Introduction
Commander Asil Khan was a famed urban guerrilla in Kabul. He served in the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA) of Gailani. During the war against the Soviets, the Mujahideen had no rank structure, so the term commander applied to all military commanders whether they led 10 men or 1,000.
Afshar Ambush
On 28 May 1982, I led a group of four Mujahideen in an ambush at the very gates of the Soviet garrison in Kabul. At that time, elements of the Soviet 103rd Airborne Division and some other elements were based in Darulaman about 10 kilometers southwest of downtown Kabul. The headquarters of the Soviet 40th Army was also located there in the Tajbeg Palace. I was a small unit commander in my father’s front. My father is Haji Dawlat and the front’s main base was at Morghgiran, 10 kilometers west of Darulaman.
I selected the ambush site after we spent several days conducting reconnaissance and surveillance of the Soviet traffic around Darulaman. During the reconnaissance, we detected a pattern of Soviet vehicular movement along the road from Kabul to the Soviet headquarters in the Tajbeg Palace. Just north of the Soviet Darulaman base is the small village of Afshar. It has a typical suburban bazaar with several grocery and fresh fruit stores and stalls. Soviet soldiers frequented this bazaar and would stop their vehicles there to buy cigarettes, food and imported vodka. Afshar looked like a good ambush site. Soviet soldiers felt secure there, there was room enough to set up an ambush, and site entrance and exit were fairly easy. The path to and from the ambush site was mostly concealed and we could easily reach Mujahideen bases and safe houses in the Chardehi District using this path.
We spent the day of the ambush in Qala-e Bakhtiar – a village six kilometers to the west of the ambush site. We had AK-47s and a non-Soviet manufactured light anti-tank grenade launcher. In the early evening, we moved out towards Afshar. It was the Muslim month of Ramadan – when Muslims fast during the entire day. Few people were out at sunset since this is the time to break the daily fast. Since our ambush site was in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet base, I decided to conduct a very quick attack on a single Soviet vehicle and to take prisoners if possible.
We moved through a narrow street of Afshar, which opened onto the main road north of the Darulaman Palace. Around 1930 hours, as my leading riflemen reached the street intersection, a Soviet GAZ-66 truck approached from the east on its way to the military camp. The truck had five passengers – a driver, a soldier in the right front seat and three soldiers in the back. One of the soldiers had a backpacked radio. I told my anti-tank gunner to fire when the vehicle was in the kill zone. He fired, but he narrowly missed the truck. The truck came to a sudden halt and its occupants jumped out of the vehicle, took up positions and started firing at random.
During the brief firefight, we killed one Soviet soldier. Two soldiers ran away to the southwest towards their camp. One soldier crawled under the truck near the rear tires. The radioman rushed into an open grocery store and hid there. One of my Mujahideen was close to the shop behind a concrete electric pylon. I told him to follow the Soviet radioman into the front of the shop while I went into the shop’s back door and introduced myself as a “friend”. The Soviet soldier was flustered at first, but when he saw the foreign light anti-tank weapon in the hands of my Mujahideen, he uttered “dushman” (enemy). He kept quiet as we bound his hands and led him out the back. I recalled my team and we quickly left the area. The whole action only lasted a few minutes.
Fearing enemy retaliation, we moved out swiftly in the dark, heading to Qala-e Bakhtiar. From there, we went on to Qala-e Bahadur Khan, Qala-e Jabar Khan and Qala-e Qazi until we reached our front’s base at Morghgiran around 2200 hours. We kept our prisoner there for three days and then transferred him to NIFA headquarters in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Author’s Commentary
Detailed reconnaissance and knowledge of the enemy’s movement and security arrangements contributed to a workable ambush right in the heart of the Soviet garrison area. The Soviets had not posted security at a vulnerable point adjacent to their garrison – either through overconfidence or negligence on the part of lower-level commanders.
Selection of a small group of fighters with an effective mix of weapons, and good selection of the ambush site played a significant role in the action. However, using a non-standard anti-tank weapon probably caused the gunner to miss a large target a close range. One wonders if the gunner had any training or practice with the weapon before he used it. An RPG-7 and an experienced gunner were needed.
One wonders why the Soviets stopped their truck in the middle of a kill zone once the Mujahideen rocket missed them. Since the Mujahideen rocket missed the vehicle, there was no need for the truck to stop and the soldiers could have escaped through the small arms fire before the anti-tank gunner had a chance to reload. The Soviets failed to react effectively. Stopping in the kill zone under small-arms fire was a risky and unwise move that the cost the Soviets the life of one soldier and the capture of another.
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