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The Battle for Hill 3234: Last Ditch Defense in the Mountains of Afghanistan

2011; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13518046.2011.572704

1556-3006

Lester W. Grau,

Military and Defense Studies

Abstract The Battle for Hill 3234 was a small, bitterly-contested mountain fight that was a near-run thing, yet part of one of the most successful operations of the Soviet-Afghan War-Operation Magistral. Indeed, this combat by an under-strength 39-man paratrooper company has gained iconic status in Russian and inspired the popular movie and computer game 9th Company. The movie is great entertainment, but hardly accurate. This is the most-accurate account of this battle in the English language. Notes 1 Fedor Bondarchuk directed 9 Rota [9th Company] that was released by in 2005 by Art Pictures Group. It was a box-office hit in Russia that set records for domestic ticket sales. The movie is good entertainment, but does not stick close to actual events. The actors are sweating in T-shirts in the summer heat while the fight was actually in the snow. There is a single movie survivor of the fight, when in fact there were 33. The movie unit had no radio communications whereas there actually were. The movie shows a well-prepared defense with bunkers and trenches, whereas the best the paratroopers could do on the hard frozen ground was to pile up kladki [walls of rock and scree]. A helicopter lands on Hill 3232 in the movie, but helicopters could actually only hover next to lower mountain slopes while wounded were passed overhead into the aircraft. The movie adds many vignettes that reflect the Afghanistan experience, but not the actual fight. The computer game was developed in Russia and is now being released in the West. It is a shooter game that allows the player to be one of several of the Soviet participants. This article is not subject to US copyright law. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of Defense. Dr. Lester W. Grau, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, a senior analyst in the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office, Combined Arms Command, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the country's foremost expert on the Soviet-Afghan War, has published or edited many books and articles on the conflict. 2 Boris V. Gromov, Ogranichennyi kontigent [Limited contingent] (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1994) pp. 298–299. 3 Lester W. Grau and Ali Ahmad Jalali, ‘The Campaign for the Caves: The Battles for Zhawar in the Soviet-Afghan War’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 14(3) (September 2001) pp. 69–92. 4 Participating Soviet units included the 108th and 201st Motorized Rifle Divisions, the 103rd Airborne Division, the 56th Separate Air Assault Brigade, the 345th Separate Airborne Regiment, and the 191st Separate Motorized Rifle Regiment. The DRA units include the 8th, 11th, 12th, 214th, and 25th Infantry Divisions and the 15th Tank Brigade. A. N. Shishkov, ‘An Airborne Battalion Seizes the Satukandau Pass’. In Lester W. Grau (ed.), The Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: NDU Press 1995), p. 62. General Gromov also used some ten Afghan battalions from the DRA armed police (Sarandoy) and secret police. His DRA counterpart for this operation was General-Lieutenant Shah Navaz Tani, the Army Chief of Staff. Gromov, 300. The DRA 37th Commando Brigade was a key part of the operation. Carey Schofield, The Russian Elite: Inside Spetsnaz and the Airborne Forces (London: Greenhill Books, 1993) pp. 117. 5 Shishkov, p. 62. 6 General Gulzarak Zadran, Lieutenant Omar, Mawlawi Nezammudin Haqani, and Mawlawi Abdul-Rahman; ‘The Defense against the Soviet Operation “Magistral”’. In Ali Ahmad Jalali, and Lester W. Grau, The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War (Quantico, VA: United States Marine Corps Studies, 1998) pp. 165–173. 7 Gromov, 302. Grachev commanded the 103rd Airborne Division. 8 Boris Gromov, ‘Afganskie memuary, MAGISTRAL” [Afghanistan Memoirs, MAGISTRAL], Krasnaya zvezda [Red star], 30 December 1993. 9 Ibid. 10 Russian website, ‘Before the Battle’, The Truth about the 9th Company, http://www.pravdao9rote.ru/afgan/vysota (accessed 3 September 2010). 