Courage in the Line of Fire in Asymetrical Warfare

"We were fifteen people [policemen], and all my comrades surrendered [to the Taliban] except me."

"I told myself that I'm not going to do that, and as long as I have a gun, why I should give up?"

"The enemy is very weak. They want to frighten us through their propaganda. I learned that no one should fear the enemy in real life." 

Ahmad Shah, national police member

"Afghanistan is a sovereign country, it has an independent army and a sovereign system, it has a Constitution, we are the guardians of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."

Fazel Mohammad Daudzai, member, Afghan Special Forces

Humvees that belong to Afghanistan Special Forces are seen destroyed during heavy clashes with Taliban during the rescue mission of a police officer besieged at a check post. (Reuters)

 A convoy of Afghan commandos sped from their base outside Kandahar in a mission to extract a wounded police officer on the outskirts of Kandahar, held there trapped and surrounded by Taliban insurgents. They had just returned from an earlier mission and though exhausted were prepared for this operation in Kandahar, that had before 2001 and the U.S.-led NATO mission to oust al-Qaeda been a Taliban stronghold. Although their previous mission had been tiring, it had not been tense, unlike the one they were speeding toward.

Approaching the checkpoint where Ahmad Shah had fought on alone for almost two days, the group of some thirty special forces soldiers carried in a convoy of Humvees soon found themselves under automatic weapons fire, where a gun battle erupted when the convoy forced its way to the proximity of the position that held Shah. They managed to hustle him into one of the vehicles and prepared to speed off with the wounded man.

A series of loud explosions erupted with the first three of eight Humvees in the convoy struck by rockets; damaging them sufficiently to render them inoperable. Commandos inside the disabled vehicles swiftly switched trucks with gunfire coming from all directions. Ricocheting off the Hunvees' metal armour volleys of bullets failed to penetrate. Elusive Taliban fighters became targets of gunners atop the Hunvees swivelling to aim fire at the fleeting figures.

The intact Humvees took several hits from rocket-propelled grenades, then the convoy sped off, with no additional injuries. The mission exemplifying the relentless attacks by the Taliban against Afghanistan's military even while Taliban fighters succeed in attaining greater territory at a time when foreign military troops get on with their withdrawal concluding 20 years of conflict with the Taliban, holding them at a distance but in the final analysis, failing.

The practised guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run have served the Taliban well in frustrating the efforts of a military trained in conventional warfare. Air support from Afghan warplanes is compulsorily restrained in such urban settings with the press of a nearby civilian population. With this mission, the Humvee drivers were forced to manoeuvre between the cars of civilians caught up in the crossfire. 

 

Afghan security personnel stand guard as Afghan security forces fight the Taliban in Kandahar on July 9.

 

The rescue of police officer Shah whose leg had been injured in a grenade explosion, was successfully accomplished enabling him to have medical attention and to be reunited with his unit at a hilltop police base. Some of the commandos would return to their main base, while other unit members planned a return to attempt to extract their damaged Humvees and resume the fight with Taliban hidden in the city.

"Don't shoot them, don't shoot them, I beg you don't shoot them.. How are you Pashtun [the major ethnic group in Afghanistan] killing Afghans?", an anguished passerby pleaded, as Taliban murder 22 special forces commandos who had surrendered to their greater force last month in the town of Dawlat Abad, Faryab province, close to Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan. 

 

One of those killed in Dawlat Abad was a 32-year-old commando Sohrab Azimi, who spent two years at a military school in the US and was due to marry his American fiancée next month. Sohrab Azimi trained in the US.

"[The executions constitute a] war crime. This is not the first time the Taliban have shot dead our soldiers."

"The Taliban have no mercy on anyone; From the military to innocent civilians are executed. The Taliban cannot deny this crime."

"The video clearly shows the Taliban executing our soldiers after surrender."

Afghan Ministry of Defence spokesperson Fawad Aman

The US military left Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield on July 5, and didn't notify the new Afghan commander for more than two hours.