For Syria’s Antigovernment Fighters, A Saudi Purchase of Croatian Arms.

For weeks we had been watching the spread through the civil war in Syria of weapons made in the former Yugoslavia, and been admiring the work of Eliot Higgins (a.ka. Brown Moses) as he tried mapping their appearances in the videos of varied and far-flung armed groups. At one point, two weeks back, the NYT had assigned and accepted an At War blog post from Eliot and considered putting it on the NYT site.

Then we held up. By that time we were almost certain we knew who was buying and shipping in the weapons. We decided to try to show not just the terminal end of the arms pipeline, as others were working on that, and Eliot had already done the heavy lifting there. We decided to bear down on the other side — from where the weapons were coming, and to develop a richer sense of who was paying for and moving them. That took time. The results are in today’s NYT — a sketch of a more activist approach to helping the rebels, as Sunni Arab states funnel old Balkan stockpile into Syria, under Washington’s (at a minimum) watchful eye.  A backgrounder by Eliot as he describes this latest bout of arm-spotting (and the methodology and meaning in the appearance of unusual arms) is here.

Thank you, Eliot, for your patience, and your fine eye, and for creating an opportunity for merging new and old forms of reporting into a fresh look at recent events in what is becoming a more active regional war. 

One note:  An interesting question to pursue in the months and years ahead will be the future whereabouts and uses of the Croatian-sourced arms. Many arming programs start with good intentions, and later look naive, or even foolish. Why? Because weapons tend to move liquidly with time. These newly arrived weapons in Syria may well have been intended for nationalist and secular fighters. The briefings in Washington may have strongly emphasized that point. If history is a guide — and it is — then with time you can expect them to spread to others’ hands. For future researchers, three words: follow the guns.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Screen grabs from rebel videos of the type of weapon that gave the deal away.

Mikhail Kalashnikov Hospitalized.

Mikhail Timofeyovich Kalashnikov, the man credited by the Soviet Union with designing the AK-47 and many of its descendant arms (including the AKM, PK, AK-74 lines) is in intensive care, complaining of general weakness. Mr. Kalashnikov has proven over the decades to be almost as durable as the weapons that bear his name. Trotted out for years as an attraction and reliable source of nostalgia by Vladimir V. Putin’s arms-export agency, he has been scarcely seen in public this year.  This is not surprising, considering that he is 93 years old, and had kept a busy schedule since the Great Patriotic War.  

Mr. Kalashnikov’s fatigue will lead to no small amount of reflection about his roles and his legacy, as it should. We will revisit some of the related themes soon. But first we have more to file from Syria, where his namesakes are, as ever in the wars of our time, in uncountable abundance. And his influences have resurfaced of late in other ways, as the AR-15, a weapon created and mass-produced as the United States’ answer to the AK line, has spurred a fresh discussion about military firearms, and our lives, following the school massacre in Newtown.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Mr. Kalashnikov, at a Kremlin appearance in 2005, just before sitting for another interview for THE GUN. By Nikolai Khalip. On this day he appeared with his diamond-and-gold Avtomat Kalashnikova tie clip, an incongruous little memento that he often wore when not in his ceremonial uniform, which was bedecked with medals from the Soviet and Russian states.

New Evidence of MANPADS Use By Syrian Rebels

Two new videos suggest that Syria’s rebels are now putting to work their supply — quantity still unknown — of heating-seeking, shoulder-fired anti-aicraft missiles.  The At War blog, which has covered the incremental movement of weapons of the commonly-called Stinger class through the conflict, examines what today’s development might mean.

Context:

In one video, the system is an SA-7. In the other, the type cannot be seen.

The SA-7 is an old system, and much less capable against modern military aircraft than its younger cousins.  Also, as yet there is no publicly circulating evidence that the rebels have these weapons in large quantities.

Absent further information or fuller insight, the material that surfaced today marks a predictable step. If you were a Syrian Air Force pilot or air crew member, it would certainly be unsettling. It also would be nothing you would not have anticipated as government bases changed hands and SA-7s or other anti-air systems were picked up by antigovernment fighters as the war has dragged on.

In other words, this is not necessarily a game-changer. That said, if more are seen, and in a manner suggesting they are widely distributed and tactically effective, then this moment might later seem to have been significant. It is for now too soon to say.

With a nod to Damien Spleeters, for another arms-beat collaboration. 

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Screen grab of a fighter with a complete SA-7.

Pinteresting Photographs and Notes.

A few days ago we opened a Pinterest account to complement this blog and its related Twitter feed and Linked-In, Google+ and Facebook pages. The associated Pinterest page, thus far, is organized thematically and in ways that regular visitors here will recognize. Its boards include Arms Trafficking, Arms & Ordnance Identification, Unsafe Handling, DIY Arms, and others. The boards will start small but become more populated with time. More boards will follow as the page takes shape. 

We hope Pinterest can serve two primary purposes.

First, that it can provide a related index to this blog (although if you hit on the oval-and-arrow beside the RSS symbol in the upper right corner of this page, you’ll find a reasonably functional chronological presentation of all posts on THE GUN).

Second, and more importantly, we hope Pinterest will provide an organized way to post and share arms-trade data with other researchers, and arms-safety information with readers and the public. Why? Often, arms-trafficking research and ordnance identification relies on pooling information and resources. The fairly small circle of competent and ethical researchers can be collaborative and collegial, and their informal networks can lead to solid conclusions and analysis that otherwise would not exist. (One example, of many.) 

