The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen ... - Tribal Analysis Center

Chapter 6, Vignette 5 Page 167
the myth that the Mujahideen along the Gardez-Khowst highway are
invincible by opening the unopenable road. If the Soviet goal was to
escalate and to threaten Pakistan, then the Soviets needed to bring
more forces to Paktia Province after they opened the road to Khowst.
General Zadran thought that this was too dangerous a gamble for
the Soviets to take, considering the probable international and
regional implications. Instead, General Zadran concluded that the
Soviets meant to show their military might to the world by doing
the impossible, so that they could then end the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan and withdraw with a solid victory to their credit. In
order to accomplish the impossible, the Soviets needed to force
the main road from Gardez with at least a division and, having
achieved the breakthrough, move toward Khowst to link-up with
the DRA 25th Infantry Division which would try to open a corridor
to the west. General Zadran's final analysis was that the Soviets
needed to flex their muscles by opening the road that had been closed
for all those years.
We started to prepare for the Soviet offensive against the
Satakandow pass. The shoulders of the pass loom some 400 meters
over the road and, once in the pass, the road follows a slow, twisted
route packed with hairpin curves. It is an excellent place to defend.
We reinforced the minefields along the road. We laid three mine
belts on a three kilometer front at the opening of the pass with 300-
400 meters between mine belts. We reinforced our positions on the
high ground overlooking the road and pass. We had a total of ten
BM-12s in the area. We crowned the pass with ZGU-1 air defense
machine guns. These are both good positional weapons but are
very difficult to displace rapidly when the situation requires. We
also had DShK machine guns, 75mm and 82mm recoilless rifles
and plenty of RPG-7s. Haji Nawab Khan commanded the
Mawlawi Nezamuddin Haqani was a group commander and a deputy to Jalaluddin Haqani.
He was a member of the fundamentalist Islamic Party (HIK) led by Mawlawi Mohammed
Yunus Khalis. He joined the Mujahideen following the communist coup in 1978 and fought
in the Paktia area. Prior to the Soviet invasion, his group had liberated the area surrounding
Khowst and only the city of Khowst remained under government control.
Mawlawi Abdul-Rahman of Zadran is the son of Noor Mahmuod from Kandow village.
When Soviet forces attacked Satakandow pass, his group of 100-120 local Mujahideen
occupied positions at Ghelgoy. They were armed with 82mm recoilless rifles, ZGU-1
machine guns, DShK machine guns, 82mm mortars, MBRL and one Stinger. His group
fought a rearguard action through the pass to Sewak before they went into the mountains.
He lost ten KIA in the fighting.