The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War/Chapter 8

=CHAPTER 8: DEFENDING AGAINST RAIDS= Effective defense against ground raids requires timely intelligence, plans and battle drills, prepared fighting and sheltered positions, a ready reaction force, accessible weapons and ammunition, escape routes, security patrols and sentries and early warning elements post-ed far enough away to provide adequate early warning. Rehearsal of plans, battle drills, the ready reaction force and escape and withdraw-al are essential to effective defense against raids.

s)Itj ..)•1" RAZA KHAN4•1" IN`]HAJITALEB Page 212 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War 1 KMSAYGHANI VILLAGE Map 8-1

VIGNETTE 1: SOVIET RAID ON MUJAHIDEEN HIDEOUT AT SAYGHANI
by Haji Abdul Qader

On 9 January 1981, a Soviet detachment mounted a raid on my home in Sayghani Village, about six kilometers northeast ofBagram air base. At that time, I commanded a group of some 200local Mujahideen who were spread among several mobile bases in the area. We would conduct specific missions in Bagram and neigh-boring districts in Parwan and Kapisa Provinces. I rarely spent the night in my village since it is very close to the Soviet garrison at Bagrami and difficult to defend. I would alternate among my mobile bases and would stay at a different location every night. I was usually accompanied by no more than 20 of my men who were disguised as peaceful civilians.

A week before, JIA Commander Mawlawi Zaher of Gujarkhel and I combined forces to ambush a Soviet/DRA column at Sofi Baba along the road from Koh-e Top to Sayad. The column had seven or eight trucks and six APCs. The column was returning from Khanaqa and Niazi in the south where the DRA had conducted a press gang to draft recruits into the DRA army. We ambushed their column at dusk and destroyed two APCs and four trucks with short-range RPG-7 fire. We captured some 70 Kalashnikovs, which we desperately needed. We divided the weapons between our two groups. I believe that the raid on my home was in retaliation for this ambush.

That night I had some guests from Laghman and entertained them until late in the evening in my house in the village. In the late evening, I sent most of my men to other villages and kept about 40 at Sayghani (22 of them were residents of the Village). Sayghani is a village of about 100 homes located off the main road. My home is near the village mosque, protected by several fort-like structures ringing the village (Map 8-1 - Saygháni). I posted two guard details—one at my house and the other at the mosque. The night was very quiet and at midnight the snow began to fall. Early in the morn-ing, I woke up for morning prayer. The guards on my roof reported

Haji Abdul Qader was a school teacher who became a Mujahideen commander. He was initially with the HIK faction and later with the IUA faction. [Map sheet 2886, vic grid 2970].Mr. Anthon Jalali's notes also used in this vignette.

1 The Soviet 682nd Motorized Rifle Regiment and the 354th Separate Airborne Regimentwere garrisoned in Bagram. Page 214 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War

that everything was all right. However, when I was half way throughablutions,2 I noticed signal flares streaking across the cloudy sky. They were coming from the northeast and southeast.

The night may have seemed quiet to my guards, but it was busy for the Soviet raiding detachment. Led by local guides and informants, the raiders had stealthily walked from Bagram to the village during the snowfall and quietly occupied several buildings around the village. By dawn, the enemy had taken up positions at Haji Satar, Rahim, HajiTaleb, Raza Khan, Haji Rahmat Sayed and Amanullah forts.3

As soon as I saw the flares, I asked the guards about it. They said that they thought that the enemy was on the road to the village some two kilometers away. I thought that the flares were much closer. I had no time to gather all my men, so I took the 15 men who were staying in my house and we tried to exfiltrate from the village. Shortly after we left my house, I realized that I had forgotten my briefcase full of data about my group. I sent my younger brother to fetch the briefcase and ordered my men to move down the road to the mosque and then on the Rahmat Said fort at the edge of the village. From there, we would take the path to Mujahideen-held areas. I waited for my brother. A few minutes later he joined me and we hurried after the group. We caught up with the group as they approached the stream beyond the mosque. The stream bed was full of Soviet soldiers in ambush. They opened up on my group with AK-74s and killed three of my men on the spot. The rest of my group disappeared in the dark and moved to the southwest, where they were soon trapped in another ambush and killed to the last man. An enemy tracer bullet had set my tsadar on fire. My brother warned me that I was on fire. I pulled off my burn-ing tsadar and threw it away, but that attracted the attention of the first ambush group who again opened up on us and killed my brother.

I had lost contact with my group and so I moved in the opposite direc-tion and slipped out through a house at the edge of the village. The enemy had blocked all streets and escape routes and none of my Mujahideen survived the raid. The enemy killed all 40 Mujahideen and 15 civilians at different locations in the village.

