[size=7pt]Left photo: Private Eero Kinnunen, waiting for helicopters to redeploy from an operation in Registan Desert, December 1986.
Right photo: Major Eero Kinnunen, infantry company commander, Helmand, Afghanistan, 21 March 2008.[/size]
Übernommen von Military Review 30.6.2011 Artikel 9
von Major Eero Kinnunen, Estonian Defense Forces und Lieutenant Colonel Lester W. Grau, US Army, ret.
Two Tours in Afghanistan - Twenty Years And Two Armies Apart
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Government or the Government of Estonia.
I AM AN ESTONIAN from a small town some 250 kilometers southeast of Tallinn. In 1985, after graduation from high school, I began my university education. The first part was a month spent harvesting potatoes on a Soviet collective farm. In those days, the state interrupted all sorts of activities so that students, soldiers, pensioners, and factory workers could “volunteer” to help with the harvest. We were mediocre harvesters, but we had some great parties. Upon my return from the harvest, I was conscripted into the military. Usually, university students were deferred from the draft until graduation, when they would serve as reserve officers. However, there was a war on and there was no education deferment for me. I was conscripted into the Soviet Special Forces (Spetsnaz) and sent to Chirchik, Uzbekistan, which is close to Tashkent. Chirchik had a mountain training center and a large air base. Our firing ranges and training areas were mostly in the mountains. I have no idea how I ended up in the Spetsnaz, but it probably had something to do with my high school sports (handball, cross-country skiing, and orienteering). At 16 years old, the selection process began by listing your preferences for the draft board. I put down the airborne forces. My Russian was not too good when I started, but it got better during the six months of training at Chirchik, which was good but very hard mentally and physically. We did everything we would eventually do in Afghanistan–long range patrols, ambushes, raids, reconnaissance. Helicopters would drop us off in the mountains and we would have to accomplish our ambush or raid and find our own way back.
First Tour
Most of the Spetsnaz who served in Afghanistan were conscripts, but the rugged six months of training did much to prepare us. At graduation, our first sergeant (a long-serving warrant officer) extolled the deeds of our predecessors and told us to emulate them. We had no idea where we were going to serve inside Afghanistan, but the cadre had all told us, “If they send you to Kandahar, hang yourself, because that is true hell.” We were split into various groups and sent to the airfield at Tashkent to wait for our aircraft. My plane took off in the dark and landed in the dark at 0300 or 0400. It did not turn off its engines and quickly returned to Tashkent. There was no one to meet us. We sat at the side of the runway. Hours later, the sun rose, and we felt like we were in an oven. A vehicle drove down the runway and picked up the officers in our group. We asked where we were. It was Kandahar.
Other vehicles drove up, and the battalion representatives began selecting their new members. The physically fit Russian guys were selected first. The Central Asians were picked last. There was definitely a racial bias in the selection process. I was the only Estonian and was picked quickly after the Russians were. I found that I was now a member of the 173rd Spetsnaz Battalion, which was garrisoned on a piece of the Kandahar air base apart from the 70th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade—the main combat force on the base. The barracks were tents and later plywood and modular buildings. The food was terrible. Water supplies were limited.
We new guys had about a month to get our act together. We did a lot of range firing, small unit training, and a lot of marching. We could shoot as much as we wanted. This was different from the Soviet Union, where the ammunition was strictly controlled and limited. Our platoon leader conducted a trial mission to test our abilities. We went into safe areas in the mountains and desert while he evaluated our performance under pressure. We moved mostly at night. Once the platoon leader was convinced of our reliability, we joined the rest of the battalion in real operations.
We had missions within a 200-kilometer radius of Kandahar air base. We worked in the Registan Desert in the south, in Helmand Province to the west, in the mountains to the north, and out to the Pakistan border in the east. We did a lot of ground movement on foot or in our infantry fighting vehicles. We performed blocking and shaping missions in support of the 70th Brigade. When we moved, soldiers with the most experience walked on point. Our primary mission was to hunt and interdict mujahideen caravans. We would do this with ambushes, raids, patrols, and helicopter inspections. Ambushes and raids were conducted on targets for which we had good intelligence. Helicopter inspections were conducted in areas where we were familiar with the terrain, the normal times of enemy movement, enemy tactics, and the looks of a peaceful versus a hostile caravan. Helicopter inspections normally involved two gunships and two lift ships. We Spetsnaz were in the lift ships. We normally flew into the area at dawn or near dusk—when hostile caravans arrived in the target area, shifted hiding places, or loaded cargo.
