The Gun Markets of Erbil

Photos and text by Collin Mayfield. Sponsored by Qilo Tactical.

*Various antique firearms, and accessories, hang on the wall of Bakhtyar’s gunshop.*

Erbil, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq.

Near Erbil’s ancient citadel, a site occupied over three millennia, is Bakhtyar’s single-room gun shop. It proved difficult to find, tucked underground beside hardware stores, unadvertised, and hidden away. Bakhtyar’s gun shop was far from the kitschy tourist stores on the opposite side of the Qelat. Fortunately, an American friend who visited prior gave some instructions to Bakhtyar’s.

Still struggling to find the infamous store, my fixer Stella got us better directions from shopkeeps near the citadel. On the way, societal pressure had us stop at a tea stand for a cigarette break, so we had to buy Arabic coffee and chai. It isn’t prudent for a woman to walk through a public market and smoke.

Bakhtyar’s basement room is an international armory, antiquated to modern. Stale air mixed with cigarette smoke and subtle overtones of gun oil and the smell of abrasive cutting disks. Full and parted Soviet Tokarevs, Makarovs, AKs, and RPKs were lying around. A clone of a German MP40 was mounted to the wall above and below two American M4s. A percussion-cap pistol was juxtaposed beside a British Sterling submachine gun. On another wall, a bow, quiver, and knives hung beside Mosins, Enfields, Mausers, and a muzzleloader. The hanging guns, many nonfunctioning, were only decor.

*Bakhytar stands behind his work table in the rear of his single-room shop.*

*Mosins, Enfields, Mausers, and a muzzleloader are displayed alongside a bow and arrow.*

*A clone of a German WWII-era MP-40 hangs between two American M4s.*

Bakhtyar sells and repairs all types of firearms. Most of his clients work for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as regular police, security agents in the Asayish, or the armed forces of the Peshmerga. While I admired antiques, a Peshmerga came and handed his service pistol to Bakhytar for repair. The soldier quickly left and Bakhytar resumed using his angle grinder on a barrel shroud.

*A Peshmerga handing a part from his pistol to Bakhtyar.*

Childhood photos of Bakhtyar working in the same shop hung beside a newspaper clipping of Mikhail Kalashnikov. Bakhtyar started learning the family business of gunsmithing in the 1980s.

*Bakhtyar, pictured on the wall, began learning gunsmithing at about age 9.*

*A newspaper clipping of AK-47 inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov.*

Civilians Bear Arms and a Government Crack Down

Bakhtyar’s store exists in the context of civilian-owned firearms. By global standards, the KRG has loose gun laws - with an extensive private small arms trade. About 70% of KRG residents, whether Kurd, Arab, or Assyrian, own guns or have access to guns through their families.

The 1993 Weapons Law No. 1, written five years after Saddam’s punitive Anfal Campaign against Iraqi Kurds, grants citizens the right to carry weapons. The law stipulates that adult, permanent KRG residents can own and carry guns, provided they have no history of mental illness or a criminal record - though KRG dissidents dispute the validity of many criminal records.

Despite loose laws and a common gun culture, Bakhtyar only sells hunting guns to the public. He won’t sell military hardware to citizens - only fudd guns are available. Shotguns, bolt actions, and pellet guns are available. The Asayish has raided and closed similar gun shops in Erbil and across the Kurdistan Region. Bakhtyar keeps his shop legal to avoid KRG scrutiny.

*Shotguns, rifles, and airguns are available for civilian purchase, behind and right of more powerful hardware.*

Civilian-owned guns aren’t only hunting guns or inherited antiques. There are an estimated 7.6 million civilian-held firearms for wider Iraq’s population of 43 million, and the KRG’s black market has an array of options. High-caliber long-range rifles, fully automatic rifles, belt-fed machine guns, and explosives are illicitly available weapons. The most commonly sold guns are Russian and Chinese AKs. Today, a quality AK sells for about $450 USD on the Kurdish market.

