"Northern Alliance: Charging into Battle" Topic

In the book Swimming with Warlords, which I recently reviewed – TMP link – the author briefly reviews the start of the drive in the north against the Taliban.

Abdul Rashid Nostum was an Uzbek warlord and proven warrior who over the years had fought for all sides in Afghanistan, developed an independent fiefdom in Mazar-e-Sharif, then was forced into exile after an internal power struggle.

Ahmad Shad Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir and de facto leader of the Northern Alliance until his assassination, reportedly persuaded the CIA to fly Nostum back into Afghanistan to reestablish his old forces.

Dostum had the support of Task Force Dagger, which included Green Berets, Air Force ground controllers, and a Special Operations aviation regiment.

On 9 November 2001, his men launched a series of cavalry attacks on the Taliban lines, resulting in a Taliban retreat which inspired other Northern Alliance commanders to go onto the offensive.

The author cites Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton as a useful reference.

Has anyone tried gaming this fighting?

I put those Northern Alliance photos up Bill TMP link

Actually it was not the CIA that flew Dostum back into Afghanistan, it was the Iranians (he was in exile in Iran at the time). They had no love for the Taliban back then. The CIA had so little knowledge about Dostum (and so many of the major players) at the time that the SF soldiers who were sent to link up with him were given totally inaccurate information about him. They were told he was an elderly man with one arm who possibly hated Americans – all untrue. Intelligence gathering in Afghanistan pre-9/11 was pretty poor, in part because of the very touchy relationship with the Pakistanis and in part because it just wasn't all that high a priority.

I'd really love to do an Afghanistan 2001 project some time, it's been on my list for a while. Not sure how to go about it though. The thing that really transformed the battlefield situation at the time was laser-guided munitions from American air support – not that Dostum and his men didn't fight very hard and very bravely, it's just the air support was completely overwhelming for the Taliban and foreign troops.

I think to make it interesting you would have to downplay the air support, otherwise it's just going to be a miserable time for one side.

The problem is, if you downplay the air support, it isn't the same war. There's no way we would have succeeded without it. It's the same with any Afghan rules, in the real world the minute air turned up they went home.

Yeah, it would be a very different kettle of fish. Back in 2001 they were still trying to hold static positions in many places, because after all, that worked pretty well during years of fighting in the civil war. So the air force had a field day.

I don't know how to make it interesting when one side's positions are going to consistently vanish in plumes of smoke, over and over.

I've sat in on or helped run a number of interviews with Dostum and some of the American SF he worked with back in 2001. Supposedly some of the more poorly-educated Talibs had no clue what laser guided tech meant, and so they couldn't understand why their positions kept exploding, with no cause in sight. In a lot of cases they couldn't even see the aircraft, and they certainly weren't diving on them in the sort of attack runs they were used to. Dostum would radio them and tell them if they didn't surrender he was going to use the "death ray" on them and wipe them out – the "death ray" being a laser designator in the hands of an Air Force forward controller a few miles away.

Dostum would radio them…

The author mentions that both sides had the same radios, and could hear (and talk) to each other across the lines.