Intelligence Review

Colonel Salman , 2 Commando , 1 East Bengals AccountAkhtar Abdul Rehman was not a particularly brilliant man and had memorized some phrases like Kabul must burn . He had limited operations to Kabul because he wanted publicity. I viewedit as a narrow way of waging guerrilla war.It may be noted that the pioneer of Afghan guerrilla operations was Brigadier Raza Ali a special forces officer with an outstanding service profile.Akhtar Abdul Rehman developed a personality clash with Brigadier...
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Colonel Salman , 2 Commando , 1 East Bengals AccountAkhtar Abdul Rehman was not a particularly brilliant man and had memorized some phrases like Kabul must burn . He had limited operations to Kabul because he wanted publicity. I viewedit as a narrow way of waging guerrilla war.It may be noted that the pioneer of Afghan guerrilla operations was Brigadier Raza Ali a special forces officer with an outstanding service profile.Akhtar Abdul Rehman developed a personality clash with Brigadier Raza Ali and sidelined him and placed him in logistics. Akhtar Abdul Rehman preferred artillery officers who were narrow in mindset and knew little about guerrilla warfare.Akhtar Abdul Rehman inducted Brigadier Yusuf because he was a non commando and was controllable.Yusuf had no concept of guerrilla warfare but his induction did not matter as the basic team of SSG commando officers was intact and ran the real show.It may be noted that France and Britain were involved in providing financial assistance to the Afghan insurgents from the very beginning i.e from 1980.In 1985 I took over Quetta sector.Kandahar ,Helmand,Farah ,Herat ,Nimroz ,Zabul,Uruzgan, Ghor and Badghis. This area comprised more than 50 % of Afghanistans area.The strategy that we adopted was to interdict heliborne supplies forcing the Soviets to move armored columns.Once a column moved we withdrew,thereby causing logistic attrition and then avoiding direct clash.Ultimately because of supply and logistic constraints and shortages Afghan garrisons started falling.