With every burst of gunfire in the sky above his shop, Sher Akbar Afridi, 70, smiles. “Gunfire means business,” he said. “It is not the smell of gunpowder but cash. More gunfire means more business. If there is no gunfire, we get worried.”
The Pakistani town of Darra Adam Khel has been the centre of the regional gun trade for more than a century. In that time, this dusty bazaar 25 miles south of Peshawar near the Afghan border has been witness to the succession of conflicts across the region and supplied arms to them all.
In the workshops alongside the bazaar, gunsmiths forge impeccable copies of the M16 automatic rifle issued to American troops in neighbouring Afghanistan for as little as 30,000 rupees (£165).