The Mujahedin in Action

During the Soviet offensive last April, the Afghan rebels combined strategy and weaponry to bloody effect. In one operation, 800 mujahedin, coordinating their attacks by radio, ambushed a fleet of Soviet vehicles traveling along the Salang Road, the main highway between Kabul and the Soviet border. By the following day, little remained of the Soviet procession save smoke, smashed and smoldering trucks, and the body of an Afghan government soldier (left). Four days later, the rebels struck again with a textbook ambush (above and right). They boxed in a Soviet convoy by firing rocket-propelled antitank grenades in front of the enemy vehicles and behind them. Then, from their mountain hideouts, they rained heavy machine-gun fire down upon their stranded prey. Forty Soviet vehicles went up in flames, and pillars of thick black smoke billowed hundreds offset into the air.