Khyber Pass Copy

Copies of British Martini and Snider firearms built in the Khyber region

Copy of Webley Pocket Pistol in .38 S&W, purchased at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

A Khyber Pass Copy is a firearm manufactured by cottage gunsmiths in the Khyber Pass region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The reason they are called that is because the Adam Khel Afridi, who live around the Khyber pass, were historically the most active arms manufacturers on the Frontier.

The area has long had a reputation for producing unlicenced, home-made copies of firearms using whatever materials are available - more often than not, railway rails, scrap motor vehicles and other scrap metal. The quality of such rifles varies widely, ranging from as good as a factory-produced example to dangerously poor.

Models

The most commonly encountered Khyber Pass Copies are of British military firearms, notably Martini-Henry, Martini-Enfield, and Lee-Enfield rifles, although AK-47 rifles, Webley Revolvers, Tokarev TT-33s, Colt M1911s and Browning Hi-Powers have also been encountered. A Khyber Pass Kalashnikov-style rifle usually refers to such a rifle composed of a mishmash of parts from various AK rifles. It is thus unlike any rifle produced by a factory or issued by a regular military force. The typical example of a "Khyber Pass AK" is a stamped receiver AKM in 7.62x39 caliber, fitted with the triangular folding stock common to Russian AKS-74 rifles.

The Khyber Pass gunsmiths first acquired examples of the various British service arms during nineteenth century British military expeditions in the North-West Frontier, which they used to make copies. During World War II, some locally organised Irregular Forces were issued Khyber Pass made rifles - partly for financial reasons and partly because there was concern the troops would steal their rifles and desert if issued higher-quality British or Indian manufactured rifles.

Identification

Since Khyber Pass rifles are usually copied exactly from a "master" rifle, which may itself be a Khyber Pass Copy, markings and all, it's not uncommon to see Khyber Pass rifles with numerous errors and particular identifying factors, notably:

• Spelling errors in the markings (the most common of which is EИFIELD for ENFIELD)
• V.R. (Victoria Regina) cyphers dated after 1901 - Queen Victoria died in 1901, so any rifles made after this should be stamped "E.R" (Edward Rex, referring to King Edward VII)
• Generally inferior workmanship including weak or soft metal, poorly finished wood, and badly struck markings.

It is notable that Afghanistan was a point of conflict between the British Empire and Imperial Russia throughout the 19th Century, from which it is reasonable to assume that tools and expertise relevant to both cultures were accumulated by native gunsmiths. Hence despite an untrained eye assuming that a reversed "N" or "L" in ENFIELD is simply a transcription error, a toolmaker or linguist will recognise that they are actually the Cyrillic "И" and "Г" characters, with the gunsmith using whatever letter punches he had available.

Ammunition

The ammunition used in the Khyber Pass region is often underloaded, being made from a variety of powders or even old film (which contains nitrocellulose, a key component of smokeless powder) - and as such, Khyber Pass Copy rifles cannot generally stand up to the pressures generated by modern commercial ammunition. In short, it is generally advised that they not be fired under any circumstances, although there are a few collectors who have made extremely mild handloaded cartridges for their Khyber Pass rifles. This practice is not recommended, and anyone firing a Khyber Pass rifle is doing so at substantial personal risk.

See also

• Gun politics in Pakistan

External links

• Vice Magazine, "Let's Go Pakistan!"