The Gun

by C. J. Chivers

  The young men were quick, and they likely surprised the border guards watching the stillness below their posts. Both men reached the far wall. As they neared the concrete, the border guards opened fire with Kalashnikovs. Dozens of bullets flew toward the men. The range was short—perhaps sixty meters. The bullets missed Kulbeik. He scaled the wall and squeezed through the strands of barbed wire. Fechter was lean and fresh-faced; he looked fit. As he leaped to gain a hold with which to pull himself up, one of the rounds found its mark. He was hit. He fell, back to the eastern side.

  Kulbeik sensed his companion’s peril. But Fechter was so close. If only he could get up and try again. “Now go, go now, now move ahead!” Kulbeik shouted.

  Fechter could not raise himself. He had been struck in the pelvis.

  The hips, upper thighs, and pelvic girdle are among the worst places for a rifle bullet to smack into a human being. Wounds to these areas are often instantly immobilizing. Load-bearing bones rupture. Victims buckle and collapse. Complicating matters and raising the risk of swift death, large blood vessels follow the contours of bones. If cut, these blood vessels tend to bleed heavily and in ways that can be hard to stop. In the mad race to stop the flow, pressure and tourniquets are hard to apply.

  Just a few feet from Kulbeik, at the edge of the communist world, Peter Fechter could not stand, much less scale a vertical concrete wall. Unarmed, eighteen years old, and at the mercy of two governments whose boundary he straddled, he slumped to his side, his blood draining from a wound almost impossible to treat. He was in need of immediate aid. His hasty attempt to escape had come to a full stop. He was not inches from freedom. He was a spectacle, watched by residents and officials from both sides, a helpless young man, minutes from death.

  He shouted for aid. Surely he was not a threat, or capable of escape. Weapons were no longer required. But the wall was new, and the procedures for this kind of moment uncertain. From their posts on the east and from the west alike, the guards watched, joined by a growing crowd. No one dared to step into the strip and help. Fechter was thrown a bandage from the Western side. His wound was too severe, and too tricky, for him to hope to treat himself. Fechter bled. After several minutes he passed into unconsciousness, and fell silent. He slumped on his side, in the fetal position, wearing a dark sport coat. Later, the East German border guards, helmets on, their assault rifles slung across their dark coats, ventured to the wall and picked up Fechter and carried him away. An East German doctor soon pronounced him dead.

  No one outside his own circle had heard of Peter Fechter before. He verged on anonymity in life. His death was of the most public sort, and East Germany was unapologetic about how in his ending he realized instant and gruesome fame. Karl-Edvard von Schnitzler, the caustic East German television host, swept aside complaints, and defended the guards’ decisions both to shoot and to leave the young man to die. “The life of each of our brave boys in uniform is worth more to us than the life of a law-breaker,” he said. “One should stay away from our border—then you can save the blood, tears, and cries.” The killing of Fechter also fit the use of the assault rifle for which Mikhail Kalashnikov had been rewarded: “reinforcing the power of the state.” Here was the real Kalashnikov, 1962, propaganda peeled away.10

  The Kremlin’s posture toward its satellites and their yearnings for self-determination remained true to this form.

  In early 1968, the Soviet Union faced another challenge from its western vassals, this time in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, where a reform-minded politician, Alexander Dubček, assumed control of the nation’s Communist Party. Dubček sought change, including loosening restrictions on speech and on the press, liberalizing the economy, and offering citizens more consumer goods. The challenge to Kremlin hegemony was less confrontational than the uprising in Hungary twelve years before. But it was a threat. Its nickname, Prague Spring, suggested it was only a start. By July, with the Kremlin worried that tolerating one upstart might encourage others, the Soviet army was planning exercises—the word used to mask an invasion—on Czech and Slovak soil.11 Soviet divisions struck in August, advancing alongside troops from Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland. The airport outside Prague was seized, allowing transport planes to offload troops. Resistance was sporadic and mostly light. But more than seventy people were killed, and Moscow had sent a fresh signal to its satellites and to the West: The communists’ hold on power would be preserved by force. When it felt threatened, the Soviet Union and its local partners would move past talk of fraternal relations and partnership and turn its guns on its own, just as they would fire on their unarmed citizens when they tried to flee.

