Battles of Zhawar - The Second Battle

The Second Battle

The second offensive was conducted on a larger scale, and eventually involved 12,000 troops, including 2,200 Soviets, led by DRA General Nabi Azimi, with Soviet General V. G. Trofimenko serving as advisor.

The offensive began on 28 February 1986, a short while after General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had announced the decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Thus the Soviet units were initially confined to supporting the Afghan offensive.

The opening moves were conducted by DRA ground troops attacking from Khost and Gardez who made very slow progress, due to bad weather and harassment by the Mujahideen, reaching the approaches to Zhawar only one month later.

The second phase of the offensive was to be an airborne assault carried out by the Afghan 38th commando Brigade. The initial assault group, transported by Mi-8 helicopters, departed on 2 April, but they got lost in the darkness and accidentally landed on the wrong side of the Pakistani border. This force was quickly surrounded and taken prisoner. The main airborne assault came in the immediate vicinity of Zhawar, and was supported by precision airstrikes by Soviet Su-25 attack aircraft. These attacks caused some losses among the Mujahideen defenders, even trapping 150 of them, including Haqqani, inside a cave that had been targeted by a missile. Haqqani later escaped and led 700-800 Mujahideen in a series of counter-attacks against the DRA landing zones, that they overran one by one. After three days of fighting, the DRA 38th Brigade had ceased to exist as a fighting force, and 530 commandos had been captured by the Mujahideen. The DRA also lost 24 helicopters. This fiasco prompted the Soviets to take over the operation, whose command was given to General Valentin Varennikov. The DRA force was strengthened with Soviet units, and the aerial bombardment of Mujahideen positions was intensified and pursued round the clock.

Eventually, on April 17, the offensive was renewed. After several unsuccessful attempts, the DRA/Soviet force managed to capture the strategic Dawri Gar mountain. At a crucial moment, a Hezbi Islami unit drew back from their positions without fighting. At the same time, Jallaluddin Haqqani was injured in an airstrike, causing rumours of his death to spread rapidly among the Mujahideen, and their forces abandoned the defense of Zhawar, that was overrun by government forces.

The Soviet engineers tasked with destroying the base had very little time to do so, as the Afghan troops were intent on withdrawing as soon as possible, fearing a Mujahideen counter-attack. In the end they tried to do as much damage as they could by detonating explosives inside the caves, and laying seismic mines before withdrawing hurriedly.