One way of finding out what sort of weapons the Taliban favor is to go the usual military route: examine captured arsenals and look for shell casings after a firefight. Or you could just go and talk to the man who apparently sells them their weapons, as* Guardian* reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad recently did. The results were highly instructive.
Abdul-Ahab talked to a man named Hekmat, formerly a shopkeeper but now a wealthy smuggler. Hekmat made his fortune ferrying arms from Central Asia. He also deals in heroin, but prices are down this year, so apparently the real money is in guns. Surprisingly, the hot item is not the plain-vanilla Kalashnikov.
"It's the Kalakov everyone wants," the arms dealer tells Abdul-Ahad. "The Taliban like it because it pierces body armor."
The Kalakov, evidently, is the name the Afghans give to the AK-74, a Russian weapon based on a 5.45mm cartridge. This is confirmed when Hekmat shows the comparatively smaller round for the rifle.
In some ways this should not come as any great surprise. The Soviets designed the 5.45mm round specifically to fight against Western armies who might have body armor, and have upgraded the standard bullets since its introduction in 1974. The original bullet had a mild steel core and a lead tip; a harder steel core was introduced in 1987 and this was enlarged in 1992 to create the 7N10 "improved penetration" round. This will punch through a Kevlar vest, but not hard ceramic inserts.
The AK-74 round has better penetration than the Russian 7.62x39mm round it replaced, as well as improved accuracy. This Japanese video shows that it also penetrates better than a 5.56mm from an M16A1– but only in wood, which doesn't tell us anything about armor-piercing properties.
If some Taliban fighters are apparently seeking to abandon the old 7.62 cartridge for a smaller caliber, there's some irony here: Some commentators have argued that the current NATO 5.56mm -- the standard round for the M16 rifle, M4 carbine and M249 light machine gun-- is not lethal enough. Arguments about the effectiveness (or lack of it) of the 5.56mm round have been going on forever. Many of these go back to the introduction of the M16 in the 1960s, or are based on dubious "experiments" such as casually firing fifteen rounds into a tethered goat.
The U.S. Army Infantry Center carried out a detailed study of the effectiveness of the 5.56mm cartridge. This was prompted by anecdotal reports from Iraq and Afghanistan that the round "overpenetrated," punching a hole right through an enemy combatant who was able to continue fighting. The study looked at several different 5.56mm alternatives as well as the NATO 7.62x51mm (.308 Winchester) used in the old M-14; it found no significant differences in effectiveness at "close quarters battle" ranges of up to fifty meters. It concludes that U.S. forces "are still being provided the best performing weapons and ammunition available."
And if the Guardian report is correct, upgrading the Taliban arsenal with the AK-74 would be expensive. According to Hekmat, a Kalakov that costs $700 in Tajikistan sells for as much as $1,250 in southern Afghan provinces like Helmand. That sounds like a lot of money for a force whose hired help has been dubbed the "$10 Taliban" because of their low rates of pay.
[Photo: Captured AK-74, via HighRoad.org]
See Also:
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: The Taliban Push Back
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: Hansel and Gretel vs. Roadside Bombs ...
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: Helmand's Bomb Fight, Up Close and ...
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: The Perils of Armed Social Work ...
- Danger Room in Afghanistan: A Close Fight, and a Couple of ...
- Afghans Trading AK-47s for M16s