COMMENTARY:
Lack of effective security contributed decisively to the Soviet success and led to the destruction of the resistance force. Combat security should protect a unit from surprise attack and

2 Muslims pray five times a day and wash before prayers. 3 Many of the home in Afghanistan are surrounded by high, thick adobe walls and are actually small forts. Chapter 8, Vignette 1 Page 215

provide sufficient time and space for the main body to prepare and deploy for combat in the most favorable conditions possible. Had the Mujahideen posted security patrols on the approaches to the village, the Soviets probably would have been unable to approach undetected and to surprise the unprepared resistance fighters. The two guard details that Commander Qader deployed inside the village could provide only close-in protection but could not provide early warning or tactical security for the unit.

The secrecy of the Soviet movement to the village and their stealthy deployment at the village played a decisive role in the outcome of the raid. Taken by surprise, the Mujahideen lost control of the situ-ation and were forced to act under conditions dictated by the Soviets.

The Mujahideen could have avoided the disaster by preparing contingency plans with clear-cut instructions to the combatants and group leaders in the event of surprise attack. The plan would deter-mine the location of each combatant and sub-group leader during their overnight stay in the village. Bagram was a major Soviet installation and the overconfidence and bravado of the Mujahideen contributed to their defeat.

Once he discovered the Soviet presence, the Mujahideen comman-der did little to establish effective command and control over the situation. He said that he did not have time to reach every combatant and sub-group leader. But the commander failed to lead even the small15-man group that was with him. He waited for his briefcase and told his men to proceed without assigning a group leader in his absence. This group was leaderless as it blundered into the two ambushes.

Local informers and collaborators were also vital to the Soviet success. The Soviet detachment could not have achieved its goal with-out help from the inside. Such cases of collaboration created a lot of suspicion among the Mujahideen and sometimes resulted in very trag-ic consequences to innocent people.

Haji Abdul Qader learned a very important lesson at a very high price. As he says, his group never again stayed overnight in Sayghani without posting a strong security detail on approaches to the village at points not less than two kilometers from the place.

Page 216 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War

VIGNETTE 2: BATTLE FOR ALISHANG DISTRICT CENTER
by Commander Sher Padshah

In August 1981, the Mujahideen controlled the district center of Alishang in Laghman Province. My base was in a remote upper valley near Daulatshah. I brought 29 of my Mujahideen south through the fertile Alishang Valley to Alishang Village. (Map 8-2 - Alishang) This is a trip of over 45 kilometers. When we arrived, we were very tired and the local Mujahideen, who numbered 50, told us to sleep and that they would provide security. In the morning, as we were rising for morning prayers, we heard shots. The guards then realized that we were surrounded. We decided to escape into the mountains. The Badrow hills are about three kilometers northeast of the village and lead to the mountains. As we tried to get out of the village, we came under fire from all directions. Within five minutes, we lost 14 Mujahideen KIA and 50 WIA. Mawlawi Niaz Mohammed, the local Mujahideen commander, was among the dead. Faced with withering fire and heavy losses, we retreated back into the village to conduct a desperate defense.

Our force was down, to 15 Mujahideen but our mortars were still in position from where we had set them up the night before. Besides the mortars, we had RPG-7s, PK machine guns, Kalashnikov rifles, and Bernau "20-shooters."4 We mounted a stubborn defense. We discov-ered that Soviet forces had surrounded the village. At 0800 hours, a DRA reinforcing column with tanks and infantry came from the provincial capitol of Mehtar Lam. We started firing the mortars at the column. The DRA kept trying to get into the village, but we drove them back. Sometimes the fight degenerated to hand-to-hand combat. We hit one tank with a RPG-7. Around noon, a jeep full of Soviet advisers drove into range. One of my RPG-7 gunners destroyed the jeep. We also captured some of the DRA soldiers who were close to the jeep. We demanded that they surrender and they did. The fighting continued until 1600 hours. Then, as sunset neared, the DRA and Soviets with-drew, leaving the village in our hands. Besides our 14 Mujahideen KIA and 50 WIA, there were many dead and wounded Afghan civilians including women and children. I do not know what the total enemy casualties were.

Commander Sher Padshah is from Laghman Province. [Map sheet 3086, vic grid 0149]. 4 The Bernau is the Czechoslovak M26 light machine gun. The Mujahideen called them"20-shooters." Page 218 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War

I am sure that someone from the village had told the government that we were there. Some of the villagers had left the village before the Soviets surrounded it. The villagers that were left actively helped the Mujahideen in the defense. The women provided us with food and showed us where to take cover. They led us from house-to-house as the enemy tightened his noose around us. That evening, after the fighting, we asked the locals for donkeys and mules to haul away our dead. We put our dead on their animals and took the bodies to their villages for burial. We took our wounded to local doctors for treatment. They helped as best they could, including some of the doctors from the government hospital.

