How did a band of ragtag tribesmen manage to defeat the Soviet Union in its own backyard? The Afghan War BY RICHARD MACKENZIE ATCHING Muslim rebels con- What kind of conflict was the Ahmad Shah Mas- ceive, plot, and execute a clas- Afghan war, really? How, in fact, soud—the "Lion of W Panjshir"—learned sic guerrilla strike against Soviet- did a ragtag band of Muslim tribes- his guerrilla warfare backed outposts in the remote Ker- man stymie one of the two military skills from the mas- an Valley, you get a close-up look at superpowers—in its own backyard, ters. Emphasizing how the war is being won—and at that? How was the conflict fought speed, stealth, and lost—in Afghanistan. day-by-day on the ground? maneuver—and with a pipeline to the en- In the meticulously planned as- For a look at the eccentricities, emy's closest se- sault, small units of highly moti- tactics, goals, strengths, and weak- crets—his mujahe- vated Muslim irregulars, fortified nesses of the combatants, one need deen fighters scored with reasonably good weapons and look no further than the planning a big success at the Battle of the Keran extraordinary intelligence data, sur- and execution of the October 29, Valley and kept on prise and utterly rout the heavily 1987, battle for Keran. winning. The skill of equipped but slow-footed and de- such local leaders as moralized soldiers of the Afghan Planning the Offensive Massoud is the big Army garrison. The Afghan mujahedeen had reason that Soviet troops are marching The Keran Valley operation, been planning this offensive for out of their Afghan •which I witnessed during a bone- months. The objective was to cap- quagmire. wearying, three-month journey ture seven Soviet-supported Af- through the Hindu Kush mountains ghan Army bases in northeastern with Afghan rebels last fall and Afghanistan. Taking the bases winter, was only one battle. Yet it, in would dramatically reduce travel a nutshell, sums up the war's basic time for supplies from Pakistan. realities. What's more, it would further boost Those realities are yielding major morale for the rebels in their eight- consequences. Following Geneva year war against Soviet occupation talks in April, Moscow and its client forces. in Kabul agreed to a nine-month The rebels' long logistics tail be- timetable for a complete Russian gan in Garam Kishmar, or "Warm troop withdrawal. The Soviet re- Waters," a village at the tip of the treat, the first since 1942, now ap- northwest frontier province of Paki- pears in full swing. stan. There, the Muslim forces re- 140 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1988 I ceived Chinese guns and rockets. They are purchased and distributed by Pakistan with $600 million a year in US aid. Then, the equipment had to be trekked overland into Afghani- stan. The extreme dedication of the rebels is evident in such arduous endeavors. In a blizzard, a team of mujahedeen was forced to stop on a mountain path when one of its horses dropped dead under the am- munition load it was carrying. One of the men took up the weight that killed the animal, threw it on his back, and wordlessly continued the climb. Such a sight is not uncom- mon—not on the guerrilla side. On the side of the Soviet and Afghan armies, by contrast, morale throughout the war has remained R low. Initially, the problem stemmed TA primarily from the fact that many of LACK S the original Soviet soldiers were raw /B reserves whose units often received Suau ny ho t An t Though never equipped with a preponderance of modern weaponry, the Afghan rebels have begun to acquire more arms in recent years. Among such arms are mortars, rocket launchers, antimine field weapons, communications gear, and—most critical of all—Stinger antiaircraft missiles from the US. third-rate equipment. By the sum- contributed to widespread Soviet mer of 1980, Soviet military leaders desertions. A few of these deserters realized their errors, however, and have actually gone over to the mu- began substituting conscripts for jahedeen. the reserves. "It is hard to imagine a war in Even then, Red Army forces who which Russia's conscript army entered the fray had only the would be less well suited than it is in poorest tactics and most pathetic a counterinsurgency in moun- training. tainous Afghanistan," says Mark What's more, the high command Urban, a British scholar of the war. felt obliged to send home Muslim Future analysis may yet produce soldiers from Soviet Asia for fear a complete answer as to why the that they would sympathize with Soviet Union chose to ignore histo- their rebel coreligionists—as many ry and invade Afghanistan, a land of them in fact did. known throughout history as a Primitive medical care and hy- graveyard of imperial ambition. giene practices