The Gun (76 page)

12.
OTIA 6129 Technical Report, bullet, ball. Report a.k.a. “Preliminary Technical Report, Egyptian 7.62mm, ball.”

13.
Neil C. Livingston and David Halevy,
Inside the P.L.O.
(New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990), p. 38.

14.
On visits in the United States, Kalashnikov has been gracious about the M-16, and complimented Eugene Stoner in person. Later, he placed flowers on Stoner’s grave. But Kalashnikov is both competitive and attuned to his audiences. In Russia, away from Americans, he routinely criticized the American rifle. A sample, from public remarks at Rosoboronexport’s offices in Moscow in April 2006, in the presence of the author: “They said that an American soldier would never take a Soviet AK-47 assault rifle in his hands. Oh how they lied! In Vietnam, the American soldiers threw away their capricious M-16s and took a Soviet AK-47 assault rifle from a killed Vietnamese, counting on captured ammunition. It all did happen, because the conditions in Vietnam were not as clean as conditions in the States where the M-16 works normally. Why am I talking about the past? You see it every day on TV. In Iraq, they openly show Americans with my machine guns, my assault rifles.”

15.
The theoretical range gains were offset to a degree by the short distance between the front and rear sights of the AK-74. This reduced accuracy with iron sights is a simple matter of geometry, and one of the trade-offs associated with having a shorter barrel.

16.
Hogg and Weeks,
Military Small Arms,
p. 271.

17.
Similar processes were at work elsewhere. In the 1960s, the Israeli military carried the Fabrique Nationale FAL automatic rifle. The FAL was a European competitor against the M-14 during tests in the United States in the 1950s. Like the M-14, it fired the standard NATO cartridge. The Israeli soldiers found it unsatisfactory, due to its heavy weight, its powerful recoil, and its performance shortcomings in the dusty conditions of war in the Middle East. After the Six Day War, the Israelis set out to find a better weapon. They were intrigued by the Kalashnikov’s performance in the hands of their Arab enemies, and in the ensuing contest between arms two designers for Israeli Military Industries, Yisrael Galili and Yaacov Lior, submitted an assault rifle that knocked off elements of the AK-47 but chambered for the same American round fired by the M-16—the .223. The result—the Galil—was a fine example of convergence: the Soviet rifle design made to the American cartridge. It was fielded in the early 1970s. The rifle did not enjoy especially high popularity with Israeli soldiers, who at about the same time as the Galil became available were also issued American M-16s, which by then were largely debugged and were considerably lighter than the Galil.

18.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 431.

19.
Author’s visit to Kurya, 2004.

20.
Anthony Sampson,
The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed,
(New York: Viking Press, 1977), pp. 28–29.

21.
New York Times Magazine,
September 24, 1967.

22.
Ian Johnston, “Death of a Despot, Buffoon and Killer,”
Scotsman,
August 17, 2003.

23.
Mustafa Mirzeler and Crawford Young, “Pastoral Politics in the Northeast Periphery
in Uganda: AK-47 as Change Agent,”
Journal of Modern African Studies
38, 2000, pp. 416–19.

24.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 17.

25.
From “Programma Doprizyvnoi Podgotovki Yunoshei,” published by the Ministry of Defense of the Soviet Union.

26.
“Protocol of Pre-Draft Youth Competitions of Pripyat School No. 1.” The handwritten ledger of student performance was found by the author in June 2005 in the gymnasium of the school. Translated by Nikolay Khalip.

27.
Small Arms Weapons Systems, Part One: Main Text,
published in May 1966 by the U.S. Army Combat Developments Command, Experimentation Command, Fort Ord, Table 4-1.

28.
Similarly, a contest between two Russian soldiers at Mikhail Kalashnikov’s eighty-fifth birthday celebrations in Izhevsk in 2004 was won by a soldier who disassembled and reassembled his Kalashnikov in twenty-six seconds. Author’s observation.

29.
Many sources describe the system that armed Afghan insurgents against the Soviet Union. This was condensed from Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
Afghanistan—The Bear Trap: The Defeat of a Superpower
(Havertown, Pa.: Casemate, 1992).

30.
Ibid., p. 109.

31.
Lawrence J. Whelan, “Weapons of the FMLN—Part Three: Database Overview,”
Small Arms World Report,
Vol. 3, Nos. 1 and 2, February 1992. Published by the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security, pp. 1–9.

32.
Mao Tse-Tung,
On Guerrilla Warfare,
transl. Samuel B. Griffith II (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 83.

33.
Lawrence J. Whelan, “Weapons of the FMLN—Part Two: The Logistics of an Insurgency,”
Small Arms World Report,
Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1991. Published by the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security, p. 3. Also “Weapons of the FMLN,”
Small Arms World Report,
Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1990, p. 3.

34.
“Weapons of the FMLN,”
Small Arms World Report,
Vol. 1, No. 4, August 1990, p. 3.

35.
David Schiller, “Security Problems After Germany’s Reunification,” in
News from the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security,
Vol. 2, No. 2, February 1991, pp. 3–4.

36.
Center for Peace and Disarmament Education/Saferworld, “Turning the Page: Small Arms and Light Weapons in Albania,” December 2005, p. 6.

37.
Personal communication to author from an international arms dealer in Ukraine.

38.
There are many accounts of Minin’s deals with Liberia. The facts here are condensed from the work of two international arms-transfer researchers, Brian Wood and Sergio Finardi, in Chapter 1 of
Developing a Mechanism to Prevent Illict Brokering in Small Arms and Light Weapons—Scope and Implications,
published by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2007, pp. 4–6.

