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IN 1999, IRAQI PRESIDENT Saddam Hussein ordered construction to begin on what would be the world’s largest mosque. On a hundred-acre site, fifteen miles outside of the capital city of Baghdad, the huge house of worship was part of the dictator’s plan to strengthen his iron-fist grip on the nation by appealing to the region’s Muslims even though his Baath Party had a history of disavowing religion and regularly harassing and killing Muslim fundamentalists.
The “Mother of All Battles” mosque was not only an attempt to curry favor with Iraq’s Muslims but also to pay homage to the Gulf War of 1991. Hussein had dubbed it the Mother of All Battles, in which Saddam’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait prompted a counterattack by a U.S.-led, UN-sanctioned coalition that drove Iraq out of the small, oil-rich country but left him in office with diminished military power.
Opened on April 28, 2002, Hussein’s birthday, the mosque was a tribute to its megalomaniac maker. The building housed a handwritten Koran reportedly produced from three pints of Hussein’s blood mixed with ink and preservatives, a pool in the shape of the Arab world, and a twenty-four-foot-wide mosaic of the president’s thumbprint. Outside, forty-three-meter-high minarets, symbolizing the forty-three-day conflict with the United States, reached skyward. These minarets were fashioned in the shape of Scud missiles, the NATO name for the R-11 missile built by the Soviet Union during the cold war. Hussein’s military blasted Scuds into Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Mother of All Battles. These crude, inexpensive, but effective short-range missiles were often launched from trucks, and could deliver a conventional explosive warhead, a small nuclear bomb, antipersonnel bomblets, or biological or chemical weapons.
The mosque also sported four outer minarets. Like those closest to the main building, these towers were exact images of another Soviet-made, simple, inexpensive, and mobile weapon that Hussein revered. Standing thirty-seven meters high—signifying Saddam’s birth year, 1937—these barrel-shaped minarets were replicas of Tabuk assault rifle barrels, Iraq’s version of the AK.
Although Saddam’s regime officially denied that the minarets were designed like either of these weapons, the look is unmistakable. In the case of the AK minarets, the towers even included the gun’s distinctively shaped handguard that provides a tight grip on the barrel during automatic fire. Like Scud missiles, the AK offered Saddam Hussein simple weapons born from the Soviet utilitarian mind-set. They were cheap and deadly.
Although coalition bombings in 1991 destroyed much of Iraq’s air force, Scud missiles, and tanks, Hussein’s regime retained its arsenal of small arms, especially AKs. In fact, by March 2003 when the Iraq war, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, as it was called by the United States, commenced, Iraq’s arsenals were brimming with small arms, perhaps as many as seven to eight million pieces. These weapons would prove deadly to U.S. troops once major hostilities ended, but were not considered a threat by military planners when the war began.
The war commenced with air and ground attacks led by Vietnam veteran General Tommy Franks. Believing that Iraq had violated UN sanctions against building and warehousing weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological, and nuclear arms—President George W. Bush gave Franks the go-ahead. Although military pundits had expected lengthy air bombings as a prelude to entering ground forces, as in the 1991 Gulf War or the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Franks instead ordered ground troops to enter the southern tip of Iraq through Kuwait and make their way to Baghdad as fast as they could. Just as the German army motored swiftly through the Ardennes in 1940, bypassing small villages on the way to Dunkirk and Paris, U.S. troops traveled at top speed, ignoring small towns on their way north to the capital city. Pentagon planners believed that by attacking Baghdad and destroying the nation’s command-and-control capabilities, they would cause the regime to disintegrate, and the Iraqi people would overwhelmingly support the invaders as liberators. Once Baghdad was under U.S. control, Pentagon strategists believed that these bypassed towns and villages would fall into line.
As U.S. forces advanced across Iraq, one of their first objectives was to secure the Rumaila oil fields, an area that extends underground into Kuwait. During the Gulf War, Hussein’s soldiers ignited theses wells not only to hide their movements amid the dense smoke but to distract coalition forces. Franks was determined to prevent Iraq’s army from burning the oil wells again and ordered GIs to secure the fields. This action would also pay postwar benefits, because President Bush hoped that the country’s valuable oil supply would help defray the costs of Iraq’s reconstruction.
