The Bear Trap (Afghanistan’s Untold Story)
Page 31
By March, 1989, the Mujahideen had assembled 5,()00-7,000 men in the hills around Jalalabad. However. their impending attack would not achieve surprise, as it had been heralded with too much publicity. The Jalalabad garrison knew what was coming and had made the necessary preparations. The 11th Division had been brought up to strength and other reinforcement units deployed in a ring of defences. Bunkers, barbed wire and extensive minefields surrounded Jalalabad. The outer defences extended 20 kilometres from the city, particularly to the east. Highway l, the link to Kabul, was protected by scores of posts throughout its length. Map 23 depicts the approximate layout of the Afghan defences and the main topographical features of tactical importance.
The Mujahideen assault began in early March with a direct, frontal attack from the east, up the Kabul river valley and on either side of Highway 1. Their first objective was the Samarkel position on the road 12 kilometres SE of Jalalabad. The ragtag warriors stormed ahead under cover of a heavy rocket, mortar and machine-gun barrage. Their initial impetus and enthusiasm carried them forward. The ridge east of Samarkel fell, and shortly afterwards the little village itself. Next the airfield, only 3 kilometres from the city, was taken by jubilant warriors yelling their war cries. This advance was led by several captured T-55 tanks crewed by the guerrillas. I believe this was the only tank versus tank engagement of the war. The Mujahideens’ success was short-lived, as the coordinated use of the three As drove them back from the strip.
The battle gradually became a stalemate, with more and more Mujahideen being sucked into the siege, but unable to coordinate their efforts, and wasting lives in reinforcing failure rather than success. Although some eight senior Commanders and their groups were deployed, there was no overall leader who could command obedience or devise a sound tactical plan. Attacks were invariably by day, with the Mujahideen walking or cycling forward in the early morning for a day’s shooting, and returning at dusk to sleep in the deserted villages in the surrounding rich farmland.
From the outset a steady stream of miserable refugees, old men, women and children, tramped towards Pakistan. By June 20,000 had gone. Meanwhile the siege of Jalalabad ground on with the Mujahideen unable to improve on their initial success. A decisive factor in the attackers’ failure was a lack of cooperation between the Commanders. They attacked when the mood took them, and without thought to concentrating or coordinating their efforts. As one exasperated Commander was quoted as saying in the London Sunday Times, ‘There is no coordination. If the Mujahideen attack on one side and keep the government busy, the Mujahideen on the other side are sleeping’. This lack of an overall plan led to many setbacks. The vital highway to Kabul, which, after the airport was closed, was virtually the only way of reinforcing or supplying Jalalabad, was seized by the guerrillas. But instead of closing the road permanently, the Mujahideen kept rotating the groups responsible which enabled the enemy to keep slipping convoys through.
All through April, May and June the position of the Mujahideen gradually worsened. Within a matter of a few weeks ammunition shortages became critical. The heavy, and at times wasteful, expenditure in the early days could not be made good. The US shipments were still substantially less than necessary, the reserve stocks had never been built up again after the Ojhri Camp disaster, and there had been little forward planning or dumping of available stocks prior to the battle. Not only was the strategic wisdom of attacking Jalalabad doubtful, but the tactics and logistics of carrying it out were quickly revealed as inadequate.
The Afghan resistance had also been underestimated. These soldiers had to fight to survive. Some early killings by the Mujahideen of prisoners confirmed in their minds that surrender was no answer. They were supported by enormous firepower; they had the advantage of being in strong defensive positions; numerically they equalled, if not outnumbered, their attackers, and their logistic needs were met. Aircraft, including Antonov-12 transports converted into bombers, flew up to twenty sorties a day. Heavy bombs, and cluster bombs that exploded above the ground scattering scores of bomblets over the target area, were used. These were extremely lethal against infantry. The effect on the ground is rather like the effect on a pond of throwing a fistful of gravel into the water, but over a far wider area. Although the Antonov is a slow-moving, propeller-driven aircraft, on these bombing missions it kept high, above the Stingers’ ceiling.
Then there was the psychological as well as the physical effect of the Scud missiles. At least three firing batteries of these missiles had been deployed at Kabul, where they were maintained and operated by Soviet personnel. They were new weapons, introduced to help compensate for the Soviet troop withdrawal, and they were technically complicated, which explained the Soviet crews. A battery consisted of three launcher vehicles, three re-loading vehicles each with one missile, a mobile meteorological unit, a tanker vehicle towing a pump unit on a trailer, and several command and control trucks. Getting ready to fire took an hour. It involved a lengthy survey procedure at the firing position, using theodolites and optical devices, being completed before the missile could be raised upright for launching.
