SAW:��First impressions

[Ozgur Budak]

It needed adjustment for a designer too. First of all in guerilla warfare the military objective is not a village, hill or a river. Guerilla's objective is to harrass the opponent to claim political power. There are few situations Mujahideen sought conventional military objectives -like operation ghashey scenarios- but even that is regarded as a failure since real strenght of guerilla is not its military power on a battlefield; but the very idea or danger of insecurity any place or any time. Thus as Lester Grau put brilliantly; it is better to destroy a truck a hundred different times and places than destroying hundred truck in one battle.

Another difference is objective points. Some scenarios have small intervals between victory points. Afghanistan was a war of poor. Mujahideen always sought economical ways to make life tough for the Kabul government. You cannot see hundreds of men fighting for ambitious military objectives. Most of the times the terrain and Mujahideen evasive tactics resulted comparatively low casualty numbers comparing conventional wars. Loosing 40 mujahideen to defend a village was a fatal mistake Mujahideen rarely made. Thats why killing 10-20 Mujahideen was a real achievement for Soviet forces. Such a thing would be trivial in mechanized warfare.

I like those rally voices too. Some of them are in Dari some of them are in Arabic I guess. I only understand "Yallah" which means "comeon" in Arabic. Turkish is completely a different language; though we have lots of Persian and Arab words imported. Mujahideen consisted of different ethnic/language groups: Uzbek, Tajik, Pathan, Arabic, Persian. Hard to make a standart.