Pinterest, ideally, can provide a board to post images that others might want or use in their work (I’ll put up two examples shortly), and the contents can remain there indefintely to stimulate projects and encourage others elsewhere. In an age when many arms transfers remain almost completely non-transparent, data often has to be assembled - cartridge by cartridge, label by label, serial number by serial number - by the few people in the field troubling to take on this unglamorous task.

We have only two requests. First, that those who use the work responsibly cite it. And second, that those who document arms and ordnance in the field, or encourage or use the efforts of other people, will make their records safely and insist others do so, too. It has become scary out there, in this social-media age, with people rushing toward unexploded ordnance to make images and video that are then cast out onto the internet to score political or propaganda points. 

We’ll be adding much more about this last point soon, with a group of concerned friends.

One last note: Pinterest, like this blog, is a work in progress. Readers’ suggestions are welcome. Send them to thegun.book@gmail.com. 

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Home-made hand grenade, for the Pinterest DIY Arms board, made in part from an Al-Bustan tomato paste can (al-Bustan means “the garden” in Arabic). By the author. Eastern Libya. Last year.

Those “Saudi Arabian” Arms Shipments to Syria.

On the At War blog, further details of the apparent transfer by Saudi Arabia of M1943 cartridges to antigovernment fighters in Syria. Seconding and corroborating the fine work by Damien Spleeters and Nic R. Jenzen-Jones. 

Once again: The evidence available from the field thus far points to Saudi Arabia providing, via Ukraine, at least a limited amount of small-arms ammunition to fighters seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Sardine can from the Lugansk Cartridge Works, in Ukraine, matching data on a shipping label documented by the BBC in Aleppo. By the author. Jebel al-Zawiya. Last month. (The can had been used to ship 7.62x39-millimeter ammunition for Kalashnikov rifles.)

Further Sightings of Repurposed Motorcycle Brakes on Rebel Gun Mounts in Syria.

The novel use of a disc brakes taken from motorcycles and put to service on rebel heavy machine gun mounts has become one of the street-level technical adaptations of the Syrian war. We’re still not certain where or when this practice originated; one Libyan activist has suggested to us that it might have appeared last year in the war to overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi and his ruling clique. But that’s not yet established as a verified fact — the activist said he would scour his sources and old photographs to see if there is a preexisting North African record. We’ll revisit that possibility if and when supporting evidence turns up.

What does it mean for Syria? We’ve covered already the utility of this improvisation, on the At War blog. And we’ve noted as well that technical merits aside, what is most interesting about this system is its appearance in rebel fighting units that are geographically and socially distinct from each other, which suggests a significant degree of knowledge-sharing among those seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Whether this sharing was organic or spurred along by outsiders is an open question. We don’t know, and we won’t pretend to know. But it certainly suggests that powerful currents run beneath the surface of this rebellion.

Yesterday we posted a sighting from Bab al-Hawa, by Damien Spleeters, a Belgian journalist and arms researcher. Today we share yet another sighting, shown above. This one was sent here by Bjorn Holst Jespersen, of Copenhagen, one of the busiest and most careful arms spotters of the Syrian war. (Check out Bjorn’s .processing blog and prepare to be impressed; one of the now firmly established developments surrounding the Syrian war has been consistent excellence of some on the untrained and informal arms spotters, who often beat the pros with both timeliness and accuracy.)

This particular sighting is listed at its source as being from Haram, a small Syrian village beside the border with Turkey. Zoom in on the details and you will see that the handle arrangement here is different than others — it’s a fabricator’s weld job, not a set of handlebars from a small motorcycle — but the underlying components are otherwise the same.  Bjorn also sent in a new sighting of a similar system in Aleppo. (Thank you, Bjorn.)

As we noted yesterday, heavy machine guns are a highly visible and photogenic weapon system. They tend to get photographed at a disproportionate rate, thus you might have the impression that they are everywhere. In Syria, their use among rebels is still relatively uncommon, simply because the antigovernment fighters have far fewer of these systems than they would like. But the recurring sightings of this adaptation form a useful indicator; you can be sure that many other forms of collaboration are occurring, but do not leave such a remarkable and readily observable visual trace. And so we’ll remind readers again: We do not follow weapons simply for the sake of following weapons. This site is not for buffs, or for arms promotion. Those inclined toward gun porn can get plenty of gun centerfold shots somewhere else. We follow weapons in the service of trying to illuminate what weapons can tell us, if only we look.

What’s This?

It’s a workshop-grade artillery round, for a workshop-made artillery piece being manufactured by the Free Syrian Army. Crafted by machinists, in part from standard pipe and fittings imported from China and in part with the help of a simple foundry for casting the fuze body in the nose, all aided by the basic chemistry skills required to brew its explosive fill, it is a weapon that is both a testament to the anti-government forces’ resourcefulness and their shortage of conventional arms. It speaks as well to revolution by other means, and how a guerilla force organizes for a long war, taking contributions from all quarters.

Soon on the NYT, a review and tour of the many means by which Syria’s growing uprising has armed itself to fight a better-armed foe. With pix by Bryan Denton.