Greece is an interesting (and arguably understudied) country to anyone in the security field. Its early 19th-century armed struggle for independence against the Ottoman Empire not only inspired a host of similar nationalist uprisings, but also captivated intellectuals already living in “free” and often democratic western countries, and to an extent, it established the values of self-determination in a pre-Wilsonian world. Its geography is interesting, consisting of some of the most ungovernable terrains on Earth, in this case, mountains and archipelagos of separate island chains. Greece’s islands make it a natural target for a vast network of smuggling and organized crime, and its northern inland borders are shared with post-communist countries whose regimes collapsed in the 1990s and whose militaries experienced broad illicit and illegal outflows of weapons from armories that were—in the case of Albania—literally opened up and pilfered by civilians or commonly sold off by corrupt military officers who faced uncertain futures. The country also lies perfectly between southeast Europe—which experienced tremendous violent conflict in the 1990s—North Africa, and the Levant, most of which is either still experiencing some form of armed conflict or recovering from revolutions and/or violent unrest of some kind. Furthermore, Greece itself has a rich internal history of armed political violence and especially of guerrilla activity, be it in the form of the bandits who dominated northern mountain passes in the time of the Ottomans, the guerrillas who fought fascist forces in WWII, the nationalist rebels who went to help the guerrilla organization EOKA fight the British on Cyprus, the Marxist-Leninist urban guerrillas of the late 20th Century, or their militant anarchist predecessors of the present day. Adding to all of this, for most of the 21st Century, Greece seems to have been suspended in a permanent state of unrest, and the Greek people have a remarkable ability to mobilize one another into the streets for mass protests, demonstrating for a variety of causes.
A few things of interest to me in this post I thought I would note:
The fifth image in the other small arms section has a (most likely) World War II surplus M1 Garand action, clearly taken out of its stock which sits next to it. Interestingly, the black stock at the bottom of the image is an American Archangel chassis – those were made for Remington 700 rifles and M1A / M14 rifles – but never M1 Garand‘s. Hard to imagine what it’s doing in that picture.
Another small note, the Molot AK in the picture right after that one is not a 556 AK, but rather one of their 7.62x54r or 30-06 offerings.
Some info / theories on how the MP5s and T56s got there would be interesting to me.
A few things of interest to me in this post I thought I would note:
The fifth image in the other small arms section has a (most likely) World War II surplus M1 Garand action, clearly taken out of its stock which sits next to it. Interestingly, the black stock at the bottom of the image is an American Archangel chassis – those were made for Remington 700 rifles and M1A / M14 rifles – but never M1 Garand‘s. Hard to imagine what it’s doing in that picture.
Another small note, the Molot AK in the picture right after that one is not a 556 AK, but rather one of their 7.62x54r or 30-06 offerings.
Some info / theories on how the MP5s and T56s got there would be interesting to me.