Looted Iraqi equipment on black market

Interesting article in yesterdays NYTimes on how all the “stuff” that was looted from Iraqi military and industrial complexes have now started to appear on the black market as well as in the Bazaars of Baghdad and Mosul.

In the weeks after Baghdad fell, the roads in that part of Iraq were choked with trucks carrying scrap metal, looted generators, cars, chopped-up tanks and other equipment, many witnesses said. Mukhtar Ahmed, who owns a tea shop in Bashmakh, north of Munthriya, estimated that as many as 300 trucks a day passed his shop at the height of the activity.

….

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said the story of the [looted] artillery factory was not necessarily reassuring.

“This is just the stuff that got caught,” Mr. Pike said when a reporter contacted him from Forward Operating Base Cobra, an American Army base near the [Iranian] border. “The more interesting stuff would have gone out first,” he said.

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