The Last Cavalry

BALA-MURGHAB, Western Afghanistan -- In the flowering meadows of the Murghab valley, a chilly dawn wind blows across the horse lines of the 511th Division's 2nd Mounted Company. In the barracks the kitchen boy shivers in a rough blanket as he kindles a fire. The cavalrymen are still asleep, but their horses stir as they smell the wood smoke, snorting as they nose through the paddocks in the spreading gray light.


The 2,000 horsemen of the 511th Division are the last working cavalry in the world. In the hilly terrain of Badghis province, these nimble horsemen are far more effective than the decrepit Soviet battle tanks inherited from the Russian invaders which are the staple of Afghan warfare. In a landscape where the best roads are little more than cart tracks, tanks can advance no faster than a walking man. The cavalry, on the other hand, can outrun any vehicle and outgun any unit of infantry. Armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and heavy machine guns, the cavalrymen move swiftly and silently, outflanking the enemy in the still Afghan nights or attacking head-on as part of an armored advance.


"Even though I have tanks, armored personnel carriers, Katyushas [multiple rocket launchers] and planes, the cavalry is still my first line of defense and attack," says the supreme commander of the Badghis front, General Rozi, who studied at Kiev's military university during the Russian occupation. "It may seem strange to fight like this in the 20th century, but in this terrain mounted troops have a real tactical advantage. ... The enemy have tanks, but they do not have cavalry who can outmaneuver any tank."


Until this week, the horsemen served General Abdul Dostum's anti-Taliban alliance and were the main hope for holding back the radical Islamic militia that has conquered two-thirds of Afghanistan. But in a dramatic shift of loyalties, the cavalry's commanders have joined the forces of the Taliban, turning against their former allies. The Pahlawan brothers, lords of the western Faryab province and commanders of the 511th, led the mutiny against Dostum to avenge the assassination last year of their eldest brother, Rassoul, who was killed after a dispute with the general. Rassoul was getting too powerful, becoming a threat to Dostum, whispered Pahlawan advisers at a formal dinner at the family palace last month. Now, in the best traditions of Afghan blood feuding, Dostum's troops are feeling the full savagery of the Pahlawan's revenge.


The defection deals a crippling blow to Dostum's alliance. With the fierce and disciplined cavalry now on their side, the Taliban are poised to attack Dostum's strongholds in Shebargan and Mazar-i-Sharif, bringing the whole country under their purist Islamic rule.


"The enemy are very afraid of the cavalry. When we attack their trenches at night, they do not even fight, they run," says Abdul Manan, head of 2nd Company's 200 horsemen. A 15-year veteran of the cavalry who has participated in more than 200 sorties, Manan explains, "We ride as close as we can without being seen, and then charge. We jump over the trenches and destroy as much as possible with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Then we disappear. Allah protects us."





The men of 2nd Company are tough country people -- mostly ethnic Uzbek farmers, herders, and laborers from the provinces of Badghis and Faryab. Theirs is a simple credo: What their feudal lord says is right. Whether the enemies are the Russians, Afghanistan's ousted president Burhannudin Rabbani or the Taliban matters little to the ordinary horsemen. They come to the front line by foot in early spring for the summer's fighting, their belongings slung in multicolored kilim saddle bags. Following the timeless pattern of Afghan war, every summer an adult member of each family joins the annual levy and heads off unquestioningly to battle. "We are not politicians. We are fighters," says Sergeant Rashid, a shopkeeper and jovial father of eight. "We fight when our commanders tell us to fight."


Throughout April, the cavalry and the Taliban were preparing intensively for the battle over control of northern Afghanistan. From the muddy hilltop command posts, a four-hours drive on a light tank or an hour's brisk gallop from the Murghab river, Taliban tank crews could be seen tinkering with and revving their machines. In the valley, the cavalrymen were drilling, practicing charges and shooting in preparation for their own advance. Little did the two sides know that within a matter of weeks a court intrigue would transform the sworn enemies into comrades-in-arms, but such are the strange fortunes of an Afghan war.


This summer will be the first experience under fire for many of the young troops. Manan personally helped train new recruits during the winter months by teaching them buzkashi, an Afghan version of polo where as many as 100 mounted men divide in two teams and fight to throw the body of a decapitated goat through a goal. The fast, violent free-for-all usually ends with a crop of broken human limbs and a very mangled goat, but it is excellent training for the nimble horsemanship and balance needed for fighting. The best riders pride themselves on their ability to fire a Kalashnikov accurately from a cantering horse, letting the reins hang free and steering with their legs.


Manan also supervises the army stud farms, farriers and saddle-makers' shops in Maimana, the dusty provincial capital of Faryab. The design of the saddle has changed little since the introduction of the stirrup in the sixth century. The saddles have wide, high cantles and a raised pommel, and are made of light wood covered in leather or woven wool. The saddle cloths are small, striped carpets lined with decorative tassels which the men weave themselves.


Their horses are sturdy, willful, fast Arabs, nimble as polo ponies but with the stamina of a carthorse. With the exception of a few officers' mounts, they are owned by the army and winter at the military horse-lines while the cavalrymen go home to their families. The men are not sentimental about their mounts -- most do not even have names -- and regard them with a pragmatic eye to survival. One advantage of advancing on horseback is that the animal's belly protects the rider from the explosion of anti-personnel mines which are scattered around enemy positions. The horse will lose one or two legs, but the rider usually survives, administers the coup de grace to his mount with a shot to the head and climbs on a comrade's horse to fight another day.


