium-sized howitzer developed for service by the US Army after World War II. The M198 can launch projectiles at a distance of at least 22 km. This howitzer can fire a variety of ammunition, including explosives, rockets and white phosphorus. ISIS likely captured howitzers from the Iraqi army after they fled their bases.

Field gun 59-1

The Type 59-1 is a Chinese copy of the Soviet M-46 M1954 towed field gun. The M-46 was first released by the Soviets in 1954. At one time, the M-46 was the longest-range artillery system in the world with a maximum firing range of 27 km. The Type 59-1 is a licensed Chinese copy of the much lighter M-46. Both Syrian and Iraqi troops used the Type 59-1

Anti-aircraft guns ZU-23-2

ZU-23-2 - Soviet anti-aircraft automatic guns, produced from 1960 to today. It fires 23 mm ammunition at a rate of 400 rounds per minute. The ZU-23-2 can fire effectively at 3 km and is designed to strike low-flying targets and armored vehicles. These weapons were used in the Syrian civil war and are also in the Iraqi army's arsenal.

"Stinger"

The Stinger is an infrared homing, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. It was originally developed in the USA, and entered into service in 1981. These MANPADS are extremely dangerous and can effectively destroy helicopters and airplanes.

Stingers require specialized maintenance and care. Most likely, ISIS got the FIM-92 from Iraqi military bases.

The HJ-8 is an anti-tank missile that was manufactured in China starting in the late 1980s. HJ-8s have a range of up to 6,000 meters and their system is partly based on the US BGM-71 TOW missile.

HJ-8s are very effective against armor, bunkers and fortifications. The Free Syrian Army has been using these missiles with great success against the Syrian Arab Army since June 2013.

DShK 1938 machine gun

The DShK 1938 is a Soviet heavy machine gun dating back to 1938. This machine gun was the standard of the Soviet Union during World War II, and it is still in production around the world. The DShK has several uses: as an anti-aircraft weapon and a heavy infantry support weapon. It can fire 600 rounds per minute. The machine gun is also mounted on cars for convenient use and maneuverability. ISIS likely stole these machine guns from either the Syrian or Iraqi armies.

One of ISIS's most effective weapons is their success in the media. The group regularly produces propaganda videos. They have their own propaganda magazine in English, and tweet with hashtags for trending events to achieve maximum interaction with the audience. ISIS is armed for conventional war—and has decades of campaign experience in Syria and Iraq. With such an arsenal, ISIS can certainly dictate its own rules in the Middle East, but it is difficult for them to resist the high-tech armies of Russia, the United States and other European countries.

And if the bandits failed to capture or buy something, they have to be smart - handicraft workshops provide the insurgents with artillery and even missile weapons.
Zvezda talks about the most unusual weapons of rebel groups.
М16А4
A mangled rifle with the inscription on the receiver “Property of US government” (that is, “property of the United States”) was certainly the most interesting example of the captured weapon display at the Army 2017 exhibition. How did the modern American rifle end up in the hands of the militants? Most likely, the M16 was captured by ISIS (an organization banned in Russia) in the warehouses of the Iraqi army, to which they were officially supplied.
R-40
If a primitive savage had been lucky enough to find a gun, he would probably have been delighted with such a good, strong club. The photo shows a primitive rocket launcher. Only the missile installed on it is far from primitive - it is a Soviet R-40, intended to arm the MiG-25P fighter-interceptor. A hypersonic projectile made of titanium, with a thermal imaging guidance head, resistant to electronic countermeasures, is used by ISIS in a installation compared to which the ancient Katyusha BM-13 is the crown of engineering.

RBG 40mm/6M11

Another example that raises many questions is the Serbian revolver grenade launcher. It recently appeared in service with opposition groups and ISIS militants. The weapon itself is not too remarkable, especially since it is a copy of the South African Milkor MGL 40x46mm. However, there is no information about export sales of the RBG 40mm/6M11; the grenade launcher is generally not widespread in the world. This indirectly indicates shadow channels for the supply of weapons to Syria from South-Eastern Europe.

Fortress rifle

The shortage of modern precision weapons is forcing militants to construct real monsters. In the photo there is something like a serf gun from the 17th-18th centuries, that is, something between a musket and a cannon. Of course, in a more modern guise: this stationary weapon was probably chambered for the heavy Soviet DShK machine gun. In addition, a cheap optical sight, most likely removed from an air rifle, attracts attention.

A more serious example: an Austrian high-precision rifle, which is in service with NATO countries. It was demonstrated among other trophies at the Army 2017 exhibition. Developed in the early 70s, the SSG-69 rifle today remains a serious argument in the hands of a trained shooter - for a series of 10 shots, the dispersion diameter at 800 meters is no more than 40 cm. That is, at this distance an experienced sniper can still hit the height figure. At the same time, at 300 meters the spread will not exceed 9 cm. Perhaps this high-quality weapon was initially provided to the Syrian opposition, from where it came to ISIS.

Gas mortars

In war, all means are good, especially those that are inherently flammable. Household gas cylinders have long been loved by ISIS terrorists as shells for homemade large-caliber mortars (from 218 to 305 mm). However, it cannot be said that progress stands still: in Lately Stabilizers began to be welded to the cylinders. This is unlikely to seriously improve the accuracy of throwing household containers; on the other hand, shooting at residential areas does not require scrupulous calculations.

Chemical weapon
Perhaps the most frightening example captured by Russian special forces in Syria was a plant for synthesizing toxic substances in the field. It is a concrete mixer into which reagents are poured - in themselves they are relatively harmless, but when mixed they form organophosphorus toxic substances (OA) such as tabun or sarin. Note that this kind of binary method of obtaining chemical agents was used by the United States for a long time - for example, artillery shells were filled with precursors, which were mixed during the firing process, forming
nerve agent V-gas.

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