Angry Planet - What Gold Plated AK-47s Tell Us About War

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

As I keep saying, war has changed. It’s the recent theme of War College. And it’s not just conflict, but the way people cover conflict. Increasingly, journalists and researchers are using open source intelligence, social media, and academic disciplines such as history and anthropology to explain the complicated conflicts of the modern world.One of the groups doing that is Silah Report. “Silah Report is a non-commercial research project exploring contemporary and historical small arms & light weapons in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA), and Central Asia regions.”Here to talk about that work is Miles Vining and Adham Sharif. Vining is the co-founder of Silah Report and Sharif is its Podcast Coordinator and author specializing in Egyptian small arms history.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. You know, if you're really that powerful, you have an army that fights for you. You lead an army that does these things. You don't, you're not out there, you know, slugging it away in the trenches and in the ditches. You're not supposed to, that's not your role. Your role is to lead that army and to encourage people. You're not going to be fighting. And that Excalibur item that you have, that's your piece of power. Other people fight, not you. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College.

I am your host, Matthew Galt. As I keep saying, war has changed. It's the recent theme of War College. And it's not just conflict, but the ways people cover conflict. Increasingly, journalists and researchers are using open source intelligence, social media, and academic disciplines such as history and anthropology to explain the complicated conflicts of the modern world. One of the groups doing that is CILA Report. CLA Report is a non-commercial research project exploring contemporary and historical small arms and light weapons in the Middle East and North Africa and Central Asia regions. Here to talk about that work is Miles Vining and Adam Sharif.

Finning is the co-founder of Sila Report, and Sharif is its podcast coordinator and author specializing in Egyptian Small Arms history. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Matt. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Miles, let's get some basics out of the way. You're the co-founder of this project. What is it exactly? Yeah, so Sila Report began and was born where I saw a sort of niche, a sort of need, a sort of capability.

gap within researching, within publishing, where for me personally, I was at this period of my life where I was in university, and I was intensely fascinated by, first of all, Afghanistan because of my role there as a Marine in 2011, and I was interested in the languages of Pashto and Dari and history and culture, and then also as an extension of that with Islam in the Middle East as well at Indiana University. But at the same time, I was also in terms of intensely fascinated by small arms. I had had a side career, so to say, which has become my full career now, with looking at small arms, researching, writing. I started writing for the Small Arms Review magazine, Small Arms Defense Journal, firearm blog, Shepard Nudes eventually,

and Armament Research Services as well. And what I saw was a huge gap in that initially you had folks who knew about the guns, but they wouldn't understand everything else when it came to looking at the small arms in these regions. They wouldn't understand the names, the particular aneur, the particular acronisms, the odd nicknames, the why these things were important. And on the flip side, you had people who understood that stuff. And they could, you know, they were fluent Dari, Pashto, Arabic speakers. And they knew this stuff. They've been studying it. These were my professors. These were other experts. These are journalists and et cetera. And they knew this stuff very well. And they knew the dynamics of the region and they understood working out with a lot of the people.

But when it came to the small arms, they didn't understand that. And they would see, okay, you know, they could look at a picture of whatever of, you know, as a conflict in Afghanistan or in Iraq. And they'd say, okay, yeah, that's, you know, in Iraqi, whatever, an Afghan, whatever. And they'd say, yeah, whatever, who cares about the gun? But then the gun people would look at that same picture and they'd say, that is a super rare, super-intense, you know, super fascinating small arm. But then when I would ask them, okay, how do you think it got there?

you know, the answer was always like, well, I have no idea. I don't know how to answer that. And that's the point at which Silaf Report was born, in that we're taking a look through the lens of, you know, of history, of culture, of religion, of politics, of language, of linguistics, of online stuff, of what we value the most of, of primary source stuff and actually getting to the point of origin of a lot of these places and finding out more about these things and then writing about it, reporting about it. Trying to get stuff published. We've recently had our first article in an academic journal in coordination with Aries and with a book coming out by Ares on Kabul Arsenal Martini-Henaries. And we're using all that together to have this blend of a story to try to answer some of these fascinating predicaments and mysteries and try to make sense of a lot of what's out there. All right. What is Armament Research Services and how is it connected? So Armament Research Services is a research group that focuses on small arms. They do a lot of work for, you know, they've done work for NGOs, for governments, for various organizations beforehand. And we recently joined forces with Aries last year. And so we fall under Aries in terms of organization-wise, and it's been really good because we've benefited because our quality has gone up.

We've gotten better editors. we're able to be put more in touch with more different entities and then people that we can work with to accomplish this stuff. But Aries and Silaf Report, you'll see the Ares reporting on the Ares website. A lot of what Ares does is actually not on the website in that they do a lot of research projects that is outside of the web. The website is an, you know, it's called the Hoplight. It's their blog. It's a showcasing of the material that they have. So.

