The U.S. Defense Department has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols delivered to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The newspaper, citing a new government report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through to early this year as part of an effort to train and equip troops.
The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
The United States has spent 19.2 billion U.S. dollars trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least 2.8 billion dollars on buying and delivering equipment.
But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking, the Post report said.
Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.
The GAO reached an estimate of 190,000 missing arms -- 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols -- by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records Petraeus maintained of the arms and equipment he had ordered.
In all cases, the gaps between the two records were enormous. Petraeus reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 pieces of body armor and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security forces from June 2004 through September 2005. But the property books contained records for just 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 pieces of body armor and 25,000 helmets.
The GAO has plans to look for similar problems in the training of Afghan security forces, the newspaper reported.
Source: Xinhua
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