The Kurdish ( Peshmerga) militias in northern Syria do. Called People’s Protection Units, or YPG, are incredibly dedicated to the cause of defending their people and homeland.
This was brought home recently after I examined some pictures of their homemade tanks weaponry and armored vehicles. These are vehicles the Kurds actually use in combat against ISIS and other terrorist groups. In some cases they are deadly effective. Albeit strange to look at.
Among the dozen or so files I examined were descriptions of ingenious vehicles designs which look like they came from Tatooine desert scenes in Star Wars. They were basically cobbled together by car mechanics and welders from old beat up, salvaged cars and track vehicles.
The Kurds are mostly comprised of volunteers armed with small arm weaponry they buy on the blackmarket or capture from the enemy. These include some heavier weapons such as mortars and rocket launchers, pickup trucks turned into mobile gun turrets and an occasional piece of artillery or homemade cannon.
The Kurds, aka: Peshmerga, Peshmerge, or pesh merga (Kurdish: پێشمەرگە Pêşmerge) literally “those who confront death”) is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters.
The Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan have existed since the advent of the Kurdish independence movement in the early 1920s, following the collapse of the Ottoman and Qajar empires which had jointly ruled over the area.
Peshmerga is also the official name of the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.
Peshmerga forces include women in their ranks.
The Peshmerga has proven to be an effective army, providing security to all ethnicities. During the US-led invasion of Iraq the Peshmerga helped the United States in their mission to capture Saddam Hussain. They also captured al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden’s messenger Hassan Ghul in 2004, which eventually led to Operation Neptune Spear in which U.S. Navy SEALs located and killed Bin Laden.
See article: How the CIA caught Bin Laden http://theweek.com/article/index/243389/how-the-cia-really-caught-bin-ladens-trail#axzz34IzUbxqb
The Kurds also use an assortment of homemade bombs, zip guns, pen pistols and improvised explosives.
Zip guns are improvised guns. An improvised firearm is a firearm manufactured other than by a firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith, and is typically constructed by adapting existing materials to the purpose.
They range in quality from crude weapons that are as much a danger to the user as the target, to high quality arms produced by cottage industries using salvaged and re-purposed materials.
The Kurds also use homemade drones, really they are more like “remote control model planes with cameras mounted to them. In some cases these model planes are equipped with clasps for holding grenades that are remotely controlled that fall down with strings attacked to their pins are pulled as they drop, sometimes on the tops of terrorists frantically trying to shot the model aircraft out of the sky.
In one case, which remains unverifiable at this point a Kurdish militia used a gas powered model plane with sticks of dynamite and flew it into a window of a building where a sniper was perched and remotely detonated it. “So long as it gets the job done we don’t care how ridiculous it appears”, said one Kurdish commander recently on a popular social media site was quoted as saying. This commander wished not to be identified for fear of endangering his family in Iraq. We respect that.