Adam, how did you get involved in all of this and how would you describe what you do? So basically, I would like to describe myself as a researcher when it comes to small arms, especially in the Middle Eastern region, especially my country, Egypt. And I met miles by pure coincidence, honestly, so to say. I was doing research on the Egyptian military, spoke to a very famous profile, so to say on Twitter, EG Defense Review, and through him I found out about Salah Report, and I got into contact with Miles. And I remember our first discussion being over, the Hakeem rifle. And I remember Miles, you know, seeing a potential in me, and he encouraged me to write about the Hakeem rifle,

and he later on encouraged me to do more for Salah. And he saw some of the materials that I provide and whatnot. At that time, I was doing it for my own personal reasons. I wasn't publishing any of my work. I didn't think someone would care about my work, honestly speaking, before, Salah report. I was doing this for my own knowledge, so to say. And since then, Adam has taken on the role of our podcast coordinator, which he's been killing it at very recently, our past. Ever since the beginning, it was actually his idea to start the podcast. And I was like, you know, I don't know how is this thing going to fly? but we started it and it's been great. And we've had people on there. And this is like sort of the essence of what we really want to get down to.

You know, getting down to the primary source research and asking the questions that we're really fascinated by. The last podcast that we had, we were talking to a hydro-dipper in Idlib that was taking gun parts and other small arms and then hydro-dipping for those who aren't familiar with that. It's essentially a process of where you have a finish applied to the top of a water. base solution and then you put whatever medium you want inside it and you sort of dip it a certain way and then the finish gets applied and then you bake it on and you can do it to any almost any object you know that's you know that can that can take it we can't we get more into it on the podcast there and then the podcast before that we had a in a rocky um self-taught gunsmith um who had actually converted a in a Soviet era RPD light machine gun, which is a 762 by 39 millimeter

belt-fed bipod mounted light machine gun. And he had converted it to make it look like an American or FN Belgian M249 squad automatic weapon. And it wasn't an M249, but it looked like an M249. And we were just quizzing him about that stuff. And that's really what we get into on there. Why would you do that conversion? I got to know. Adam, you did the translation for that and you were talking to him a lot with Marwan. Why don't you kick that off? It's absolutely fascinating before we get to that, to explain that before we started recording with Marwan, that he was speaking with me with an Egyptian dialect. And that's another thing, perhaps someone to a non-Arab, you know, non-Arabic speaker, they will not

notice, but sometimes we interact with different, what you call it, dialects. And for me, it is fascinating to be speaking about small arms to a non-Egyptian, and he's speaking in the Egyptian dialect at first. You know, we're like building bridges, so to say. And then when we started recording, he switched to, you know, to be more official, so to say, formal. He switched to the Iraqi dialect. So anyways, to answer your question, it's because he saw what American gunsmiths are doing, and he believes he could do better. And this is related to the view of Arabs, basically, to the West, being more scientifically advanced, being more sophisticated and whatnot.

But he saw them doing something that he believes he has a potential to surpass, to show that the Iraqi, the Arab, is capable of doing something even better. better if he's given the, you know, the necessary resources, so to say. And he did something very amazing, very impressive. And a lot of people definitely in the community spoke about it. So it's this view of, you know, comparing himself with the West or so, or we can say American, American gunsmiths, the Iraqi gunsmiths versus the American gunsmiths. What are the, the, the, what are the bulk inspirations for a lot of the gunsmiths and a lot of the people that are making the modifications that you speak with. Is it mostly a Western influence, or are there still people that are looking to, you know,

Russia and Russian small arms and kind of Soviet era weapons? Adam, if you can take that one. So it differs from one region to another. So don't really expect customization and modifications to small arms being sold in Saudi Arabia would be the same as in Syria, for example. Syria, it would be more towards functionality than aesthetics, so to say. While in some countries, it would be more towards aesthetics, it's all about the demand in that region. For example, Syria rebels, fighters, freedom fighters, militants, whatever term you want to use,

there would be more of how can we make our weapon more effective on a battlefield? While in Saudi Arabia and even in Yemen, although it's a modern country, it's an exception there, They would want their weapons to be golden-plated. They want their weapons to look good. Some of them don't even want to use their firearms. They want to hang it on their walls, so to say. And regarding whether they're leaning towards Soviet or Russian, small arms, whether it's American, it's fascinating that the Middle East has weapons from everywhere, literally everywhere,

from China to Europe, to America, to Russia, to the Eastern Bloc, you name it. So there is no... Go ahead. Oh, no. So what I just wanted to add on there as a caveat to that question, back in what Adam is saying, is that what's more important to look at, what is important to look at is the supply and demand and what is available. And this is where you see a lot of things like conversions due to the ammunition availability. And this is something you can't see from online, from just.

just looking at pictures and images. And this is something that you really get a feel for on the ground in that there's a basic problem of, okay, you know, we have these rifles, but we have an available stock of these rifles, but there's nothing, we don't have spare parts and we don't have ammunition for them. So, but we do have a great availability of ammunition for these other ones. So, for instance, a lot of the French rifles, we see examples of, you know, Matt 38, you know, bolt action rifles being converted to 762 by 4. 5-4-r-r-rimmed, the Russian PKK and Mosin-Nagat cartridge.