One of the groups assigned to the area was the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines. Wearing bulky and hot chemical protection suits, Alpha Company was one of the first large ground units to make its way across the Kuwaiti border. After an eight-hour drive, it reached Pumping Station No. 2. Once a base for an Iraqi brigade, the station was largely abandoned save for a few die-hard fighters. The marines took several Iraqi prisoners during skirmishes, but then something unexpected occurred.
A half dozen Iraqis, possibly from Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, took off in a brown Toyota pickup truck, in what several marines later said resembled a drive-by shooting. The retreating Iraqis fired AKs wildly out the windows, hitting Second Lieutenant Therrel “Shane” Childers, in the lower abdomen. Childers, a thirty-year-old marine from Harrison, Mississippi, and a graduate of the Citadel military college, died almost immediately. He was the first U.S. casualty of Operation Iraqi Freedom. For most of the marines in his company, it was their first look at the AK in combat, but it would not be their last. What perhaps frightened them most was the way these soldiers used their weapons. While U.S. troops were highly trained and disciplined and taught to make every shot count, these soldiers fired indiscriminately, without regard to whom they would hit. They were successful. They had killed one marine and injured several others. How could a professionally trained force engage and win against this type of soldier?
Other advancing troops avoided major cities except when necessary to gain control of strategic bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates. The first indication that the U.S. plan was running into trouble—although it was eclipsed in the news by the stunning and swift march toward Baghdad—occurred in the bypassed city of Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, just north of the Kuwaiti border. As U.S. troops pushed onward, British troops were sent to secure it. To the surprise of military brass, it took two weeks of fighting for the British to enter the city, a conflict that included the largest tank battle the British had seen since World War II. Once Iraq’s tanks were destroyed, however, fighting still continued, turning into close-quarter urban warfare. British troops found themselves under constant small-arms attack from Iraqi army regulars and fedayeen fighters.
Fedayeen is the plural of an Arabic word meaning “one who is ready to sacrifice his life for his cause.” The first fedayeen in the eighth to fourteenth centuries were a group of Ismali Muslims belonging to the Shia sect of Islam, who terrorized the Abbasids, the Sunni Muslims who ruled Baghdad. This religious group was also known by the name hashishin because it was claimed that they put themselves into a fierce fighting-frenzy state by taking hashish before battles. (The modern word “assassin” is derived from their name, as many of their terrorist tactics involved murdering rulers.)
There have been several notable fedayeen groups throughout history. This latest group of fighters, Fedayeen Saddam, were handpicked by Hussein’s regime and put under control of his son Uday. Their loyalty to Hussein and the Baath Party assured they would fight to the death against any invader. This paramilitary group, whose numbers may have reached thirty thousand to forty thousand fighters, were used by Hussein to put down opponents and smuggle arms and drugs in the region. Despite their numbers, the international community knew little about them until Hussein pressed them into military service during the U.S. invasion. Their weapon of choice was the AK.
As the U.S. military pressed toward Baghdad, their supplies lagged behind. At about the 250-mile mark, supplies on the front lines became scarce—food, water, and fuel—and supply convoys had to play catch-up. These lightly armored trucks were easy prey for fedayeen ambushes. Although many of the convoys were given cover by helicopters, others were attacked by hit-and-run raids. Fuel tankers were favorite targets because they were slow-moving, and exploding, burning fuel had a dramatic effect.
American troops entered Baghdad certain that total victory was near. When the city fell on April 9, 2003, the fedayeen were in disarray, but many of them carried on the fight, mainly armed with AKs and RPGs. Something else occurred, however. Despite the Bush administration’s contention that the war would be over quickly, and the Iraqi people would welcome the coalition forces as liberators, what followed was a protracted guerrilla war for which U.S. forces were not properly outfitted.
The days following the taking of the capital city were marked by looting and an inability of American forces to maintain order. To Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraqi people, oppressed for decades by Hussein, were simply letting off steam.
