The Main Enemy

by Milton Bearden

  Tight screening of candidates for training had been one of the conditions we set down in introducing the Stinger. The Afghan trainees in this and all subsequent groups would be vetted both for skill and reliability. Leading candidates were drawn from the pool of mujahideen gunners who had already brought down Soviet or DRA aircraft with SA-7 missiles, an inferior Soviet copy of a much older American missile that had been in the mujahideen arsenal for a few years but used with little success. The need for skill was obvious, but reliability was equally important: There was still a great deal of concern that the Afghans might turn around and sell their Stingers. And with Iran and the Soviet Union bordering Afghanistan, there would be no shortage of bidders. Like all other programs in which we were involved, only Afghan fighters were to be trained. No foreign volunteers would be included in the program; they were a motley lot, increasingly the dredges of the prison populations of the Arab world.

  At one time, the CIA had mulled over the idea of training volunteer Arab legions to take part in the war, but the idea was immediately scrapped as unwise and unworkable. Contrary to what people have come to imagine, the CIA never recruited, trained, or otherwise used Arab volunteers. The Afghans were more than happy to do their own fighting—we saw no reason not to satisfy them on this point.

  “Lights!” the chief instructor said in Dari from the rear of the room, and the classroom quickly lit up, revealing a collection of a dozen mujahideen. In their midst was Engineer Ghaffar, a heavily bearded man clearly in charge of the group. I had been fully briefed on the fighters being trained—including Ghaffar, who had two confirmed kills using SA-7s. The fighters, to a man, wore regulation full-length beards. All wore gray or beige shalwar kameez and rolled Chitrali hats.

  “Ready for a final two-man drill?” the officer asked his unconventional students.

  Ghaffar, Stinger training unit in hand, was now joined by his second gunner. He nodded without comment.

  “Lights out! Procedure drill!” the instructor barked, handing a second Stinger training unit to the second gunner. He shouted a few orders to his assistants behind the sheet, alternating between Dari and English for my benefit. It appeared the group had been prepared well for my visit. Having undergone inspections myself back when I was in uniform, I had no reason to expect the game would be played differently here.

  “Give us two targets. High left and center right!”

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” answered the two gunners in unison.

  “First step?”

  “Stinger on the shoulder!” came the instant reply.

  “Second step?”

  “Knock off the front cover and pop up the sight!”

  “Third?”

  “Screw the battery cooling unit into the well, start the gyro motor with the thumb switch,” Ghaffar announced without hesitation. I got a running translation from the Pakistani brigadier escorting me through the camp.

  “Start tracking! Ghaffar high left target, Gul the right target!” the Pakistani officer ordered.

  The gyro motor noise grew louder as the two units tracked their targets and the cheek-to-bone vibrators began to kick in, reverberating against the gunners’ cheeks. Each time the training units locked on to the infrared target, the room was enveloped by the shrill screech of the “identification friend or foe” alarm. There had been some debate as to whether the Stingers issued to the mujahideen should even have the IFF feature, since there were no friends in the skies of Afghanistan. In the end, the IFF stayed—and the fighters simply considered it another part of the sound-and-light show they valued so highly. Cheek-to-bone vibrators were a useful complement to the shrill siren of the IFF, in that they sent a physical confirmation that the gunner was on target when he might not be able to hear the IFF in the din of battle.

  “What’s next?” the instructor shouted.

  “Uncage!” came the instant response from both commanders as both men hit the black rubber-covered “uncage” button on the left side and at the forward end of the grip stock.

  A loud siren filled the room, and the vibration told both gunners that they were ready to fire.

  “What’s next?”

  “Superelevate. Place the target in the sight. Pull the trigger.” Two voices spoke as one.

  “Your targets are MI-24Ds. Which of the three sights do you use?”

  “Center sight!”

  “Fire! Shut down! Two kills,” the instructor said with a smile, relaxing now, clearly pleased with his little demonstration. If the gunners could replicate this precise sequence in the field, they’d bring down their targets every time.