Because there's no more French ammunition left in the region, but there is a plentiful amount of PKK ammunition. Can you read the history of the conflict of a region in its small arms? And what does it tell you about its interactions with the Western world and the, you know, the Eastern powers as well? Yeah. No, absolutely. Adam, why don't you say? Why don't you say something about that?

So for me personally, I agree with you, Mr. Miles, 100% that you can definitely, with some countries at least, read their history through their firearms. If we spoke, for example, about Egypt, if we would go back to while Egypt was a monarchy in its last monarchy days, they went to a Swedish, sorry, not Swedish, Yeah, a Swedish rifle manufacturing company, and they went for the Hakeem, which is originally the longman. I don't know how to pronounce it properly. And at that time, Egypt chose that rifle not based on political leanings or whatnot. Of course, political leanings had to play a role, a limited role.

For example, they didn't go to the Soviet Union who at that time was supporting Israel. for a short time. The Soviet Union played a big role in supporting the new state of Israel and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. So definitely they wouldn't go for Russian stuff, but they went for a European country, and they chose the weapons based on availability of ammunition, which was the 8mm miter-mouser ammunition, which Egypt had a huge stockpile off due to, you know, World War II and they had their own modifications on. So Egypt had at that time was more independent to say when it comes to choosing their own equipment. But then when Egypt, when the monarchy fell and came the military regime, they started leaning towards the Soviet Union. And we see that huge transition from European-centric weaponry to Soviet and Eastern Blank. block weaponry, Warsaw Pact weaponry, starting from, you know, handguns and whatnot, to all the way to tanks and planes.

So it is very interesting that you can read through weaponry, small arms and whatnot, a history of a country's political leaning, so to say. So Egypt in the early 1950s before the coup was more independent, you know, leaning towards the West, so to say. definitely anti-socialist, anti-communist. During Nasr, it was leaning towards the Soviets and socialism. And then Yurings had that after Naume Kippur war, we had Western military equipment coming again. We started by M60 tanks. We started receiving the F4 phantoms.

So you can definitely read through, you know, to a degree, the history of a country through its firearms. And then, so I can add another. Another quick example of that, the history of the M1 grand in Iran. In the 1960s, over 160,000 M1 grants were supplied to the Shah of Iran. And this was just as Adam is talking about with the sort of differences between the Soviets and then going towards each other. Well, the U.S. was trying to sway the Shah, you know, more towards the U.S. side.

and stuff like military equipment sales and foreign military aid was on that list of trying to bring people over. We see this a lot in Jordan where we have, we're researching through cables of Jordanian government officials, you know, sort of quivering on the edge of, you know, hey, U.S., like, we can either go towards the Soviets or we can either go towards you. Who is going to give us a better deal? And it was a very real reality back then. But you see them one grand in Iranian military service.

then it gets replaced by the G3 in the 1970s. G3s begin production in Iran, and when Grands become regulated, the sort of rear-ashelon militia groups. And then Iranian Revolution, Islamic Revolution, takes place in 79. We see the Grand come out again, as a lot of these groups are, you know, taking rifles from armories and old armories and stuff when we see the Grand there. And then we see the Grand during the Iran-Iraq War in service with women's auxiliary use. units that were holding, you know, security positions behind the front line and rear-achlan positions because a lot of the men were at the front and couldn't fight. So we see the grand in use during the war because that's the only thing they have left. And Iran was stretched really thin.

Iran-I-W-WRaw ends, enter into 2001, 2003, OEF and OIF. We see M-1 Grands turning up in al-Qaeda and Taliban weapons caches in Iraq and in Afghanistan because the M-1s from Iran have proliferated to both countries, and they're still around. And we also see examples of Iranian hunters and today still using the M1 Grand. And they're still being caught when, you know, poachers get caught. They get caught with these rifles alongside, you know, Iranian Burno or Mouser rifles as well. So Adam's example of the Hakim and the Iranian example of the M1 Grand, These are, the rifles tell the story of the region and the other way around as well.

All right. This is a question for both of you, because I think you may have different answers. Don, please go first. How does a weapon become a status symbol? Meaning, like, here in America, it is the AR-15, is the status symbol weapon for a certain class of person. What are the status symbol weapons that you're seeing in conflicts in the region in the Middle East? We can write a book about that. Yeah.

There are so many factors involved. Like, for example, for jihadists and militant organizations, especially those following the Salafiihadists, is the AKS 74U, based on seeing their own. leader at one point showing off the weapon all the time. I'm speaking about Beladden. He used to show up with the AKS 74 you and it would be like technically his sidearm. So they made this mental note of Beladden connection, so to say, Beladden and the AKS 74U. While in other countries, so to say, away from organizations and whatnot in militias, it is the most common weapon.