Street violence continued. As U.S. forces attempted to contain it, many Iraqi people grew tired of what they saw as a growing American occupation. In addition, Hussein had gone into hiding and many citizens were afraid that the Americans would abandon them as they had done in the 1991 Gulf War, leaving an opening for Hussein to return to power, more vengeful against opponents than before. Moreover, many Iraqis were still angry about U.S. bombings during the 1991 war that had destroyed large sections of the country’s infrastructure. Electricity was flowing at less than a quarter of its prewar amount and damaged water treatment plants allowed raw sewage to flow into the Tigris River, a prime source of freshwater for many Iraqis. Many Iraqis blamed the United States for the widespread disease that followed. Although most Iraqis despised Hussein’s rule, at least they had had freshwater, electricity, and other basic services, none of which existed now.
During the uncertainty and chaos that followed the coalition’s swift victory, millions of small arms, mainly AKs, were looted or sold from Hussein’s huge armories. One of the main occurrences took place in May 2003, when L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, decided to dismiss all Baathist members from government positions and disband the Iraqi army. Although it may have been a correct decision—and perhaps the only logical one considering circumstances at the time—it caused major social disorder and violence as these groups let loose the nation’s small arms to almost anyone. Not unlike the situation during the disbanding of the Soviet Union, military officers and government employees sold the country’s weapons as a way to make money, and also to foment opposition against the government in power; in this case, the U.S.-run provisional government. The weapons landed in the hands of law-abiding but nervous civilians. They also reached Baathists loyal to Hussein and other opponents of the U.S. occupation who used them to run a protracted urban war.
As we’ve seen in many other countries, the street price of the AK is an accurate indicator of the degree of social order and citizen anxiety. In the months prior to the invasion, the price of an AK varied but stayed within a range of $150 to $300, with Chinese models on the lower end and Russian models at the high end. Oddly enough, despite Hussein’s dictatorship, private gun ownership in Iraq was fairly high, especially among the loyal Sunni Muslims, for whom a $150 license fee permitted as many small arms as they wanted. It was not unusual for households to maintain several small arms, almost always an AK among them, even in the large cities such as Baghdad and Fallujah. During the worst disorder just after the fall of Baghdad in March and April 2003, prices plummeted as military inventories flooded the market. In Basra, AKs were so ubiquitous that they were almost worthless, one of the causes of the British difficulties maintaining control of that city.
About six months later, as Baghdad settled down and coalition forces got a better handle on widespread looting and street violence, AK prices reverted to previous levels. By then, the bulk of AKs from military arsenals either had been destroyed by coalition forces or distributed to Iraqis. As the summer progressed and insurgent groups coalesced behind political and religious leaders in opposition to the Provisional Authority, demand grew again to the point where small arms were being imported from the neighboring countries of Iran and Syria.
As U.S. forces prepared for an unexpected and extended guerrilla urban war in Iraq, their own small arms seemed unsuited to the task. GIs were issued the standard M16A2, which followed the M16A1, the official and more formal name of the M-16, from the Vietnam era. The A2 had improved sights, a modified handguard, and a different “twist rate” in the barrel. It fired a three-round burst, but the most important difference was the ammunition. The A1 fired the standard U.S. 55-grain, 5.56 × 45mm round, designated as the M193 cartridge. NATO altered the round to fire a 62-grain bullet instead of the 55-grain and classified the cartridge as the SS109. The U.S. designation was the M855. (A grain is a unit of mass equal to 64.79891 milligrams. It is used for measuring bullets and gunpowder in the United States, while most other countries use the metric system.)
The SS109/M855 could not be fired from the old M-16 rifles because the bullet would not stabilize in the M16A1’s 1:12-inch twist rate. The A2 twist rate was 1:7-inch to accommodate the longer, heavier SS109/M855 bullet. (A 1:7-inch twist rate means that the bullet makes one complete twist in seven inches of travel.)
One of the most important advances in small arms is the concept of rifling, the purpose of which is to stabilize a bullet in flight and improve accuracy. As firearms developed, designers noticed that bullets would wobble once they left the barrel. By adding spiral grooves in the barrel, they could make the bullet spin and be more stable in the air, especially at high speeds. This is the reason why quarterbacks throw a football with as much spin as they can on the ball; it gives a longer and more accurate pass. It’s also why a fast-spinning top has stability while slow-spinning tops wobble and fall over sooner.
Like everything else in arms design, there is a trade-off. Too low a twist rate and the bullet does not stabilize enough. But spinning the bullet too much accentuates even the most miniscule manufacturing defects, causing it to be unstable. Arms designers use complex computer models to find the best twist rate based on barrel length and bullet mass, but field experience usually yields the best data.
