The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

When the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan, they evaluated their chances for success upon their experiences in East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately for their soldiers, as well as the people of Afghanistan, they ignored not only the experiences of the British in the same region, but also their own experience with the Basmachi resistance fighters in Central Asia from 1918-1933. Consequently, in Afghanistan the Soviet army found its tactics inadequate to meet the challenges posed by the difficult terrain and the highly motivated mujahideen freedom fighters. To capture the lessons their tactical leaders learned in Afghanistan and to explain the change in tactics that followed, the Frunze Military Academy compiled this book for their command and general staff combat arms officers. The lessons are valuable not just for Russian officers, but for the tactical training of platoon, company and battalion leaders of any nation likely to engage in conflicts involving civil war. . .

• The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War
• The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost
• Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban
• Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics)
• Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Second Edition
• The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan
• Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda
• Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
• Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89