For example, Egypt, it is the AKM, so to say, the Ma'i, AKM, whatever term you want to use for it, because basically the Egyptian Ma'i is a clone of the Russian AKM, with some modifications, so to say. It is the most common weapon. It is a weapon that has been used against Israel for a very long while. It has been with us most of the time during our conflicts with Israel, our modern conflicts. and you would see it along with the

Bursaid, the Egyptian submachine gun which is a copy of the Swedish what's the name again of it Miles? The Swedish the Swedish cat Carl Gustav Yeah the Carl Gustav

Yeah the Swedish Gustav so those two weapons because they are so common and they have been in so many conflict they became like status weapons So in Egypt, we have in Ismailia a monument for the Battle of Ismailia, which is basically the muzzle of an AK, a barrel of an AK with a bayonet attached to it. It's a very large monument.

And you have then other monuments, a statue of Egyptian soldiers carrying Russian anti-tang grenades, and carrying the AK and the Bursaid. That's an example. But sometimes, if we go even back in time, I was still speaking to miles about it, a while ago, my recent, you know, my dad has recently passed away, and I found very old Egyptian pounds

in his wallet, and I saw a picture of Egyptian soldiers carrying Leightonfield rifles. It came from a time where Lee Enfield was the standard, you know, rifle in the Egyptian army, and it was the most common weapon, obviously.

So you'd see it more in our works and whatnot, artwork, so to say. So, yeah, no, status symbols for us are fascinating to look at. The example that Adam mentioned about the A.K.S. 74 U. In Afghanistan, it's known as the Khrinkov or the Shinkov. And that is a poshune name that came about during the war. And this is one of the pieces that I was originally really interesting

in because the United States, people would say, because we have that word, in the English language in the U.S., a short-barreled AK, whether or not it's 545 or 762 or 556, a short barrel dakey with a folding sock is called a crankoff or a crank. And this is one of the things I got really frustrated about is because people were just making stuff up on the spot and saying, well, maybe it was the name of a Russian officer. They captured it from. And it was like, people didn't bother to go that extra step, you know, to look, okay, what are the posture sources on this? What are the Dari sources on this? Where does this come from? Who first used it? And that's the kind of stuff we look into, right? And that particular rifle,

carbine, submachine gun as some might call it. You see it in Yemen and it's known as the Jafri and it's known as the Osama gun in other places. On the subject of, you know, status stuff, this goes on further to, in Iran, the logo of his, the crest of Hisbalah, a lot of people look at it and they think it's a lopsided AK. But we recently had an article on this by one of our other guys named Omar, and he pointed out that that's not an AK, it's a G3. And the reason why is because when Hizbala was trying to, well, before Hizbala, the IRGC, the Revolution and Guard Corps, when the designers were putting something together, they wanted to use symbology, and they liked the idea of sort of a raised fist with a rifle. But there is too much of a correlation with communist

ideologies of a raised fist, you know, raising up in communism, socialism. And the AK was sort of the symbolism of communism, as it still is sometimes today. So instead of an AK, they put a G3, which the G3 was in the region, it was uniquely Iranian. Saudi Arabia also had G3s. But Iran was producing them at that time and still producing them today. So by putting upraised fist with a G3, this is a uniquely symbolic IRGC symbol. And that got later changed to Hizbalah when they adopted it. And then today you see examples of AKs with a raised fist in some of the Iraqi PMU or what is colloquially known as the Hashashaba units in Iraq with a raised fist and an AK.

But the difference is that communism isn't a big deal right now. And that the communism, no one really cares about communism anymore. The symbology isn't there. the whole generation is passed that doesn't care about communism. So having an AK in an outstretched hand isn't a problem as in 1979 when there was a definite interest in a lot of communist issues. Another thing I want to ask about is, and sorry, give me one second here. All right, another thing I want to ask about is this idea, and Adom, you'd kind of spoken about it in Saudi Arabia, this idea of like weapons that are aesthetically pleasing but you don't use.

Why, like, what is the particular culture of like Saudi Arabian gold-plated weapons and like why even bother having a weapon you're not going to use? Like what's kind of the logic and culture there? Basically that whole thing of owning a weapon and whatnot and not using it and showing it. It's basically a sign of wealth, sign of strength, sign of, capability for a family or a tribe, even the same mentality you would find it in southern Egypt. Southern Egypt, you have enough firearms to equip to a Hezbollah, it's not even one Hezbollah. I'm not over-exaggerating here. And anyone who did any research on arm smuggling in

the south of Egypt knows what I'm speaking about. But people don't use it most of the time. They actually keep it for showing off, so to say, as I said, only. walls and whatnot. And the mentality behind it, as I said, it is basically a sign of power, a sign of strength, a sign of wealth, a sign of getting things