  “Engineer Ghaffar, why do you superelevate before you fire?”

  “Because the rocket launches out six meters and drops slightly as the main rocket motor kicks in, sir. Superelevating keeps it lined up on the target it has acquired. If you don’t superelevate, the rocket might drop too low to pick up its target once the motor kicks in.”

  I left the classroom more impressed by the makeshift nature of the training facilities than by the scripted performance arranged for my benefit. Nevertheless, I was convinced that the fighters would be able to use the Stinger successfully. Unlike the British-made Blowpipe that had been introduced almost a year earlier in small numbers, the Stinger was what the Afghans desperately needed—a “fire and forget” missile that allowed a gunner to live and tell of his encounter with Soviet gunships. With a Blowpipe the gunner had to acquire his target optically, fire the missile, and then stand his ground, usually upright and in the open, while he guided the missile with a toggle all the way to the target. The predictable result was an uneven duel between the MI-24D and the lone gunner, with the gunner more often than not ending up a martyr. The Soviet-designed SAM-7, widely available on the gray and black arms markets, was no more effective, but for a different reason. It was reliable, and even then just marginally so, only when it was “looking at” the hot tailpipes of an enemy aircraft. It could rarely acquire an incoming aircraft head-on. So the Afghans would usually have to wait until the enemy aircraft, either a helicopter or a fast mover, came in, dropped its bombs or fired its rockets, and then turned tail, at which time the SAM-7 gunner could pop up and let his missile fly—that is, if he was still alive. In every sense the Stinger was a revolutionary weapon, and even before it was first fired in combat, a belief began to spread through the highly superstitious ranks of the resistance that it possessed certain magical powers. They would eventually come to value the Stinger as their American amulet, their talisman for victory.

  Though I hadn’t been part of the early political debate in Washington on the wisdom of giving the Afghans the Stinger, I had been brought in peripherally, so I knew something about the furor it had caused on Capitol Hill. Clair George asked me to brief Senator Sam Nunn of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the fact that Stinger technology had already been lost to the Soviets. The GRU officer who’d bought the system from an agent inside NATO was none other than Colonel Sergei Bokhan, the CIA’s man in Athens. Now, I thought as I left the training classroom in Ojhri camp, let’s hope after all the sound and fury over getting this little baby into the war that it really works.

  The Soviets were deeply concerned about the new technology behind the Stinger, and they’d had a couple of years to develop countermeasures. I would soon find out if they had been successful.

  Northeast of Jalalabad Airfield, 1505 Hours, September 25, 1986

  Engineer Ghaffar and his three dozen fighters had been moving constantly since they had crossed over zero line into Afghanistan one week earlier. Now, on the afternoon of September 25, they were settling into a concealed position about a mile northeast of Jalalabad airfield, some two miles southeast of the city. A thriving trading town that had hosted supply caravans and garrisoned armies for two millennia going back to Alexander the Great, Jalalabad had been the hinge of the bloodiest of Afghanistan’s wars going back to antiquity. It was the destination of the ill-fated British garrison that in 1842 set off
in retreat from Kabul with 16,500 British and Indian troops. After constant ambush along the ninety-mile line of retreat, only one British officer arrived at Jalalabad safely.

  The Soviet garrison at Jalalabad was ideally situated near the point where the Kabul and Konar Rivers joined up and began to wind their way, skirting the Khyber Pass, into Pakistan to join the mighty Indus in its search for the sea. There had been a few Soviet combat air patrols over the last two days as Ghaffar and his men jockeyed into their final firing position, but they had been fast-moving MiGs or Sukhois, flying too high for a sure shot. Ghaffar had let them pass through the area without firing. He was hoping for fresh targets today, possibly MI-24D gunships, the dreaded, heavily armored attack helicopters that had swept over his country with impunity since the invasion. They would usually come home to Jalalabad late in the afternoon, after completing the day’s mission. He and his men could wait, hidden in the scrub grass and large boulders on a slight rise in the terrain. That afternoon the wind was blowing from the northwest; landing aircraft, even helicopters, would probably approach from downwind.

