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Sevunts.com
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SOWJONI, Afghanistan - Twenty years ago, Col. Abdul Khaleq and his deputy, Habibullah, would have cut each other's throats. Col. Khaleq was a career officer in the Communist Afghani army trained at Ryazan Paratrooper College in Russia, to fight the mujahedeen, while Habibullah was a mujahedeen field commander, trained in a CIA-financed camp in Pakistan. Today, both of them are officers in the army of the Northern Alliance, which has been fighting the Taliban for almost eight years. They are united by a mutual enemy. "The Taliban want to drag this country back to the Middle Ages," Col. Khaleq said. For Habibullah the Taliban are an aberration of Islam. "They call themselves Muslim but they aren't," Habibullah said. "They are just abusing the name of Islam." Thus Col. Khaleq and Habibullah work hand in hand to prepare shock troops that would be able to defeat the Taliban fighters dug deep into the mountains barely 30 kilometres from the Alliance training camp. It's a work that never ends at the 787th light infantry battalion, housed in a square mud-walled fort with a rusting BTR, an armoured Soviet troop carrier, in the centre and Second World War Soviet howitzers in the corners. For every batch of graduates Col. Khaleq and Habibullah train and send to units all over the front line, a new batch of volunteers arrives. "This war would be won or lost on the shoulders of these men," Col. Khaleq said, as he looked over about 100 new volunteers, villagers dressed into a mishmash of traditional Afghani clothing, herded to a corner of the fort. Col. Khaleq and Habibullah will eventually make soldiers out of them but they have to start with basics: some of the soldiers don't know their left side from their right side. Most don't know how to read or write, so everything has to be explained to them. Standing next to them in neat rows are two companies that have almost completed their training. "They are ready to fight," Col. Khaleq said. "They have guns, special uniforms and sleeping bags -- everything they need to fight." For the new recruits the training lasts about 10 months and by the end of that time these peasants will have to learn to march, use small arms, dig trenches, destroy enemy tanks and positions. Some of them fought against the Soviet Union but they'll have to learn to fight against a different and more dangerous enemy. "The Taliban know how to fight, they know the country and they fight harder than Russians," said Habibullah, who fought the Soviet invaders for almost 10 years. "Russians couldn't last long against us. But Taliban do, even with American bombs falling on them every day." In fact, in some cases the bombs hamper the ability of the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban, Habibullah said, watching his troops practise frontal assault on enemy trenches. "They don't bomb them hard enough to destroy many of them," Habibullah said. "But because of the bombing we can't attack them for the fear of being caught under these bombs. "Before the bombing started our front lines were more active and we were even able to capture some towns, now we just sit and wait." But senior Northern Alliance commanders think their troops have done enough waiting. Gen. Mumar Hassan, one of the top Alliance commanders, said it wasn't possible anymore to wait for the Americans to intensify their air campaign. "Every minute we stay put, we lose one year," Gen. Hassan said, speaking at his compound in Dashteqala Saturday. "As soon as we complete supplying our troops we will attack, before Taliban are resupplied by Pakistan. "You can't win this war with bombs only, you've got to use ground troops and that's what we intend to do very soon." |
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© 2009 Levon Sevunts. All rights reserved. |