Government forces opposing the radical Islamic militias in Syria have reported a sudden flood of advanced weaponry including long-range missiles being used as ISIS and others push towards the Mediterranean coast.
An investigation, published by the Independent newspaper, reveals the concerns of Syrian army officers loyal to president of the rump Syrian state Assad, who are defending the eight mile strip of land separating the Islamic State from the sea. Speaking to journalists, officers said since ISIS’s capture of Mosul the types of weapons they had employed had changed dramatically, and now included heat-seeking missiles and tube-launched anti-tank missiles.
Surviving fragments of exploded ordinance, some of which became embedded in sand before detonating have confirmed the suspicions of some commanders that this equipment originated in the arsenals of the United States. One component that the Syrian commanders claim came from exploded ordinance has the company name ‘Eagle-Picher’ written on it, a contractor to that produces batter-packs for missile guidance control computers including the American TOW.
The commanders also claim the nature of radio-chatter intercepted from the Islamic State and other related terrorist militias has changed recently, and reflects the increasingly cosmopolitan make-up of jihad. Accents and languages identified include Chechen, Georgian, Egypt, Libya, the Gulf, Tunis and Morocco.
ISIS’s extensive use of social media can be used to corroborate the claims of the new weapons. The investigation turned up a video of a heat-seeking missile being fired against a dug-in Syrian army tank, and the Islamic State has shared footage of them parading weapons, often leaving Western observers baffled at their origins.
Last month a ISIS propaganda film showed a group of fighters unboxing crates of modern grenades, all in their original packaging and of types manufactured for the German army. Although a government source denied they had come from Germany, just weeks before Germany had shipped a €70 million donation of second hand military equipment to Kurdish rebels. The gift, which included 16,000 rifles, eight million rounds of ammunition and a number of armoured military vehicles also sent 10,000 grenades to the rebels.
It is not known whether these weapons have been used as intended against the Islamic State, if they were immediately sold on the black market, or if they were among the number of errant air drops which accidentally parachuted caches of weapons meant for besieged troops to ISIS positions instead.
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