The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War - Ali Ahmad Jalali

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a small hill on the highway south of Qala-e Morad Beg. (Map 14 - Morad) It isthe Sadre Azam hill. It is an excellent site for an ambush and we set up our ambush on the hill to the east of the highway.[4] I had 30 Mujahideen and four RPG-7s. This area was closely watched by the enemy and so we could not spread our force out. Therefore, I concentrated the force on the hill with the rifles forward and the RPGs higher up on the hill. We thought that the convoy would arrive at 1600 hours and were in place before that time. At 1600 hours, the convoy came. It was led by a BMP. Soviet soldiers were sitting on top of the BMP. Usually we would not attack the head of the column, but since the lead vehicle was such a good target, we opened fire on it and destroyed it. We took thecolumn by surprise. The column stopped and the enemy dismounted some soldiers who took up positions and fired back at us. We fired at each other for about an hour until a relief column, arrived from nearby Kabul to help the ambushed column. We pulled out. The enemy lost one BMP, four gasoline tankers and probably about ten killed and wounded. We lost Malek Mohammad from Karez-eMir who was killed.

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      This is typical of the small-scale ambushes that the Mujahideen regularly conducted. The losses on both sides were minor, yet over time they added up. The Soviet soldiers customarily rode on top of their APCs since it is safer if the APC hit a mine. A powerful antitank mine blast might merely hurl the the soldiers off the APC whereas it would almost certainly kill everyone inside. Furthermore,the inside of an APC is crowded, is hard to see out of and, in August, is unbearably warm.

      The convoy was hemmed in by the village of Morad Beg, so the Soviets had difficulty maneuvering armored vehicles forward tofire into the ambush site. Since the object of the ambush was to destroy vehicles, it made sense to hit the head of the convoy. If the object had been to capture weapons, then an attack on the middle or end of the convoy would have been better. Available terrain kept the Mujahideen ambush compact—which is not what they prefer. This is closer to a Western-style ambush. After the initial firing,the ambush turned into a desultory, protracted sniping exercisewhich was more like an afternoon's recreation for the ambushers than decisive combat.

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      by Commander Qazi Guljan Tayeb

      (Commander Qazi Guljan Tayeb was a third year student in Kabul Theological College during the communist takeover in 1978. He joined Hikmatyar and later switched to the Sayeffaction in the mid-1980s. He was the Commander of Baraki Barak District of LogarProvince.)

      East of my base in Baraki Barak is the town of Padkhab-eShana. It is located one and a half kilometers from the Kabul-Gardez highway. The Soviets had put security posts on the high ground around this town to protect the highway from Mujahideen attacks coming out of Baraki Barak District. I decided to attackthese posts in July 1985. By that time I had switched from the Hikmatyar faction to the Sayaf faction.

      We moved out from Baraki Barak at dusk. I had some 100 Mujahideen with me. We crossed the highway and entered Padkhab-eShana town. It is a large town occupying a square kilometer and containing some 1,000 houses. My Mujahideen moved into houses and stayed with the people throughout the next day. That night, using local guides, we set up ambushes on the roads leading into the village. The area around the town is also a green zone with orchards and woods(Map 15 - Mazar). Mazar Creek passes through the town near thebazaar. Mazar Creek begins at a spring and has good water. Soviet soldiers would go to the creek to get water, wash, fish and take a dip. We put an ambush at the creek near the spring. We put another ambush along their supply route which ran to the Soviet security posts from the main road. There was a path that ran from the security posts to the town dwellings. Soviets would often come down this path to the town to steal or extort things. We set our third ambush along this path in an area covered by buildings and orchards where the enemy maneuver would be restricted and constrained. We set our fourth ambush along the path from the creek to Mir Ghyas hill.

      In the morning, a few Soviets came to the creek. The Mujahideen at this ambush site opened fire and then left quickly after they saw that they had killed some Soviets. About the same time, a Soviet jeep drove along the supply route. That ambush opened fire and hit the jeep. Soviet tanks came from Pule-e Alam and surrounded the town. We hid our weapons and mixed with populace. Gradually we left the area disguised as civilians and went to the north and west. We had twowounded Mujahideen. We killed 12 Soviets, destroyed one jeep andcaptured four weapons.

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      by Major Sher Aqa Kochay

      (Major Sher Aqa Kochay is a graduate of Afghan Military Academy, Kabul, and received training in commando tactics in the Soviet Union. He served in the 37th Commando Brigade and participated in DRA actions against the Mujahideen in Panjsher Valley. He defected, with a large amount of weapons, to the Mujahideen in 1982 and became a NIFA commander in Kabul. He organized a new Mujahideen base in the Khord Kabul area some 20 kilometers south of the Afghan capital.)

      On August 13, 1985, my 40-man Mujahideen force moved from its base at Sewak (20 kilometers southeast of Kabul) to establish an ambush at the Qafus Tangay (some 25 kilometers east of Kabul). The area was protected by a Sarandoy (Internal Ministry Forces) regiment. This area was previously protected by tribal militia, but exactly one year prior, the local tribal militia of Hasan Khan Karokhel defected to the Mujahideen. Hence, the regiment deployed east of Kabul between Gazak and Sarobi to protect the power lines supplying electricity from Naghlu and Sarobi hydroelectric dams to Kabul. The regiment's head-quarters was at Sur Kandow and its forces were deployed along the Butkhak-Sarobi road10 in security posts. (Map 16a - Qafus 1).

      Each day, the regiment sent truck convoys with supplies from head-quarters to the battalions. In turn, battalions sent trucks to make deliveries to all their highway outposts. About two kilometers from the DRA Mulla Omar base, the road cuts across the mouth of a narrow valley called Qafus Tangay. Qafus Tangay begins at the Khak-e Jabar pass in the south and stretches north to the Gazak-Sarobi road. The valley offered a concealed approach from the Mujahideen bases in KhordKabul in the south. The road at the mouth of the valley passes through difficult terrain forcing the traffic to move very slowly. This was a favorable point for an ambush.

      I moved my detachment at night reaching the ambush site early in the morning of August 13. My, group was armed with four RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launchers, several light machine guns and Kalashnikov automatic rifles. I grouped my men into three teams. I positioned a 10-man party with the four RPG-7s at the bottom of the valley near the road. I positioned two 15-man teams on each of the ridges on the two sides of the valley that dominated the road to the north. Both of the flank groups had PK machine guns. (Map 16b - Qafus 2)

      10 The southern east-west road on the map.

      The plan was to wait until the enemy's supply vehicles arrived atthe difficult stretch of road directly facing the Qafus Tangay Valley. I planned to assign targets to the RPGs as the trucks moved into the killzone

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