The battle at the Shar-i-Safa camp turns a risky attempt to seize the initiative into a devastating struggle for survival. After Abdel Khader Khan’s death, the men’s position on the mountain becomes exposed to Afghan army forces and Russian air power; a strike that kills eight Afghan soldiers is followed within an hour by a helicopter attack that costs the camp nine of its own men and drives the survivors to flee.

Causes and strategic setting

The attack follows the destruction of Abdel Khader Khan’s returning column. Suleiman Shahbadi and Khaled Ansari believe the Afghan army has regrouped after that battle and may have followed Nazeer’s trail or obtained information from prisoners. Their explanation is a considered suspicion, not a confirmed account. They expect further attacks and fear that Russian support could bring helicopters once the weather clears. Remaining on the high ground, they conclude, could eventually mean losing the position and more men.

The immediate danger is set against a longer history of war that Abdel Khader Khan has related to Lin. In November 1878, the British forced their way through the Khyber Pass, beginning the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Lord Frederick Roberts captured Kabul and imposed martial law; Abdel Khader Khan recounts the execution of eighty-seven Afghan soldiers and the destruction and deaths that followed. He also describes Ayub Khan, his ancestor, raising an army against the British, and the Battle of Maiwand, where the Afghans defeated a British and Indian force before the Siege of Kandahar began. The history gives the current struggle a long perspective, without making its competing causes or costs disappear.

The counterattack and its reversal

With few viable options, Suleiman Shahbadi decides on two mortar counterattacks. The fourteen-man strike force divides into two teams: Khaled Ansari and Habib lead one, while Suleiman Shahbadi leads the other. Lin remains at the camp with four sentries to care for the wounded. Following Habib’s directions, the teams position their mortars about a kilometre from the enemy camps, within effective range, and begin bombarding shortly after dawn. The firing continues for half an hour.

When the strike teams enter the ruined camps, they find eight Afghan soldiers, not all of them dead. Habib acts against the survivors. The others return to the camp sickened by what they have allowed him to do, hoping not to see him again. The episode makes the counterattack’s moral cost immediate: military success is measured in enemy casualties, but the men who carry it out cannot treat what follows as a clean victory.

Less than an hour after their return, a counter-bombardment strikes the compound. As the survivors emerge from cover, a Russian helicopter rises over the camp and fires rockets toward the caves. Lin is caught in the attack and shelters in a narrow cleft in the rocks. The aircraft makes further passes against the caves before opening fire on the exposed ground. The scene sharply changes the balance of the fight: the men who had just attacked enemy positions are now under assault from a force they cannot readily reach.

Losses and the defense of the camp

Some of the defenders return fire with Russian PK machine guns. Another man launches rockets from an AK-74; the shots miss, but the combined fire hits the helicopter and helps persuade its pilot to withdraw. Jalalaad, a young Hazarbuz nomad, leads the counterattack. After handing off the PK, he takes an AK-74 with a taped double magazine and leaves with two other young men to search for enemy soldiers who might have approached under cover of the aircraft. Their boldness contrasts with Lin’s initial instinct to hide, and converts the defense from passive endurance into a brief, dangerous challenge to the helicopter.

The camp’s losses are severe. Of the twenty men there at the start, eleven remain after the attack, including three wounded men. Nine have been lost—one more than the eight Afghan soldiers killed in the mortar strike. Lin tends the wounded, but the camp’s medical supplies and food have also been damaged or destroyed. The survivors can recover some medicines and basic supplies from the wreckage, and they still have ammunition and snow for water; food, however, becomes an urgent concern. The tally of men and resources makes clear that holding the position is no longer a realistic plan.

Retreat and the battle’s continuing consequences

Suleiman Shahbadi and Khaled Ansari decide that the survivors must leave for a cave on another mountain, about twelve hours’ march to the east. They expect another Russian helicopter within hours and believe ground forces will soon follow. Khaled relays the orders: each man is to carry two canteens filled with snow inside his clothes, along with weapons, ammunition, medicines, blankets, a little fuel and wood, and the surviving goat. The men leave hungry and settle in the new cave for four weeks. They divide the goat into small daily portions and preserve the cooked meat in an improvised store in the snow. The retreat extends the battle beyond the moment of attack: survival now depends on conserving food, water, medicine, and strength.

The fighting also shapes Lin’s understanding of what the war demands. Earlier, while being tortured in Arthur Road Prison, he recalls reaching a choice between hatred and forgiveness and deciding that forgiveness was necessary to survive. That memory does not erase anger or make violence harmless; in the Afghan campaign, Lin continues to confront the costs of both action and survival. His experience at the camp gives concrete weight to the chapter’s reflection that men may begin wars for profit or principle, while the immediate struggle increasingly narrows to survival and the protection of home and loved ones. The battle ends not with security or resolution, but with a depleted group forced to move on. Later, during their descent from the mountain, the men hear enemy mortars finding their range, confirming that leaving the camp has not ended the danger.