Amidst a news round up are a couple of paragraphs (shortened), with links, on the state of the Taliban armoury in Helmand, after the Marja fighting:

Have you ever wondered what an insurgent’s gun locker looks like? The New York Times has for some while been looking at what weapons the Taliban and associated groups have at their disposal, how they equip themselves, and what each might tell us about their ability to function as a fighting force. The area of Marja, in Helmand Province...captured 26 firearms – of which twelve were variants of the Kalashnikov, eight were fifty-year-old bolt-action assault rifles, four were variants of the PK machine gun, and two were semi-automatic pistols...

According to the New York Times, the weapons collected – and in particular the presence of a growing number of ancient bolt-action rifles in the regions – fit a broader pattern which suggests arms supply issues may well be starting to affect militant groups’ attack capabilities – though at the same time, the report stresses that an apparent decline in the prevalence of assault rifles should not be taken to indicate a dramatic drop in the availability of all types weapons across Helmand.

The report’s author also draws attention to the repairs carried out on a number of the captured weapons – repairs that, while certainly hindering their overall accuracy, render them usable nevertheless. A testament to their owners resourcefulness or, again, to increasingly limited supplies? The answer, it is suggested, probably lies somewhere between the two...

..Old they may be, but together they have helped some of the poorest and least well-equipped forces in the world stand up to one of the biggest, best funded and most technologically sophisticated armies ever seen.
Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensec...utm_campaign=0