I would suggest it is not just types but quantities that make a difference.
Source: Rome, Italy's Inter Press Service News Agency - http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38323
AFGHANISTAN: Soviet-Era Weapons Handy for Taliban
By Tahir Qadiry
Excerpts:
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Jun 26 (IPS) - While United States officials accuse Iran of arming a resurgent Taliban, officials here say the weapons are actually part of vast caches left behind by the Soviet army that fought a nine-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in 1988.
Ustad Basir Arifi, secretary for the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programme in northern Afghanistan, told IPS that weapons abandoned by the Soviet Union there are now being moved by professional smugglers to the southern provinces where the Taliban Islamist movement has its stronghold.
"Huge caches of weapons remained with the people from the Soviet Union period. These are now being smuggled to the south of Afghanistan. These weapons are bought in the north of Afghanistan and smuggled to the south to be used against government and foreign forces," Arifi said.
Zai did not rule out the possibility of weapons originating from outside Afghanistan. "Smugglers could be bringing weapons from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north. A good transit point could be Badakhshan province," he said without mentioning Iran.
Gen. Abdul Manan, representative of the defence ministry in the DIAG programme, said the government has been able to collect 70,000 heavy and light weapons from the whole country under the DDR and DIAG programmes. But he believes that at least a million more pieces were in the hands of armed groups in the north.