One afternoon I accompanied some Erbil friends shooting. Someone grabbed the familial AK-47, allegedly taken from a dead Daesh fighter while someone else purchased 100 loose rounds of 7.62 before we drove into the hills. It was an automatic AK; shooters spewed bullets at Carlsberg and Tuborg cans just shy of 100 yards. The popular Danish pilsners are a nice respite from the Iraqi sun. Beer cans were finished just prior to becoming targets.

However, the government is working to remove guns from KRG society, where gun crime is too common. The government is cracking down on civilian gun ownership and legal gun shops after a string of violence in 2022. That June, KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani ordered the closure of several firearms markets and the confiscation of unlicensed weapons after two professors were shot dead by a former student at an Erbil university. Later that week, a husband and wife were killed in a family dispute, alongside several other shootings across the KRG.

Registration comes first in administering Barzani’s 2022 Weapons Law No. 2. The government opened 48 registration centers for citizens’ guns. Citizens were required to register their weapons before an imposed Jul. 21, 2023, deadline, and they must hand over their heavy weapons. People can legally possess pistols, shotguns, rifles, and generously commonplace automatic Kalashnikov variants - all if registered. Ten new registration centers were established in Erbil, for a total of 90 throughout the KRG. Per Rudaw, over 17,000 guns were registered.

Now post-deadline, the police and Asayish treat unregistered firearms as “illegal weapons,” making holders liable for arrest while said weapons are impounded and handed to the Peshmerga. Under Weapons Law No. 2, only KRG citizens with a registered firearm and separate carry license have the legal right to bear arms, provided that they show the state proof that they need a firearm for personal protection. The KRG will issue one-year, renewable gun licenses. Private sales will still be legal, but only for registered weapons.

In July 2023, after I left Iraq, the Asayish raided another, albeit illegal, gun shop in Erbil. Several suspects were detained and manufacturing equipment, parts, and guns were confiscated. Authorities say the detainees were assembling AK-47s and AR-15s.

Persistent conflicts over the past decades continuously scattered military hardware through the region. The mid-90s civil war between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), now the KRG’s two dominant political parties, left small arms. Distrust between the two factions, and looting during the war, pushed civilians to procure guns for self-defense.

Other weapons came from Saddam’s regime. The Ba'athist army was disbanded and thousands of former soldiers kept their arms. The transitional government established a successor force. The new army proved unable to keep weapons gifted by US-led coalition members secure.

Kurdish gun dealers saw a boom in civilian-purchased weapons with the violent expansion of the Islamic State. KRG citizens rushed to buy guns after ISIS took Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul in 2014. Various atrocities, especially beheadings, pushed citizens to arm themselves to protect their families. However, most gun store patrons at the time were Peshmerga.

Any attempt by the KRG to demilitarize society is further hindered by existing divisions between the KDP and PUK parties. Both entities have their respective military structures, with the KDP more dominant in Erbil and Duhok provinces and the PUK more dominant in Sulaimaniyah and Halabja provinces. However, the KRG’s new memorandum also instructs the Asayish, Peshmerga, and other security services should leave their weapons in an armory rather than carry them off duty - though more armories need to be built.

Before we left Bakhtyar’s shop, he showed me a video of him shooting an RPG with friends in the countryside. “Would you like to come shooting?’ he asked me through Stella. As tempting, though expensive, as shooting an RPG or other weapons with Bakhtyar sounded, I was growing tired of bureaucracy and didn’t want to deal with getting approvals from the Asayish.

After smoking another Esse Change with the gunsmith, we ascended the stairs from underground. As we left Bakhtyar said to Stella “I don’t care that you’re Assyrian [a Christian ethnoreligious minority] - just as long as you aren’t Arab. I won’t sell to Arabs.” Only three decades ago, trauma from the genocidal Anfal Campaign remains.

Scars like those left by Anfal entrench the belief in an armed populace. Gun culture is a regional fixture. It will prove difficult for new laws and police mandates to change that. Generations of war, incessant political instability and divides, and limited trust in government institutions guarantee continued civilian-owned weapons.