In my last post I posted quotes of interest from The Bear Went Over the Mountain by Lester Grau. As I stated in that blog, Bear was a series of vignettes and stories about Soviet tactics in Afghanistan. But what about the mujahedeen and their tactics? Lucky for us, Grau got the other side of the story and wrote The Other Side Of the Mountain. Here are the quotes I found of interest, with my comments:
"The Mujahideen use the Mamur Hotel ambush site over and over again, yet apparently the Soviets or DRA seldom dismounted troops to search the area to spoil the ambush or to try to set a counter-ambush."
Warfare is about adapting. If you don't adapt, your enemy certainly will. And you will die.
"The RPG-7 was probably the most effective weapon of the Mujahideen."
The RPG is a simple weapon but is extremely inaccurate. However, when used effectively it can be a game changer.
"...we had time to set up during the daylight before the column arrived, since the convoys always left Kabul in the morning well after dawn."
Don't set patterns. Just don't.
"If the terrain at the ambush site is very constricted, the guerrilla may want to attack the head of the convoy and block the route with a combination of a roadblock and burning vehicles. If the convoy has armored vehicles and engineer vehicles concentrated to the front of the convoy, the guerrilla may want to attack the middle or tail of the convoy with the hope that the convoy commander will not divert a great deal of combat power back to deal with his attack. If the guerrilla is after supplies, the middle of the convoy is best if he can isolate a piece of the middle, since most convoys have a rear guard."
The Soviets used large logistics convoys with lots of vehicles. These made for tempting targets since there were only so many armored and armed vehicles to go around. There are 2 ways to combat an ambush by insurgents in my experience: either look unimportant, or look too alert and scary to want to attack.
"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."
Destroying the orchards and villages may have prevented ambushes along that route, but by doing so the Soviets most likely angered the local population and created way more enemies than they had before.
"Security elements should be the last elements to pull out of an ambush – not the first."
If you have a tank and the enemy doesn't, don't run away.
"However, in order to prevent future ambushes in the area, the Soviet forces bulldozed Deh-Khwaja homes along the main road out to a distance of 300 meters from the highway."
Keep destroying those villages, I'm sure that will work out for you.
"In a guerilla war, the loss of initiative becomes decisive in the outcome of tactical combat."
A tactical fight is like a sports game. If you lose the initiative you have to claw and fight to get it back. You have to hope your enemy makes a mistake, and hope is not a course of action you want to rely on.
"We gave him first aid and released him. He was a conscript soldier from the Panjsher Valley who had recently been press-ganged into the military."
The mujahedeen most likely made a friend and ally by letting this Afghan soldier go instead of keeping him captured. Forced conscription makes for bad soldiers.
"...the most important Mujahideen weapon in the conflict was the RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launcher."
So important that I highlighted it twice!
"On the morning of the raid, the Mujahideen raiders moved to the target within a herd of sheep. Some Mujahideen posed as shepherds, while others crawled along in the middle of the grazing sheep."
Didn't I read about this in The Odyssey? Brilliant move.
"Less than 15% of the Mujahideen commanders had previous military experience, yet the impact of the military who joined the Mujahideen was significant. They provided a continuity, an understanding of military planning and issues, a modicum of uniform training and an ability to deal with outside agencies providing aid to the Mujahideen."
Find that one person who is useful and exploit the hell out of them.
"Tactically, the Mujahideen realized that movement along streets is suicidal in urban combat."
That's what we call a linear danger area. Even ROTC cadets know that.
"Even during the fighting, the women from the villages would bring bread and milk forward to our positions. The whole area was actively supporting us."
The population is key for both the insurgent and the counter-insurgent.
"The Mujahideen lack of a structured, viable supply system hampered their tactical capabilities significantly."
Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics. Lack of both supplies and a stable supply base will doom an insurgency...sometimes.
"The combination of overwhelming firepower and ground maneuver unhinged the Mujahideen defense and the decisive action taken by the Soviet infantry forced the poorly-supplied Mujahideen to break contact"
Two key words: overwhelming and maneuver. Bring everything to bear and then don't sit still.
