Syria Feature: Insurgents Fighting With A Hodge-Podge of Weapons (Chivers)

Photo: Bryan Denton/New York TimesWorking together and at the urging of antigovernment fighters, local businesses and tradesmen have organized into a network engaged in making weapons, in part by delegating different tasks among the various trades. Some shops concoct explosives and propellants, a job that one organizer, Ahmed Turki, said had best been accomplished by a local painter with experience mixing chemicals. Others, who have electricians’ skills, wire together the circuits for makeshift bombs.

Machinists and metallurgists assemble rockets and mortars, as well as the bodies for mortar and artillery shells or the large cylinders often used to hold the charges in roadside or truck bombs. (These men also manufacture truck mounts for machine guns captured from government forces; one novel design included using a disc brake from a motorcycle to arrest the movement of the weapon as its operator adjusts the gun’s elevation.)

Still others remove the propellant from captured tank and artillery rounds, which is then repurposed in the rebels’ arms.

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