that are not easily, can be easily gotten. So a sign of connections, being able of forming connections with other people that can get you such things. And

the same thing goes in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia has by far, you know, more blues laws when it comes to owning firearms. And that's, and that makes them want to show off in a different way. So owning, for example, a 1911

pistol in Saudi Arabia would not be enough because it's easier for people there to own it. It's way easier than, for example, in Egypt. So what can we do to stand out? Okay, I would like to have a gold plated and, you know, with certain engravings and what

not. So they would do something for that, something that is more expensive, something that is more costly. Again, it's basically shown off. That can be also, I didn't do much research on it, to be frank with you, connection to the whole thing of the old history of the Arabian Peninsula, where every man back, even before the feudal times, before the, you know, even the bronze era, had to carry a sword with him. Every man had to carry a sword with him. And, so, mentioned a lot in Arab literature to protect his family, to protect his mission dies, to protect

his caravan, his life. So that can be attributed to the whole thing as well. And you have, for example, a very good example is the North Yemeni Civil War, which unfortunately most people were

either in the Middle East or even West have heard, you know, didn't hear about it. Egypt was involved in that war. It was Egypt's Vietnam, so to say, where you had the Egyptians supporting the Republicans and had the Saudis, the Israelis, the British, sending mercenaries and sending firearms to support the loyalists. I will not get deep into this, but it caused such a proliferation of weapons that it is absolutely normal in Yemen for someone to carry a firearm. No problems whatsoever. And that's why there were some pictures around on the internet showing a Yemeni guy carrying an AK-47 and the security guard or some soldier, you know, basically searching him.

And people seeing that picture with common, like, what the hell? Can't he see the assault rifle? He's carrying the firearm? And the guy's actually searching him for a suicide vest or, you know, some sort of explosive, because people checking that picture will not get that owning a firearm is completely normal in Yemen. It's the norm. In fact, I would have been told before by Yemeni you're not considered a man if you don't own a firearm. There was, there's a Jordanian gun shop. He worked in a gun shop and he said he had this neat quote to me where he told me, you know, in previous times, Jordanians had the camels and swords. Well, the pickup truck has replaced the camel and the shotgun has replaced the sword.

forward. There's not as much, there's not as many firearms in Jordan as they're on Yemen. But that was, that's a colloquial point there. But on that, so I think it's also interesting, you know, like, you know, how come everyone has these gold guns, but they don't, and they don't use them? What's the point of having a gun that you don't use? I'd just like to add a, a point of fact in most of the golden firearms that I've observed, that I've looked at in reference collections, it's interesting because we see like, you know, the golden. for the presentation cases and the golden guns are inside them, but the majority of them don't have cleaning kits. So this is like a, you know, a very real aspect of, yeah, you're getting presented with this golden gun. You're not actually going to use it. If you're actually going to use it, it would come with a cleaning kit because you'd have to clean it, but you're not going to use it because you're in that leadership position. And let me, in another way to look at this, and then we'll go back to status symbols as well. So we were recently researching something and this really stuck out.

But we were researching this 37-38-millimeter riot gun that was described in Chinese as Excalibur, and the Chinese translation for X-Calibur, and as you recall, X-Calibur was King Arthur's sword in the tail. But the Chinese translation of X-Calibur is actually the sword of God. And what that comes down to is we see a manifestation of power, in a manifestation of a leader's power in an object. And you look at, you know, the Chinese translation, sword of God, and you look at what the emperor, the Chinese emperors would have. I can't talk too much

about that, but they would have this sort of, they would have a sword at their hand, and this would be a very ornate, like, elaborate sword. And the point of that was, this is the physical extension of their power. So people would see this. And that's why you see it. And that's why you see it, you know, with King Arthur in X-Calibur. King Arthur is the only guy who can draw that sword out of the rock because that sword is an extension of his power, of his might. So you think of an ex-caliber as we go back to status symbols. Having a golden gun is sort of an excalibur of that. And the idea behind not using it goes back to if you're a leader, you know, if you're really that powerful, you have an army that fights for you. You lead an army that does these things.

You don't, you're not out there, you know, slugging it away in the trenches and in the ditches. You're not supposed, that's not your role. Your role is to lead that army and to encourage people. You're not going to be fighting. And that ex-calibre item that you have, that's your, that's your piece of power. Other people fight, not you. But that's another perspective on that. I am maybe one of my favorite answers so far.

That was, that was good. Obviously, it's not all about weapons. weapons come with a lot of accessories, modifications, scopes, stocks, all sorts of different modifications can be made to a weapon. Obviously, it's going to change depending on region, but question again for both of you, Miles, if you want to start off. What are some of the common accessories and modifications you see in your work? The same stuff, the same stuff that we see in NATO-American militaries,

You see a lot of people trying to copy what people have in the West. So big thing is lasers and optics and some sort of a stock. Like when I say a stock, I mean some sort of collapsing, folding telescope in stock to make things shorter. Going back to the status symbol stuff, everyone likes a short rifle. That's why the short rifles in these regions tend to be one of the part of the status symbols, not just because of that power that they hold, but also because they're just super convenient because you can just fit them anywhere. And that is highly important in a lot of these mobile conflicts where you're running around in a vehicle, you do a lot of driving, you're jumping in and out, such as in Syria. And you want something that's short.