"We engaged the paratroopers with all our air defense machine guns and whatever other air defense weapons we had. As the paratroopers drifted closer, we realized that we had been duped. The 'paratroopers' were dummies and the reconnaissance aircraft had photographed our response and pinpointed our positions."
I highlighted this in my previous post. Using dummy paratroopers was a genius move by the Soviets.
"During the first week of November, representatives of fruit dealers appealed to the Mujahideen to open the highway, but to no avail. In a guerrilla war, support of the local population is too valuable to be risked by actions that hurt local economy."
Mujahideen groups made mistakes on occasion. This was one of those occasions.
"The Mujahideen who had the most difficulty with cordon and search operations were usually separate groups who had little or no ties to a central Mujahideen planning authority, had worked out no contingency plans and had taken no steps to fortify the area."
Best to make friends in the next valley over just in case you need to make a hasty withdrawal.
"Mujahideen insistence on holding base camps cost them dearly. At this point in the war, base camps were not essential to Mujahideen logistics and Abdullah’s base camp was not the only one which the Soviets overran."
A few of these quotes are going to appear contradictory. However, in the beginning stages of an insurgency, the insurgent should not try to hold ground. Holding ground just allows the counter-insurgent a place to attack you and win, which decreases the insurgent's morale and ability to recruit.
"When the Mujahideen held real estate, it allowed the Soviets to concentrate their superior firepower on the Mujahideen."
The insurgent is most effective when he's fighting uncoventionally and not holding territory that can be taken from him. Insurgents learn quickly not to hold ground until the enemy they are fighting is too weak or incapable of re-taking that territory.
"The enemy was very stylized and never did anything different. We knew from where they would come, how they would act and how long they could stay."
Adapt, adapt, adapt, adapt...and don't set patterns!
"Instead of defending in positions being pounded by fighter-bombers and close-air support aircraft, the Mujahideen went on the offensive and attacked the landing zones."
The best defense is a good offense. To expand on that thought, an assault force is at its most vulnerable when it is first getting off the helicopters and getting organized. By attacking the landing zones you seize the initiative, disrupt your enemy's attack, and can likely prevent any follow on forces or reinforcements from arriving.
"The Soviet advance on Chaghni was slow, but the Soviets were finally learning to dominate the high ground before they moved their ground force."
In Afghanistan it's absolutely crucial to control the high ground as you manuever a force through any of the valleys. Otherwise you're just asking for machine gun fire or mortars to come raining down on you.
"A dictum of guerrilla warfare is that the guerrilla should not hold ground. Mujahideen logistics forced the Mujahideen to hold ground."
Look at this dead horse, I'm going to keep beating it.
"Soviet soldiers were the main source of our gasoline. We would buy it from them."
This is what happens when your soldiers are underpaid and unsupervised.
"Bombing is a necessary part of being an urban guerrilla. The object is to create fear and take out selected individuals."
The war against the Soviets, much like the current conflict in Afghanistan, was a rural fight. However, insurgents did operate in the urban areas. Roadside bombs and carbombs strike fear in the populace and delegitimize the government. Also, as the quote states, they are good for assassinations as well.
"The urban guerrilla attacks the credibility of the government by chipping away at morale, attacking notable government targets and disrupting the daily life of the populace."
What I've found interesting is my multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan is that when bombs go off and the population of a city is living in daily fear, there isn't a lot of anger directed towards those conducting the attacks. Anger is directed towards the government and the occupation forces for not preventing those attacks; or in the case of the occupation forces, anger that they are even there because the very presence of foreign troops invites attacks.
The Other Side Of the Mountain was written in the same style as The Bear Went Over the Mountain and while slightly tedious to read and often repetitive it was interesting to gain the perspective of the mujahideen. I really hope that someone takes the time to write a book from the perspective of some of the Iraqi insurgents as well as those insurgents currently fighting in Afghanistan. It would likely provide for some real lessons as well as provoke some thinking on the tactics the US applied to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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