I recently wrote a blog post for ARES (Armament Research Services), Silah Report is a subsidiary of ARES, about weapons captured by the Taliban during their 2021 offensive which toppled the Afghan Government. You can check out the article here.
This article will go over some of the modifications made to the weapons captured from ANSF (Afghan Security Forces) by the Taliban during their 2021 offensive. These modifications appear to have been made by the ANSF before they were captured.
During a short but ultimately eventful visit to the regions of Suwwat (Swat Valley) and Kohistan, located in the far Northern uppermost areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, in late October 2021, a Hungarian-esque oddity was discovered lurking amongst the tall evergreen trees and majestic rocky mountains just a few kilometres outside of the capital city of Suwwat, Mingora. This mechanical contraption of metal and wood found in the arms of a security guard at a trout farm was very reminiscent of the well-known 7.62×39mm Hungarian AK-variant; the AMD-65 carbine, at an initial glance.
The NSV heavy machine gun (Utyos/Utes) is one of the most recognized and respected heavy machine guns on the battlefield today. The original NSV was designed by Grigory Nikitin, Yuri Sokolov, and Vladimir Volkov and produced by a few different Soviet satellite states.[i] The most well-known of these NSV manufacturers is the Western Kazakh Machine-Building Company (ZKMK), formerly MetallistJSC, a manufacturing plant in Uralsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (modern-day Kazakhstan).[ii] In this article we’ll examine the history of the Kazakh NSV.
A long-lost video filmed by fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, once thought lost to us who’ve been following the arms trade in the Pak-Afghan region over the last decade and longer, has recently resurfaced after a few years of it being pushed off the world-wide-web and into the deep reaches of the online archives. It was once again shared with us by our colleague Mick who runs an OSINT feed, much to our jubilation.
The Sterling submachine gun is a well renowned submachine gun of British design by George William Patchett – the head arms designer at Sterling Armaments Company in Dagenham, England, UK. The weapon is a select-fire, blowback operated submachine gun, utilising advanced primer ignition design and is chambered in the widely used 9×19mm cartridge. It is fondly remembered as a very reliable and rugged platform to this day by its users. It was initially adopted by the UK armed forces starting around 1953 replacing the earlier and more infamous STEN submachine gun and ended up being removed from active service in around 1994, replaced by the 5.56×45mm SA80 self-loading rifle. This platform of SMG has been used by a wide variety of countries across the globe and has also been manufactured by the UK, Canada, India and also Chile.
A number of images were shared with us which originate from one of the more famous dealers in the long running manufacturing and arms trading town of the ‘Khyber’ region in Pakistan – Darra Adam Khel. These images showed a bunched-up pile of non-barrelled actions for a number of bolt-action patterns, a dream for many collectors and shooters in places such as Europe and the USA.
The Thompson models 1928, 1928A1, M1 and M1A1 submachine guns, famously also nicknamed the ‘Tommy Gun’, are a heavy weight milled all-steel submachine gun design, chambered in the U.S. military’s then standard issue pistol round – the .45 ACP cartridge, and designed in the USA in the wake of World War One. They were first adopted by the U.S. military in a widely used capacity during the World War Two, eventually being supplanted by the cheaper and simpler M3 and M3A1 ‘Grease-Gun’ submachine guns. A small but significant number have also been seen in the Pak-Afghan Region.
Recently, a colleague from Afghan Eye, an independent media organisation covering Afghanistan, shared with us a video uploaded by a Twitter user which purportedly showed an Afghan elder of some renown handling and firing an AK-pattern rifle. The man in question was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
In this episode, Miles and Yousef Riazi discuss in great detail the different types, and quality of Iranian-made small arms and the history of the weapons that are issued to the infantry of the Iranian army. As well as Yousef’s experience dealing with them as a former conscript who served in the Iranian army.
An often-misunderstood subject is how Khyber gunsmiths make their extensive selection of arms in the modern day. A major myth propagated by misinformed persons is the belief that gunsmiths of the Khyber region fabricate the parts for their firearms from scratch, by hand. The truth is, we aren’t living in the early to mid-1900s anymore and these smiths have no need to make these by hand – for the most part and haven’t done so for a few decades now.