AK47

AK47
Author: Michael Hodges 2008 208 pp
My rating: 1*
Started May 27 2008, Finished May 29 2008

If this annoying, unpersuasive and tendentious book had been much longer, I wouldn’t have finished it. I was hoping to find a straightforward history of the weapon’s development, distribution and usage, but the author, a British journalist, is more interested in its semiotics. Frustration with the book, particularly a lack of technical detail and illustrations, caused me to spend fifteen minutes perusing Wikipedia and Youtube entries about the AK, research that taught me more about the gun than this book. There are two primary reasons why the AK is so widespread, the weapon of choice among what I call Non Governmental Militaries --terrorists, insurgents and personal armies throughout the third world: based on a simple, unexacting design it is extremely reliable and durable (qualities for which it sacrifices long range accuracy) and probably more to the point, it was licensed to many export hungry Soviet states and thus produced in enormous quantities and sold at relative bargain prices to any customer, no matter how ill reputable, who had cash.
After Hodges glosses over the nuts and bolts, he argues that the weapon’s ubiquity lead it becoming emblematic of the uses to which it is put and of those who use it. His basic thesis is that the AK has “joined soft rock and Coca-Cola in the list of internationally successful products that were sought for what they represented as much as for what the actually were or did.” (pp192-3) In his conclusion, he expands the scope of his argument well into abstract nebulousness, writing that “Previously, globalization had been about the imposition of American products on a worldwide market. The Kalashnikov has changed that. It is the world’s first truly global product, operating on its own terms” (p209) While Hodges’ contention is that these are the reasons the AK is so widely used, he never persuaded me. Instead, I came away feeling that its ready availability and lack of affordable competition are the real reasons for its “marketplace dominance.”
The book starts with a pointless, arbitrary “timeline” of the weapon. The first two chapters are the story of the eponymous Mikhail Kalashnikov and how he came to create his enduring legacy; though like most of the book’s chapters it is heavily padded, it is still probably the most worthwhile. Chapter three spends 40 pages describing the life of a North Vietnamese soldier in order to repeat the dubious allegation that he shot down a B52 with an AK. Chapter four explores the lives of Palestinian terrorists/resistance fighters in the West Bank and doesn’t serve much purpose except to create sympathy for them. The next chapter, a tale of African child soldiers, is perhaps both the most irritating and illuminating – while it makes a provocative point that the “AK went from being a tool of the conflict to the cause of the conflict”, its diatribes against Western rock stars who stage benefits to raise money for African relief are particularly half baked and distracting. The next chapter, in which the author interviews a couple of would be British Jihadis of Pakistani extraction, most successfully makes his point that the AK47 has become the embodiment of revolutionary resistance; however, despite scoring some points, Hodges still manages to undermine one of his points – that the AK is the sine qua non of NGMs with the following quote, the likes of which I’d been anticipating throughout the book: “They train you to use a Kalashnikov, but what they really want you to do is blow yourself up on a bus or a tube. You don’t need an AK for that.” (p159)
The final chapter, conflating almost all modern day American street violence with the universal brand of the AK47, particularly rubbed me wrong. When Hodges writes that by 2004, “On the streets and television screens of America, the AK would combine the imagery and association of its previous incarnations into one overwhelmingly powerful cultural package” (pp 188-9), I found myself thinking nonsense – most Americans probably could not even differentiate the AK from other, similar looking, assault rifles.

The book is sloppy, hyperbolic and laden with unsustainable conclusions:

“Pick up any broadsheet or tabloid newspaper and you will find at least one photograph on an AK47” (p6)
Mehdi Army (p18) also spelled Mahdi army
[African child]”soldiers invariably had Mikhail Kalashnikov’s gun in their hands when they went into battle.” (p109). [Italics added]
“Emmanuel was the real deal, an actual Kalashnikov kid who lent the album the kudos of actual conflict.” (p 130, italics added, the word he wanted was something like credibility or bona fides.)
“… Pakistan … a country where the Kalashnikov dominated life.” (p 140) Really that weapon, which is rarely present in news photos or footage from that country, has more of an impact that Islam or poverty?
“Implicit in all of Faisal’s preaching – indeed its central message -- was the need for young Muslim men to learn to use a Kalashnikov. [A Faisal sermon stated] ‘Islam was spread by the sword, Today it has got to be spread by the Kalashnikov.’” (p150-1, italics added, Faisal explicitly cites this need in this quote and without any other examples of Faisal’s preaching one has to imagine that learning to use the weapon is not its central message, but instead ancillary to fighting for Islam. )
Hodges claims that US military planners should have anticipated a formidable insurgency because the Iraqi population “had enough weapons to mount a fierce and punishing resistance … the Kalashnikov … had inveigled its way into every level of society …” (p162. Saddam’s despotic regime was perpetuated by a strong state security system (secret police) whose primary goal, if not only, objective was eradication of any potential resistance to Saddam. Such a system would hardly have allowed widespread spread of assault rifles from the military into civilian hands. It seems to me more than likely that the Iraqi population did not become significantly armed until after the war, the abandonment of the Iraqi military armories and the disbanding of the Iraqi army.)
“Black Hawk Down leaves the viewer in no doubt that the AK was the best weapon in Somalia.” (pp194-5) My conclusion about the combat in BHD had nothing to do with the strengths of specific weaponry, but instead on the advantages of overwhelming numbers suicidally applied in a close urban environment.
“Desperate for foreign currency, governments in the newly capitalist eastern European exported the only thing they had that Americans wanted: cheap guns.” (p 198) First of all, based on evidence that Hodges implicitly provides, virtually all AK47 sales went to the third world, or at least not to the US. Second of all, saying the AK is the only thing those countries had that we wanted is more than a gross exaggeration.