The Scuds fired in Afghanistan carried high-explosive warheads weighing over 2,000 pounds. Jalalabad was comfortably within—range. The only warning the Mujahideen had was if they heard the sonic bang as the missile crashed through the sound barrier. They were area weapons. that is they could not achieve great accuracy. Their manuals indicate that when firing at a range such as from Kabul to Jalalabad, about half the missiles would fall in a circle with a radius of 900 metres. Over 400 Scud missiles thumped down among the hills around Jalalabad during the siege. I believe at least four fell inside Pakistan.
In four months of fighting the Mujahideen failed to take Jalalabad. It came as no surprise to me, or anybody else who took the trouble to study the situation. Their losses in men exceeded 3,000 killed and wounded. They expended what little reserves of ammunition had been accumulated, and their inability to breach the minefields and fixed defences boosted the morale of their enemies. The battle for Jalalabad renewed the Afghan Army’s confidence in its own ability, as well as telling the world that the Mujahideen were not yet able to march into Kabul. It was another major setback to the Jehad, from which the Mujahideen have not recovered to this day. Nor do I believe that their leadership has understood the lessons.
ISI and the Party Leaders made a strategic blunder in moving from guerrilla to full-scale conventional warfare too soon. They compounded it by selecting Jalalabad, whose capture would not necessarily bring down the Communist regime, instead of Kabul which would. They made no attempt to tie down Afghan reserves by keeping up the pressure at airfields such as Kabul or Bagram.
It was during the latter stages of the siege that Hekmatyar’s men ambushed Massoud’s forces in Takhar Province, sparking off the campaign of vengeance that resulted in the public executions described in chapter eight. That outright civil war should break out among the Mujahideen at such a critical juncture is indicative of the rapid erosion of what little unity was left for the Jehad.
Tactically, it was a textbook example of how not to fight a battle. There was no surprise; inferior forces attempted to assault prepared positions frontally in daylight. The attacks were poorly coordinated and the Mujahideen were subjected to a continuous barrage of shells and bombs from which there was no respite. Logistically it was grossly mismanaged. Due to the US cutback and the loss of all the strategic reserve stocks of arms at Ojhri, there was insufficient ammunition for a large-scale offensive lasting more than a week at most. The Mujahideen leadership knew all this, but still persisted with their plan.
General Gul was removed from his post at ISI in June 1989, when it was clear to everybody that Jalalabad was a catastrophe. His two-year involvement with the Jehad must have been a bitter experience for him. He came at a time when military victory was in sight; he left when Mujahideen defeat was distinctly possible. The falling away of American support, the Ojhri explosion, the air crash which killed the Presiden
t, the fractious political infighting of the Leaders, which increased markedly as the Soviets left, and finally Jalalabad, demanded a scapegoat—General Gull Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had him transferred back to the Army whence he came.
His replacement was General Shamsur Rahman Kallu. He was brought out of retirement for the job. Zia had got rid of him for having the temerity to suggest that the President should relinquish the post of Chief of Army Staff. He has closely followed the American line, bending to their pressures and thus effectively scuttling the chances of a Mujahideen victory. He has failed to retain unity among the AIG.
The Jehad has never recovered from Jalalabad. The Mujahideen had showed the world that they had the courage and skill to apply the pressures of guerrilla warfare to bring about the retreat of a superpower. Given the means to fight, given the cause of Jehad, and given a modicum of sensible military leadership, they could not be defeated. Take away these props and no army can win. Military history is a great teacher for both soldiers and politicians. Its lessons are few and of repeated. The problem lies in the learning.
Postscript
“Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of
hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.”
Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart, The Real War 1914-1918 ( 1930).
I have recently revisited Peshawar, spoken to the Leaders, renewed friendships with some of my former comrades-in-arms, and again gone inside Afghanistan. I wanted to see for myself what had happened to the Jehad which defeated the Soviets, but cannot defeat the Najibullah regime. It was a depressing visit. The ordinary Mujahid is bewildered, exhausted and angry with the endless political and military feuding that continues to sap the strength of their efforts against the Kabul government. They certainly seem helpless, and many have lost hope.
The more I look back, the more I re-think events of the past three years, the more convinced I am that it was the deliberate policy of the US government that we should never achieve a military victory in Afghanistan. Once the Soviets were out America had avenged Vietnam; she then concerned herself with bringing about a stalemate. Both superpowers will be content when Najibullah and his leftists shake hands with the moderates in some government of reconciliation. When this happens it will not bring peace or stability either to Afghanistan or the border areas of Pakistan.
