The interview came after the publication of a report by the Conflict Armament Research monitoring group (CAR), which said that Daesh had been producing weapons on a mass scale in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Moreover, the sophistication of its arms manufacturing matched national military forces.
The document also said that the terrorists had standardized production and had a robust supply chain of raw material from Turkey.
According to the report, "the degree of organization, quality control, and inventory management indicates a complex, centrally controlled industrial production system."
The latter included a monitoring system with regular, detailed reports on production rates and quality that helped ensure standardization — usually to the tenth of a millimeter.
Speaking to Sputnik, Chris Hunter said that fifty commercial entities from twenty countries were involved in a global supply chain as far as Daesh's arms production is concerned.
Describing Daesh as a sophisticated and "very wealthy" terrorist organization, Hunter said that higher echelons of power profited from Daesh smuggling arms through the territories of a spate of Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey.
"In particular, there were smuggling routes from the borders of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and other countries," he said, adding that "we also talk about benefits in the highest levels in some neighboring countries."
In this vein, it is safe to say that Daesh's arms manufacturing business is worth "potentially billions of dollars," according to Hunter.
The Iraqi army launched an operation backed by Kurdish fighters and US-led coalition air support on October 17 to retake Mosul, Daesh's last major stronghold in the country.
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