When we found a caravan, we would inspect it from a very low altitude to determine its size and probable cargo. If the caravan’s personnel behaved in a hostile manner, the gunships destroyed the caravan. If they behaved peacefully, the lift ships would land in front and behind the caravan and we would conduct a detailed search. The gunships would circle overhead, and if necessary, support our evacuation and withdrawal. We had a lot of success with this technique. We took as few prisoners as possible. Prisoners require guards. We always had five to ten prisoners that we were stuck guarding for over six months. When higher headquarters finally took them, they were handed over to the Afghan government—which usually turned them loose. So, it was easier to release them immediately with a warning.
Private Eero Kinnunen on the shooting range in early 1987.
We had little other contact with the people, but we had a linguist assigned to our group. He was a brand-new second lieutenant with no military experience who had just graduated from a language institute. He studied Dari, but the people in our area spoke Pashto. He had little opportunity to improve his language skills. If the people saw us during a mission, we moved. When the people saw helicopters flying around their area, they knew that we were probably on the ground nearby. Then they would hunt us. They primarily used the Kochi nomads as their scouts. The nomads were herdsmen, and they would move their flocks of sheep or goats slowly over the area, looking for us. Sometimes they would move three or four flocks over the same area while they looked.
Once we were located, the armed mujahideen would come. Our first reaction was to move two to three kilometers away to avoid them or to get evacuated by helicopter. If it was night, the helicopters would not come and then we might have to build fighting positions and battle it out until sunrise. Communications were always a problem in that terrain. On several occasions, we were unable to establish contact with our headquarters and the enemy hammered us badly. When we had good communications, we could get close air support, which was always welcome. Unlike helicopter transport, close air support was always available. The mujahideen seldom broke contact without the intervention of close air support. We always worked outside of the range of supporting artillery.
Our normal mission was three to four days long. Patrols in the desert and mountains were particularly tough. In the desert, we did not have to heat our rations. We just set them out in the sun and soon they were ready. We normally moved with a three-man point consisting of senior, end-of-tour guys. They moved about a kilometer in front of the group. When I was senior, I hated this duty, but many of the guys wanted it.
ZitatWe were guarding against the mujahideen, but also against other battalions that might strip our vehicles for spare parts, ammunition, and other essentials.
We Spetsnaz were well-armed and equipped. We had all sorts of Kalashnikovs with silencers, sniper rifles, Chinese RPGs with bi-pod mounts, AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers, and NSV .50-caliber machine guns. Our radio equipment was first-rate as well. The guys on point traveled light, carrying a Kalashnikov, a canteen, ammunition magazines, and some grenades. The main body functioned as mules. They carried the .50-caliber and the AGS-17 guns broken down into component parts, as well as the heavy ammunition for them. The sappers carried mines and explosives, the radiomen carried the radios. Unlike the mujahideen who had mules, donkeys, and camels, we carried everything on our backs—45 kilos (100 pounds) was not uncommon. We did not wear standard boots, which were inappropriate for the terrain. I managed to get some tennis shoes.
My company had BMPs [Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty tracked infantry fighting vehicles]. The other two maneuver companies in the battalion had BTRs [Bronetransportyor wheeled personnel carriers]. Our companies rotated between garrison duties, mission preparation, and mission accomplishment. Garrison duties included guard rotations and normal camp support. We were guarding against the mujahideen, but also against other battalions that might strip our vehicles for spare parts, ammunition, and other essentials. We had next to nothing in the way of recreational activities. We had a sauna, but since we were in the desert, we did not need much help in sweating. We had an outdoor exercise area with some chin-up bars and parallel bars, but little else. Mail came fairly regularly. We were paid 15-20 rubles a month (roughly 20-25 dollars).
First Combat
Following our shakeout period, my first three days of actual combat revealed what Spetsnaz actions were like in the Kandahar area. Twenty men boarded two Mi-8MT helicopters and flew out in the late afternoon. It was early fall. We had an RPK light machine gun, three PK machine guns, an AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, AKMS 7.62mm short-barreled assault rifles with silencers, AKS-74 short-barreled 5.45mm assault rifles, and a Dragunov SVD sniper rifle. Many of our assault rifles had the GP-25 under-barrel grenade launcher.
Sometimes we flew straight to the insertion point, and sometimes we made several false landings before and after the insertion. This time we flew straight to insertion and then hiked in the dark to our ambush position along a dirt road northeast of Kandahar. The land was fairly flat and covered with low brush and vegetation.
Figure I
Our ambushes were fairly deep (see Figure 1). We had the first line 50 to 100 meters from the road. The forward position had two sections of six men each and paralleled the road for about 150 meters. Behind that, we had the three-man AGS-17 position and the ambush command post—the platoon leader and the two radio operators. Behind that, we had a two-man rear lookout post. We put four MON-50 (Soviet claymore) directional mines on one end of the kill zone, firing out of the zone and parallel to the ambush party. The mines provided a way to attack enemy vehicles and to secure against an enemy trying to turn that flank. We did not dig any fighting positions since we did not want to leave evidence of our visit.