The Soviets left some of their dead in the village of Alishang. They moved south to the village of Qawalkhel. They surrounded the village and told the villagers to go to Alishang and recover their dead or they would destroy their village. The Qawalkhel elders came to us and asked for the Soviet dead. We told them that they could recover the Soviet dead after we left.

COMMENTARY:
Mujahideen night time security, when sleeping in a village, was usually only a guard or two posted inside the village. The Mujahideen needed to get security out to the key terrain dominating the village to provide timely warning. When the Soviets and DRA had timely intelligence, they were often able to surround sleeping Mujahideen whose guards were within yards of the sleepers. The Soviet forces were probably from the 66th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade in Jalalabad—some 40 kilometers away. The DRA force was probably from the 71st Infantry Regiment—garrisoned only seven kilometers away in Mehtar Lam. The area is open and easily accessible by road. The local Mujahideen's overconfidence hurt the resistance badly.

VIGNETTE 3: VISION IN THE BAR KOT VALLEY
by Doctor Mohammad Sadeq

It was December 1983. I left my village of Sotan in Dara-i NurValley for the nearby valley of Bar Kot. I had five of my Mujahi-deen with me. In Bar Kot Valley, we stopped at the village of Dud-Reg where we spent the night in a Mujahideen guest house(Map 8-3 - Vision). Dud-Reg is the last village in the valley before the forest begins. In this area, the mountains are all heavily wooded with pine, juniper and sycamore. It was foggy, rainy and very cold. There were other Mujahideen from IRMA staying in the house next door to ours. After supper, everyone but my sentry went to bed. I was asleep and dreaming. In my dream, I saw a man in a white robe who laid his hand on my shoulder and said "You will prevail." Then the man dropped ammunition in my lap and gave' me an Enfield rifle. "This is the time to go forward" the man said. I woke up and looked around. I could not find any ammunition or Enfield rifle, but I checked to make sure that my Kalashnikov and pistol were still under my pillow as I was thinking about the dream.

At 0030 hours, I again awoke as I heard a shot fired. I scrambled to my feet and asked the sentry what was going on. "Nothing, every-thing is all right" Agha Gul replied. I lay back down. Shortly after-ward, I heard another shot. I jumped up, pulled on my shoes and grabbed my weapons. The other Mujahideen were also up. I looked outside. The sentry said "The Soviets are here. We are surrounded. I see their signal rockets all around us." The other group of IRMA Mujahideen rushed out into the night and up into the mountains. My five Mujahideen asked me "What should we do?" I replied, "Well, they've come for us, so let's give them a fight." The enemy had us surrounded and had blocked all the exits by this time.

The house that we were in had a large, enclosed courtyard (60meters x 60 meters). The enemy were firing at us and they knew exactly where we were. I went to the back of the enclosure and crawled over the wall into a narrow meter-wide alley. I asked my Mujahideen to follow me. We moved down the alley and into the open fields. I could see Soviets in the open field.

Doctor Mohammad Sadeq was a commander with the HIH in Kunar Province. [Map sheet3186, vic grid 4341]. Page 220 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War Chapter 8, Vignette 3 Page 221

I told my Mujahideen that I would lay down a base of fire so that they could cross the field. Once they crossed the field, they were to go to the flank of the field and hold it. Just behind us was the house where the IRMA Mujahideen had stayed. I did not know that they had gone and were worried that they would unintentionally fire into our backs. I fired as my Mujahideen crossed the field, but they came under fire. We all fired back and retreated into the mountains. As we started up the mountains, we bumped into still more Soviets who were positioned in the mountains. As we were taking shelter behind a wall, one of my Mujahideen was hit and killed. We did not know this area very well, so we did not know how to get out. It took us about three hours to find our way safely up into the mountain. As we reached the moun-tain, we met the IRMA Mujahideen who had escaped earlier. They asked us to use tracer rounds to mark targets for their mortars. I fired at the enclosure that we had started out from with tracer bullets. The IRMA Mujahideen then fired their mortar at the enclo-sure. As daylight broke the IRMA Mujahideen mortar fire became more effective. In all, they fired 42 mortar rounds. The Soviets did not want to stay around and get mortared, so they withdrew. As I watched the Soviets pull back, I realized that we had prevailed and that my dream had come true. It was now time to go forward.

After the battle, I learned that the IRMA Mujahideen also had one of their group killed by the Soviets. Two Afghan women were also killed near the enclosure. The Soviet force had come from Jalalabad(about 20 kilometers away).5 They had come at night on their APCs. They were guided by an Afghan named Nader. He was from Shewa. Since the DRA was established in this area, the people were divided in their loyalties and people like Nader worked against us.

