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IRBIL, Iraq The U.S. Army failed to properly keep tracks of hundreds of humvees, tens of thousands of rifles and other pieces of military equipment that were sent to Iraq, according to a governmentaudit from 2016 that was obtained by Amnesty International and released Wednesday.

The price of the equipment meant to equip the Iraqi army, Shiite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga totaled more than $1 billion.

This audit provides a worrying insight into the U.S. Armys flawed and potentially dangerous system for controlling millions of dollars worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region, Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty Internationals Arms Control and Human Rights researcher, said in an emailed statement.

[Tracking U.S. weapons grows harder in the fog of Iraqs fragmented war]

The arms and equipment transfers were apart of the Iraq Train and Equip Fund, a program that initially appropriated $1.6 billionunder the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act to help Iraqi forces combat the rise of the Islamic State. The 2017 act is slated to lend$919.5 million to the fund.

The audit found that improper record-keeping, including duplicatedspreadsheets, handwritten receipts and a lack of a central database to track the transfers, contributed to the reportsfindings. Additionally, the audit claimed that under the Iraqi Train and Equip Fund, once the equipment was transferredto the government of Iraq, the Pentagon no longer had to monitor the materialas it was no longer U.S. government property.

While likely not an issue for things such as uniform items and body armor, the lack of any post-transfer accountability on U.S. arms and munitions raises the chances for illicitdiversion from the intended supply chain. Currently, the Middle East is awash in U.S. weapons and equipment, and with President Trumps decision to equip Kurdish forces in Syria with more weapons, it is unclear whether the United States has learned from any of its past mistakes in the region.

The need for post-delivery checks is vital, Wilcken said. Any fragilities along the transfer chain greatly increase the risks of weapons going astray in a region where armed groups have wrought havoc and caused immense human suffering.

The audit said the training and equipment fundsmanagementhad initiateda two-step corrective action plan to implement visibility and accountability systems following concerns raised by the Pentagons inspector general. The audit does not detail what the corrective actions might entail. However, it wouldlikely include greater oversight by the Pentagons End Use Monitoring division. The division runs the Golden Sentry Program, with the intended purpose ofmonitoring the transfer and stockpiles of U.S. equipment that is providedto other countries.

[Afghanistan may have lost track of more than 200,000 weapons]

A 2015 audit on the Iraq Train and Equip Fund found similar issues, including almost no record-keeping on the Iraqi side.

Iain Overton, a former BBC journalist, and histeam of researchers pulled 14 years of Pentagon contracts, revealing that the United States has supplied more than 1.45 million firearms to various armed groupsin Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a New York Times magazine report. Those includemore than 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns. It is unclear how many of those remain in possession of their intended recipients.

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U.S. failed to keep proper track of more than $1 billion in weapons and - Washington Post