We waited in the dark. The moon, which could provide some illumination, had not yet risen. Then we heard the noise of a vehicle coming down the road. We listened for the sound of other vehicles, but heard only one motor. It was moving straight toward our directional mines and into our kill zone. We detonated all four mines and everyone opened fire. The vehicle was still moving! I was firing a PK machine gun. I could see my bullets hit the vehicle’s side. This was no pickup truck. The vehicle drove the entire length of the kill zone and sped away before we could launch an illumination rocket to see what it was.
We moved into the kill zone, trying to determine what had gone wrong. We discovered 10 dead or dying mujahideen lying on the side of the road. It took several weeks before we figured out what might have happened. Someone in the area had an old BTR-40—a Soviet-built armored truck with a roofless rear troop-carrying compartment.^1 This was probably the vehicle in our kill zone. The Spetsnaz seldom used RPGs in ambush since we never encountered armored vehicles in guerrilla convoys. This was one time when we could have used one.
At dawn, the helicopters flew in to retrieve us. We returned to Kandahar air base, ate, cleaned our weapons, and got some sleep. We were going out again that night. Late that afternoon, we boarded three helicopters. We were now a force of 25, as we added a three-man .50-caliber NSV machine gun team and two other Spetsnaz soldiers. We again flew northeast, but this time we landed in the mountains. We walked most of the night to one of our unit’s favorite ambush sites. We holed up on high ground in a hide position, where we got some sleep after posting sentries. At dusk, we moved to the ambush site and our platoon leader put each of us in position, assigned our sectors of fire, and made sure we knew who was on our left and right. My partner and I were at the right flank of the main ambush position (see Figure 2). Our ambush kill zone stretched 500 meters.
Figure II
We lined the kill zone with MON-50 directional mines, firing right across the road. The main ambush position was 200 to 300 meters away from the road, and the AGS-17 was positioned forward in the middle of it with the platoon leader. The tripod-mounted NSV was on over-watching high ground some 500 meters from the road. We had a rear observation and security post of four men covering us from adjacent high ground. The ambush overlooked a road intersection. A dry streambed ran parallel to the intersecting road and through a culvert under the main road.
A Spetsnaz ambush of a multi-vehicle column usually let the first vehicle pass since its function was often reconnaissance. The second vehicle was the target for a weapon with a silencer. If we could stop a vehicle inside the kill zone without alerting the following vehicles, they would bunch up. The ambush was then triggered with the explosion of directional mines or the firing of a SVD sniper rifle. The platoon leader would then launch an illumination rocket and everyone would open fire against targets in their sector. You fired your first magazine nonstop full-automatic to create a shock effect and establish fire supremacy. Then it was free fire within sector.
The moon was up, so it was not a problem driving without headlights or seeing approaching vehicles. We heard motors moving in our direction. They strained as they climbed and then quieted down again. Finally, the first vehicle drove carefully through our kill zone. It did not stop and we let it go. It was probably a kilometer in front of the others. Finally, the second vehicle appeared. Our lieutenant let it get to our right flank. The silent weapon failed to stop this vehicle, but the MON-50s did. An illumination rocket showed three trucks in our kill zone spaced 100 meters apart. Our main ambush force destroyed them. The NSV machine gun took out a fourth truck that was about to turn onto the main road from the intersecting road. Another truck, seeing the NSV destruction, reversed and probably hid in the nearby village. The mujahideen dismounted from the lead reconnaissance truck and tried to take our ambush from the rear, but our four-man rear security post stopped them.
We moved into the kill zone. There were 10 dead guerrillas. The cargo included ammunition, clothing, and military equipment. We collected their weapons and burned or blew up the rest. One of the trucks was fully loaded with 107mm rockets. When this truck caught fire, it exploded and rockets flew everywhere. We had a free fireworks show watching the rockets arc overhead. We saw nothing else of the enemy that night. We asked to be picked up at dawn, but the helicopter pilots felt that our position was too risky, so we had to run across the mountain carrying our gear and the captured enemy weapons.² We finally boarded our aircraft and flew back to Kandahar air base.
ZitatA lot of us veterans had a problem fitting back into Soviet society.
The Spetsnaz did not spend a lot of time on the base. We spent a lot of time on ambushes and raids. Some went well, some did not, and often nothing happened. My year and a half passed. On 9 November 1987, I flew out of Kandahar to Tashkent. They gave me a train ticket home and 100 rubles mustering-out pay. I cashed in my train ticket and, adding this to my pay, bought an airplane ticket home to Estonia. I was a veteran and ready to get back to civilian life. I never wanted to see Kandahar again.