A topic has been brought to my attention by a friend of mine and I thought it would make for a great blog post. There is a region in Afghanistan that is called the Khyber Pass and it is notorious for black market weapons manufacturing. Black market weapons manufacturing on its own isn’t that new of an idea, but what makes the Khyber Pass so unique, is how unique and ingenious some of the weapons that are made there are, and how impressively similar their copies of existing firearms are.
In the Khyber Pass, they take old surplus military rifles and weapons that are commonly found in the hands of insurgents and they either modify them and repair them using parts from different weapons or they make their parts with domestic machinery. On the occasion, some of the manufacturers make carbon copies of existing firearms that are indistinguishable from real ones.
These two pictures illustrate how precise the copies of the weapons that come from the Khyber Pass are. Not only are the main specifications of the weapons copied, but the cosmetic stampings and markings of the weapons that are put on for tracking and standardization purposes are also copied making some of the weapons that come out of the Khyber Pass almost completely indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts. Not only do they make replicas that they either produce for insurgent and terrorist organizations or for private collectors, but they also synthesize weapons out of existing gun parts. In some instances, they even produce their own parts or take them and modify them from other machineries such as engine blocks and vehicle parts.
This particular gun from the Khyber Pass is made of parts from multiple different firearms and some domestically made parts to create a faux version of the M4 Assault Rifle.
What is frightening is the M4 that was made in the Khyber Pass is probably not meant for a private collector as it is way too different to be a replica. Instead, and what often happens to most of the weapons made in the region, it will instead go to terrorist organizations to be used as a weapon of destruction rather than a collector’s item.
Picture Cites:
http://www.milsurps.com/content.php?r=200-%E2%80%9CKhyber-Pass%E2%80%9D-Lee-Enfield-No.I-Mk.III*-Rifle
https://www.rct.uk/collection/69430/te-lawrences-lee-enfield-rifle
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/507147608034961415/
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Great blog… I am interested on how the conflict in Armenia is going, and because of your previous blog I think I am going to do some research on that. It was interesting to see the difference in the WWII gun compared to the newer AK M4
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Really interesting stuff, I had no idea this was even going on. Kinda scary to think about how easily and often guns are copied.
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it is truly crazy that guns can be made this way and how similar they look as the original. In my opinion the replica and original looks indistinguishable.