A surreal mix of capitalism and communism surrounds the AK-47 on the rifle's 60th anniversary in Moscow.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/weekinreview/15chivers.html> <http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/15/news/rifle.php> Russia's trademark gun turns 60 amid rumblings of profits lost By C. J. Chivers Sunday, July 15, 2007
MOSCOW: The Kalashnikov, the world's most abundant firearm and a martial symbol with a multiplicity of meanings, turns 60 this year. In some places this is cause to shudder. In Russia it is treated as a milestone to celebrate, and a chance to cry foul.
Once strictly communist products, the AK-47 and its offspring are killing tools so durable and easy to use that they were heralded as achievements of state socialism and industrial might. Uncoupled from the laws of supply and demand by their origins in planned economies, they flowed from arms plants in the tens of millions, becoming national defense and foreign policy instruments for the Soviet Union and allied states.
But the 60th birthday party has displayed the rifle's evolving place in both the market and the Kremlin's mind. These days the Kalashnikov is seen through capitalist lenses, and argued about in ways that could not possibly have been envisioned by its communist creators.
In cash-hungry Russia, Kalashnikov is now an informal brand. And as purchases of Kalashnikov rifles and their derivatives continue on foreign markets, Russian arms manufacturers and exporters worry not about ideology and world dominance, but over sales opportunities lost.
The back story manages to be both odd and unsurprising. Russia's anger is at the United States, a potential customer that has become, once again, a premier distributor, handing out the weapons to indigenous police officers and soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States was also a bulk purchaser in the 1980s, when it supplied mostly Chinese and Egyptian Kalashnikovs to anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan.
In returning to the Kalashnikov market, the Pentagon has shunned purchases from Russia, opting instead for AK-47 knockoffs available for sale or donation from other countries' stockpiles. (The true AK-47 was short lived and swiftly modified; its many variants, almost all of which the Soviet Union helped create via foreign aid, are often inaccurately called AK-47s, by now universal shorthand.)
In Afghanistan, the United States has selected the AMD-65, a short-barreled Hungarian Kalashnikov copy with a forward hand grip and futuristic muzzle, as the standard weapon of the Afghan police. It has received most of its projected 55,600 AMD-65s via its foreign military sales programs, according to data provided by Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
An additional 10,000 Kalashnikov knockoffs were transferred in 2006 to Afghanistan from Slovenia. At least some weapons being handed out, based on an examination of the shipping containers and rifles this spring in Afghanistan, are inexpensive Chinese clones.
Similarly, in Iraq (which once had its own Kalashnikov plant, built with communist help) the United States scrounged or purchased more than 185,000 Kalashnikov-style rifles and light machine guns for Iraqi security forces from 2003 and 2006, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
It did so without buying a single weapon from Russia, which, as creator of the underlying design that all automatic Kalashnikovs share, regards itself as the rightful owner of an informal but global brand.
These transfers have alarmed and irritated Russian officials and arms merchants, and split the AK-47's 60th birthday celebrations between parties and bitter pleas.
With events that began in early July and will continue into August, the Kremlin and its arms-export agency are feting both a family of weapons and the man credited with their creation, Mikhail Kalashnikov, who at 87 has proved to be as durable as the rifles that bear his name.
Even Kalashnikov himself is venting his dismay over proliferation without Russian profit. "I take them into my hands and, my goodness, the marks are foreign," he said of the knockoffs the Soviet Union once championed. "Yes, they look alike. But as to reliability and durability, they do not meet the high standards of our military."
Without these controversies, the celebrations might have had a familiar feel. The AK-47 and its derivatives, first tested in the forests outside of Moscow six decades ago, have been common on battlefields and in Soviet and revolutionary iconography for two generations. Kalashnikov long ago became a hero of the proletariat.
By the fall of the Soviet Union, their global saturation was complete. Soviet students practiced assembling and disassembling Kalashnikovs in the 10th grade. Soviet statues clutched them with muscular, thick-handed grips. Almost anyone who might fight the West or its partners had been eligible for automatic-rifle shipments from the communist bloc, or even a rifle or ammunition plant.
Every self-respecting communist revolutionary and even allies of convenience, from Fidel Castro to Yasser Arafat to Idi Amin, eventually had their Kalashnikov stockpiles and Kalashnikov poses, never mind the body counts.
The testimonials this month have celebrated Russia's version of this history. Depending on your point of view, these rifles have been either a revolutionary's trusted partner or a lethal instrument of proxy war, terror and crime. The chosen speakers, hand-picked by Russian officials, have chosen the former line.
"On behalf of all my brethren who died in the anti-American war to liberate our country, we thank you for inventing this weapon," Senior Colonel To Xuan Hue, the defense attaché from Vietnam, told Kalashnikov at one celebration.
Group Captain Biltim Chingono, the defense attaché from Zimbabwe, also sidestepped the rifle's checkered reputation, saying that in his country's civil war it had proved "to be the mightier and decisive freedom pen."
