#Rebels

Recent photographs out of the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib show a thorough manufacture of improvised anti-material rifles, all in 14.5mm. Local gunsmiths in the rebel-held city appear to be using the discarded barrels of 14.5mm KPV heavy machine guns, of an unknown country origin (most likely Russian) to fashion both bolt action and what appears to be two variants of a self-loading gas operated rifle. Some of these rifles even have very well applied digital camouflage schemes for the conditions that they are manufactured in. All variants are magazine-fed from either underneath the receiver or in one case as a side loading mechanism. All have Picatinny rails fashioned to the receivers of which variable power scopes are affixed. At least one of the scopes is a Steiner, while others have a “B” logo embossed on the front of the objective lens cap. It could possibly be Bushnell but the logos don’t match. It could also be an airgun scope that those would be much easier to acquire not only in the MENA region but anywhere else. Barring any evidence to prove otherwise, all the anti-material rifles look to be manufactured by the same entity and also look to be in different stages of experimentation and testing. One of the self-loading rifles looks rather crude, and due to the presence of more bolt action systems, it appears that testing was done with the self-loading rifles but found to not be satisfactory so the entity went with a “production” run of the bolt actions which were much easier to produce reliably.

The Syrian rebels continue to use strange and dangerous (to themselves) weapons and tactics. In the video below at about 00:41 you can see two Syrian rebels shooting DIY grenades with a lit fuse from a semi-automatic shotgun. The shotgun is likely to be a Turkish sporting shotgun.

Yesterday I blogged about the weapons used by the Malaysian military and police during the Lahad Datu Standoff. These photos show a group of men believed to be members of the Royal Army of Sulu. They were taken during peace talks between another rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and Philippines government in October of last year. The man (center left in the above photo and dressed in a plain olive drab uniform) is thought to be Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Datu Azzimudin Kiram.

A reader noticed this interesting sniper rifle in a photo of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MNLF) fighters which appeared in his local newspaper. It is a quite a nifty looking rifle, if not a little bulky. Apparently they are fielding quite a few of them. I think they would be made locally.

In the video embedded below, a Syrian rebel explains how to operate two DIY weapons. The pistol looks like it may once have been a flare gun. The rifle looks to be one of the most complex single shot guns I have ever seen, I think the optics were taken from binoculars.

An StG 44 would fetch a lot of money in the collectors market, yet are most often found in the hands of dirt poor militiamen ( and women) in Africa and the Middle East. One was recently photographed in the hands of a Syrian rebel.

Danger Room has published a fascinating article by David Axe about a farming community who have organized themselves into a militia to defend themselves from the marauding remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group …

The Atlantic has a published a fascinating photo essay showing the Libyan rebel weapons retrofitting and manufacturing ‘industry’.

TFB reader Mehul emailed me some photos that his friend, a law enforcement officer, took of confiscated homemade pistols manufactured by Naxalite (communist) rebels in North East India.

Jane’s Intelligence Review, via Burmese (Myanmar) news website Irrawaddy, reports that the United Wa State Army (UWSA) rebels in northern Burma have begun manufacturing AK-47s and ammunition for themselves and to sell to their allies in the region.

The weapons being anything they can find and tactics being kidnapping civilians and attacking oil infrastructure. I have not read of any credible military victories. The “Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta’s” only claim to fame is managing to damage an oil platform 120km offshore.

… and their use, or lack of use, of iron sights amazes me.