COMMENTARY: The Mujahideen were lax about security in this area, despite the known divided loyalties within the populace. The guest-house that the Mujahideen were staying in was not a private home, but a Mujahideen guesthouse regularly used by Mujahideen passing through the area. All the local villagers knew about its presence and function. The Soviet's guide came from Shewa, which is 15 kilometers away and yet he had no trouble pinpointing its location at night. The Soviets drove through a well-populated area on APCs to conduct their raid, yet the Mujahideen got no advance warning and their sentry was

5 The Soviet force was either from the 66th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade or the Spetsnaz battalion based in Jalalabad.

Page 222 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War surprised. The Mujahideen were complacent about security and set patterns that the Soviets reacted to. Only the presence of the Mujahideen mortar and a large stock of mortar ammunition saved them.

VIGNETTE 4: SURPRISED BY THE SOVIETS IN THE DARA-E NUR
by Doctor Mohammad Sadeq In March 1984, the DRA and Soviet forces again tried to destroy the Mujahideen forces in the Dara-e Nur Valley. A total of 120Mujahideen armed with seven RPG-7s, one 82mm mortar, one DShK and many Kalashnikovs blocked their advance at Shokyali Village which is located at the junction of Dara-e Nur and Bar Kot Valleys.(Map 8-4 - Bar Kot) We positioned our forces to block both valleys and the high ground between them. The enemy came and tried to overcome our defenses but failed. Then the government sent a group of the area's elders to talk to us. The elders tried to persuade us not to fight in the area and to leave, but we refused. We held the area for another year before the enemy brought another column against us.

Nader, the DRA police chief for the area, sent us a message also trying to persuade us not to continue to fight in this area. He warned us that, if we did not leave, the Soviets would destroy all the villages in the area. It was now April 1985. At 2030 hours one evening, my group left the village of Sotan. We were armed with an RPG-7 and Kalashnikovs. We were moving to the junction of the two valleys along the foot of the mountains. One of my men stated "I will fire a shot to show our presence and let the people know that we are not cowards. It will show them that we are not intimidated and that we are still here. "I tried to talk him out of it, but he finally fired the shot. As soon as he fired, the night lit up with return fire from all the Soviets who we discovered were in the area in force. The Soviets had arrived the previous night and had waited all day for us. We had not reached the junction yet, but were at a place called Kar. The Soviets were firing at us from positions on the mountain to the west and to the east is a steep canyon with a sheer 150 meter wall. We were trapped and surround-ed, so we went to ground and fought back through the night and next day. With the day, helicopters came and fired at us. We grimly held our position and waited for the next night when we would try a break-out. But the Soviets had also had enough fighting, and they pulled out at the end of the day. I lost one KIA and one. WIA. I do not know if there were any Soviet casualties.

Doctor Mohammed Sadeq was a commander with the HIH in. Kunar Province and was also the narrator of the previous vignette. [Map sheet 3186, vic grid 4742.] Page 224 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War Chapter 8, Vignette 4 Page 225

COMMENTARY:
The Mujahideen believed in the invulnerability of their defenses and let the routines of positional defense dull their alertness. The Soviets again were able to infiltrate a force deep into the Mujahideen territory and take them by surprise. The lack of Mujahideen discipline triggered the ambush, but apparently triggered the ambush prematurely before the entire force was in the kill zone. Mujahideen leaders led by consensus, force of personality and moral persuasion. The Mujahideen failed to man their defenses around the clock andthe Soviets were able to move through their unmanned positions and surprise the Mujahideen. It is unclear whether the Soviets were in a deliberate ambush or were waiting for night fall to move on Sotan to attack the Mujahideen.

One of the problems that a guerrilla movement has is that the peo-ple who suffer the retaliations for guerrilla actions are usually the civilian populace. What starts as a popular cause, supported enthusi-astically by the populace, can sour when the local populace has to bear the reprisals with no apparent end in sight. The local populace that remains often just wants to be left alone by all sides. The Mujahideenin this area lost a great deal of local support and, consequently, intelli-gence information and early warning.

CHAPTER COMMENTARY
Mujahideen local security was often lax in those areas which they controlled or which Soviet/DRA forces had not visited in awhile. Often,Mujahideen local security was even lax in areas adjacent to majorSoviet and ,DRA garrisons. KHAD infiltrators and informers often managed to provide timely information that resulted in successful raids. The Mujahideen often failed to post security at a sufficient dis-tance from their force to provide adequate warning. Instead, they relied on local inhabitants to provide that warning. In areas where the local populace had fled or were tired of the war, the Mujahideen were blind. The factional nature of the Mujahideen also discouraged the dis-tribution of timely intelligence to all Mujahideen forces in an area.

The Mujahideen often failed to plan against raids, constitute a ready reaction force, designate escape routes and assembly areas and rehearse their defense. Aggressive Soviet or DRA raids had a good chance of success against unprepared Mujahideen. The trick was to withdraw before the Mujahideen had a chance to recover and pursue.