THE RECIRCULATION OF RIFLES IN AFGHANISTAN

A post today on the At War blog discusses the state of arming of the Afghan national security forces, and some of the problems and choices made during the war. It describes, in part, the ways that firearms move through Afghan fighting units, and the rationale for (and the difficulties that have undermined) efforts at standardization.

Ideally, Afghan government units would use the same weapons, and therefore require the same ammunition, which would serve to simplify procurement and resupply, and allow units and members of mixed army-police patrols to share ammunition during a fight. But right now the Afghan National Army is moving toward one suite of firearms, which are NATO-standard, and the Afghan National Police have another suite of firearms, which are old Eastern bloc patterns – principally Kalashnikov variants of rifles and machine guns.

Afghan army units now have little flexibility in what they can carry. The American M-16 is the official standard arm for Afghan soldiers, and because it is new to the country, there is little chance for Afghan soldiers to find alternative variants on their own. They simply do not exist in the bazaars. Afghan police, however, carry Kalashnikovs – weapons that have been in the region for nigh on a half century, and are widely available through underground means. This has allowed police to obtain alternatives to the standard-issue AMD-65, a Hungarian Kalashnikov derivative with a folding stock and shortened barrel that is not popular in police units. (I will be writing about reasons for this unpopularity in a post soon on At War.)

For these reasons, Afghan police units can be very useful places to sample arms in Afghanistan. All sorts of Kalashnikov variants turn up in police officers’ hands, and, in the right setting and context, the police are often agreeable to letting you examine them. Why bother? The sampling offers glimpses at the provenance and longevity of rifles, and, through interviews of the officers carrying them, provides chances to unpeel which variants are more or less popular or expensive, and why. In many cases, inventorying police weapons, and bazaar sampling in Afghanistan and Pakistan, also provides a means to dispense with the nonsense, oft-repeated in news articles and by activitists, that Kalashnikovs are inexpensive, to the point of being almost free. (Many of you have heard the line that you can buy a Kalashnikov for the price of a few sacks of flour, for for a chicken, or for $15, $25, or $50. Don’t believe these things. And ask anyone who repeats such myths for their evidence.)

On the subject of sampling: Two other places to inventory Afghan weapons are in collections from the Taliban’s dead or their caches, or in the hands of Afghan private security companies. These two pursuits have their limits – access to Taliban weapons is not an everyday possibility, and security contractors, if working a post that has video surveillance, are often loathe to have their weapons' photographed, because cameras are usually not allowed in such places. But when possible, these inventories are priceless in furthering an understanding about assault-rifle distribution and proliferation. The collections have more or less been assembled by scrounging, pilferage and the like, and they present a richly varied assortment of arms.

Which brings up the point. Past posts here and on At War have mentioned the longevity of some weapons, which remain functional in the field, even in harsh conditions, for decades. These posts may have left an impression that weapons of say, 40 or 50 or more years old, are unusual and somehow special. Nothing could be further from the truth in Afghanistan. While traveling Afghanistan since 2001, I have routinely encountered Kalashnikovs from the 1950s and the early 1960s. They can be easy to spot from afar. The original Kalashnikovs in most factories had solid-steel receivers, and they look much different from the Kalashnikovs with stamped metal receivers (the AKM and its derivatives), which the Soviet Union introduced in 1959, as it began to phase out the “true” AK-47s. You can spot the originals at a distance of 50 feet or more, and then approach whoever is carrying it, for a more detailed look.

How abundant are these old weapons? Early this week, when I walked out the gate at The New York Times bureau in Kabul, the first Kalashnikov I saw was perhaps a dozen yards away – in the hands of a private security guard at one of the checkpoints outside the Canadian embassy. It was a solid-steel receiver Kalashnikov, a true AK-47, from Izhevsk. It was undated. But Izhevsk began conversion to its first stamped-metal Kalashnikov in 1959, so this weapon was likely made between 1948 and 1959 – more than a half-century back. Here is a peek at the weapon. (The Afghan contractor carrying it asked that his face not be shown.)

And here is a look at its stamps, which are the opposite side of the receiver, above.

Kalashnikovs of this age were not hard to spot during the week, though they are less common than the stamped-metal variants. This is partially because the stamped-metal variants have been manufactured for more years and are more abundant, and because at present the Afghan police have been issued Hungarian AMD-65s, which have stamped-metal receivers. The police presence in the capital is dense, and as a result the AMD-65 is among the most common weapons seen while wandering about. But the solid-steel weapons are still on display, and I was able to inventory several, as the At War post noted, at the front gate of the headquarters of the Afghan Border Police, where three early Bulgarian Kalashnikovs were visible and a fourth was just inside the gate. It was produced by a police lieutenant over tea as I enquired about his impressions, and the origins, of his unit’s guns.

The markings on one of those weapons, manufactured in 1960, has been posted on At War, and those on another, manufactured in 1966, are shown at the top of this post. Here are the markings on the third, vintage 1965:

And now on the fourth, below, also from 1965:

Those of you who are firearms enthusiasts, or who track small-arms proliferation, or investigate crimes, probably appreciate these kind of the photographs, and enjoy the level of the detail. The rest of you might wonder why you have been brought this far. There is a reason. What you have been seeing, and reading, are details into the battlefield durability of some of the oldest Kalashnikovs made, both in the Soviet Union and beyond. These weapons have clearly not come anywhere near the end of their useful lives, and remain favored tools by those who wield them. Whatever you think of guns, and of conflict, the photographs and any reasonable analysis of the weapons recirculating in Afghanistan suggest that automatic Kalashnikovs will remain a principal tool of violence for decades more. The line’s simplicity, its abundance, and its durability have made it the world’s predominant tool of war. This dominance is nowhere near its end.