The Kalashnikov calamity
If, I ask you to give me the name of an assault rifle, what would you say? If you aren’t into weapons and armament you might not have a name in mind (and all the abbreviations in the domain of armament don’t make the task of remembering the names easier). I f you are into First-person shooters you might have some names in mind. But in both cases, if I say “Kalashnikov” or “AK-47”, there are high chances that you recognise it. Fact is that the “AK-47” is the most produced assault rifle in the world with over 70 million produced AK-47’s while the Kalashnikov family totalizes more than 100 million produced units.
Many people might have encountered this weapon in video games, while many other first read about it or saw it in the news. For example, both the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the Paris attacks of 2015 were made using AK-47’s and derivatives. In fact, one is more likely to read about Kalashnikov Assault-rifles in the context of global terrorism and civil war in the third world, than in any other context. And the question that many would ask is, why? Why did this soviet rifle become so linked to gun violence in the third world, as well as terrorism?
Before diving in the question, let’s first recap the history of the AK-47. The “Avtomat-Kalashnikova 47”, is a rifle developed by the Russian military engineer Mikhail Kalashnikov. It bases itself on German WW2 rifle models and was developed as the name hints in the year 1947. This is just a brief history, and definitely lacks many useful details, but the point isn’t here.
This rifle that will be an essential companion of the soviet military will then be opened to other markets, especially in the communist block. The fact that the AK-47 was created during the beginning of the cold war made it an important asset in the Soviet strategy of proxy warfare during the cold war. Indeed the rusticity and simplicity of this weapon made it simple to produce in mass, and the venue of the AKM, which is a simpler and cheaper-to-make version of the original Kalashnikov, in 1959 will facilitate the mass production of Kalashnikov rifles, these rifles will then flood the gun-market of many third world countries, as the USSR will arm all the rebel groups it supported with Kalashnikov rifles. This is in a way the first major wave of the introduction of the Kalashnikovs in the gun markets of third-world countries. Of course, such an introduction wasn’t only done through illicit means as many countries relied on AK-47 and derivatives for their army, and still rely on them to this day.
The second wave of such introduction was carried on by China, which in 1956 will become the second producer of AK-47 rifles after the Soviet Union. Kalashnikov rifles will then pour in the markets of Chinese allies, including African states. This constant supply of Kalashnikovs in frequently unstable countries will lead to the monopoly of Kalashnikov rifles on gun violence in many of these countries, as more and more criminal groups manage to get Kalashnikovs for cheaper and cheaper prices.
The third and deadlier wave of the introduction of AK-type rifles in the civilian gun-market is the one that followed the mass counterfeiting of these weapons especially in places such as Pakistan, Somalia, Liberia, and Afghanistan. This counterfeiting production being fostered by the relative simplicity of the structure and fabrication of the AK-47 and the AKM-59, which makes it easier to produce illegally without having to take many risks with the final product. This immense illegal production makes the number of AK-47 type weapons in the market even bigger than the official record stated prior, making the tracking of such weapons even harder.
All of this has given what Mikhail Kalashnikov once described as a tool to protect the motherland, into one of the major assets of gun violence in the third world. In addition to this, the easy availability of this gun has played a big role in shaping civil wars in modern times. As starting an insurrection has been easier than before and without much foreign financial or logistic support. And as witnessed in the cases of the Arab civil wars that followed the Arab spring, it takes a large uprising to destabilize the state for a massive number of charismatic figures with minimal financing to start their militias by arming them with a massively available and cheap stock of Kalashnikov rifles. In a way, this is the Kalashnikov calamity, that more than with any other weapon, the Kalashnikov has made the stability of many countries, where a large stick of it has been supplied, in peril.