  The Eastern bloc had changed from Stalin’s time. The Great Terror had given way to a less bloody form of centralized rule. But there would be no organic evolution from the totalitarian remains of what Lenin and Stalin had built. If the system were to give way, it would have to crack. The political consequences of this posture, and its effects on civil liberties and human rights, were obvious. The security implications were worrisome. One day, when the communist systems came under strain, or when they shattered, their huge storehouses of weapons might slip from state control to markets, where appetites for the arms were growing.

  Eastern bloc infantry rifles had come to the Middle East in large numbers in the mid-1950s. The first large shipment to be widely recorded—the Kremlin-negotiated deal via Czechoslovakia to Nasser’s Egypt in 1955—apparently did not involve AK-47s. Czech rifles were shipped. But not long after these transfers, Soviet AK-47s began to flow to the Egyptian army, as did M1943 ammunition and the technology to produce both the weapons and the cartridges. By the late 1950s, American technical intelligence officials were secretly testing Egyptian-manufactured 7.62x39-millimeter cartridges—a sign that a Middle Eastern version of the ammunition was already in significant circulation.12 By the early 1960s, Egyptian soldiers were carrying an Egyptian-made AK-47 knock-off—the Misr, the first of many Kalashnikovs to be cloned in the Middle East. Soon the Kremlin’s engagement with Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya resulted in their militaries’ adopting the Kalashnikov line. The timing was portentous. Unlike many military items the Soviet Union provided its customers in the region, small arms could be easily transferred to third parties, who could easily master their use. And the rush of Soviet infantry weapons into the region aligned with the rise of Palestinian nationalist groups, many of which engaged in campaigns of terrorism against Israel and its citizens.

  Middle Eastern terrorism had been nurtured with state sponsorship. Soon after Israel declared independence in May 1948, Egypt’s King Farouk I had organized unconventional fighters against the Jewish state. The fighters called themselves fedayeen, guerrillas prepared to sacrifice their lives. From bases in Jordan, Lebanon, and elsewhere, and with backing from Egypt’s intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, they conducted attacks against Israelis in the early 1950s. After Farouk was deposed in 1952, in part because of Egypt’s military failures, the Egyptians lent the fedayeen more support. Unconventional war and sabotage proliferated as other Middle Eastern governments and the Palestinian diaspora followed the Egyptian example. Unable to defeat Israel by conventional means, they maintained pressure in other lethal ways, while seeking a measure of deniability.

  In the evolution of war, processes that develop in parallel—political, technological, or tactical—can suddenly cross, and at these points of intersection wars change. In the crucible of the Middle East in the 1960s, this was the case. The Palestinian groups that chose militancy soon procured the newly available rifles that the Eastern bloc had shipped to its Middle Eastern clients. The AK-47 and the AKM became standard arms for unconventional war. They were studied in militant training camps and carried on guerrilla and terrorist missions that entered the groups’ tactical routine. Assault rifles, those lightweight instruments for concentrating firepower, multiplied the menace of individual insurgents and terrorists, elevating the danger they posed and the ambitions they voiced. The weapons�
� utility was not lost on the groups’ leaders. Khalil al-Wazir, a commander who eventually led Fatah’s armed war under the nom de guerre of Abu Jihad, embraced the AK-47 as a vehicle to victory. “The Kalashnikov is our only language until we free all of Palestine,” he said.13 From the fedayeen camps in the Middle East, the weapon, and the mentality for turning its barrel toward civilians, spread outward. Eventually a flight from Libya in 1972 carried six of the rifles to Munich.