But then you have the lasers and optics, and people love that. They love putting that stuff on there. The problem is a lot of what people put on theirs is junk or people don't know how to use it. And this is what I always say, you know, for instance, looking at the Taliban, you see propaganda videos of Taliban fighters with 8.000. TN core or pulsar, you know, thermal or night vision optics. And you see some, you know, PEC 15, PEC 16 laser aiming modules on them. You know, and the problem here is that it's one thing to have a capability. It's another thing to know how to use it.

And this is something you don't see from you look at a picture online and people are looking at it and saying, oh, look, you know, the Taliban have this night vision capability. And I'm looking at that. And I'm saying, okay, great. do they know how to use it? Are those optics zeroed? Are those lasers zeroed? Do they have spare batteries? I mean, fighting at night is an incredibly complex operation, even for professional militaries in NATO in the United States. It is extremely hard. You have to do a lot of training. You have to know how each other, how people work. And that doesn't happen overnight with a night vision optic. But they're trying to emulate those forces at the same time. And unfortunately, people have these optics and stuff. But what they don't see,

So what they don't see is all the training that goes behind in a Marine platoon, in a U.S. Army platoon, in an S.F. Asset, an ODA team. They don't see the thousands and thousands of hours in pain and torture and hazing that goes into a successful unit. And they just see the unit performing successfully at night. And they say, oh, look, well, they got the optic. Well, the optic makes all the difference. So that's one example of what we've seen for that stuff, lasers, optics, and sites. stocks. Don? So I definitely agree with what Miles have said, but I have to say that even this is changing. You have certain training units, for example, Malhamma tactical in Syria, which is, so to say, raising the awareness of having a competent trained force. And that is something else we're seeing militias, Middle Eastern militias, changing to become much more effective and well-trained force, not necessarily on part to Western troops, but definitely

enough to give them a difficult time. So I believe the days where you see some militant firing and AK overhead or, you know, just hip-firing and dancing across the street while firing from, you know, a machine gun, a picky-em. These days might come to a close in the day. In the not so far future as we see that even ISIS have learned the importance of a well-trained force. In fact, it is well known that ISIS have invested a lot in improving the performance of their troops, and they had tactical superiority in Syria over some of the revolutionary rebels, so to say, and even initially the Kurds that gave them the upper hand. So we can see that it is becoming, oh, we have the night visions now, whether they are legit,

American Western night visions looted from local armies or whatnot, to the point where they're saying, okay, now we have the stuff, now we need to know how to use the stuff and use them efficiently and effectively on the battlefield. All right. Another question for both of you, Adam, if you'll start. of, so I'm assuming that you both have actually fired some of these weapons. What are your favorite guns to actually fire? With all, use respect, I think, first, he definitely was answered first. Go ahead, Miles.

I think, I think my favorite gun is the crank, is they KS70 for you. I own one. I've shot mine. lot. I like it's I like it because it is fun to fire. It's fun to shoot. It's just that's short little compact package. But I like the I'm more interested in the sort of symbology and the interest and the history of it than the actual effectiveness of it. That's what really. And here's the thing though is that being into firearms and stuff like that, it's when I can, when you can actually hold that thing and you can actually feel it and you have that

sort of connection to history and you're like, wow, I'm feeling holding and shooting what was actually being used in these time periods that fascinate me. You know, it's hard to, and this is why I love studying firearms as opposed to, you know, you could do the same sort of, you could do the same sort of studies of this stuff that we do with tanks or missiles or hand grenades. But it's kind of hold to, it's kind of hard to, you know, hold a 155 artillery piece, you know, in your hand and be like, wow, there's so much history in this. It's like, well, first of all, you can't hold it because it weighs, I don't know, 500 pounds or something. No, several tons. It's the same thing with a grenade or like an RPG round. It's like, well, like, yeah, this grenade has really seen some stuff, right? It's like,

but you can do that with a firearm. You have, you can have that sort of personal connection to wood and metal and steel and now plastic. Yeah. You're having a whole different experience on the range than the rest of us, I see. I like blazing away too. Don't get me wrong. Adon?

