ISLAMABAD The US military and its allied western forces have shipped unprecedented amount of conventional weapons into Afghanistan since 9/11 as part of their Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Well-placed diplomatic sources informed TheNation on Tuesday that the US military and its NATO allies, particularly UK and Germany, had shipped hundreds of thousands of arms stuffed containers subjecting the Afghan population to the massive death, destruction and displacement. Sources said that the US military had used four major shipping companies including Maersk, APL, Hapag-Lloyd and Liberty Global Logistics to transport these containers to Afghanistan. These companies, sources further said, had also been subletting part of arms consignments to their associates. Meanwhile, details of arms shipment contracts of the NATO member countries were not immediately available. In a related development, international human rights watchdog, the Amnesty International (AI), in its July 19 report, had expressed deep concerns over the states failing to control movement of weapons to human rights abusers. Examples highlighted in the report include deliveries of cluster munitions and their components on ships registered in the UK, and managed by UK and German shipping companies, that were transported from South Korea to Pakistan between March 2008 and February 2010 for use by the countrys army. These deliveries took place despite the UK and Germany having committed to comprehensively ban the transfer and use of cluster munitions. In a new report, the organization highlights how transport companies registered in China, France, the Russian Federation, the UK, and the USA - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - are able to move conventional weapons and munitions to countries where they could be used to commit rights violations and war crimes. Lax controls on arms shippers and flyers who increasingly move conventional arms around the world are not confined to jurisdictions with weak arms export and import laws, said Brian Wood, Arms Control Manager for Amnesty International. To save lives and protect human rights, the Arms Trade Treaty being negotiated at the UN must address the role of transporters and other intermediaries in arms supply chains, not just specify what states export and import licensing procedures should be. The report, Deadly Movements: Arms Transportation Controls in the Arms Trade Treaty, was launched in New York as the first round of UN deliberations on the content of the proposed international Arms Trade Treaty resumed. It reveals how recent arms shipments by sea and air carried out around the world by transport companies registered in the five nations and ships registered in European states, pose a substantial risk of being used to facilitate serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.