And there was another problem adapting the A2 to urban combat. Troops engaged in street fighting in the cities of Somalia years earlier noticed that they spent a great deal of time running in and out of infantry vehicles like Humvees, helicopters, building doors, and passageways. For these kinds of highly mobile situations, their rifles were too long and cumbersome. The quick fix was to outfit soldiers with carbines, rifles with shortened barrels, to make moving around easier. Just prior to their combat roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne and 101st Air Assault divisions had their A2s replaced with M-4 carbines, which were shortened versions of the A2. Although the M-4 barrel was only about six inches shorter than that of the A2, the weapon was much easier to handle in confined spaces because it was lighter and had a collapsible stock.
There was still another trade-off, however. The shorter barrel of the carbine gave the bullet a lower velocity compared to the longer-barreled A2. For the M855 bullet to be lethal, it must hit its target at more than 732 meters per second. As with its predecessor, the M193 NATO round penetrated human flesh and spun, causing devastating tissue damage. This only worked at high velocities, however. When fired from a long-barreled A2, the M855 bullet left the barrel at 914 meters per second and entered the target at 732 meters per second at a distance of about 200 meters. With the M-4 carbine, however, the bullet left the barrel at only 790 meters per second and after only 50 meters it had already dropped below the 732 meters per second threshold needed to inflict catastrophic damage. Specially equipped troops have complained that while the weapon was excellent for close-in fighting, it was ineffective at stopping enemy soldiers farther away. The problem was mitigated by the army’s adoption of the MK262 Mod 0 cartridge that fired a slightly heavier 77-grain bullet with a tiny hollow point that fragmented inside the body. GIs reported more kills with this combination.
With more wars being fought in urban environments, the U.S. military eventually had to come up with a new type of weapon that would combine the lightness and shortened length of a carbine with the firepower of the standard M-16. Clearly, the M-4 was an interim, stopgap weapon. Although it was good for close quarters, it overheated on fully automatic fire and became unreliable because of the great stresses placed on its parts. Like Kalashnikov years ago, U.S. military planners had been looking for a new rifle for a new kind of warfare.
A plan for such a rifle, dubbed the XM-8, had been in the works for several years. Prototypes had been tested during 2003 and 2004 and deployment had been hoped for in 2005 but had been held up by the Iraq war and technical issues. Like all new army rifles, political and financial arguments surrounded it. In the case of the XM-8, Congress was reluctant to spend billions to outfit soldiers with new rifles while the war was draining the treasury—not to mention the task of training soldiers on a new weapon on the fly. Adding to the argument was that the new rifle came from Heckler & Koch, a German company, which would mark the first time that a non-U.S. design was used for GIs’ rifles. Some suggested that because Germany had tried to block the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Congress would be remiss in rewarding a German company even though the rifles would be built inside the United States. As the war progressed, the XM-8 was gaining more and more favor with military planners and the soldiers who tested it, but until it was to come online American GIs had to fight the war in Iraq with the weapons they had available, and that included, ironically, AKs. (Many firearms experts, even those inside the military, contend that the XM does nothing significantly better than the current family of small arms. Nevertheless, Defense Department officials want a new weapons system to replace the M-16 series.)
Early reports from the front found GIs using AKs that they had picked up during raids. Unlike Vietnam, where GIs were afraid to use AKs for fear of drawing friendly fire because of the unique sound of the weapon through the dense jungle, where the enemy could be a few feet away and you couldn’t see them, soldiers in Iraq had no such trepidation. In this war, they were rarely close to enemy combatants without knowing it. In many instances, combatants could see each other across open terrain.
One of the first stories to surface was that of the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, which operated tanks in the city of Baquba in the summer of 2004. Along with Fallujah, Ramadi, and Samarra, this city of 280,000 people, about thirty miles northeast of Baghdad, and within the so-called Sunni Triangle, saw some of the heaviest ground action of the war.
