On the morning indicated, the mujahideen dispersed as planned. Six men tucked themselves under the bridge to the west of the built-up area in Batawul. The four that were to attack the central tanks took their positions under cover by some shops on the south side of the T-junction intersection in the center of Batawul.
Two hill formations lay on each side of the east-west road in Mar Koh, near the eastern edge of Batawul. The larger formation, reaching almost two hundred meters above the surrounding terrain, was on the north side of the road and the other much smaller one, at less than a hundred meters, was directly across on the south side. Near the tops of these hills Abdul Latif stationed his air defense fighters.
About halfway up each hill another five mujahideen were placed, to focus as planned on the lead tank. Like their fellow attackers at the intersection they were to strike that tank as soon as the first explosion signaled a successful hit on the trailing tank. If they could disable their target quickly, they would direct their attention to the next in line and move on toward the rear, descending from the hills as they did so. They were to meet up with their fellow fighters at the intersection, and ultimately, those coming from the rear. Ejaz and Saleem were among the men on the hills at the head end of the column, and Abdul Majeed was assigned to the road intersection.
Ten to fifteen seconds were all that could be hoped for before losing the ambush’s element of surprise. Speed was essential.
Abdul Latif’s air defense group was to focus solely on helicopters and to fire upon them incessantly as soon as they came within range. It would be sufficient to keep them distracted to prevent them from defending the tanks. It would be a bonus if one or two could be downed, but only if all gunships withdrew or were destroyed would it be acceptable for Abdul Latif’s men to join their fellow fighters engaging the tanks.
At the eastern end of Batawul, Haqqani’s twelve remaining mujahideen were deployed to catch escaping soldiers. Sikander was among them.
About forty minutes after the mujahideen had settled into their positions, the first of the T-62 tanks came rumbling through Batawul. They were in a widely spaced column about three kilometers long. Two hundred meters above them, a flight of four Hind helicopter gunships tracked the slowly moving formation, as ready as they would ever be to respond to any attack. They flew in a diamond pattern with the lead helicopter over the head end of the column, one left and one right flanking gunship, and one over the rear of the column but about seventy meters farther back from the trailing tank.
As soon as the trailing helicopter passed overhead, the six mujahideen sprang from under the bridge. With the trailing tank now almost a hundred meters down the road, they opened up with their RPGs. Two grenades were launched, followed immediately by a second salvo. A third was held in reserve in case the first two missed their target, and in readiness for the tank in front of the trailing one, as soon as the latter came to a halt. The rear of a T-62’s armor was notoriously weak. As the first two RPGs came screaming into the trailing tank, two large orange flashes preceded a billowing cloud of black smoke, announcing the hit as the vehicle came to a standstill.
For now, the forward tanks continued moving as if nothing had happened. As soon as Haqqani’s men saw the smoke from the explosion at the rear of the column, those at the road junction launched their attack on the nearest approaching tank, while those on the hills opened up on the lead tank. After a volley of RPG fire, each of the three initially targeted vehicles was now immobilized.
Inevitably, all the remaining tanks came to an abrupt halt. As planned by the attackers, the position of the column severely limited options for a lateral breakout. The tank commanders were left with no choice but to fight from within the column or hope that the helicopter gunships, which were extremely well armed, could strike back effectively.
The gunship response was not long in coming. Having witnessed the unfolding offensive against their charges below and ahead, the Hind pilot at the rear of the flight radioed to his remaining fellow pilots to locate the source of enemy fire and eliminate it. He himself would focus on defending the head end of the column to take out those mujahideen that could most readily create a logjam of tanks, but he would circle the hills to approach them from the rear. The helicopters broke formation.
As the lead gunship came within range, Abdul Latif’s troops from near the peak of the northern hill let loose their self-destruct-enabled RPGs. Of the six fired, his created the hoped for airburst and promptly set the lead helicopter on fire. In about ten seconds it careened out of control heading for the ground not far from the tank column. This left a pair of helicopters flanking left and right sides of the paralyzed column while the one originally guarding the rear raced to the far side of the north hill to approach the hills from the east.
The pilots of the other two gunships meanwhile located both the source of RPGs coming at them from the north hill, and the gunners that had been attacking the lead tank from halfway up the south hill. As one of the two Hinds turned left to focus on the air defense mujahideen, the other veered to its right, toward the source of the anti-tank RPG fire.
Obeying Abdul Latif’s initial orders, none of his air defense fighters high on the southern hill had fired and their presence remained unknown to the helicopter pilots. Having anticipated retaliation for his first attack, Abdul Latif hurried his fellow air defense fighters on the north hill toward a different spot while he signaled his men on the south hill finally to open fire. As the helicopter that had committed itself to counter-attacking Abdul Latif and his men turned to its left, the requested salvo of RPGs came from the south hill toward each helicopter. Realizing now that they were in a killing zone, both pilots hastily made evasive maneuvers, though the pilot who had begun to swing for the north hill managed to fire off three rockets first.
