What to do when a Taliban hand grenade falls at your feet? Throw it back.
- Thread starter Blackleaf
- Start date
It's be quick that way. You'd dive to the ground and get halfway there and BOOM!. No feet left, schrappnel in various parts of you, and years of pain ahead. Awesome!
That is what your friends will experience even if you cover it with your body.It's be quick that way. You'd dive to the ground and get halfway there and BOOM!. No feet left, schrappnel in various parts of you, and years of pain ahead. Awesome!
And they'd be happy about you being crippled for life?
Life's a beach.
Sheilding can happen relatively safely but so can tossing the grenade back.
http://gizmodo.com/373839/soldier-u...rom-grenade-blast-survives-thanks-to-backpack
It's be quick that way. You'd dive to the ground and get halfway there and BOOM!. No feet left, schrappnel in various parts of you, and years of pain ahead. Awesome!
Well if it lands at your feet you could be screwed but if it lands in the area hit the deck and you should be OK. It is a frag, not a 500 Lb bomb.
It makes a great story because it is clear the Taliban frag chucker didn't milk his frag. He pulled the pin and threw it. The Brit was lucky as well as brave.
If the Taliban guy pulled the pin and counted "1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000, 4-1000 THROW!"
...the story would be MUCH different.
You just don't know when to pass do you? Try taking your own advice.
Sergei Zharov. The Russians Are Back. Concise History of the Taliban
Philosophy: Concise History of the Taliban
Anarchy
In 1992, after the fall of the Communists, Kabul, traditionally a Pushtun city, fell under control of Tajiks Rabbani and Massoud and an Uzbek Doustum. This has immediately provoked a new war — this time between the mujaheds themselves — when Pushtun Hikmetyar besieged Kabul. Since nobody could realistically win that war, the situation has run into a dead end, and the country has been divided between the warlords.
Doustum controlled six provinces in the North. Three western provinces around Herat belonged to Ismail Khan. Rabbani governed Kabul and North-East. Jalalabad was managed collectively by the local warlords. Hikmetyar seized a small region near Kabul and also controlled some Pushtun areas near the Pakistani border. The center of the country belonged to the ethnic group of Hazaras.
Kandahar area has got the worst deal — there was no single controlling force there, and the region was torn apart by the feuding warlords and plain gangsters. The city itself has been divided between hostile groups.
Birth of the Taliban
Afghan refugees did not rush to return to their homeland from Pakistan after the Soviet troops have been withdrawn. The Taliban has been born exactly there, among the mujahed veterans, many of whom have been studying in theological schools at the time. The name itself means “students”. When the international community has almost completely forgotten Afghanistan, the talibs thought they could be the only force that could still bring peace to their home. After prolonged discussions, they have created a program with clear goals and yet unclear means. They were going to restore peace, disarm the population, and realign the social life with the Islamic customs. Muhammed Omar has been elected as the leader of the movement. He was 35 at the time.
They got lucky with the means, however. Pakistani authorities had their own reasons to support the Taliban. Trade with Central Asia was seriously disrupted by the impossibility to send goods overland through Afghanistan. Hikmetyar controlled the border crossings in Southwestern Afghanistan and forced the goods being reloaded from Pakistani trucks to the Afghan ones. And gangsters would then hijack the trucks along the route. The Pakistanis were ready to support any force that could guarantee safe passage of the shipments.
From Words to Actions
The Spring of 1994 was when the first action by the Taliban has happened. A Kandahari warlord has abducted two girls and kept them at his military base where they were being gang-raped. Thirty talibs — with 16 automatic rifles — have attacked the base, freed the girls, and executed the warlord by hanging him on a tank barrel. And they have got a lot of arms from that raid.
A few months later, still in Kandahar, two other warlords had a shootout on the account of not a girl but a boy this time, whom they both wanted to rape anyway. A few passersby have been shot in the process although they did not want to rape anybody at all and just happened to be in the vicinity of the duel. The talibs have freed the boy.
In October of 1994 the Taliban has captured a border city of Spin Boldak, which was controlled by Hikmetyar's forces before that. Along with the city, the talibs have got a weapons dump with 18 thousand Kalashnikov rifles.
Two weeks later the Pakistanis sent a truck convoy with medicine to Central Asia. The convoy has been hijacked near Kandahar, and the Pakistanis asked the Taliban to intervene. The talibs attacked three days later, released the trucks, and killed the hijackers. The very same evening they attacked Kandahar itself and captured it in two days of fighting. Now they had their own air force with six fighters and six helicopters. None of them operational yet, however.
Paths of Glory
Within two months the Taliban had over 10,000 people in its ranks, who were inspired by its goals and achievements.
In three months the talibs controlled 12 provinces out of 31 and reached the outskirts of Kabul and Herat. Destroying Hikmetyar's forces, they have opened access to Kabul for the food trucks that were turned away by Hikmetyar. Massoud, however, has stopped the Taliban's advance towards the capital, and they turned their attention to Herat, capturing Shindand near it.
Massoud joined forces with Ismail Khan, using his aviation to bomb the talibs and to airlift 2,000 of his warriors to Herat. By the end of summer of 1995 Ismail Khan even began a counteroffensive against the talibs and captured back some of his territory.