So in my case, I live in Kuwait. So the last time I actually fired the forearm was three years ago. Going to the shooting range in Kuwait is quite expensive and the availability of firearms is quite limited and I still remember it very well I used a couple of handguns nothing really with historical backgrounds so to say most of the stuff were produced manufactured recently so not really much history behind it but I would love to you know I understand his point understand Miles's point to

point of view because I've seen historical weaponry, real-life firearm in museums and whatnot, and I would love just to, you know, I'll never do that, but you know, smash the glass and grab the trifle and kill it in my hands. I definitely, for example, use the Hakeem one day. So, for example,

give you an idea. I'm holding a 1911 lighter in my hand, a lighter in the shape of a 1911 handgun. And this is probably the closest thing I would ever get to holding something that resembles a 1911 in Kuwait. I did hold an AKM, an AKMS in Kuwait, but that was an illegal AKMS.

And I was just, I was amazed because for me, as I said, something that is difficult to obtain, something that is difficult to find, something that can get me in much trouble. I just haven't given my hand. It was an incredible experience. And I don't own that AKMS, and it's not with me. think. What is the strangest small arm you all have encountered doing this work? There's a lot. There's a lot of weird ones.

I think I can tell you the coolest one. The coolest one I've ever ran into in Iraq and Syria is a VZ 24, VZ 26. It's just such a neat little sub-exam. machine gun, everything folds into each other and unscrews each other. And it's got a, you know, magazine, um, um, it's got a stripper clip loader embedded in the carrying in the, uh, the, the, uh, the forward grip. Like that's just a cool, neat little thing. Um, and then I can tell you the strangest, weirdest, um, methodology thing that we've come across is in Syria, um, Kurdish forces and, and Arabs that work with the Kurdish forces in the SDF, the Syrian Democratic forces,

they believe that if you press the forward assist of an M16A2, A4, M4, if you press that while you're firing the rifle, it actually makes the bullet more powerful. And you can go through, you know, at least two or three cinder blocks as opposed to one. with the same ammunition that I'm trying not to laugh when describing it because it's so it's so ridiculous with the same ammunition that they've shot before and it actually has an effect on the round and that's one of the strangest most oddball things I've ran into methodology wise can do you have any idea why that belief persists yeah and I think there's and I think there's a rationale behind it

from what I've come up with. So, first of all, how it began probably has more to do with, like, myth and lore and, like, image in that we're wondering if somehow when the Kurds, when the Yapaiga Kurds, the Syrian Yopalya Kurds first started, you know, getting supplies of M16s or started using them. one idea is that someone asked someone you know some experienced guy you know probably some former puckerka fighter like hey what does this button do and the guy did not want to say i don't know you know i think like what's that there's some joke talking about like uh like image like image among kurds among arabs and it's like you know do you know where this building is and it's like well the first answer to that is it's somewhere far away from me i'm not going to tell you that I don't know where it is, but I am going to say it's somewhere else.

And you don't want to admit that you don't know something. So that might be part of it, that some experienced guy didn't want to admit that he actually had no clue what the forward assist on an M16 did. The other thing that I think about it and an almost more rational thing is that I actually think that when they're doing this, when they're pushing forward on a forward assist, I think they are actually more accurate. I don't think they're obviously not doing anything to the bullet because there's the same ammunition. So I actually think some of these fighters, when they're actually pressing forward on the fort assist,

their rounds are actually more accurate than if they weren't. And thus it sort of confirms their belief. And why I say this is because if anybody has seen precision rifle shooters, whether military snipers or in the sort of precision rifle. series, you know, precision rifle shooters, long-range shooters in the United States, there is a very, very prevalent technique of bringing your thumb along the right side of the rifle. And for some people, it doesn't do anything. For a lot of people, it actually helps because you're taking pressure off the side of the pistol grip or the side of a slant stock,

if it's a non-pistol grip rifle, and you're putting it along your right trigger finger, and you have less pressure and less torque on the rifle. So as you're shooting, sometimes shooters have a tendency to sort of torque their hand. Because if you really grip your hand and your thumb is on the left side of the rifle, you'll, your hand, like you can do it right now if you're listening to this. You know, hold your hand as if you're holding a firearm and then sort of put a lot of pressure in it. Your hand might squeeze in together and then it will torque to the left. and that might be enough to throw your shot off if you're doing the precision

if you're doing precision stuff at you know 500 meters a thousand yards so if they're doing that and they're put in their right thumb on the right side of the rifle and they're pushing against the forward assist they might actually be getting more precise more accurate shots but it's not the reasons why they think it is that's the closest i've come to reality on that on in a long way to answer that question uh don't what's the strangest thing you've seen? Actually, it's something that I wrote an article about. The Egyptian do-it-yourself Thompson.