In Russian circles, little praise is being spared. "The famous Kalashnikov assault rifle has become not only an example of daring innovative thought but also a symbol of the talent and creative genius of our people," President Vladimir Putin said in a decree.
At the same events, Russian officials and arms manufacturers are clamoring over who should be allowed to put Kalashnikov rifles on the market.
Some arguments are based on quality, and Russia claims, without offering evidence, that the copies and clones are not as well made as the genuine article. There is some support for this on black markets in Iraq, where the Russian Kalashnikovs often fetch higher prices than their clones, although whether the rifles are better or simply more coveted is not clear.
Other arguments are rooted in what the Russians claim is law, as the arms industry insists that the factories that the Kremlin once sponsored, and now are in sovereign, post-Soviet countries, have no right to manufacture or sell items of Soviet design.
"More than 30 foreign companies, private and state based, continue the illegal manufacturing and copying of small arms," said Sergey Chemezov, the former KGB officer and confidant of Putin's who directs Rosoboronexport, the state arms-marketing agency. "They undermine the reputation of the Kalashnikov."
So far, few customers have paid notice. The largest customer in the market, the United States, has purchased whatever weapons it sees fit, coloring the AK-47's 60th birthday, like much of Kalashnikov history, with another angry struggle.
"We cannot tolerate the situation when only 10 percent of the Kalashnikovs are manufactured legally," said Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister. "We cannot stand for this. We must fight."
<http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38323> AFGHANISTAN: Soviet-Era Weapons Handy for Taliban By Tahir Qadiry
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Jun 26 (IPS) - While United States officials accuse Iran of arming a resurgent Taliban, officials here say the weapons are actually part of vast caches left behind by the Soviet army that fought a nine-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in 1988.
Ustad Basir Arifi, secretary for the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme in northern Afghanistan, told IPS that weapons abandoned by the Soviet Union there are now being moved by professional smugglers to the southern provinces where the Taliban Islamist movement has its stronghold.
"Huge caches of weapons remained with the people from the Soviet Union period. These are now being smuggled to the south of Afghanistan. These weapons are bought in the north of Afghanistan and smuggled to the south to be used against government and foreign forces," Arifi said.
According to Arifi, security officials have on several occasions intercepted weapons being smuggled to the south. He said the DIAG has urged the government to take firm measures to avoid all this.
Abdul Aziz Ahmad Zai, the chief of DIAG, said his group was "very concerned over the issue. It shows that the Taliban are being fortified."
Zai did not rule out the possibility of weapons originating from outside Afghanistan. "Smugglers could be bringing weapons from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north. A good transit point could be Badakhshan province," he said without mentioning Iran.
Zai said powerful syndicates were carrying out the smuggling. "However, our security officials and the Interior Ministry are working very actively in this regard," he added.
According to Zai, the recent riots in northern Jowzjan province were an indicator of the fact that weapons were freely available to people. He also said that there still were armed groups in the north of Afghanistan. "It is a very great concern for us that there are lots of illegal armed groups in the north," he said.
Gen. Abdul Manan, representative of the defence ministry in the DIAG programme, said the government has been able to collect 70,000 heavy and light weapons from the whole country under the DDR and DIAG programmes. But he believes that at least a million more pieces were in the hands of armed groups in the north.
A gun smuggler operating from the Balkh province district told IPS that he has been in the business for the last two years. The Pashto-speaking, bearded man who spoke on condition of anonymity said he regularly comes to the north to buy different kinds of weapons. "I have employed people to collect weapons from people who have them and these are ferried to the south."
"I have my customers in Kandahar. When the weapons reach there, they come and receive it. I make good profit. I can buy an AK47 for 200 dollars in the north and sell it for 400 dollars in the south," he added. Occasionally he smuggles explosives as well.
Ahmad Shah, 45, a resident of Chemtal district in the Balkh province freely admitted to supplying the smugglers with guns. "I earn my living through running this business," he told IPS.
Atta Mohammad Nur, the governor of Balkh province, neither accepts nor rejects the fact that the weapons are being smuggled to the south. "It could be right. Insurgents are doing their utmost to disrupt life in the country. They could be smuggling weapons from north to the south," he said.
Rohullah Samun, spokesman for the Jowzjan governor, accepts that vast amount of weapons still exist in the province. "People do have weapons. There are lots of illegal armed militias in Jowzjan and its neighbouring provinces. Some of the warlords are regrouping," he said.
The reference was to Abdorrashid Dostum, one of Afghanistan's most formidable warlords. Dostum, who once supported the Soviets, has had a hand in the many regime changes that this war-torn country has seen over the last three decades and retains enormous influence in Jowzjan.
Dostum was among leaders who helped the U.S.-led forces to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001. Until recently he was regarded as the strongman of the north but his role has been reduced to that of being a military adviser to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.
On Jun. 13, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN television in Paris that there was "irrefutable evidence" that Iran was supplying weapons to the Taliban.
Ironically, the Taliban owes its origins largely to Mujahideen (freedom) fighters that were once armed and backed by the U.S. against communist rule in Afghanistan and the Soviet occupation. (END/2007)
-- Yoshie