Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War - Bennett Park Raiders

Page 218 The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War
including women and children. I do not know what the total enemy
casualties were.
I am sure that someone from the village had told the government
that we were there. Some of the villagers had left the village before
the Soviets surrounded it. The villagers that were left actively helped
the Mujahideen in the defense. The women provided us with food and
showed us where to take cover. They led us from house-to-house as the
enemy tightened his noose around us. That evening, after the fighting,
we asked the locals for donkeys and mules to haul away our dead. We
put our dead on their animals and took the bodies to their villages for
burial. We took our wounded to local doctors for treatment. They
helped as best they could, including some of the doctors from the
government hospital.
The Soviets left some of their dead in the village of Alishang. They
moved south to the village of Qawalkhel. They surrounded the village
and told the villagers to go to Alishang and recover their dead or
they would destroy their village. The Qawalkhel elders came to us and
asked for the Soviet dead. We told them that they could recover the
Soviet dead after we left.
COMMENTARY: Mujahideen night time security, when sleeping in a
village, was usually only a guard or two posted inside the village.
The Mujahideen needed to get security out to the key terrain dominating
the village to provide timely warning. When the Soviets
and DRA had timely intelligence, they were often able to surround
sleeping Mujahideen whose guards were within yards of the sleepers.
The Soviet forces were probably from the 66th Separate Motorized
Rifle Brigade in Jalalabad—some 40 kilometers away. The DRA
force was probably from the 71st Infantry Regiment—garrisoned only
seven kilometers away in Mehtar Lam. The area is open and easily
accessible by road. The local Mujahideen's overconfidence hurt the
resistance badly.