  Ghaffar and his men sat quietly in their hidden position, fitting the three grip stocks with missiles, checking and rechecking their work, and monitoring enemy troop activity nearby through their binoculars. As the men settled down to wait, a few of the fighters quietly prayed for strength and wisdom in battle. They sought help and guidance from the Creator of Death, the Avenger. Ghaffar himself recited Ya-Rashid, the Guide to the Right Path, to ensure that he would be steered according to His eternal plan.

  Ghaffar would later tell me that he had uttered Ya-Rashid for exactly the one thousandth time when his targets came into view, eight beautiful MI-24D gunships. Quickly Ghaffar ordered his other two gunners to their positions. Both perched their weapons on their shoulders, poised like hunters stalking their prey.

  “Wait until I give the order to begin the procedures,” Ghaffar told his gunners as he shouldered his own weapon. The other fighters took their positions, two of them shouldering their Stingers and preparing for the launch sequence on the order from Ghaffar.

  “Knock off your front covers and pop up your sights!”

  “Cover off! Sight up!” two voices answered in quick succession.

  “Hold your battery cooling units until I give you the order to screw them into the wells!” Ghaffar instructed, excitement building in his voice.

  “Altitude one thousand meters, range twenty-five hundred,” one of Ghaffar’s men called out, giving the others the range of the approaching aircraft.

  “Engage BCUs!” Ghaffar shouted, and screwed his battery cooling unit into the well.

  “BCU engaged!”

  “BCU engaged!”

  “Begin tracking!” All three gunners flipped the thumb switch in unison. The sound of the gyro motors gained strength as the Stinger trackers picked up the heat from the approaching helicopters, each gunner sighting in on a prearranged section of the helicopters’ formation to avoid wasting a precious missile. By now all three gunners were getting a strong cheek-to-bone vibration, indicating that they had acquired their targets. The IFF signals kicked in, filling the air with a shrill, piercing sound that seemed only to increase the excitement of the team. The gunships had dropped to about one thousand feet as they made their final approach to the Jalalabad airfield.

  “Uncage!” Ghaffar ordered. The acknowledgments came almost instantly as the other two gunners hit the rubberized rectangular buttons, fully arming their Stinger missiles.

  At this point, each gunner was on his own, relying only on the training he had received at Ojhri camp as he followed the pinpoint of light behind the white sheet. In less than two seconds, the three gunners had superelevated their missile tubes and fired. The first Stinger shot out of Ghaffar’s tube, traveled the prescribed six meters on its launch charge, and then failed to ignite. The missile fell to the ground, clattering among the rocks until its momentum was spent. A dud!

  But before the impact of that failed launch set in, the second and third gunners had fired their missiles, and the slender arrows shot toward their targets at twice the speed of sound, leaving widening white trails arching across the blue skies above Jalalabad. Ghaffar had reloaded his grip stock with a second tube when the first missile struck its target. The first helicopter exploded in midair and fell like a rock off the end of the runway just as the second missile found its target, sending the second MI-24D into a wild spiral caused by the loss of two of its rotor blades in the explosion. By the time the second gunship hit the ground about six hundred yards from the burning wreckage of the first kill, Ghaffar had reloaded and acquired his second target, zeroing in on one of the five remaining choppers now taking wild evasive actions to avoid whatever was stalking them.

  Ghaffar picked his second target carefully. He wanted to kill the lead helicopter in the flight and already had solid cheek-to-bone vibration signaling target acquisition when his target turned toward him and came screaming directly at his position. Ghaffar superelevated his Stinger and fired his second shot of the day while holding his target in the sight. The missile shot out of its tube, ignited its rocket motor instantly, and flew true and straight toward the lead MI-24D as the chopper lay over almost on its side and began dropping right toward him. As the gap closed to less than a thousand meters, Ghaffar saw bright flashes coming from the 23 mm Gatling gun slung under the Hind. The cannon rounds flew wide of their target, kicking up rock as they hit and exploded. The missile closed the remaining gap and exploded on contact with the hot turbine engine.

