Introduction
Commander Sarshar was a police officer in Parwan and worked clandestinely with the Mujahideen. When his cover was about to be blown, he became a Mujahideen commander in Ghorband. He commanded a mobile group in the Ghorband front near Charikar.
Weapons Raid in Charikar.
Charikar, the capital of Parwan Province, has a compact city core, approximately one kilometer by one kilometer, and a large suburb. The northern section of Charikar is called the “new jail” area. The headquarters of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) militia forces (self-defense units) was in the “new jail” area. Malek Shah was our contact inside that headquarters. In October 1983, he promised to get us inside the militia compound when the commander of the compound was asleep. I brought 65 Mujahideen from my base camp for this mission. We were armed with two Goryunov heavy machine guns, three PK medium machine guns, four RPG-7s, and Kalashnikov and Enfield rifles. I divided my force into three security groups and an assault group. One security group deployed near the road northeast of the headquarters, while the other deployed to the northwest of the headquarters to cover the other flank. These two security groups protected the assault group. The third security group secured our withdrawal route north to Ofian-e Sharif.
We approached the target in the night at 0200 hours. At 0300 hours, we got a flashlight signal from the headquarters. I climbed the wall and the eight other Mujahideen in the assault group followed me. We were all inside the compound and Malek Sharif was just starting to point out the three rooms of the compound building when one of the sleeping militia got up. He saw us and began shouting. We had no time, so we burst into the three rooms firing as we went. I led the group into the commander’s room. We killed 20 and I lost one killed in action (KIA) and one wounded in action (WIA). We captured 16 Kalashnikovs and I got their commander’s Makarov pistol. Since all the firing was inside the rooms, much of the noise was muffled and the other security outposts did not react. Apparently the other security posts did not know that we had taken this post. We left the post before dawn. We went back to Ofian-e Sharif and the following night returned to our base camp in Ghorband.
Author’s Commentary
The side streets of Charikar are narrow and crooked. Security of the flanks and withdrawal routes were always a prime consideration and took most of the urban fighter’s personnel. In this instance, 87% of the force was used for security. It was probably not excessive. One wonders about the effectiveness of Charikar’s security system when 20 soldiers are killed with automatic weapons at 0300 hours in the morning – and nobody notices.
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