11 Igor Pechorsky in Schofield, 119–120. The Strella is the SA-7 shoulder-fired air defense missile that was manufactured in the Soviet Union and China. The Blowpipe is a British shoulder-fired air defense missile. The new method of assault involved copious amounts of grenades thrown just prior to the assault. The bursting radius of most Soviet hand grenades is 15–20 meters, so the assaulting forces were accepting risk from their own grenades as well as enemy fire. 14 Ibid. 12 There were three major logistics bases directly linked to the Mujahideen logistics facility in Miram Shah, Pakistan. They were Zhawar, Sarani, and the Shar-i Kot Valley. The Soviets were aware of Zhawar and Sarani but unaware of the ammunition storage facility overlooking the Shar-i Kot Valley. Soviet agent intelligence reported that there was a Mujahideen force of five units totaling 415 guerrillas operating out of the Shar-i Kot during Magistral. See Magistral operations map on Russian website, ‘Grenade launchers and shelter’, The Truth about the 9th Company, http://www.pravdao9rote.ru/afgan/vysota accessed 3 September 2010. 13 Schofield, p. 120. 15 Ibid. 16 Zadran, pp. 171–172. 17 The Black Storks reportedly are an elite Special Operations unit with some ten battalions of highly trained and motivated professional soldiers used for extraordinary missions. The unit is officially called the Special Service Group. It belongs to the Army of Pakistan and is headquartered in or near the magnificent Attock Fort. Some of the Soviet participants spoke of their attackers being dressed in black uniforms with their webgear uniformly arranged. The black uniform is reportedly one of the uniforms of the Black Storks. 18 Each battalion had three parachute companies. The 1st Battalion had the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and the Second Battalion had the 4th, 5th, and 6th companies. 19 ‘Before the Battle’, The Truth about the 9th Company. 20 Normal TO&E strength for a Soviet airborne company was 85 personnel—79 soldiers and 6 officers. The 9th Company had 39 personnel which included 4 of its officers, an attached artillery fire control officer, and a warrant officer. 21 The regimental commander postponed observance of New Years until after the operation. ‘Before the Battle’, The Truth about the 9th Company. This was a major holiday in the Soviet Union and celebrated with much vodka. In the movie, the troops enjoyed a drunken bacchanalia while on the mountain, drinking samogan [moonshine]. The actual observance was muted and sober. The commander sent up plum juice and cookies for the troops. Alcohol at altitude can have serious effects on blood pressure and turn a scratch into a serious wound. 22 ‘Before the Battle’, The Truth about the 9th Company. 23 ‘Stinger’, The Truth about the 9th Company. Stinger was a US-manufactured system. The British ‘Blowpipe’ and the Chinese ‘SA-7’ are also possible candidates. 24 ‘On the Combat Post’, The Truth about the 9th Company. 25 Some Russians attribute the Christmas Day attack as a deliberate provocation by Islamic forces, but this is conjecture at this point. 26 ‘Shelling the Heights’, The Truth about the 9th Company. 27 A. Oliynik, ‘Klyatva tridtsati devyati’ [The Oath of the 39], Krasnay zvezda [Red star], 29 October 1988; Schofield, 121; and time line from http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/afghan-soldiers/4.shtml (accessed 20 September 2010). Lieutenant Gagarin's call sign ‘Cosmonaut’ is a bit of a soldier humor. Yuri Gagarin was the most famous of the Soviet cosmonauts. 28 Time line from http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/afghan-soldiers/4.shtml (accessed 20 September 2010). 29 Time line from http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/afghan-soldiers/4.shtml (accessed 20 September 2010) and Schofield, p. 121. 30 Schofield, 122–123. 31 Scholfield, pp. 123–124. 32 Steven J. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets: A Combat History of Soviet & Russian Airborne Forces, 1930–1995. (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1995) p. 261. 33 Zaloga, p. 261. 34 Schofield citing Klintsevich, pp. 124–125. 35 Zaloga, p. 261.