Their is currently an insurgency being fought in Northern Sinai between the Egyptian military and security forces with ISIS’ branch “Wilayat Sainaa” (Sinai Province). We have found materials published by Egypt’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior that has listed some of the interesting gear and weaponry captured from ISIS. This includes World War Two era weaponry, DIY weapons, and what appears to be a single modified M1 helmet that could possibly have been the property of the Israeli Defense Forces once upon a time (this will be covered in a later article); this brings up the question: how much gear and weaponry were looted from battlefields by the locals during the conflicts between Egypt and Israel. In this article, we will present some of the rather exotic World War Two era weaponry while saving the DIY materials for a future article.
(Note: While World War Two era weaponry is quite a broad term that encompasses firearms still being used by modern-day armies such as the M2 Browning and the DShK heavy machine guns; this article will focus on small arms that are no longer in production, extremely rare to be acquired on the civilian and black markets and are not modern-day replicas.)
Within modern Arab history we have examples where women carried arms and fought as well.