In general, four-man tank crews were issued two M-4 carbines and four 9mm pistols in the belief that the group would mainly stay inside and fire the tank’s turret-mounted machine gun. But as often occurs, real-life combat is not what Pentagon brass envisioned. While on patrol, the tankers found themselves trying to squeeze their vehicles through streets too narrow to accommodate them and over roads barely wide enough for a person to walk down. They were forced to leave their tanks and patrol on foot. “Normally, an armor battalion fights from tanks,” said Lieutenant Colonel Mark Young. “Well, we are not fighting from our tanks right now.” With each tank group short at least two rifles, the soldiers routinely used AKs, confiscated from raids or checkpoints, and put them to good use. Like their enemy brethren in Vietnam, they appreciated the gun’s simplicity, reliability, and knockdown power, qualities absent from their M-16s and M-4s.
In some instances, even soldiers with the newer M-4s chose the AK because of its fully automatic fire that allowed them to “spray and pray” into hidden enemy positions such as areas of tall grass. They also preferred to have automatic fire inside buildings where the heavier 7.62mm round penetrated wood and thin stucco walls with ease. Soldiers also reported that sometimes it was easier to obtain ammunition for the AKs. During raids they would routinely find hundreds of new rounds in boxes available for the taking.
While some officers had considered prohibiting troops from using the AKs—to comply with army regulations concerning standard firearms—most allowed their soldiers to use them, especially because they would have had no small arms at all beyond their issued pistols.
Soldiers found that unlike their M-16s, the AKs resisted dust and sand from frequent storms that turned the landscape red and then pitch black. During these periods, M-16s clogged easily and did not fire until they were stripped down and cleaned. Troops learned quickly to cover their weapons with plastic wrap or place them in duffel bags. Some fit condoms over the barrel ends, to keep out sand particles that jammed their weapon’s action. The AKs did not require similar handling. The GIs who used them appreciated their performance under adverse desert conditions.
Using the AKs also gave GIs a better understanding of the weapon they encountered most often. All too frequently, though, they learned about the AK’s power when the 7.62mm rounds pierced their body armor.
IN THE LATE 1990s, soldiers were issued the Interceptor Multi-Threat Body Armor System that provided protection against shrapnel and 9mm rounds fired from low-velocity handguns. It was better than the twenty-five-pound Vietnam-era “flak jackets” that protected only against shrapnel, but it was still not up to the demands of Iraq as it offered no protection against 7.62mm rounds fired from AKs.
What could stop heavy fire, however, was the Interceptor with ceramic plates inserted into pockets on the vest. The pockets were strategically placed to offer protection for vital organs. Although their exact composition is classified, these Small Arms Protective Inserts—known to the soldiers as SAPI (Sappy) plates—can stop AK rounds and even light machine-gun rounds. The full vests cost about $1,500 each retail and can be bought with neck- and crotch-protection attachments. Even with the plates, the vests weigh 16.4 pounds, much less than the Vietnam-era flak jackets.
When the war in Iraq began, few soldiers had the protective inserts. Even months into the fighting, well after the fall of Baghdad as urban warfare escalated, about 30 percent of soldiers had not been issued the new vests. By the summer of 2003, congressional offices were receiving letters from soldiers and their families asking why these protective vests were not given to their soldiers even though Congress in April had specifically earmarked $310 million in the $87 billion appropriation for the Iraq war to buy 300,000 vests.
At hearings, lawmakers read letters from angry parents who had bought the inserts for their children with their own money and mailed them to Iraq. Small towns paid for vests with neighborhood fund-raisers and bake sales. Congressmen also brought up reports about GIs who duct-taped plates sent them by family members to old-style flak jackets. Soldiers complained that they were forced to share SAPI plates and vests, offering them to comrades who were heading into immediate combat.
The protective plates were so crucial to GIs’ survival that they were touted in the raw lyrics of the rap album Live from Iraq produced by members of Taskforce 112 of the 1st Calvary Division who called themselves 4th25 (pronounced “fourth quarter,” like the do-or-die period of a football game). Recording in a plywood shack with old mattresses for soundproofing, the group expressed their frustration at poor equipment and lack of army support for their mission, which included protecting Baghdad airport. Thousands of albums were sold over the Internet and through regional music stores around the Fort Hood, Texas, area where the men were based. The song “Stay in Step” told a story of survival: “Bloody desert combat fatigues, dusty and ammoless M-16 with a shredded sling… Hit in the head and shoulder but still taking deep breaths/Cause I’m in Kevlar and Sappy plates in my flak vest…”
Members of Congress wrote letters to Donald Rumsfeld demanding an explanation. “Not only did the Pentagon fail to provide U.S. soldiers with adequate lifesaving armor prior to the start of combat operations, but it took your Department seven months after hostilities began to even approach Congress with a request for funding for this essential equipment,” wrote Ohio congressman Ted Strickland. “This is particularly startling considering that the latest-model Kevlar vests, which receive ‘rave reviews’ from field commanders, reportedly cost only $517 per unit [just for the plates]. This seems like an incredibly small price to pay in exchange for equipment that has been credited with saving at least 29 U.S. lives so far.”
