Pakistan's Wild West

Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan -- Gunfire rips the morning air in this otherwise quiet village about 40 miles from the Afghanistan border, but nobody ducks or runs. Nobody believes an invasion is under way.

Sporadic bursts from machine guns, pistols and rifles are a way of life in Darra Adam Khel, which has earned a reputation as the armory of Pakistan's rugged northwest frontier.

"We have 2,300 gun shops, and about 12,000 people working in the weapons industry," said Munawar Hassan, a journalist and community leader. "It is an open business here, just like a flower shop in Peshawar."

A quick tour of this hardscrabble town near the Kohat Pass offers a window into the culture of the region, where blood-based tribal alliances dating back centuries are more important than modern national boundaries.

This is an austere land where bandits, smugglers and thieves abound. It's a bit like the old American West, a dry, unforgiving landscape of bare mountains and dusty tracks winding through spiny rock outcrops, a place where the weak perish quickly.

But the cowboys here wear turbans, not 10-gallon hats, and they dress in flowing cotton pants and sandals instead of chaps and boots.

Just as in the Old West, though, they live by a frontier code of personal justice and self-reliance. The Pakistani government's courts and police have no authority here. Affairs are run by tribal elders who enforce the law and the will of their people with the might of arms and the weight of tradition.

"Crime here is very low," Hassan said. "I have a Kalashnikov in my house, and my brother has a Kalashnikov. Everyone is the same, so everyone knows that his neighbor, and his enemy, is armed as well."

Over the years, the gunsmiths here have supplied arms to the fighting factions in neighboring Afghanistan. In the early 1990s, after the Afghans had defeated the Soviet Union, a top Afghan leader came to Darra Adam Khel to thank the gun makers for helping them repel the invaders.

"The people here are not educated, but they are very technical," Hassan said. "They are very good at making and repairing weapons."

The gunsmiths seem unperturbed by foreign visitors, but they don't volunteer much. Some have told reporters they don't supply the Afghan Taliban, the Islamic extremists who run their neighboring country. But in a town with a 1,000-year-old reputation for smuggling, it seems likely some guns from here find their way across the nearby border.

The town's gun making roots stretch back nearly a century. Legend has it two Pakistanis trained as gunsmiths by the British ran away during colonial days and set up shop here. Within a few years, the craft spread, with the demand for cheap, reliable weapons high.

Today, the gunsmiths use lathes and other modern tools, but much of the work still is done with hand tools by men squatting in dank shops. Despite the primitive equipment, the gunsmiths boast they can copy nearly any weapon and turn out a workable duplicate within days, for only a fraction of the normal price.

"Heavy weapons have been banned, including rocket launchers and 3-inch mortars," Hassan said. "But you can get semiautomatic and automatic pistols and rifles, copies of any gun you want."

Pakistan is a country of bazaars -- markets that offer everything from bedroom furniture to vegetables, from carpets to kitchenware.

But the main road of Darra Adam Khel is dotted with shops selling weapons. Rifles line the walls, pistols nestle on racks, and leather holsters hang from wires attached to the ceiling. Some of the shop signs adorned with flourishing Arabic script are accompanied by English advertising for guns, rifles and ammunition.

Behind the row of shops fronting the main road are narrow alleyways that lead into a maze of even narrower footpaths that twist between brown, mud-brick walls.

Open a weathered wooden door into a tiny hut, and you find a man hard at work at a gleaming metal lathe, patiently turning raw steel into a gun barrel. Nearby in a better-lit shop, a man sits cross-legged on a rug, working with a small hammer to insert firing pins into gleaming brass bullets.

He casually tosses the shells into a plastic bowl, where they are scooped up by a co-worker who fills them with gunpowder.

Despite the prospect of a looming war, which would seem good for business, the mood here is glum.

Business has been bad lately, the gun makers say, because the Pakistani government has pressed tribal authorities to crack down on the weapons industry in response to a growing international movement to limit the production and sale of light arms.

If the Americans come to fight, the gun makers think, one result will be a flood of captured top-of-the-line weapons, which will further stifle demand for Darra Adam Khel's guns.

"Our quality is second to those weapons, so it will hurt us," said Chan Badshah, a bullet maker.

In a nearby shop, gray-bearded Mutabar Khan squats on the cement floor, surrounded by oily metal hand tools he uses to assemble pistols.

"This gun takes six days to make," he said, holding up a sleek black pistol and clip. "It sells for 1,500 rupees [about $25], and the clip costs another 500 [about $8]. It holds 13 bullets."

Khan, a third-generation gunsmith, seems resigned to the current downturn in business as just another challenge he and his hard-working neighbors must endure. Having survived invaders since the time of the ancient Greeks, people here accept war, strife and struggle as the lot of life.

"Business is very bad now," Khan said, "but that is from God, not from the Americans."

I've had a soft spot for Dara Adam Kel since I learned of it about 1980. It's been around more than a century. It shows that gun control is impossible in a country where lathes, files, drills, and steel are easily availalble.

Nearby in a better-lit shop, a man sits cross-legged on a rug, working with a small hammer to insert firing pins into gleaming brass bullets.

You can tell this was written by someone on the Urinal Constipation staff

This is hell as defined by Sarah Brady. Some doofus wrote how the WTC attacks proved the need for more gun control. He wrote that some terrorists were arrested after buying guns at gun shows to smuggle back to the Middle East. That's like smuggling ice to the Eskimos. Let's see, buy a Chinese made AK-47 here for $500 or more and smuggle them to Pakistan and sell them for $75. Yeah, how do I get into this business.

"a man sits cross-legged on a rug, working with a small hammer to insert firing pins into gleaming brass bullets."

The Pakistanis have more technical skills than lamebrain leftist authors.

Luke 22:36 (KJV) --Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Got sword? (M1 Garand ==>CMP)

No mercy, no quarter!
May the jihadists burn in hell for eternity!
Help speed them on their way!

Molon Labe!

Nearby in a better-lit shop, a man sits cross-legged on a rug, working with a small hammer to insert firing pins into gleaming brass bullets.

The mental image I get from this phrase is entirely different than the one the firearms-ignorant writer intended.

(TAP, TAP, BANG!)

What he is describing is the process of placing a primer back into a casing as part of reloading it with something simular to a Lee Reloading Tool. The Lee tools are the cheapest of the bunch, they cost about $20 retail. Lee also makes very sophisticated reloading tools that are in essense a small reloading factory for about $300. The engineering and value is superb.

I understand that. (As my daughter says, 'Like, duh!')

What I'm saying is that the process of tapping said primer with a firing pin gives a completely different mental image than seating a primer into a cartridge.

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