  “Allah hu Akhbar!” came the cries of the fighters all around him. The explosion of the fuel tanks tore the helicopter apart in midair, showering the area with debris. Ghaffar saw the fighter whose job was to videotape the attack jumping up and down with the others, calling out, “God is great!” the red recording light of the Sony still burning and the lens pointing straight at the ground. Ghaffar only hoped that something had been captured on tape before the cameraman was overcome by the excitement of the kills. I would later view the video and see both the confirmed kills and the wild shots of ground, dusty sandals, and sky as the cameraman jumped about.

  “Gather up the equipment and be ready to move out in two minutes!” Ghaffar shouted to his fighters, the excitement now out of his voice, having resumed his authority. Turning to his cameraman, he said, “Move as close to the wreckage as you can and get some pictures.” Then to another of his team: “Destroy the Stinger that misfired. Pound the center of the missile with a large rock. Be careful not to strike the warhead!”

  The standing order had been clear: Functioning Stingers were under no circumstances to fall into enemy hands. Ghaffar made a decision on the spot to destroy the electronic circuitry of the dud missile rather than try to bring it home, fearing its warhead might explode on the way. Within minutes, Ghaffar and his team had cleared the area and were on their way to motorized transportation waiting for them ten kilometers away. They would travel home to Pakistan that evening to report their success. Ghaffar took the frequency hopper radio from one of his fighters’ packs and broke radio silence for the first time since he had deployed one week before.

  “Three confirmed kills at southeast end of the target airfield,” he reported. “Four missiles fired. One missile failure.” The secure transmission from Ghaffar’s radio flashed to ISI receivers high in the mountains across zero line in Pakistan, sending the electrifying news of the first major victory against the Soviet helicopter fleet.

  Islamabad, 2030 Hours, September 25, 1986

  An urgent call had come in from Colonel Riaz, aide to General Akhtar, on the evening of the Jalalabad ambush. His message was brief and to the point: The first team deployed to Nangarhar had brought down three targets late that afternoon. Would I please advise Mr. Casey and ask for some satellite coverage of the scene? I returned to the office and reported the claim of success to Langley, along with the observation that on the heels of the Kharga attack just one month earlier, the e
vents at Jalalabad today might trigger a shift in mood of the Afghan resistance.

  When I picked up the cable traffic the next morning, I had two messages on top of the stack from headquarters. The first cable thanked me for my account of the shoot-down reports but cautioned me to take claims of success by the mujahideen with a grain of salt. I was instructed to secure independent confirmation of these and future kills.

  The second cable, referring back to the first, was short and to the point. It said, in inimitable Langley cablese:

  BELAY REF, SATELLITE IMAGERY CONFIRMS THREE KILLS AT JALALABAD AS REPORTED. PLEASE PASS OUR CONGRATS FOR JOB WELL DONE!

  I watched with deep interest as Soviet air operations stood down in eastern Afghanistan over the next week. When operations resumed, patrolling aircraft were flying much higher than before the ambush.

  The war was entering a new stage.

  Langley, September 26, 1986

  Jack Devine, chief of the Afghan Task Force, flipped through the twelve-by-eighteen sheets of the morning pass of satellite coverage of Jalalabad and decided on the spot that the war had taken the turn he needed. On the heels of the total destruction of the ammo dump at Kharga a month earlier, what he saw before him gave him the crucial ingredient he was looking for—momentum. He picked up the phone and dialed Casey’s office two floors up.

  When the DCI’s secretary came on the line, he said, “Jack Devine. Can I see him right now? I’ve got some photos he ought to see.”