In response, Chief of the U.S. Central Command General John Abizaid testified, “I can’t answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply.” In private, Pentagon officials reiterated their surprise at the guerrilla war they found themselves fighting. Abizaid promised that all ground troops would have the vests and plates by year’s end.
Body armor was not the only problem. AKs were making Swiss cheese out of vehicles, too. The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), commonly known as the Humvee, had become the Jeep of the modern military. With four-wheel drive, automatic transmission, a low center of gravity, and even a snorkel that allowed it to operate under sixty inches of water, the Humvee was the major transportation vehicle for American troops. It was designed to quickly bring troops to the front lines, but the Iraq war had no front line and no predictable point of contact with the enemy. Combat was wherever the insurgents decided it was. The Humvee proved to be a liability in many situations. Although its standard armor plating made it much safer for passengers than the standard army Jeep, it was vulnerable to close-range AK fire as well as IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, that were being deployed by enemy soldiers. The Humvee armor was designed for far-off AK fire and shrapnel but not close-in assaults.
Enterprising GIs raided junkyards and scrap heaps to find steel plates and other heavy metal pieces to bolt to their Humvees in an attempt to protect themselves from attack. Sometimes they would fill buckets with sand and hang them from the vehicle’s side panels. The soldiers dubbed this jury-rigged setup “hillbilly armor” and “gypsy racks,” and as pictures of these makeshift vehicles reached the U.S. public, it was becoming clear that GIs were fighting under conditions that Department of Defense officials had not anticipated. At a town hall-type meeting in Kuwait with Secretary Rumsfeld in December 2004, a National Guard soldier asked why soldiers had to rummage through local landfills for scrap metal and other materials to up-armor their vehicles.
The ever cryptic and aloof Rumsfeld shrugged. “You go to war with the army you have,” he said, a response that reverberated throughout the United States as angry members of Congress continued to question the Department of Defense’s planning and execution of a war that was growing unpopular as the U.S. death toll rose.
The controversy grew as the military retrofitted, or “uparmored,” Humvees that were not designed to carry the extra weight. This additional burden produced excessive wear and tear and mechanical breakdowns, even rollovers and accidents, not to mention the additional fuel consumed by the heavier vehicles, which increased the burden on supplies.
It seemed to many that the war in Iraq was being fought with too few soldiers, inadequate small arms, subpar body armor, and ill-matched vehicles. And there was more embarrassment ahead. The newly forming Iraqi army, trained by the U.S. military and civilian contractors to defend their country, refused American-made M-16s or M-4s. They insisted on being issued AKs, and the United States was forced to comply.
THE COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY published an RFP, or Request for Proposal, for “brand new, never-fired, fixed stock AK-47 assault rifles with certified manufacture dates not earlier than 1987.” In addition, each rifle had to include four magazines, magazine pouches, a bayonet, sling, and cleaning kit. Officials said they wanted a single source of the weapons. The ultimate shipment was to be thirty-four thousand rifles.
The request appeared ludicrous and humiliating on several levels. First, it bolstered the belief that the M-16 and M-4 were not up to the new realities of war. If so, why were GIs using these weapons? Second, if the Iraqis wanted AKs, why not issue them from the hundreds of thousands of AKs found in arsenals and stockpiles throughout the country? (Before the contract was awarded, the nascent Iraqi army was being outfitted with AKs from Iraqi stockpiles and from Jordanian army stocks.) Around the same time that the RFP went out, U.S. troops found about a hundred thousand AKs in Tikrit, a city north of Baghdad. Reports of similar discoveries were coming in almost daily. Some of these weapons were used but many were new and unused, purchased by Hussein’s regime and stored in their original boxes.