Commander Manan leads his company into battle on horseback. A radio operator with saddlebags bulging with transmitter and batteries rides close beside, along with junior officers and messengers. In the brief chaos of a raid, Manan is armed with nothing more than a well-worn Browning pistol and a flare gun tucked into his Uzbek tunic. He fires the flares after a retreat as a marker for any horsemen who have lost their way in the darkness and confusion.


The horses are used to the fear and noise, allowing their riders to fire heavy machine guns or even deafeningly loud rocket-propelled grenades from the saddle. "They are like us -- they are old soldiers, they don't mind the noise," jokes one cavalryman as he mounts up for target practice. With the RPG slung over one shoulder and a quiver of anti-tank rounds hung in a knapsack, he trots into the paddock, loads, aims and fires. The pony knows what is coming, and flinches, crouching slightly to absorb the recoil, and when the rocket fires, bucks in shock, but otherwise stays under control. Four rounds later the horse and rider trot back, the mount sweating -- and completely deaf to its master's claps or whistles.


When the troops are not training for battle, they amuse themselves with card games, listening to the radio and quail fighting -- a miniature version of cockfighting. To catch the birds, the soldiers walk in line through the fields carrying special nets, which they throw over the quails when they break cover. The men eat some of the birds and save the most vicious ones for fighting. Each man has one or two prize birds, kept in cotton bags in his billet. During idle afternoons, they toy with their quails, stroking them in the palms of their hands like worry beads. In the evenings, they set the quails upon each other in a momentary flurry of feathers, encouraged by the shouting men. The first bird to retreat from a tiny circle scratched in the earth loses; the bets are money and chores.


Manan, whose family was killed in an air raid six years ago during the internecine fighting that followed the Soviet withdrawal, remains aloof from the quail fighting. He quietly smokes in the corner with his ear pressed to a short-wave radio tuned to the BBC Dari service. In the silence of the night, after the men have fallen asleep, he explains his fatalistic warrior philosophy. "If we die, it is because God wills us to die," he says, dragging on a hashish joint. "I am not afraid of being killed. It is an honor to die like a man. We are in the hands of Allah."





As spring turns into summer, the relative comfort of 2nd Company's billets among the ruined villages and blossoming pistachio groves of the valley is soon to be a thing of the past as the cavalry is mobilized to the front line. On the day of the move, a chilly morning in late April, Manan wakes the 40 men and boys in the half-ruined house that serves as their command post. After a breakfast of rice and boiled mutton, they pray. In the half-dozen other ruined villages of the valley, other squadrons of 2nd Company also prepare to strike camp and move up country. Manan orders his batman to saddle his favorite horse, mounts up and canters out of the compound with an escort of officers for a last conference with the frontline generals.


The younger soldiers pack up the tack room -- a jumble of saddles, girths, RPG rounds, machine gun belts and Kalashnikovs -- in preparation for striking camp. The soldiers sling boxes of ammunition and giant cooking pots -- always carried in pairs for the sake of balance -- over the horses' backs and set off as an advance party to prepare the new hilltop billets.


But there is one formality still to be completed before the regiment can go into battle -- the ceremonial send-off by the commander, Gul Muhammed Pahlawan. Five miles up the valley, the distant sound of helicopters announces the commander's arrival.


By the time 2nd Company arrives at the bridgehead, the Prince of Faryab is reclining regally on fine carpets laid out on the dirt of a raised embankment, inspecting the troops through a pair of field glasses. The short, round-faced man with a high-pitched laugh is waiting for his cavalry to charge. His excitement is perhaps tempered by the private knowledge of his impending treachery against Dostum, but his usual reserve in front of foreigners still dissolves into barely suppressed glee. Dostum, an Uzbek like the Pahlawans, shares Gul Mohammed's enthusiasm for the cavalry. On his frequent visits to the front line, Dostum liked to lead charges on a white horse, wearing full native dress and waving a sword. Ironically, the next time he sees his beloved cavalry it is likely to be as the avenging force of the Pahlawans' blood feud.


The cavalry masses on the far side of the valley, a thin, seething line of brown and khaki, their weapons glinting in the sun. The line swells as more companies join from outlying areas of the valley, milling around, greeting their comrades-in-arms and exchanging news of the winter. They wait for the commander's helicopters to clear the plain, the horses kicking and bucking in excitement. Once the choppers have lifted off in a blast of hot exhaust fumes and flying poppy heads, the cavalrymen form up for a charge.


The sound of the charge begins with a distant rumble. Then, carried by the warm wind, comes a war-cry, as bloodcurdling and ancient as the sight unfolding on the plain. The rumble turns into a thunder as a thousand heavily armed horsemen gallop across the valley, waving their weapons and whooping wildly in tribute. The men sit deep in the saddles, jolted back as they slacken the reins and let the horses rip into a frantic gallop. Horses and men weave left and right as companies mix into a single galloping mass of flying stirrup leathers, ornamental tassels and bouncing weapons. A few of the men of 2nd company wave to Manan and other senior officers on Pahlawan's knoll. Their bouncing forms melt into the dust cloud kicked up as they pass, the sweaty horses and men becoming plastered in fine white dust like ghosts. At the far end of the valley, the cavalry finally slows to a canter, narrowing into double file as it moves up an ancient trade road toward the enemy.