recoilless rifle close to the road. I had three positions for my force - the bottom of Spereh Ghar facing southwest, the valley floor and the ridge of Shunkolay Ghar facing south and southeast. I put myself in the center in the valley floor position where I could best control the ambush. I had good fields of fire to both sides of the ambush site. The terrain is close and prevented the enemy from massing fires against the ambush. The river prevented the enemy from maneuvering effectively against the site. The withdrawal routes are covered.
A supply convoy came from Jalalabad. We let part of it pass to attack the middle of the convoy. When we opened fire, the enemy was hit from three directions. We destroyed three armored vehicles and one truck fully loaded with melons and other fruit and one truck full of boxes of cash. Some enemy tried to flee, but were trapped by the river which has many channels in this area. The money truck caught on fire and some of the money was burned, but we took what we could and later I made it a payday for everyone. I still have some of those burnt notes and someday I will cash them in for some good ones. The enemy tried to fight back and maneuver against us, but he could not find any favorable positions. Eventually, enemy helicopter gunships came and forced us out of position. Our concealed withdrawal routes through the trees protected us from the gunships. Sameh Jan Hejran from Chakdara was killed. He was a teacher. I also had one WIA. The enemy losses are unknown since they evacuated their dead. The following day, the DRA came and towed the damaged armored vehicles away.
COMMENTARY
The Mujahideen were unpaid volunteers, so the money truck was a real boon. Mujahideen still had to support their families, so normally all heavy weapons and ⅕th of the loot from an ambush or raid went to the commander. The other ⅘ths was divided among the Mujahideen combatants. Some Mujahideen would take their captured Kalashnikovs to Pakistan where they would sell them and give the money to their families to live on. Governments supporting the Mujahideen would buy the weapons in Pakistan’s bazaars and give them to Mujahideen faction leaders for distribution. LTC Rahim’s military professionalism shows throughout this vignette. His ambush lay down is by the book and very effective. He might have blown the bridge in the middle of the kill zone, but that would have meant that a guarded bridge repair crew would be near his base camp for an indefinite period of time impeding his freedom of movement.
VIGNETTE 6: NO-PULA AMBUSH
by Commander Sofi Lal Gul
(Commander Sofi Lal Gul is from Farza village of Mir Bacha Kot District, about 25 kilometers north of Kabul. He was affiliated with Mojadeddi's Afghanistan National Liberation Front of Afghanistan (ANLF) during the war with the Soviet forces. Commander Sofi La1 Gul concentrated his efforts on the Kabul-Charikar highway.)
In December 1980, I led a group of 12 Mujahideen in an ambush on the Kabul-Charikar highway at No-Pula, near Qara Bagh. We were armed with Kalashnikov rifles and two RPG-7s. I selected the ambush site at a point where orchards and other vegetation provide covered approaches to the road and offered concealed positions for the ambush team.[2] We left our base at Farza, some ten kilometers to the west, long before daybreak to arrive at the ambush site before sunrise. I deployed my force into two ambush positions near the road and placed a three-man flank security team on the road which intersected with the main highway (Map 7 - No-Pula).
About 0900 hours, an enemy column of trucks, jeeps and armored vehicles arrived. As the head of the column passed our ambush position kill zone, we opened fire on the convoy and destroyed one of the leading tanks with a direct hit by RPG-7. As the convoy unsuccessfully scurried to take cover, our fire destroyed a jeep and an APC. Explosions in the disabled vehicles set some trucks on fire. The enemy returned fire but failed to use its infantry to attack us directly. The action continued for less than an hour. When enemy aircraft arrived over the ambush site, we broke contact and pulled out through the green zone. We had no casualties, while we destroyed or damaged one tank, one APC, one jeep and eight trucks.
COMMENTARY
The Mujahideen group achieved surprise by deploying in the dark and using the covered area close to the road for the ambush. The small number of the Mujahideen limited its action to one strike, after which they had to pull out. Failure to act decisively cost the convoy several vehicles and allowed the Mujahideen to slip away unscathed. The passive response of the Soviets caught in ambush often was due to the fact that they were carrying very few infantry in their escorting personnel carriers.
The cover provided by the orchards and vegetation that flanked both sides of the Kabul-Charikar highway helped the Mujahideen lay successful ambushes. Later in the war, the Soviets destroyed the roadside orchards and villages to prevent the Mujahideen from using them in their ambushes.
VIGNETTE 7: TWO CONVOYS IN THE KILL ZONE
by Toryalai Hemat
(Toryalai Hemat was a regiment commander of a mobile force allied with the IUA-Islamic Union of Afghanistan of Sayyaf. He fought in many provinces in Afghanistan.)
In the summer of 1986, the Soviets and DRA were moving lots of reinforcements and supplies to Paktia Province. We set an ambush on Highway 157 south of Mohammad Agha District headquarters on the 12th of July. This was four days after an ambush at the Mamur Hotel. I sited the ambush along a two-kilometer stretch between Qala-e Shekhak and Dehe Naw. Qala-e Shekhak is six kilometers south of Mohammad Agha and Dehe Naw is three kilometers further south from Qala-e Shekhak. There was a DRA outpost at Qala-e Shekhak, so we started our ambush a kilometer south of the outpost. The outpost was surrounded by mines and the DRA seldom left the outpost. I felt that the DRA might shoot at us, but would not attack from the outpost (Map 8 - Two Convoys).
I had 35 Mujahideen in my group. I divided them into four groups - a northern containment group, an ambush group, a southern security group and a support group. The northern containment group was to fire on the DFU outpost to prevent them from interfering with our ambush. The ambush group would attack the convoy from close up. The southern security group would occupy a position at Dehe Naw to protect our southern flank and prevent the arrival of reinforcements from the south. These three groups were armed with AK-47s, PK machine guns and RPGs. The support group had one 82mm mortar and a Goryunov machine gun.[3] I positioned the support group on the east bank of the Logar River behind the ambush group. All the groups were on the east side of the road. We moved from Ahmadzi Qala before dawn and occupied our ambush positions.
We did not have any advance information on the movement of columns, but there were enough columns moving to Paktia. At this time, there was usually a daily column, so it was a free hunt. There were many petrol tankers in these convoys. They were easy to set on fire, and just firing at them would do the job. Once you set them on fire, it would demoralize the entire column as everyone could see the smoke. We always wanted to hit DRA columns since they wouldn't fight, whereas Soviet columns would. Usually when a column would come, the enemy would establish security forces at suspected ambush sites and occupy them until the column passed or until they were certain that nothing was going to happen. Many times we wouldn't risk taking on the entire column. We would attack the tail since the enemy would not turn back to help the petroleum tankers at the rear. The column would