39.
Interview with Patrick Okwera.

40.
Heike Behrend,
Alice Lakwena & the Holy Sprits: War in Northern Uganda 1986–97
(Oxford: James Currey Ltd., 1999), p. 47.

41.
Ibid., pp. 59–60.

42.
From “L.R.A. Religious Beliefs,” an unpublished twelve-page manuscript prepared primarily by Captain Ray Apire, a former LRA commander and spiritual leader who defected from the LRA, and Major Jackson Achama, a former LRA administrator and “technician.” Edited by Lieutenant Colonel R. W. Skow, a former defense and army attaché at the U.S. embassy in Kampala.

43.
Ibid. Interview with Captain Apire.

44.
Author’s interviews with more than a dozen former LRA members and officers.

45.
Interview with Lieutenant Colonel F. A. Alero.

46.
Interview with Richard Opiyo, a child soldier in the LRA for six years.

47.
Interview with Ray Apire, former LRA officer.

48.
Interview with Dennis Okwonga, a child soldier in the LRA for slightly less than two and a half years.

49.
Nearly two dozen students’ or instructors’ notebooks from several camps were collected in Afghanistan by the author and by David Rhode, a foreign correspondent for the
New York Times,
in late 2001. See further, C. J. Chivers and David Rhode, “The Jihad Files: Al Qaeda’s Grocery Lists and Manuals of Killing” and “The Jihad Files: Afghan Camps Turn Out Holy War Guerrillas and Terrorists,”
New York Times,
March 17–18, 2002. For a detailed description of one of the notebooks, a 190-page handwritten record made by a student in a camp run by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, see “A Dutiful Recruit’s Notebook: Lesson by Lesson Toward Jihad,” by the same authors,
New York Times,
March 18, 2002.

50.
Kofi Annan, A. “Small Arms, Big Problems,”
International Herald Tribune,
July 10, 2001.

51.
Author’s observation at gun show.

52.
Mirzeler and Young, “Pastoral Politics,” p. 419.

53.
Michael Bhatia and Mark Sedra,
Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict. Armed Groups, Disarmament and Security in Post-war Society
(New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 42. The historical trends in Kalashnikov prices are from this work, published in Chapter 2.

54.
Author’s observations and interviews in Iraq in 2003.

55.
Author’s interviews with Chechen insurgents in the Caucasus, 2005.

56.
Author’s interview in Norway in 2008 with Sharpuddi Israilov, a Chechen who had a vehicle impounded in this way before fleeing Chechnya.

57.
Yousaf and Adkin,
Afghanistan–The Bear Trap,
p. 92.

58.
Author’s observations and interviews with arms dealers, customers, and intelligence officials in Iraq in 2006. For a further discussion, see “Black Market Weapons Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos,” by C. J. Chivers,
New York Times,
December 10, 2006.

59.
This is a commonly cited version, attributed to James R. Whelan, in his 1989 book
Out of the Ashes: The Life, Death and Transfiguration of Democracy in Chile
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989.) Other accounts differ, including one that claims the inscription read: “For Salvador, From his comrade-in-arms Fidel.”

60.
Like many of the legends of the automatic Kalashnikov, this account has been the subject of considerable dispute.

61.
Author’s interviews with Palestinian fighters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2002.

62.
Livingston and Halevy,
Inside the P.L.O.,
p. 278.

63.
Interview with author in 2008.

64.
Margarita Antidze, “Georgian Army Replaces Kalashnikov with U.S. rifle,” Reuters, January 18, 2008.

65.
Author’s observation and interviews with Russian soldiers during Russian-Georgian War, August 2008.

66.
From a memorandum in Mullah Omar’s laptop, obtained in Afghanistan in 2001 by Alan Cullison, a reporter for the
Wall Street Journal,
who allowed the documents to be reviewed by the author. The contents of one particular memo—“In the name of God, most Merciful, most Benificent, Thank God and prayers and peace upon the prophet, Following is the cost of preparing one mujahid with weapons and costume”—are reproduced here.

67.
“SUBJECT: Blue Lantern Level 3: Pre-License End-Use Check on License 50129249, United States State Department.” Correspondence, unclassified, between the U.S. Embassy in Tblisi and Washington.

68.
Author’s interviews with officials at Colt Defense LLC, 2010.

69.
Personal communication to author from Timothy Sheridan, who brokered the
American purchase of more than one hundred thousand Kalashnikovs for Iraqi and Afghan forces.

70.
Ellsworth S. Grant,
The Colt Armory: A History of Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Inc.
(Lincoln, R.I.: Mowbray Publishing, 1995), p. 180.

71.
Personal communication to author by Francis Olero Okwonga, former lieutenant colonel in the LRA and a commander of Kony’s security detachment.

72.
United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, July 2001.

73.
Personal communication to author from Dr. Michael Brabeck. The section covering Mahmoud’s and his friend’s wounds was assembled from multiple interviews with participants, including Karzan Mahmoud, Balan Faraj Karim, Ramazan Hama-Raheem, and Qais Ibrahim Khadir.

74.
Author’s interviews with Karzan Mahmoud in Ottawa in 2007.

75.
Edward Ezell, “Draft Trip Report, Izhevsk,” November 6–14, 1994.

76.
Author’s interviews with officials at Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms-export agency, in 2004 and 2007.

77.
Interview with Mikhail Kalashnikov by Bryon MacWilliams, correspondent in Russia for
Newsweek
magazine, in Izhevsk in 2004. Mr. MacWilliams shared notes of his interview with the author.

78.
Nadia Popova, “Russia’s Obama Offers Change Kirov Can Believe In,”
St. Petersburg Times,
May 5, 2009. See also “Kalashnikov Producer to Pay Wages in Sugar,”
Russia Today,
April 10, 2009.