So basically during the Swiss crisis war, 1956, which basically had Egypt facing France, Britain, and France, Britain and Israel, you know, invading Egypt simultaneously. you had I believe was it the Brits landing in Ismailia? Yeah I believe so I didn't really screw up

on my history memory of history and you had some popular resistance to the Brits and Asia did have Thompson's, you know stockpiles from World War II so someone had the idea of

gathering parts of legit Thompson and making a crude one, so to say. And it was captured by the Brits, and a couple of researchers was done on it, and a small report was written on it, but, you know, it's word in the internet. So it had to do a lot of digging and whatnot,

and I wrote an article about it, because if it wasn't obviously for me trying to bring it out to the public through Sala'H report, whatever that was written on Thompson, that Egyptian, do it yourself Thompson, would have been left obscured, honestly. And I believe Miles got contacted by one of the researchers who did actually work with that captured example, and there was some messaging going back and forth, you know, informing Miles that, hey, we saw the article that was written. So that is something else that I found interesting, honestly. It's for me it's the most interesting piece, so to say. Yeah.

So to give, so yes, so to give some, so to give more credit for that piece to talk about it, that Egyptian Thompson was, it was mentioned previously in a Nelson Mangrave or Wargrave, whatever his name is, Wargrave and Nelson's book. They talked a little bit about it, but they got a little, they got some stuff wrong in terms of the measurements that they were looking at. and there's another guy who wrote about it in a website who lives in the UK, whose webpage is now down. I don't know why it's down now. I just tried going to it.

It's a really good website that talks about submachine gun designs, and it's not very prevalent, but he talked about it. And he actually sent us pictures of the Egyptian Thompson in the National Firearms Center in the United Kingdom. And that is definitely on one of our to-do lists. And that's part of the self-port mission is to get in touch with the primary sources. And we do have a self-proclaimed mission. We do want to get to the NFC again and actually record that thing in much better quality in detail and then get it back up on the website. So now the Thompson is actually my favorite thing to fire. And this is, I'm looking at the pictures of the Egyptian

model now. It's fascinating, the small differences between the two. That is very odd. Okay, sorry. Back to questions. All right. So I think that that kind of about runs through my questions. Can you tell me how people can find your work, how they can support it, and what you guys have coming out soon? So first of all, we need money. All right. So if you like what you heard and you're interested in this stuff, the work that we do cost money. We have to go, you know, going to reference collections, web hosting, trying to get this stuff out, paying authors, paying people to write about this stuff and research it. And these are, and the thing is, the authors that contribute to Slav Report, a lot of them are native language speakers of the stuff that they're talking about. We've got people. researching stuff in Urdu and Pashto, and Dari, and Farsi, in Ottoman Turkish, in modern-day Turkish, in various dialects of Arabic. We've even got connections to the original Berber language in Algeria, Amazek. Talk about an oddball language there, in Hebrew as well. So we need to pay for these articles somehow.

And what we've got right now is you can either support us on Patreon. We've got a Patreon. We've got a group going. That is the best way to directly support us. If you're not interested in Patreon, however, we do have our Silas shop. And that's on the website. And from there, we've got, we're trying to get products out there. So we had a YPG magazine wraps, like some of these weird novelty things that we study about and we look at. And we're trying to get them out, you know, trying to get them for sale in the United States. So we had a run of YPG magazine and rifle wraps that are sold out now. We're trying to get them back on.

But in the meantime, we've got patches and stickers, and all of our material is actually made in the region. So, for instance, the patches that we have are various renderings of Takria-Silah or Silah Report in Arabic or Weapon Report, and they're actually produced in Iraq. They're produced in the KERG region, in the Kurdish regional government, in Erbil. We're actually working right now as I'm, as I record this podcast, I'm in Kabul, Afghanistan, and I was just at a patchmaker today, and we're going to try to get some Afghan patches out.

So you can see that kind of stuff. And you can actually, you know, have it. This is a cool little memento. So, yeah. And then if you don't want to, of course, if you don't want to shell out or anything, we have all our social media links. It would be great. We have a spot on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. We just started a telegram channel.

We have a Discord channel as well. Yeah, so come one, come all. And what are the addresses for all this stuff? Silaf Report, SILA-H, space report or underscore report or at Silaf Report with no space. If you just search on, I'll send a copy to you as well. But, you know, if you just search on Facebook or you just search on Instagram or you just search on Twitter, Slah Report,

you'll find it. Or you just search on Patreon. You'll find it as well. For those you don't realize, Silah, is a similar or

same word in a number of different languages in the areas that we study in Arabic, in Farsi, in Kurdish, in Turkish, and in Pashto

as Wissla, and then also in Urdu as well. And that's the sort of the word that binds everything. And it also shows that,

you know, we're interested in all this stuff linguistically as well. That word is spelled S-I-L-A-H in the modern-day Turkish Republic rendition of using Roman characters for the Turkish language. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for coming under war college and walking us through your work. Thank you very much. I thought that we were going to speak first, so I was waiting for you. Thank you very much, Mr. Matthew.

And thank you very much, sir, for having us on. The honor has been all ours. That's it. This Week, War College listeners, War College is myself, Matthew Galt, and Kevin Nodell. You can follow us on Twitter at War underscore College or at MJG, AULT, and at KJK Nodell. Good news, Kevin is back in the United States, and he will be telling us his story very soon.