The millions of refugees and the thousands of Mujahideen living in Pakistan will be required to return to Afghanistan, aid will be curtailed, but I do not believe the majority will go. They outnumber the local population, many are armed, and for a high proportion the prospect of returning to their devastated villages and fields’ sown with millions of mines, is hardly an appealing proposition. There is the danger that the situation will be exploited by the KGB, by KHAD and RAW agents, to try to bring about another Lebanon, with serious fighting between the umpteen rival factions. In this scenario Peshawar would become a Beirut. India would certainly welcome such a state of affairs.
I believe the first move to undermine the Jehad was the removal of General Akhtar. This was done by Pakistan’s President, but at the instigation of the US. Once Akhtar had gone the whole process of political intrigue, and the weakening of the military effort, gathered momentum. It was Akhtar who had resisted all the American pressures; he was seen as the champion of an outright military victory and the establishment of an Islamic government in Kabul. He was inflexible, so he had to go. The US exerted pressure on Zia to remove him with perfect timing. It coincided with the President’s belief that victory was assured, so he wanted to claim the credit. At the same time Zia would please the Prime Minister whose relations with Akhtar were poor.
Next came the explosion that destroyed all the war stocks of the Mujahideen at Ojhri. The camp was full because it was the Americans who had got their way with the newcomer, General Gull In order to supply Commanders directly, ammunition had to be stockpiled in the warehouse at Ojhri in far greater quantities, and for far longer periods, than previously. The Americans had always insisted in the run-up to the Soviet withdrawal that they should be given a safe passage. The Mujahideen consistently refused to countenance this. The US, understandably, did not want anything to delay or halt the Soviet retreat, so they cut back their arms shipments to Pakistan. But there were 10,000 tons sitting at Ojhri. One big bang and it had gone. The following week the Accord was signed, the Mujahideen’s ability to sustain prolonged operations had disappeared and the Soviet withdrawal proceeded reasonably smoothly. A convenient coincidence?
The CIA’s arms supply continued to be an erratic trickle rather than a steady stream, while the Soviets flooded Kabul with weapons and equipment on a scale never experienced before. Another unfortunate fluke?
Then came the air crash which killed both President Zia and General Akhtar deliberately, and the US Ambassador and Military Attache accidentally. Immediately the Americans blocked any attempt to uncover the culprits. The likelihood was that the KGB or KHAD had been involved, with the collusion of some Pakistani military personnel. To expose them would upset American plans and probably lead to public demands for retaliation—after all two senior US officials had been murdered by an act of sabotage. The US shed a few crocodile tears over Zia’s death, but the reality was they were not sorry to see him go. They believed, wrongly, that he was secretly pro-fundamentalist; they disliked his military rule and dissolution of the democratic assemblies; they were concerned at the progress of his nuclear programme; and they regarded him as a liability who could not be removed by political means.
At the end of 1988 Pakistan, pushed by the US, cobbled together the AIG. It was created before the Soviets were out of Afghanistan, and before the war had been won. Its only purpose has been to divert the Mujahideen from fighting the war to fighting politics. It was, and is, irrelevant. Without military victory no Islamic government could be set up in Kabul, but with a military deadlock all sorts of compromises are possible. It fitted in perfectly with American aims.
By mid-February, 1989, the Soviets had gone, with the exception of some advisers and their massive logistic support. The withdrawal had been successfully achieved, except for a period in November, 1988, when they threatened to halt it due to Mujahideen attacks. But after this the winter and a lack of ammunition secured a smooth departure. Then came the Jalalabad fiasco. The ISI, Pakistan, the Mujahideen leadership and their CIA backers moved from guerrilla to conventional warfare prematurely. Men and munitions were frittered away on an objective that could not have won the war. Both the strategy and tactics of Jalalabad were hopelessly flawed. Failure there was, I believe, the final blow to the original Jehad. It set the seal on a compromise political solution. Although I am reluctant to admit it, I feel the only winners in the war in Afghanistan are the Americans. They have their revenge for Vietnam, they have seen the Soviets beaten on the battlefield by a guerrilla force that they helped to finance, and they have prevented an Islamic government replacing a Communist one in Kabul. For the Soviet Union even their military retreat has been turned into a huge political success, with Gorbachev becoming a hero in the West, and still his hand-picked puppet, Najibullah, remains unseated, dependent on Soviet aid for his survival.
The losers are most certainly the people of Afghanistan. It is their homes that are heaps of rubble, their land and fields that have been burnt and sown with millions of mines, it is their husbands, fathers and sons who have died in a war that was almost, and should have been, won.
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we were
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sic
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the Soviet soldier
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US
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Akhtar
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Pakistan
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the Mujahideen
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Amu
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as head of KHAD
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the Mujahideen
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from
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but not the key city of Kabul
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