''The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahadeen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War'' is a 1998 non-fiction book written by former Afghan Army Colonel

Ali Ahmad Jalali Ali Ahmad Jalali (Pashto/ prs, علی احمد جلالی) is an Afghan politician, diplomat, and academic. Jalali served as the Minister of Interior from January 2003 to September 2005. He has also been a distinguished professor at the Near East ...

and American military scholar

Lester W. Grau Lester W. Grau is the Research Coordinator for the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Defense Language Institute (Russian) and the U.S. Army's Institute for Advanced Russian and Eastern E ...

Background

The book was commissioned by the United States Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division to complement Grau's previous book, ''"The Bear Went Over the Mountain."'' Jalali and Grau had planned travel into Afghanistan to interview

Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...

fighters in late 1996, but were forced to remain in Pakistan when a Taliban

offensive Offensive may refer to: * Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative * Offensive (military), an attack * Offensive language ** Fighting words or insulting language, words that by their very utterance inflict inj ...

campaign started to

seize Seize may refer to: *Seisin, legal possession *Seizing, a class of knots used to semi-permanently bind together two ropes *Seize (band), a British electronic band *The jamming of machine parts against each other, usually due to insufficient lubri ...

major portions of Afghanistan, eventually capturing Kabul on September 27. Jalali interviewed approximately 40 Mujahideen during the month which the authors spent in Pakistan and an associate, Major Nasrullah Safi, conducted interviews inside Afghanistan for two months to collect additional data.

Synopsis

''"The Other Side of the Mountain"'' is a compilation of selected anecdotes from Afghan Mujahideen recollecting their various combat actions against

Soviet forces The Soviet Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and as the Red Army (, Вооружённые Силы Советского Союза), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922), the Soviet Union (1922–1991), and th ...

during the Soviet-Afghan War. The 92 vignettes along with accompanying maps including operational graphics are arranged

chronologically Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , ''-logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It ...

and assembled topically, based on type of action, into 14 chapters. Each chapter opens with a brief summary and a simple map depicting the general locations of the vignettes inside Afghanistan. Soviet operational graphics were used in the detailed vignette maps, since the Afghan Army used them and many Mujahideen were familiar with them. The 15th chapter concludes the book by assessing the technology, command challenges, effects of decentralized command, professionalism, logistics, and tactics used by the Mujahideen.

Title

The title alludes to Lester Grau's previous book, ''"The Bear Went Over the Mountain,"'' which presented the Soviet–Afghan War solely from the Soviet perspective. This book focuses on the Mujahideen perspective, thus the ''"other side"'' of the mountain.

Reception

William C. Green declares that Jalali's and Grau's ''"highly readable compilation is a significant contribution to the literature on guerilla warfare"'' in a review for Naval War College Review. He is critical of the book's topical organization, states that the book is geographically biased, and claims that the ''"proofing and editing is distractingly bad."'' Despite these shortcomings, Green still lauds its value as a compilation of first-hand accounts of a successful insurgency but urges revisions so that subsequent editions can better educate American military personnel operating in Afghanistan.Green, William C
"The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War"
''Naval War College Review''. Volume 56, Number 3, Summer 2003. Retrieved August 8, 2020 – vi
Naval War College Review
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External links

Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahadeen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War''
(complete text) in Portable Document Format from the

Defense Technical Information Center The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC, pronounced "Dee-tick") is the repository for research and engineering information for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). DTIC's services are available to DoD personnel, federal governm ...

References