  By 4:30 A.M., the Black September cell members, assault rifles in hand, were trying to open the door to Apartment 1 at 33 Connollystrasse, where Israeli coaches and athletic officials were resting. One of the Israelis, Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, heard the noise. He opened the door and came face-to-face with the attackers. Gutfreund slammed the door, leaning into it and shouting to the other Israelis, calling them from their sleep. But the Palestinians had been quick. In the instant the door had been ajar, two of them inserted their assault-rifle barrels past the jamb, preventing Gutfreund from closing the door fully. They began to pry. Gutfreund was a huge man. He pushed back as long as he was able. For several long seconds he kept them out. His efforts saved a man. Tuvia Sokolovsky, a strength-and-conditioning trainer, scrambled from his bed and forced open a window. He dropped outside as the Palestinians rushed in. At least one of them opened fire as Sokolovsky dashed, but the bullets missed the man.

  Inside the apartment, the attackers rounded up their captives: Gutfreund, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Andre Spitzer, Jacov Springer, and Moshe Weinberg. By this point, the Black September mission had already realized a measure of success. The cell had penetrated the Olympic Village and taken hostages, and its members were unharmed. But there was still a chance for the hostages to resist. Some of these Israelis were veterans of their country’s many wars and possessed the light feet and powerful frames of lifelong athletes. These men had had an understanding of how and why to fight. Weinberg, a wrestling coach, acted first. He lunged at Afif with a kitchen knife. Another Palestinian fired. The bullet slammed into the side of the coach’s mouth. Weinberg fell. It was a grotesque injury, but not fatal—a pass-through that missed his skull. He sputtered blood; his senses and much of his strength were intact. The Palestinians herded their unwounded captives through the apartment and bound them with their precut ropes.

  Afif was not satisfied. With other members of his cell to help him, he forced Weinberg to his feet, ordered him outside onto Connollystrasse, and set out to seize more hostages. Weinberg was the quick-thinking sort, more than a match for the men who had captured him. He led Afif past Apartment 2, where smaller-statured Israeli athletes were quartered, toward Apartment 3, where Israeli wrestlers and weightlifters lived; these men brought muscle to a fight. Inside, Afif and his cell gathered six more hostages—David Berger, Zeev Friedman, Eliezer Halfin, Yossef Romano, Gad Tsabari, and Mark Slavin—and marched them at gunpoint outside, toward apartment 1.

  Tsabari ran. One of the captors opened fire. Again the bullets flew wide. (As is the case with many who carry Kalashnikovs, the Black September terrorists were well armed but not crack shots.) Near the apartment’s entrance, Weinberg lunged again. Even after being shot, he was formidable—a thick-necked career wrestler who had served as an Israeli commando. He punched one of the Palestinians in the face, fracturing his jaw. The man dropped his rifle as he fell. Weinberg scrambled to pick it up. There was not enough time. Another guard fired, shooting the coach several times. He collapsed. The remaining Israelis were forced inside, where Romano, a weightlifter on crutches from a recent training injury, sprang at their captors. After a struggle, one of the Palestinians opened fire. Romano’s torso was shredded by automatic fire.

  The Black September operation was a secret no more. The sounds of gunfire had awakened the Olympic Village, and an anemic counter-terrorism response began. A short while later, an unarmed German guard made his way on foot to the building, carrying a handheld two-way radio. There he spotted a man in a mask at the doorway, clutching a rifle. The security guard reported what he saw to his dispatch center, beginning a chain of notifications: to other apartments, to the Munich police, to the interior ministry of Bavaria, to the federal police, and to the German chancellor and diplomatic corps, which called Israel’s ambassador at his residence in Bonn.

  At 5:08 A.M., the terrorists dropped three pieces of paper from the apartment to a security officer below. The papers contained their demands. German police ringed the building and the world watched on live television as the first deadline for executions, and then others, passed. Israel reacted as expected. It refused to negotiate. A deal was struck on the ground: The Germans would provide passage by helicopter to a nearby NATO airfield, from where the hostages and their captors would be flown by passenger aircraft to an Arab nation. Much of the world had not yet organized for domestic counterterrorism action, and did not have highly trained units designated for these moments. The West Germans were unprepared. The end came quickly. That night, after the Black September cell surveyed the Boeing passenger jet that was to carry the captors and captives from Europe, the Germans initiated an ambush at the airfield. It failed. The hostage seizure descended into a gunfight, in which the terrorists turned their Kalashnikovs on their hostages, who were bound and helpless before them.

