Pssst, Wanna Buy A Fake AK-47? Yours For $150 

Eric Ellis, Peshawar 

05/28/1996 

IT'S not a great idea to go walking in the picturesque Kohat hills outside this ancient Pakistani city, the home of the fearsome Pathan warriors.

A casual stroll to take relief from the desert heat might also see you take a round from a Kalashnikov; a wrong step could tragically reveal a hidden land mine. Or you might spend your time dodging Stinger missiles and the occasional flying Scud.

But this is no war zone. It's a thriving industrial zone daily minting new millionaires.

Forget copied compact discs in China and pirated Hollywood hits in India. Pakistan hosts a far more sinister intellectual infringement that would unite the US, China and Russia - copying weapons.

Just 50km away from the Afghanistan border, the village of Darra Adam Khel does a booming line in imitation Chinese and Russian Kalashnikov automatic guns, American M-16s, Russian Scuds and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, French and Chinese land mines as well as its own rare original, a fountain pen gun.

Millions of dollars are daily transacted along this dusty one-kilometre strip of shanties and stalls which bear names such as Horshall and Bros, Haji Noor Mohamed Arms Bazaar, Samroze and Co and Shaheed Arms Store.

In this lawless abode of the feared Afridi tribe, it is estimated that 500 AK-47s are finished and sold in Darra every day.

Testing the merchandise is straightforward enough. Salesman and customers simply step outside their store and unnervingly (for a visitor) take aim at the nearby hills. The main street, Kohat Road, is littered with empty shell casings.

The local policeman says that a person gets killed or injured every day in Darra and the surrounding hills.

Some 300-odd stalls sell these and more in scenes that Jesse James might easily recognise. Even Mr Hajib's tea and naan shop sports a business card adorned with a gun logo.

The local arms trail starts at the smart Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar's old British military cantonment. An apologetic sign at the door from the management seeks guests' "co-operation" in checking in weapons with the concierge before entering the hotel.

The breakfast room buzzes with furtive negotiation, in Russian, French, Iran's Farsi, Pakistan's Urdu and English.

Well-groomed fat men haggle on mobile phones, while local police lounge around outside in Ray-Bans and black Escort convertibles.

(Times have moved on in Pakistan but it was said that for a long time the most reliable place to make an international direct-dial call in Pakistan was from Darra.)

In the industrial zone surrounding Darra, scores of illiterate metal forgers, fitters, turners and blacksmiths work beneath portraits of Saddam Hussein, Ali Bhutto, and inscriptions from the Holy Koran in turning out their wares. The BBC beams away on TVs via satellite, its clipped vowels punctuating the muezzin's call to prayer from the village mosques.

Foreigners must have hard-to-obtain permits to visit Darra but 500 rupees ($20) of baksheesh to the local cop was all it took The Australian Financial Review to gain entry and an armed escort, who loosed off a few rounds of his Kalashnikov for good measure. He even produced a pen gun for purchase -300 rupees ($14).

A made-to-order Kalashnikov takes 10 days to make and costs anything between $100 and $150, depending on the quantity.

The guns are openly made but the copied land mines, Stingers and Scuds are made in another zone visited by invitation only from the village head.

"America doesn't like this," says Mr Habib of the Khyber Rifles, referring to the manufacture of Stingers and land mines. Peshawar is host to a US consul. Darra has been copying weapons since the late 1800s, getting its start from the then British Raj colonialists who let them make their old shotguns in return for Pathan assistance in the struggle to subdue Afghanistan and the North West Frontier tribes.

But its boom time was the 1980s, when billions of dollars washed into Peshawar, first in "aid" from the United States and then in assistance from the scores of non-government organisations that arrived to help Peshawar's 2 million-odd refugees.

But while Darra might smell of money, local "merchants of death" say times are harder since the 1988 death of Pakistani dictator General Zia Al-haq and the end of the US-sponsored Afghan mujahadin's efforts in ousting the then Soviet Union from Kabul.

"Business was very good in the 1980s," remembers Mr Habib.

"We could not keep up with demand and we had weapons from everywhere." Darra even did a nice line in distilling Russian-style vodka - called Gorbachev - and smuggling it into Kabul.

The rag-tag Afghans are still here, the only difference being that the end of the Cold War has made "helping them" much less an international imperative.