Islamic State cells in northeast Syria maintain access to centralized and co-ordinated weapon supply

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Years after the Islamic State lost the final swath of territory it controlled, sending scores of fighters into prisons and camps, top-tier IS cells in northeast Syria have managed to maintain access to a centralized and co-ordinated weapon supply, a new analysis shows.

Conflict Armament Research, a Britain-based organization that documents and tracks weapons, investigated weapons and materiel that were recovered following three planned attacks on prisons that hold IS militants and suspects in northeast Syria in 2021 and 2022. There were commonalities in the materiel seized from each IS cell, which the report says strongly indicates that they were closely linked and supported by a centralized distribution network that equips top combatants for high-profile attacks.

CAR investigators found that IS cells remain skilled at maximizing the use of the weapons materiel they have by drawing on existing stockpiles, increasing their reliance on local acquisitions and producing some of their own. In the three seizures, CAR documented 271 weapons, more than 13,000 units of ammunition and IED-related material.

“As we were looking through the materiel recovered from these three operations, we started to see some really unexpected blatant commonalties, which you don’t often see considering how many weapons and how much ammunition we were documenting on a regular basis in the region,” said Devin Morrow, the lead author of the report and head of CAR’s regional operations.

CAR began working in northeast Syria from 2014 to 2015, documenting materiel recovered from IS during the height of the so-called caliphate. It resumed its work in 2020 and has since conducted 10 field missions there.

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The weapons recovered were mostly of Chinese, East German, North Korean, Romanian and Russian manufacture, and most dating from the 1980s, the final years of the Warsaw Pact, the report said.

Investigators found three common elements in the weapons recovered from the three seizures. They documented 18 North Korean-manufactured assault rifles, which are rare in CAR’s global data, making their presence in each seizure significant.

CAR investigators recorded weapons with a distinctive secondary marking, which identifies the Syrian National Army – a coalition of armed opposition groups – as a shared custodian. The SNA was formed in late 2017 and is backed by Turkey.

And researchers observed a high number of Type 56-1 assault rifles that were manufactured in the same factory in China, and which all have obliterated markings. CAR investigators found these rifles to be linked with a number of high-profile attacks in West Africa.

Investigators also found commonalities in ammunition. The report says one of the first indicators that the three operations shared the same source of materiel was that all three contained rockets and expelling charges manufactured in Bulgaria. And most of the seized ammunition, that had a date investigators could identify, was produced recently, with more than 70 per cent of the units produced between 2010 and 2018.

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The weapons recovered had been carefully managed and were generally kept in good condition, with many assault rifles having been greased and repackaged in plastic film for protection. Most of the rockets, hand grenades and some of the small-calibre ammunition units were in their original packaging, the report added.

The majority of the weapons recovered had been accumulated at the peak of the so-called caliphate, the report said, and are still used in high-profile IS attacks. IS combatants have supplemented their stockpiles by acquiring weapons and ammunition from local groups that are supplied with such materiel by international actors, the report said. It added that they continue to produce their own improvised explosive devices.

CAR traced 49 weapons and 293 ammunition units that were recovered. The investigations, the report said, found 19 legal transfers of weapons and ammunition to Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2016, and 14 legal transfers to the United States between 2002 and 2016. Both countries, the report noted, were part of international initiatives to support Syrian armed opposition groups in the early years of the civil war.

However, the majority of weapons CAR documented, are old and therefore difficult to trace.

“The big picture is just how much conflict this part of the world has experienced,” said Ms. Morrow. “Because these weapons don’t really have an expiry date, they are very usable, which means they may have been transferred to the region in the seventies and they’ve been there that long.”

Ms. Morrow said it is possible many weapons recovered were there long before agreements or international treaties were in place. What their presence speaks to, she said, is the longevity of military equipment.

While CAR investigators found IS has the ability to maintain weapons, exploit local sources and produce some of their own, they also found that high-profile IS cells in northeast Syria have not established new supply chains to access advanced weaponry.

“It is quite reassuring that the efforts put in place by the international community and by export control authorities to prevent diversion from getting into the region, have been somewhat effective,” she said.

Ms. Morrow said it is worrying that combatants are still able to produce their own explosive material and rely on some new sources, but the fact that they are relying on predominantly older weapons is a good sign of control at the borders. She emphasized, though, that policymakers need to consider the longevity of weapons.

“When there’s different states supporting various conflicts in armed groups like this, materiel can last for years and for decades and it’s still very usable. I think we all have to be quite conscious of that.”

She said policymakers need to consider how the threat and nature of terrorism is evolving in the region, particularly when it is assumed a lack of territorial control would do enough to stop it in its tracks, saying clearly it wasn’t.

Ms. Morrow said she hopes CAR’s findings help contribute to understanding tactics that terrorist groups might deploy in future planning, saying it is important to watch what’s happening in northeast Syria.

“I think keeping an eye on weapon acquisition methods in one area because it is connected through real corridors, will help to understand how other groups might be acquiring weapons or operating elsewhere.”