  On the morning of September 6, not quite twenty-four hours after Afif and his subordinates had scaled the fence, Jim McKay, an ABC television sportscaster, introduced the world to the age when military assault rifles had become elemental ingredients in forms of terrorism that would only grow. “Our worst fears have been realized tonight,” he said, and then gave a summary of the number of athletes seized. Eleven men in all, he said, and added: “They’re all gone.”

  Inside the Soviet Union, arms production continued. Throughout the mid-1960s, Soviet arms designers had watched the American rollout of the M-16 and had examined captured specimens from Vietnam. They had not been favorably impressed with Colt’s rifle. (Kalashnikov himself called it “freakish,” “prankish,” and “capricious,” and something that American soldiers “threw away.”)14 The M-16’s ammunition was another matter. It demanded attention. By the early 1970s, within five years of the M-16’s designation as the United States’ standard military rifle, the Soviet army was at work on its own small-caliber, high-velocity round: the 5.45-millimeter cartridge. Once the round was available to armorers, Kalashnikov, whose weapons were now entrenched in the Soviet military to the point of enshrinement, led a design team that created the weapon the army chose to fire it: the Avtomat Kalashnikova-74, the automatic rifle by Kalashnikov, selected in 1974. The AK-74[31] was to the AK-47 what the AR-15 had been to the AR-10—a pre-existing design reworked for a smaller, faster round.15 It entered mass production in 1976, and the Soviet army displayed it to the world in the 1977 October Revolution Parade in Red Square. It soon became the Soviet standard arm for many units, displacing the AKM.16 Old patterns in West-East arms design had recurred. The Soviet army had eagerly grasped and imitated the technical thinking of an opponent. Small-arms design had further converged.17 And again Mikhail Kalashnikov was toasted: He was named a Hero of Socialist Labor for a second time.

  The award provided another curious glimpse into life in the center of Soviet arms-design circles. One of the honors that accompanied designation of a two-time Hero of Socialist Labor was the assignment of an artist to make a bust of the hero, to be installed at the recipient’s place of birth. As Kalashnikov’s bust was being shaped, he visited the studio of Anatoly Beldushkin, the artist commissioned to render him in bronze. He was surprised by what he saw. Beldushkin had fashioned the bust closely to Kalashnikov’s likeness, but added a facial feature the designer did not possess: dense eyebrows. Kalashnikov understood.

  I saw him make my brows very thick and protested half in jest: “What do I need brows like Brezhnev’s for?” “Brezhnev has nothing to do with it,” the sculptor tried to explain amicably to me. “Such brows are indicative of constant strain of thought.”

 
Such was Kalashnikov’s world, the Soviet Union of the 1970s, a system in which the habit of kowtowing was ingrained even in the sculptor’s hands, and those enjoying its perks had casually, even cheerfully, accepted the strange rules. “I laughed merrily,” Kalashnikov wrote. “‘Couldn’t you relieve me of this strain?’”18 His bust was completed, bearing brows like those of the general secretary. It was placed on a pedestal in Kurya, the village from which the Kalashnikov family had been cast out during collectivization and sent into exile.19

  By the 1970s, the Eastern bloc arms stores were proving to be of limited Cold War use, and the risks of the stockpiles and of greater assault-rifle distribution were becoming discernible. The war the rifles were to help the Kremlin win was not fought by the means the stockpilers had planned, and the armories stood as powerful attractants for all manner of opportunists. Illicit diversion was a natural risk. The pulls and pushes of demand and supply, along with ample precedents of diversions and their consequences, were in view. Three examples were instructive: the movement of firearm stocks left from World War II; the introduction of assault rifles to Uganda, where the government fell; and the assassination in 1981 of the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.