The first rocket was equipped with flechette warheads that burst just before impact, releasing small steel darts with tailfins. The head of a flechette was designed to bend on penetrating the target and the finned tail would break off producing a second debilitating injury. The second warhead was also flechette-equipped, inflicting injuries on two of Abdul Latif’s men. The third warhead was conventional. It exploded upon impacting a rock outcrop on the hillside near the tail end of Abdul Latif’s relocating troop. One of his fighters was torn to pieces. Another was killed when a flying rock struck his head. A third mujahid appeared to have taken a small stone close to his right eye, and struggled to function with blood streaming down his face.
Abdul Latif now had two dead and three injured on the north hill, and just three able-bodied fighters remaining, two of them still on rearguard duty looking out for helicopters approaching from the east.
Moments later, an airburst exploded close to the gunship that had launched the rocket attack. It was quickly engulfed in flames before exploding as onboard munitions ignited. One of the RPGs from the south hill’s air defense group had been effective.
While the assault against the helicopters unfolded, the men that had attacked the trailing tank at the outset of the battle used its wreckage as cover to fire on the next one along in the column, now with no air cover. They began making progress toward the middle of the column. Likewise at the head of the column, the fighters lower down the hills remained focused on their tank targets and had already begun to leave each hill to pick off tanks deeper into the column.
The sole helicopter over the tank column sent rocket fire toward one of the anti-tank groups that had left the Mar Koh hills, when it, too, came under attack from the south hill air defense team. At that moment, the last remaining helicopter reappeared on the far eastern side of the north hill. Its pilot was preparing for a rearguard attack on the mujahideen troop that had been raining RPGs down on the tank column from the north hill. But he was neither prepared for the mayhem that had developed during their maneuver behind the hill, nor for the loss already of two of their flight’s helicopters, with the third taking fire and succumbing in front of his eyes.
His gu
nner fired on the mujahideen on top of the south hill. However, having seen the fate of their colleagues on the north hill, the south hill’s air defense mujahideen had already taken cover lower down the hill and were moving toward the men leading the tank attack. The rocket fire from the helicopter had no effect. The helicopter swung back to face the north hill and was about to pull in closer when a counterattacking volley of RPG fire from across the road caused a large airburst to its left. A piece of shrapnel tore through a rotor blade, weakening it. Parting from the rotor assembly, it flew off sideways and struck yet another blade, halving its length. The helicopter shuddered violently and rendered uncontrollable, it plunged earthward to explode on impact.
Free at last from the need to worry about helicopter support, the air defense mujahideen could direct their RPG firepower to crisscross the road from their elevated locations in support of the successful anti-tank teams already tearing up the tank column. T-62s were not only vulnerable from the rear; their armor was ill-equipped to sustain attacks from higher elevations. Before long, Abdul Latif and all the anti-tank squads were with their colleagues on the ground.
The outcome of this skirmish no longer in doubt, figures began emerging from the tanks driven by a well-placed fear of explosions from poorly protected onboard munitions. Arms in the air and shouting their surrender in Pashto, they hurried east toward Haqqani’s men, where Sikander also stood. They’re not Soviets, mulled Sikander.
Soon, twenty of them were seated cross-legged with hands on their heads in two rows on the ground, waiting to learn their fate.
All told, the attack resulted in twenty of the twenty-four tanks being disabled and all but four of their crewmembers dead. The remaining four tanks were intact. Their sixteen crewmembers rounded out the total prisoner count. The undamaged tanks were in fair shape and would be taken as spoils. With so many of the DRA defecting over the years, the mujahideen had a comfortable familiarity with operating Russian tanks.
None of the helicopter crews survived.
It didn’t take long for Jalaluddin to arrive from his observation post. Addressing the prisoners, he decided on a conciliatory approach.
“My brothers, fortune has not been kind to you that you have chosen the path of attacking your fellow Muslims. We know that many of you have been forced to do this by circumstance. Surrender yourselves to our cause and we will safeguard you and your families, and together we’ll rid this country of ours of the godless communist enemy. Ultimately inshaAllah they will suffer a great loss; a loss of face and a loss of power. And as they will surely leave in humiliation, think then. What will become of you?”
Jalaluddin had few illusions, as did the prisoners. If they didn’t join the mujahideen, they were vermin, worthy of annihilation. If they did defect, they would go through intense processing to be sure that they were genuinely deserting the DRA. The mujahideen had even established special groups of defection handlers who prepared such recruits to join the cause. They had seen great success in past skirmishes with the performance and dedication of defectors, who brought with them an understanding of enemy tactics as well as much-needed weapons and skills. Jalaluddin’s speech was followed by silence.
After several seconds from somewhere among the DRA soldiers emerged the solitary cry: “Allahu Akbar!” A couple of seconds later came another, then another, until in rousing cacophony everyone declared their new allegiance. Welcoming the defectors into the mujahideen fold, Jalaluddin ordered six men to round up any small arms they could find and march the prisoners to Anarbagh.
With the prisoners taken care of, Jalaluddin regrouped with Abdul Latif and the rest of his fighters to review their losses. Abdul Latif conveyed the sad news of the two air defense fighters that had been killed and of the probable loss of Omar’s eye. The rest were manageable injuries. Jalaluddin listened with dismay but as far as he was concerned, such was the nature of war. He ordered two mujahideen per tank to join each of four tank drivers from the defecting troops to maneuver the captured T-62s out of the column, pushing aside the dead hulks of the burnt out vehicles. They were to accompany him to Khost where they would be put to good use.
