Introduction
Potential informants and government spies surround urban Guerrillas. They must frequently move around unarmed and the government can usually react to their actions much faster than they can in the countryside. For this reason, urban guerrilla groups in Afghanistan were usually small and fought back with short-duration actions. Many urban guerillas lived in the country side or suburbs and only entered the cities for combat.
Kidnapping a Soviet Advisor
We were in contact with an Afghan driver from Paktia Province who drove for a civilian Soviet adviser. The advisor worked with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) mining industry. We wanted to kidnap the advisor. The driver has trained for a short time in the USSR and so the advisor trusted him. The driver agreed to help us, but we did not trust the driver and asked him to prove his loyalty. He stated “I will bring my family to stay in a Mujahideen-controlled area as proof of my trustworthiness”. The driver came to our camp with his wife and family. I sent his family to my village of Shewaki to stay while we captured the advisor.
One day the driver informed us that the adviser’s wife was coming from the Soviet Union to join him. The driver would take the adviser to the airport to meet his wife. We gave the driver a small hand-held radio and told him to contact us if there were any changes. We would contact him within twenty minutes of his call. The driver called us one morning. He reported that the adviser’s wife was arriving that day and that no one would accompany the adviser to the airport but the driver. We dressed one of our Mujahideen in a DRA’s military officer uniform and put him in a car and sent him to wait at the bridge over the Kabul River at the micro rayon in East Kabul. He got out of the car and waited for the adviser’s car. Soon, the Soviet adviser’s car arrived. The driver pointed at our Mujahideen and told the adviser “That’s my brother. He’s going to the airport. Can we give him a ride?” The adviser agreed and they stopped to pick up “the officer”. He got into the back seat behind the advisor and pulled out a pistol. He held the pistol to the adviser’s back and ordered the driver to drive to Shewaki. Another car, carrying eight of our Mujahideen armed with pistols and silencers, followed the adviser’s car. We had no trouble with the checkpoints since the guards saw the DRA officer’s uniform, saluted and waived the car and its “security tail” right through.
We took the advisor to Shewaki and burned his car. The government launched a major search effort, so we moved the adviser again to the Abdara Valley. Government helicopters strafed Shewaki after we left and landed search detachments trying to find the adviser. We kept the adviser in the Abdara Valley near the Chakari monument (the Buddhist pinnacle) for two days. Then we moved him to Tezin, near Jalalabad, for a few more days. Finally, we took him across the border to Peshawar, Pakistan, where we turned him over to one of the factions. I do not know what happened to him.
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