60 Ogryzko, Pesni afganskogo pokhoda, p. 23.
61 Ibid., p. 147; Igor Morozov, interview, Moscow, 11 March 2010.
62 Dyshev, PPZh, p. 379. Valeri Shiryaev said that he felt exactly the same way when he left Afghanistan.
9: Fighting
1 F. Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune (London, 2000), p. 5; S. Junger, War, Book Three: Love (London, 2010), p. 2. I learned a bit about soldiering and comradeship during my military service, but I never saw any fighting. There are, however, convincing accounts by people who did: Frederick Manning fought on the Somme in 1916; Vasil Bykov (Ego batalion, Moscow, 2000) was on the Eastern Front in the Second World War; Nathaniel Fick (One Bullet Away, London, 2006) was in Iraq in 2003; Bernard Fall (Street without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina, Barnesley, 2005) was in Indo-China; Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (Lieutenant en Algérie, Paris, 1957) was in a ‘hearts and minds’ unit in Algeria; Sebastian Junger was an embedded journalist in Afghanistan in 2007–8. There is a very large literature about the American experience in Vietnam.
2 M. Nawroz and L. Grau, The Soviet War in Afghanistan: History and Harbinger of Future War? Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, June 1996.
3 Personal information. Information on Vertical-T (http://vertical-t.biz/).
4 Yu. Lapshin, Afganski dnevnik (Moscow, 2004), p. 81.
5 A. Smolina, ‘Desantnik, ili pervoe znakomstvo s Dzhelalbadom’ (http://artofwar.ru/s/smolina_a/text_0110.shtml).
6 A. Kartsev, Voenny razvedchik (Moscow, 2007).
7 A. Kartsev, Shelkovy put (privately published, 2004), Chapter 17.
8 Andrei Ponomarev, interview, Moscow, 1 March 2010.
9 Alexander Gergel, interview, Moscow, 1 March 2010.
10 Colonel Antonenko and Alexander Gergel, interview, Moscow, 31 May 2007. Antonenko maintained that one of the reasons why the guerrillas fought better than the Russians was that they travelled light. Gergel said later that Antonenko was right only in part.
11 A. Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana (Moscow, 2004), p. 439.
12 Ibid.
13 M. Urban, War in Afghanistan (London, 1990), Appendix IV, p. 332; Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, p. 441.
14 Ibid., p. 370.
15 M. Bearden and J. Risen, The Main Enemy (New York, 2003), pp. 227 and 333–6; M. Yousaf and M. Adkin, Afghanistan: The Bear Trap (Barnsley, 1992), pp. 155 and 220.
16 I. Tukharinov, Sekretny komandarm (http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/secret_com/index.shtml).
17 D. Gai and V. Snegirev, Vtorzhenie (Moscow, 1991), p. 154; Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, pp. 383–432; V. Varennikov, Nepovtorimoe, 7 vols. (Moscow, 2001), Vol. 5, p. 85; Boris Zhelezin, interview, Moscow, 19 February 2007.
18 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger.
19 D. Cordovez and S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan (Oxford, 1995), pp. 194–7.
20 This is the date given by S. Coll, Ghost Wars (London, 2005), p. 149. G. Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (New York, 2003) gives the date as 25 September.
21 A. Smolina, ‘Vsem devushkam, letavshim v afganskom nebe’ (http://artofwar.ru/s/smolina_a/text_0080.shtml).
22 Varennikov, Nepovtorimoe, pp. 196–7.
23 Lapshin, Afganski dnevnik, p. 94.
24 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 151.
25 Lyakhovski, Tragedia i doblest Afgana, 1995, Chapter VI (http://www.rsva.ru/biblio/prose_af/afgan_tragedy_and_glory/index.shtml). There is a version of this incident in Prokhanov’s story ‘The Caravan Hunter’ in Treti tost (Moscow, 2003), pp. 5–103.
26 M. Gareev, Moya poslednaya voina, Chapter 6, p. 102 (http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/gareev_ma/index.html).
27 See press cuttings from NTI: ‘Working for a Safer World’ (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/1788_1802.html).
28 Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p.198.
29 General Yousaf, the Pakistani intelligence officer, claims that in the ten months to August 1987 the mujahedin had a 75 per cent success rate with their Stingers (Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, p. 186). One American study estimated, on the other hand, that the hit rate was 50 per cent; it concluded that about 100 Soviet and Afghan planes had been destroyed before the Stingers were deployed. During 1987, the first full year in which the Stingers were used, the Soviet and Afghan air forces lost 150–200 aircraft. In 1988 the losses fell to fewer than fifty (Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 198).
30 Soviet aircraft losses in Afghanistan are given in G. Krivosheev, Rossia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: Poteri vooruzhennykh sil (Moscow, 2001), p. 540; according to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, the total number of US helicopters destroyed in the Vietnam War was 5,086 out of 11,827 (http://www.vhpa.org/heliloss.pdf).
31 A. Chernyaev, Sovmestny iskhod: Dnevnik dvukh epokh 1972–1991 gody (Moscow, 2008), diary entries for 4 April 1985 and 17 October 1985, pp. 617 and 650. See account of the Soviet decision-making process in Chapter 12: ‘The Road to the Bridge’. Mikhail Gorbachev has confirmed that the arrival of the Stingers did not affect his decision-making, though of course the military had to take it into account in their tactical planning of the Soviet withdrawal (conversation, Sofia, 7 October 2010).
32 M. Galeotti, Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Last War (London, 1995), p. 197.
33 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie (Moscow, 1991), p. 162.
34 Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan (Barnsley, 1992), pp. 73–6; Tukharinov, Sekretny komandarm.
35 Sergei Morozov, interview, Moscow, 31 May 2007; Yousaf and Adkin, Afghanistan, pp. 73–6; Galeotti, Afghanistan, pp. 192–7.
36 Gai and Snegirev, Vtorzhenie, p. 262.
37 Ibid., pp. 227–9.
38 Alexander Gergel, interview, Moscow, 1 March 2010.
39 V. Ablazov, Afganistan chetvertaya voina (Kiev, 2002), p. 189.