Afghan Government Army

The Afghan Government Army is the regular military force serving the Kabul puppet government, a strategically important but internally divided participant in the war. Its troops protect vital sites and confront the resistance, while the account also shows Afghan soldiers quietly assisting the Afghan mujaheddin. The army therefore cannot be reduced to a single, uniformly hostile force: its battlefield role is shaped by Russian influence, political coercion, and ties between Afghans on opposing sides.

Position and Strategic Role

The army’s institutional position is described through its service to the Kabul puppet government and its loyalty to a regime backed by Russian power. Afghan regular army units guard the Arghandab Dam, a strategically important resource whose security is repeatedly threatened by attacks. The dam is one of three active conflict zones around the Shar-i-Safa range, alongside Kandahar and the principal Kabul highway. The resistance stronghold lies roughly fifty crow-kilometres from Kandahar, about twenty kilometres from the highway, and around fifty kilometres south-east of the dam. This geography makes the army’s presence part of a wider contest over routes, supply, and control of essential infrastructure.

Kandahar is occupied by Russian forces in Afghanistan, but its hold on the southern capital is tenuous. The highway is controlled by several well-armed Afghan mujaheddin units, forcing Russian convoys traveling from Kabul to fight through blockades to resupply the city. Government forces, meanwhile, defend the dam and patrol areas around the resistance’s mountain positions. The army is thus situated between Russian military power and an insurgency capable of contesting both transport corridors and government-held sites.

Combat and Pursuit

The narrative records encounters at different scales, from a small patrol to coordinated attacks. After one engagement, Khaled Ansari assesses that the opposing force had no mortars or heavy machine guns, suggesting it was a small patrol, probably Afghan rather than Russian. Three men in the resistance group are wounded and four horses are lost. His account distinguishes the likely identity and limited equipment of this force from a major Russian assault, while showing that even a relatively small encounter has consequences for the group’s mobility and ability to continue its mission.

The army’s role becomes more consequential after Habib Abdur Rahman has carried out a campaign of torture and killing in the Shar-i-Safa region. His actions alarm Afghan soldiers, resistance fighters, and others in the area, turning a comparatively quiet corridor between conflict zones into a place of fear and hostility. When Abdel Khader Khan’s party later encounters a local group under the pretext of a tribute exchange, Khader recognizes that the meeting is a trap intended to capture Habib. He tries to withdraw peacefully, gives up four horses, and gathers his men, but fire begins as the party is nearly clear of the high ground. Eighteen members of the column are counted dead after the half-hour battle. Afghan army uniforms and new Russian equipment are found among the enemy dead, indicating the presence of government troops and Russian-supplied matériel without establishing that every hostile fighter belonged to the regular army.

The column’s destruction is followed by a further threat to the mountain camp. Suleiman and Khaled suspect that an Afghan army unit has regrouped and may have followed Nazeer’s trail or obtained information from prisoners before launching a mortar attack. Their assessment is explicitly a suspicion, but the danger is immediate: they anticipate further attacks and possible Russian helicopter support if the weather clears. This uncertainty matters to the force’s portrayal. The resistance must act on incomplete intelligence, while the army’s movements and its connection to Russian power make the source and scale of danger difficult to separate.

Divided Allegiances

The account insists that government soldiers are not simply regarded as enemies by the resistance. Many are Afghans serving on the Russian side, and some are conscripts whose choices are constrained by the need to survive. Afghan fighters regret killing them, and many do not truly hate the Afghan soldiers they face. The deepest hatred is directed instead at KHAD, the Afghan security police associated with torture and political repression. This distinction separates the regular army from the apparatus most closely identified with coercive state violence.

The division is further complicated by covert assistance. Afghan regulars sometimes pass information about Russian troop movements and bombardments to the Afghan mujaheddin. The resistance depends on this intelligence: the account presents it as necessary to the possibility of victory. The same army can therefore threaten a resistance position in one circumstance and help protect resistance fighters in another. Kinship and shared nationality persist across the front line, even as military service places people in opposing forces.

The Army in the War’s Moral Landscape

This divided allegiance makes decisions about combat difficult. After Khader’s death, the group considers using Habib’s knowledge of enemy positions to conduct a mortar strike on two Afghan army camps. Some object to relying on a man whose torture campaign has brought danger to their own camp; others fear killing Afghan soldiers. The decision to attack is made because their position is judged perilous, not because the army’s members are treated as interchangeable targets. The strike kills some soldiers and leaves others alive; Habib then tortures survivors, leaving the returning fighters sickened by what they have allowed. The scene exposes how a militarily useful operation can carry consequences the group’s own members find morally intolerable.

The ensuing counter-bombardment and Russian helicopter assault show the larger military imbalance surrounding the army. The resistance camp is struck after the mortar raid, and a helicopter fires rockets at the cave complex. The danger comes not only from Afghan troops but from the Russian force supporting the government’s side of the war. Later, the resistance group is surrounded by patrols of Afghan army units led by Russians. With villages occupied and food access cut off, the army’s encirclement contributes to four weeks of hiding and hunger. The organization’s importance in the narrative lies in this entanglement: it is both an armed opponent and a force whose members may be unwilling combatants or clandestine sources of help, operating within a war where survival, loyalty, and kinship repeatedly collide.