Boston.com / News / Rebuilding Iraq

ERBIL, IRAQ

Arms bazaar offers pick of light arms

By David Filipov, Globe Staff, 3/26/2003

visitor to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq might have difficulty finding the Latif Awa market. The cluster of makeshift lean-tos of concrete, plastic sheeting, and corrugated paper is easy to miss among the barren rock- and garbage-strewn fields outside Erbil, the Kurdish zone's largest city. Then again, chances are that any Kurdish man could show the way. The Latif Awa market is Erbil's only weapons market, specializing in the assault rifle that nearly every Kurdish family owns, the AK-47. In this time of war, the market is one place where business is booming.

"Business is very good," said Khaled Ibrahim, whose Kalashnikov rifles hung from the cardboard ceiling of his stall. "I sell daily between two and four weapons. It's better than ever before."

From the dubious comfort his stall provided in a raging sandstorm, Ibrahim walked his guests through his inventory as any good salesman would. Did the buyers want value for their money or quality? An Iranian-made knock-off of an old M-1 rifle design? A rocket-propelled grenade launcher at $100, plenty of bang for the buck there. Or, if they wanted an AK-47, then which kind did they prefer?

"A Libyan model goes for $200," Ibrahim said, displaying his wares, most of which were smuggled in by weapons traffickers or acquired from Iraqi army deserters. "So does a Cuban or a Chinese model, but they may break or get rusty. Russians are the best, which is why they cost $300."

Choices, choices. That $100 difference means a lot to Kurdish fighters, who earn that much in a month and must buy their own weapons before they can join the legions of guerrillas called "those of who face death."

Everyone who buys a weapon at Latif Awa is supposed to get a license, first, but everyone manages to get the gun he wants.

"There is no Kurdish home without weapons," said Abdullah Mohammed, another weapons trader at the market. "We need weapons because we have many enemies, Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Saddam."

Latif Awa itself is somewhat of a monument to Kurdish displeasure with Saddam Hussein. There used to be a town here, but it was one of the 4,000 Kurdish villages destroyed by Hussein's regime in the 1980s, during his campaign to forcibly relocate the Kurdish people.

But for all the weapons on sale at Latif Awa, they do not sell the kind of arms needed to outfit the kind of army that could defeat Hussein's forces in the north. To make this point, Ibrahim pushed an aging Chinese-made PK machine gun out of the way and seated his guests on a bench in his stall.

"I have the best Kalashnikov at home," he said. "But we need tanks and planes and American weapons. Can you tell me where I can get some of those?"