took their toll on Whatever their motives, however, morale. With little water available, they clearly believed it would be a the average Soviet soldier is said to relatively easy task to subdue a bathe about once every other country immediately to their south, month. Infectious hepatitis had spi- about the size of Texas. raled out of control. And the hy- Moscow seriously miscalculated. giene situation was worse among in- Certainly, Soviet leaders underesti- digenous Afghan troops. mated the tenacity of the Afghan The ordeal of Afghanistan has led resistance. But it also overesti- to alcohol and drug abuse, not to mated the value of armor and The Soviet Union seriously mention acts of brutality by Soviet massed firepower. underestimated the tenacity of the soldiers that have been inflicted on Afghan resistance. Moreover, Soviet fellow troops as well as on civilian Soviet Invasion commanders had to cope with Soviet troops who began to sympathize with Afghans. Bullying of newcomers by The Soviets came in with great their religious brethren in the "old soldiers"—those who have force, hoping to score a knockout resistance. been in country a year or more— punch. First came a logistical 142 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1988 0 Anthony Suau/BLACK STAR buildup of Soviet troops north of the Amu Darya, the "Oxus River," which separates the two countries. A reinforced Air Assault Division at the Soviet Union's 105th Guard Headquarters was primed to seize key military and political targets in Kabul. The operation itself went smooth- ly. On December 6, 1979, a regiment of the task force was flown to Bagram, a principal Afghan fighter base north of Kabul. From there, troops fanned out to the Salang Pass, the road route from the Soviet Union to Kabul. For four days be- ginning December 22, the Soviets flew some 350 transport sorties into Kabul and Bagram, carrying men and supplies in Antonov and Il- yushin airlifters. Shortly before midnight on December 24, the Sovi- ets began airlifting more troops into Shindand, a key air base in the far west of the country, and others went to Kandahar in the south. Finally, on December 27, the de- cisive phase was launched. Para- Afghan resistance leaders have been able to rely on a widespread network of troopers moved into downtown Ka- informants among Afghan government forces and the populace at large. Such inside bul, and KGB commandos stormed information has been crucial to the rebels in planning their raids from high in the the Darulaman Palace south of Ka- rugged mountain country that dominates much of the nation. bul. There, they executed Hafizul- lah Amin, leader of the inept Afghan dreds of them—most of whom round tumbles on impact, causing regime, and replaced him with should have known better than to dreadful wounds. The mujahedeen handpicked Babrak Karmal. try to control the country centrally. refer to AK-74 projectiles as "poi- All was accomplished in days, But that's what they did." It was, in son bullets." with only one and a half air assault fact, a guiding military principle. divisions and four motor rifle divi- In the first six months, the Sovi- Exploiting Airpower sions totaling between 15,000 and ets pursued tactics that observers The biggest and most successful 20,000 men. Reinforcing troops deemed better suited to a land war innovation was the introduction, brought the total to 100,000 by Janu- in the European theater. It was a within a year, of helicopters to the ary 5, 1980. centrally controlled, high-intensity, war in massive numbers. In June The relatively small size of the mechanized operation totally un- 1980, for example, it is estimated invading force suggests the Kremlin suited to the harsh terrain, climate, that there were only forty-five to pursued only limited objectives—to and lack of infrastructure in Afghan- sixty Soviet helicopters in Afghani- take key cities and the roads that istan—not to mention the elusive stan. A short time later, Western ob- linked them. foe. servers began reporting Soviet use Moscow could not have known it, They even brought along an SA-4 of as many as eighteen attack heli- but this was the high-water mark of antiaircraft missile brigade, the im- copters in attacks on single villages. Soviet occupation. Nearly nine portance of which was not exactly Their best weapon became the years of trouble were to follow. paramount in a war against guer- Hind helicopter gunship, a kind of Divided on ethnic, linguistic, and rillas carrying on their fight without flying tank, which was used to rain tribal lines, Afghanistan has always a single plane. indiscriminate terror on the Afghan been a decentralized country—with Throughout the war, notes Ur- people and to soften up rebel posi- a vengeance.