The Taliban, however, by that time has reorganized its command and control system, not without help from Pakistan, and rearmed its soldiers. The Pakistanis have also convinced Rashid Doustum to support the talibs and bomb Herat using his air force. On September 3, 1995 the Taliban have recaptured Shindand, and on the fifth Ismail Khan has surrendered Herat and fled to Iran, just as he did in 1979.
The next year was spent in unsuccessful attempts to capture Kabul, which was defended by Ahmad Shah Massoud. Rabbani, the official president of Afghanistan, began building a political alliance with the groups that did not quite support him before: the Uzbeks, the Jalalabadis, and the Hazaras. Russia and Iran also helped him as the least of two harms. Even India joined in from a simple desire to obstruct Pakistan in everything. Trying to gain the initiative, the Taliban suddenly attacked Jalalabad in the end of August of 1996 and captured it in two weeks. Without any stops, the talibs advanced at Kabul and took it on September 26.
Chasing Massoud and reaching Salang Pass, the talibs have stopped because the pass was guarded by Doustum forces, and his position was not quite clear. It did become clear soon enough, though. He wanted autonomy under the talibs, and the Taliban never negotiated with warlords. The next target, therefore, was Mazar-i-Sharif, which now could be attacked from two directions simultaneously, from Herat and Kabul.
Ismail Khan airlifted 2,000 of his warriors to Mazar-i-Sharif from Iran. But Malik, one of the Doustum's generals, switched the sides and joined the Taliban. On May 19, 1997 Mazar-i-Sharif fell. Doustum fled to Uzbekistan.
Second to Last Failure
In nine days, during the disarmament of the population of Mazar-i-Sharif, an uprising began. Six hundred talibs were killed, another thousand captured. Malik has switched the sides again, and his forces recaptured four of the lost provinces. Massoud has reached Salang Pass and blew the tunnel up to block the Taliban, then captured Bagram airbase and stopped within 35 km from the capital. Even the Hazaras restored access to their Bamiyan valley and pushed the talibs back to Kabul.
The total Taliban losses were 6,600 people. Two thousand captured talibs were executed by Malik. 1,250 of them were chocked to death in steel containers, some were thrown into wells, sprinkled there with hand grenades and buried alive by bulldozers.
The Taliban Strikes Back
By the Summer of 1998 the Taliban was rearmed by the Pakistani and Saudis, Iran has finished airlifting military supplies to the Hazaras in Bamiyan, and Russia stockpiled tons of weapons in Kulyab for Massoud.
The talibs' advance at Mazar-i-Sharif began on July 12, 1998. By August 1 they have captured Shiberghan, Doustum's headquarters. He himself again fled to Uzbekistan. On August 8 Mazar-i-Sharif fell.
Most Hazaras found in the city were executed, part of them through the containerization, as a revenge for the talibs' deaths a year ago. Eleven Iranian diplomats who worked in the consulate there have been killed, as a result of which Iran began preparations to a full scale invasion of Afghanistan and moved its troops to the border.
On September 13 the talibs entered Bamiyan.
The next year was spent in a positional war with Massoud who has united all the forces willing to fight the Taliban under the name of the Northern Alliance. On September 5, 1999 his forces left Taloqan, Massoud's headquarters, and withdrew to Badakhshan. By now the Taliban controlled 90% of the country, and the Northern Alliance — one province out of 32.
That's what it said in the OP... that it lands at your feet. Actually I just thought of something else to do. Instead of taking the time to bend over and grab it to throw it away, just boot the thing somewhere.then head floorwards.
The guy probably knew the grenade was going to go off within a couple of seconds so he probably picked it up and chucked it far enough so that the blast wouldn't take his leg off. More like a hot potatoe type toss than a huge baseball pitcher wind up to get max distance... ;-)
As far as I know, the Taliban don't wear uniforms so it would be pretty hard to distinguish them from a civilian. Those soldiers interact with civilians everyday so the danger is always there.
In any event, that guy is brave.
As far as I know, the Taliban don't wear uniforms so it would be pretty hard to distinguish them from a civilian. Those soldiers interact with civilians everyday so the danger is always there.
In any event, that guy is brave.
I would just as soon not get into the finer details of the CIA and how they operated in the whole of that area on this thread. You have to go back a few years prior to the USSR bringing troops into the country. As usual the US ends up trying to destroy a military force that it has created. That doesn't mean I want to see any soldiers killed, civilian deaths even more-so.
You guys are aware of low-level negotiations to allow the Taliban 'function' in some capacity that includes the pullout of US forces. How true it is I don't know but the fighters from both sides would probably welcome some sort of end.
You guys are aware of low-level negotiations to allow the Taliban 'function' in some capacity that includes the pullout of US forces. How true it is I don't know but the fighters from both sides would probably welcome some sort of end.
The should have done that in 2002 - after kicking ass - set down and work it out. And it would have had a high probability of working - The US and the West had finally realized that leaving Afghanistan to themselves without aid or help after the Russian were booted was a massive strategic mistake-