![]() “All probative leads were exhausted,” according to the investigation file. ![]() personnel found it was missing gear valued at $87,335.35. When the truck arrived at the outpost in that country’s Kurdistan region, U.S. Sometime in late 2020 or early 2021, according to the files, “multiple specialized field artillery tools and equipment” were stolen from a military vehicle while being transported to Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq. wars in Iraq and Syria are actually fought. The criminal investigation files obtained by The Intercept offer a rare, unvarnished glimpse at how the U.S. commanders, military press releases, and officially sanctioned reporting. With little outside oversight or unembedded coverage of American operations, information about these conflicts is largely limited to dubious statements by U.S. Americans operate on bases where anonymity is sometimes the norm and local partners such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led group, are not always trusted. troops are ostensibly deployed to Iraq and Syria - alongside Iraqi Security Forces, Kurdish troops, and Syrian surrogates - to defeat ISIS, but they also increasingly fight Iran-backed militia groups in a legally murky sideshow war. A 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that Special Operations Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that works with America’s Syrian allies, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for those local surrogates. The thefts and losses uncovered by The Intercept are just the latest weapons accountability woes to afflict the U.S. President Joe Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes in response to the latest attack “in order to protect and defend the safety of our personnel.” The kamikaze airstrike on the outpost known as RLZ was one of roughly 80 attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria since January 2021 that the U.S. contractor was killed and six other Americans were wounded last week in a suicide drone assault on a U.S. The previously unreported thefts illuminate America’s shadow wars in the region, where a U.S. They are just the latest evidence of a persistent problem that has allowed enemy forces from ISIS in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan to arm themselves - and even kill Americans and their foreign partners - at U.S. The thefts, which occurred on, or in transit to, far-flung U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, according to exclusive documents obtained by The Intercept. Thieves have made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in artillery equipment, unspecified “weapons systems,” and specialized ammunition meant for U.S.
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