Patreon Bonus episode. Today we're speaking to our mate Caden from the

freelancers conflict blog. He's going to be telling us why the jihadist

fighters of Idlib love wearing gorka suits so

much when in battle.

So I think the best thing to do first of all before we go into why these fighters in

Idlib wear them all the time maybe you can describe and explain what is a

gorka jacket right so the gorka suit in terms of like being used in the military

has its origins in the Soviet Afghan war. So basically what why they were

developed was because the Soviet military needed a suit that would kind of protect their soldiers and at first mostly just like special operations guys and mountainous environments you know where it's windy it's wet it's rainy snowy just generally

bad weather so they needed something kind of like a tough suit that you could wear like

over a jacket over you know winter pants just to kind of like you you know, keep everything protected, keep everything insulated.

So the first corcas were introduced in the Soviet military around 1981 in Afghanistan,

and they were pretty crude. around 1981 in Afghanistan.

And they were pretty crude.

They were mostly, they were basically 100% man out of this kind of really rough canvas,

almost burlapish material, kind like similar to what a lot of kind of

canvas military tents are made out of but this suit was a really big success I mean the

soldiers really loved them so after that war you

you know after Soviet Afghan war ended in 89 the suit that they used in Afghanistan

was using Chechnya a little bit in the first Chechen war and then kind of the beginning of the second

Chechen war and then you know during the second Chechen war about after you know about

after 2000 they started kind of upgrading them so they started adding nylon panels on them using better canvas materials for the main body of it just generally making more of a modern design and that's kind of the gorka that most of us know today

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