Ambush | Short Story

Background

Summer of 2015. The war between the Afghan Armed Forces and the Taliban was at its peak. Till then the Taliban had an upper arm over the Afghan men-with-arms. Both the confidence and strength of the Afghan army was getting weaker day by day. The Taliban seized every opportunity to attack and invaded lands at their will, fighting off the Afghan force with ease. They had better weapons and machinery against some below par weaponry of the Afghans.

Seeing the condition of the war and their army, the General of the Afghan Armed Forces, Bakhtiyar Ahmed, with the help of the Minister of Defense, called in the Americans for help. In reply, the United States Secretary of Defense and the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Department of Defense, Garry Knight, wrote back a letter to General Ahmed stating that he would be sending around 6500 deputations in the form of several battalions for their aid as soon as possible and would take an equal and active part in this war against terrorism.

On a hot afternoon of May 27, 2015, 6624 heavily armed soldiers of the American Special Armed Forces were airlifted to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan province. They were distributed among themselves in the form of 33 battalions who got widely split in the battle arena and started attacking from different bases.

After the arrival of deputations, things started to change for Afghanistan. Slowly the Afghan and American Armed Forces started gaining dominance over the Taliban. They made better strategies, attacked with proper plan and timing. They fought in the form of different smaller clusters and targeted one troop at a time rather than bigger ones against more than one troops, the technique which was employed by the Afghans earlier. Finally, the battle against terrorism was won with a crushing defeat of the Taliban on February 18, 2016.

This short story is based on the heroics shown by a soldier of one such battalion in the historic battle.