The mujahideen disbanded along village lines and Abdul Latif gathered his men to head back to Laghar Juy. Hastening from Tora Bora, Abdul Rahman had not had time to join the skirmish and met with his fellow mujahideen just south of Anarbagh on their way home.
Abdul Latif judged it unlikely that retaliation would occur until at least a few days had passed and it would probably arrive in the form of airborne attacks on one or more of the villages in the area. Sustained evacuation of the villagers was therefore important and would have to remain in place for a few days until things settled down.
“Do you have the village families secure?” Abdul Latif asked.
“They’re safely in the caves,” replied Abdul Rahman. “We should all go up there until any attacks on the villages have passed.”
It took only two days for their informant network to reveal to the DRA that most of the fighters involved in the ambush had come from the area south of the highway and west of Anarbagh. On September 5, along with attacks on other locations in the area, two waves of Hinds and Mi-8 Hips came rolling into the valley of Laghar Juy. Despite Gatling gunfire and rockets launched into the village’s rudimentary buildings, their real mission was to be performed by bombs. Each helicopter carried ten 100-kilogram bombs and each pilot dropped his deadly payload over his designated part of the fields around Laghar Juy and its adjacent villages. Experience had taught them that this would inflict the most enduring damage.
From their hideaway more than twenty kilometers away up the mountainside everyone could see in the distance the Hinds proceed with impunity to tear up their villages. Most people had seen this kind of attack on their homes and fields more than once before. There was little bemoaning of the event. When the dust settled and the last of the helicopters had disappeared toward Jalalabad, the mujahideen came out of the caves, many riding on mules, to lead their women and children, livestock, and packed mules back into the villages.
Four hours later, the villagers were in the upper reaches of Laghar Juy and were able to see the damage firsthand. Given the large craters and the absence of small ones, all of the bombs appeared to have exploded, which although a curse considering the damage wrought, was also a blessing. No one would be exposed to an unexploded device.
Many of their homes were affected, but since the focus of the attack had been on the fields on this occasion, a number of dwellings remained virtually unscathed. Noor’s was one of them. Razya’s was flattened.
Razya gasped, not from the shock of seeing the destruction—few things could evoke such a reaction these days—but from trying to imagine where they would live.
“What will we do?” Sikander asked, turning to his AK-47 tutor.
Abdul Majeed exchanged glances with Ejaz and leaned into Sikander. “Aunt Noor’s household will have to get larger for a while,” he remarked.
Just then, Abdul Latif, leading Razya atop her mule, approached Noor and Rabia, both of whom were still on theirs.
“We’ll have to move in with you, sister,” he explained, adding nothing to Noor’s knowledge. “It will be only so long as we have to build our own replacement home. Of course, we’ll begin that immediately,” he added, hoping to soften the blow.
Noor was not happy about the prospect of three additional young men milling around in her home with her sixteen-year-old daughter. She understood, however, what the priorities were and nodded in resigned acquiescence. This was a time of war. For half of Rabia’s life it had been that way and it called for exceptions to cultural norms. But Noor was determined not to allow exceptions to become new norms.
Although Razya had shown only a hint of emotion upon discovering the rubble that used to be her dwelling, it was impossible for her nesting instinct to be immune to all sense of setback. Being the ever-optimistic Razya, however, she was quick to put a positive spin on things. “Noor, since we h
ave to be together, we can at least work on preparing for Ejaz’s wedding, right?”
Wedding! Noor couldn’t hold back a tearful chuckle as she considered such a notion amid the rubble all around her.
Having raised the issue of moving in for a while, Abdul Latif stood with his rifle perched over his shoulder like a yoke, resting both hands on it. He had nothing of consequence to add to the discussion of weddings and accommodations. As far as he was concerned, the important facts had been communicated and that was that.
While he was standing, Tahir, one of the village jirga members, hurriedly approached him.
“The fields! Destroyed! Almost completely,” exclaimed Tahir, gasping for breath.
“And the grain store?” Abdul Latif was unsurprised but disappointed.
“About two thirds of that too,” Tahir replied, heaving with despair. “We don’t have enough for a complete replanting even if we do manage to level the fields and fill in the craters.”
Looking around and watching the expressions on his friends’ faces, Sikander could see how out of step he was in interpreting the severity of this news. In the short time he had spent with them, his Afghan friends had always demonstrated a forbearing nature. Almost no hardship seemed great enough to cause mental collapse or the wringing of hands, despite them having seen more adversity than most in the world would see in a lifetime. Sikander leaned discreetly into Ejaz. “What does it mean?” he asked in a low voice.
Leaning into Sikander but without turning, Ejaz muttered: “It means we have to find more wheat from somewhere soon or face starvation during the winter and that might mean we have to go back to Pakistan to get it.” Turning to face Sikander he completed the comment. “But we also have to build your home and get the fields readied quickly or else the autumn planting will be missed. It won’t be a quiet period.”
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