Some U.S. gun makers were furious with the proposed purchases, saying that it not only demeaned the M-16 but that tax-payer money should not be going overseas at a time when the war was expected to cost in excess of $80 billion annually. Buying AKs for the Iraqi army also prevented them from being synchronized with U.S. weapons, an important issue for joint maneuvers.
Coalition Provisional Authority officials made strong arguments, however, for their purchase. “For better or worse, the AK-47 is the weapon of choice in that part of the world,” said Walter Slocombe, senior advisor to the CPA. “It turns out that every Iraqi male above the age of 12 can take them apart and put them together blindfolded and is a pretty good shot.”
Another reason, and perhaps more important, was value. AKs could be bought for around $60 each in these quantities, while M-16s cost $500 to $600 apiece. Still, it was never made clear why the AKs had to be bought when hundreds of thousands of unused weapons were being uncovered throughout the country.
Even the Russians were angry. Officials of Rosoboronexport expressed frustration that the United States would buy non-Russian AKs from other countries, a move tantamount to aiding piracy, they said. They claimed that no other country had a license to make the AK, and that the U.S. purchase encouraged continued violations. (This was not entirely true. The former Soviet Union had licensed production to Warsaw Pact countries and China and North Korea. This controversy will be discussed later.) “We would like to inform everybody in the world that many countries, including the United States, have unfortunately violated recognized norms,” said Igor Sevaastyanov, head of a Rosoboronexport division.
The story took an even stranger turn when the contract was finally awarded and slated for May 2005 delivery. The contract went to International Trading Establishment, a Jordanian conglomerate that received a $174.4 million deal for all sorts of weaponry including communications gear and night vision equipment in addition to AKs.
One of the subcontractors was China-based Poly Technologies, one of the world’s largest munitions manufacturers. For its part, Poly received $29 million for various weapons, including almost 15,000 AKs, 2,300 light and heavy machine guns, and 72 million rounds of ammunition.
Poly Technologies had a checkered past, however. Officials of the company, which operated under the name Dynasty Holdings of Atlanta, had been indicted in May 1996 for attempting to smuggle 2,000 AKs into the United States along with 4,000, thirty- to forty-round magazines. The U.S. district attorney for the Northern District of California estimated the street value at more than $4 million and said the weapons were headed for street gangs. The weapons had markings from China (NORINCO) and Korea.
The arrests and indictment of fourteen people from NORINCO, Poly, and independent companies followed a sixteen-month investigation during which U.S. agents paid more than $700,000 for 2,000 AKs that were smuggled aboard the ship Empress Phoenix, owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company. Several of those involved pleaded guilty and at the time of writing are awaiting sentence. Others had not yet been charged and one official, Bao Ping Ma, listed in the indictment as president of Dynasty, fled to China and is still considered a fugitive, according to the U.S. government. Dynasty’s Beijing account received 38 percent of the down payment and a portion of the final payment. U.S. Army officials noted that they had done a background investigation on Poly Technologies but not Dynasty Holdings, because the company no longer existed.
As attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq increased, the army was paying closer attention to the importance of the AKs wielded by insurgents. On several occasions, U.S. troops instituted weapons buyback programs to try to eliminate the large number of arms in the streets. During an eight-day period in May 2004, for example, U.S. troops distributed $350,000 daily for everything from pistols to surface-to-air missiles in Sadr City’s Shiite district. They collected nearly 4,000 AKs, at $125 each, 9,000 mortar rounds, other assorted weapons, and ammunition, paying out a total of more than $1.3 million for the period.
Even though one less gun on the streets was considered a victory, the program barely made a dent in the country’s overall supply. Because Iraqis were not required to turn in weapons, many decided to keep them. Also, by law, Iraqi families were permitted to own one registered gun (although many owned multiple unregistered guns), usually an AK kept for personal protection. Citizens were allowed one thirty-round magazine as well. Again, many had multiple magazines. Additionally, as happens in buyback programs, not just in Iraq but other countries as well, people brought in several older arms and used the money to buy a single better model on the black market. Black-market prices of AKs varied during the buyback programs, and U.S. troops adjusted their payment accordingly to stay just above the going rate on the street.
