Steve, in our AO (Jazeera area between Ramadi and Fallujah in 2005-06), I was tasked out to both our infantry battalion and as a combat augmentee to the MTT w/ IA 3-3. We had to face the unfortunate discovery of many hundreds of weapons (Glocks, mostly) intended for IA and IP personnel come up missing from a "secured" shipping crate.
This led to much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts, but I argued that there might be a plus to this, one that (without violating OPSEC) I saw was taking place.
One of the means insurgent cadres can keep order is by having a monopoly on weapons and the materiel necessary to wage war. While many consider AK-47s "fungible" in Iraq, this isn't exactly so. There are only so many to go around, and they cost money that unemployed MAMs find difficult to obtain.
When many hundreds of AKs and Glocks (hand guns) all of a sudden flooded the local market, many dozens of insurgents from Ramadi to TQ had a commodity that made them independent of the larger insurgent network. They could go it alone, and they could do so with weapons (hand guns) that have a unique cultural meaning (a symbol of authority in Baathist Iraq, they were typically used for executions or maimings, giving the men who possessed them a totemic quality the AK itself didn't confer).
As was famously said about The Velvet Underground, few bought their records but everyone who bought one started his own band. So too with the Glocks and the AKs that entered the market. They gave those who possessed them the ability to strike out on their own, with their own bands of recruited MAMs also dedicated to competing in the Darwinian world of illicit fuel sales, contraband smuggling, IED emplacement, etc, etc, etc.
As the network fractured, they were under less tight control by less intelligent and sophisticated SULs. In other words, a net gain for the good guys as the attrition carried itself out to natural conclusions.
C
Originally Posted by soldiernolongeriniraq
Steve, in our AO (Jazeera area between Ramadi and Fallujah in 2005-06), I was tasked out to both our infantry battalion and as a combat augmentee to the MTT w/ IA 3-3. We had to face the unfortunate discovery of many hundreds of weapons (Glocks, mostly) intended for IA and IP personnel come up missing from a "secured" shipping crate.
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