the Logar Province. Commander Seddiq's village is located on the borderbetween the two provinces. Therefore, his command fought in both provinces in coordi-nation with other Mujahideen. Commander Haji Mohammad Seddiq was affiliated withHekmatyar's HIH. )
In September 1983, my group and I were visiting the area of Maidan. The Maidan Mujahideen had heard about a future convoygoing from Kabul to Ghazni and were planning to ambush it. I joined HIH commanders Ghulam Sakhi, Captain Amanullah, Mawlawi Halim and Zabet Wali in setting up an ambush some 30 kilometerssouthwest of Kabul. Together, we had some 60 Mujahideen armed withAK-47s, 60mm mortars, RPG-7s and an 82mm recoilless rifle. Weplanned two ambush sites. One group would deploy east of the roadbetween Duranay Bazar and Sur Pul. The other group would deploy west of the road on the forward slope of Duranay mountain close to the road (Map 11 - Duranay). The Mujahideen already had well-prepared positions at both these sites.
We occupied our positions at dawn and waited for the column. At about 0900 hours, the convoy came from Kabul. It was a column of trucks and armored vehicles. A forward security element preceded the convoy. It drove through the ambush area, but failed to detect our forces. Then the convoy entered the ambush area. We let it pass through until the head of the column reached the second ambush site at Duranay mountain. Now, the column was in about a five-kilometer stretch of kill zone. We opened up from all positions along the entire length of the exposed column.
A heavy battle ensued as we fired at all the vehicles in the open. The enemy had a security outpost at Sur Pul which joined in the battle and fired on our positions. Despite this security post fire, and the fire from the armored vehicles, the Soviet response was fairly passive. Our prepared positions protected us, and the Soviets apparently did not have any infantry accompanying the convoy, so they could not dismount and maneuver against us. Our positions were vulnerable to a flank attack through Kashmirian or Ghlo Ghar, but the apparent lack of Soviet infantry support kept their vehicles pinned down on the lower ground where we continued to shoot them without anti-tank weapons.
Later in the day, the enemy brought reinforcements to the battle-field and began to pound Mujahideen positions with artillery and airstrikes. We began to gradually withdraw our ambush force and by 1500, there were no Mujahideen left in the area. A major Mujahideen commander, Ghulam Sakhi, and several other Mujahideen were killed and many were wounded. We damaged or destroyed 33 armored vehicles and 27 trucks. We captured some 40 weapons of different types.
COMMENTARY
The Mujahideen showed good planning and discipline in this ambush, but used prepared positions that they had used before. They also knew that these positions had exposed flanks, but took no precautions. They felt that the Soviets would not dismount to check the known ambush sites and did not expect immediate Soviet counter-actions to turn their flanks. They were right. The Mujahideen were setting a pattern, but the Soviets failed to react to it. The Mujahideen stocked their positions with sufficient ammunition for a fight of several hours duration. They apparently took many of their casualties from artillery and air strikes while moving to the burning vehicles to loot or when pulling back.
The Soviet convoy movement was no secret. The Mujahideen had contacts within the DIVA and agents near the assembly areas. The Soviets usually left after first light and therefore arrived in the area between 0830 and 0930. This made it convenient for the Mujahideen who did not have to stay in position all day. The Soviets knew that this was an ambush site, but did not destroy the ambush positions, put security elements on the high ground with helicopters or put a dismounted force through the area to check for ambushes. Further, they did not have helicopter gunships flying overhead or on strip alert. They did not carry an immediate reaction force which could get up into the mountains and turn the flanks of the ambush sites. Instead, they relied on the combat power of their armored vehicles and slow-reacting artillery and air support.
The Mujahideen commander had 60 combatants spread over a five kilometers stretch of ambush on both sides of the road. He did not have radio communications with all his people. Instead, the signal to initiate fire was the commander firing the first shot. Other commands were given by messenger or visual signals—mirrors, flares, smokegrenades and waving. Command and control depended greatly on thecommander's pre-ambush briefing and SOP actions.
VIGNETTE 11: KANDAHAR AMBUSHES
by Commander Mulla Malang
Despite their best efforts, the Soviets were never able to gain fullcontrol of the major Pashtun city of Kandahar. The battle forKandahar was unusual in that all guerrilla factions cooperated andregularly rotated forces in and out of the battle to maintain pressureon the Soviet and DRA garrisons. The suburbs of Kandahar were oneof the major scenes of Mujahideen road blocks and ambushes duringthe war. Hardly a day would pass without a Mujahideen attack onenemy columns along the main highway connecting the city withGhazni in the northeast and Girishk in the west. The enemy columns were most vulnerable on a stretch of the roadbetween the western suburbs of the city and Hauz-e Madad, locatedabout 40 kilometers west of Kandahar. In this area, the Mujahideenwere able to hide in the orchards and villages to ambush enemycolumns. As the road leaves Sanjari on the Arghandab River, the greenzone runs parallel to the highway in the south and an arid plain, thatgradually rises toward the mountains, flanks the road to the north.(See Map 10a - Deh-Khwaja 1 in Vignette 9.) The Herat Column In one of their early large-scale ambushes, the Mujahideen groupsaffiliated with different parties planned a series of ambushes alongthe main highway from Girishk to Kandahar (Map 12 - Kandahar).In September 1984, a Soviet/DRA supply column moved fromTorghundi on the Soviet Turkmenistan border through the Shindandair base in western Afghanistan to the Soviet garrison in Kandahar.The column consisted of several hundred trucks escorted by tanksand APCs. Most of the trucks were loaded with gasoline which they MuIla Malang, now 38, is a Pashtun from the northwestern province of Badghisat. He wasa student (taleb) at a religious school (madrassa) in Kandahar when the communists cameto power in a bloody coup in Kabul in 1978. MuIla Malang joined a resistance cell in thesouthern suburbs of Kandahar (Malajat) and started fighting the communist regime. Hewas arrested in the fall of 1979 for spreading anti-government leaflets and later releasedin general amnesty after the Soviet invasion in January 1980. Mulla Malang immediatelyfled to Pakistan and joined Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Muhamrnadi's Harakat faction. Hereturned to Kandahar for combat. Mulla Malang later joined HIK and became a major com-mander of the faction in the province with bases in Arghestan, Malajat, Pashmol andKhakrez. [Map sheet 2180]. Page 44 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War brought from Shindand. Shindand was supplied with gasoline froma Soviet-built field pipeline. Saranwal Abdul Wali of NIFA and I coordinated the Mujahideenplan. We planned to position several interconnected ambushes,manned by small groups of Mujahideen, to surprise and take theentire length of the column under simultaneous fire. This requiredselection of a favorable stretch of the road that could accommodateall the ambushes required to attack the entire column. We selected astretch of nearly seven kilometers between a point at the end ofSanjari (the beginning of Ashoqa villages) and a point immediately to the east of Pashmol as the killing zone for the enemy column. We esti-mated that this stretch of the highway corresponded to the length ofthe enemy column. We decided to divide the 250 available Mujahideen into severalgroups. The groups were armed with RPG-7 antitank grenade launch-ers and four-to-five 82mm recoilless rifles. All ambushes were sited inthe green zone to the south of the road. Each ambush group had anassigned sector of the kill zone. All groups were instructed to open firesimultaneously as the head of the column reaches the Ashoqa villages.It was expected that at that time the tail of the column would have justcleared the Pashmol villages.
At that time, most of the local population still lived in their homesalong the road. Few had migrated to Pakistan