In another bow to the AK’s widespread popularity, U.S. troops began systematic and official training on AKs to familiarize themselves with the weapon they would be encountering most often—both in enemy hands and in the hands of Iraqi soldiers who often patrolled side by side with American troops. Although special operations troops had always been trained on a number of foreign weapons, regular troops now were practicing with AKs both in Iraq and at stateside facilities like Quantico.
Marines who participated in “fam fire” practices were generally not impressed by the AK’s looks. Compared to their own M-16s, the Kalashnikovs were crudely finished, heavy, and inaccurate. When they had the opportunity to fire them, though, they understood the effectiveness at close range of these “bullet hoses.” Like their Soviet counterparts of the cold war, the marines learned to take apart the AK and put it back together in less than thirty seconds.
As civilian contractors working for security companies entered Iraq, they too were trained to fire AKs, and many were issued these weapons by their companies instead of Western arms. The AK’s automatic fire was better suited to non-soldiers who did not have intensive training time or gun skills. It was also ideal for civilians in non-security jobs who wanted an easy-to-fire gun for protection while traveling to their worksites.
As U.S. troops became acclimated to street warfare, their opponents made more and more use of IEDs, homemade devices rigged to explode with a timer or by cell phone command. The charges were often made from explosive materials taken from large pieces of ammunition like mortars.
A favorite tactic of the guerrilla fighters was to place an IED in the path of a Humvee or other unarmored vehicle, and when troops stopped to check the vehicle’s condition, they would find themselves facing a barrage of AK fire. This was reminiscent of similar mujahideen tactics against Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. In many cases, the GIs would win the firefight but still lose soldiers. This tactic worked especially well against civilian employees traveling in convoys that were not heavily armed. Even though it was not particularly effective in terms of killing large numbers of coalition forces, it eroded troop morale and made soldiers edgy and suspicious of all Iraqi civilians. This in turn sometimes led to rougher handling of civilians at checkpoints and on the street—sometimes humiliating innocent Iraqis in the process—which played into the hands of insurgents looking to turn everyday Iraqis against U.S. forces.
With the continuing violence in Iraq, media reports focused on troops killed by IEDs. While these instances were dramatic, an army report made public in spring 2005 concluded that the most deadly threat to U.S. troops, Iraqis, and civilian contractors was small arms, mainly AKs and machine guns, and not roadside IEDs. The report noted, “Firing small arms in close combat remains the number one casualty-producing tactic.” The report added that Iraqi militia often patrolled in unarmored vehicles, like pickup trucks, and were particularly vulnerable to ambush tactics that stopped a convoy either with bombs or road debris, then sprayed the occupants with automatic fire. By the middle of 2005, insurgents had turned their focus away from U.S. soldiers and trained their sights on Iraqi civilians. One particular group, physicians, were targeted by insurgents to prevent medical care of Iraqis and further cripple the country’s infrastructure. In addition, criminals regularly attacked medical centers, because surgical supplies and medicines brought high prices on the black market. Since the fall of Baghdad, twenty-five doctors had been murdered and three hundred kidnapped. For their protection, the Health Ministry directed physicians to carry AKs along with their stethoscopes.
As the violence continued into 2006, Iraqi officials were beginning preparations to put Saddam Hussein on trial. He had been captured two years earlier in a remote farmhouse near Tikrit by soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division during Operation Red Dawn, a concerted effort to find where the dictator had been hiding since he left Baghdad. After searching one location, based on a tip, and coming up empty, troops turned their attention to a small walled-hut compound with a metal lean-to-type structure. They spied an entrance that had been camouflaged with bricks and dirt. The hole itself was six to eight feet deep, and Hussein was hiding at the bottom. Along with the now bearded dictator, troops found a pistol and $750,000 in U.S. currency.
Lying next to Hussein in his “spider hole” were two AK rifles, weapons that he revered and honored in the Mother of All Battles mosque but that failed to protect him from capture by American troops.
As the Iraq war continued, GIs began to appreciate even more the brilliant simplicity of the AK. As for Kalashnikov, however, this brilliant simplicity had not translated into money. Kalashnikov was hoping to change this, not by selling the AKs as a deadly weapon but as an icon of popular culture.