Iraq army weapons wind up on black market

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — The Kurdish security contractor placed the black plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9 mm pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi army and police.

This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi army or police. It had been stolen or sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that does a lively black-market business in police and infantry arms. The contractor bought it there.

He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault rifle with a collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or fire from a car. "I bought this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle. "Now it costs $650. The prices keep going up."

Prices soaring

Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more buyers push prices to levels several times higher than those that existed at the time of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn, have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption — the migration of army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.

All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.

But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9 mm pistols, and unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries. These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was criticized by a special inspector-general this fall for, among other things, failing to properly account for the arms.

The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street markets here, where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of grocery kiosks, cosmetic stores and rug shops or from the trunks of cars.

"Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig. Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi army to the smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."

"Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia want the weapons because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan Jalal, the chief of security in the Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."

Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has been assembling data on Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization, put it another way: "When households start entering the market, that's a free-for-all," he said.

Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering from state armories, including the widespread theft of weapons the United States had issued to Iraq's police officers and soldiers.

"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his kiosk and offered weapons in the back. "The Iraqi army, the Iraqi police — they all sell them right away."

No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the owner and a friend swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and three Kalashnikovs from a car and another room.

Rifles spotless

The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped two of the rifles out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside and out, and appeared never to have been used.

The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are our best suppliers."

Tracing U.S.-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is especially difficult because the United States did not register serial numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small arms purchased for Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles that had not previously been used, according to the report.

Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, agreed that weapons provided by the United States had slipped from custody.

"I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and misappropriated," Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector-general had estimated that 4 percent, or about 14,000 weapons, were lost between arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi forces

Defections and resignations have also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they said, and often departing soldiers and officers leave with their weapons, which are worth more than several months of pay.

Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq resembled African countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the police selling off their guns. "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in the household," he said.