Chapter 4

A high valley in the Talish Mountains, Iran
April 10, 2006

The next group to climb the trail toward the pass into Azerbaijan was considerably larger, at least 150 men, almost all from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Their leader, a Captain Razmara, understood beating student demonstrators, no matter how much practice you got, was not the same as combat experience.

Twenty-five of the men were from the Revolutionary Guards' Department of Liberation and Revolutionary Movements. The existence and purpose of the Department were a state secret, but rumor flourished in a society where information was restricted. The Revolutionary Guards' officers had their own grapevine and through it, Razmara had heard a lot about the work of the Department. It trained its operatives to create networks of Islamic revolutionary cells, and then funneled arms and money to them. The cells, in turn, setup militias and highly visible social welfare organizations to gain popular support. The cells operated within, and controlled, the militias and the welfare organizations, instigating and exploiting, disorder and social unrest to challenge the civil authorities.

A recent rumor was of a new unit, the Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening, specifically to recruit and train Shahids - martyrs. Razmara was a father and a good Muslim, but opposed, encouraging young people to deliberately kill themselves.

After some initial successes in Iraq, the Americans and their Iraqi allies had taken apart the militias and the networks within them, imprisoning many Department of Liberation men. The lesson learned was, locally-recruited militias were unreliable, unpredictable, and lacked basic military skills. The militias needed a disciplined cadre of trained soldiers to carry out operations requiring organization and technical expertise.

It was Razmara's job to provide the reliable soldiers, and being chosen for it, indicated confidence in him by senior officers.

The Department men kept to themselves, and did not inform him of their plans. They were led by a Major, nominally his superior officer, but who did not involve himself in the planning and logistics needed to get the force over these mountains.

Razmara's orders were to protect the Department men, support them in setting of cells, and use his men to train the militias and maintain discipline.

Four Turkmen accompanied them. No one had explained to him why they were taking Turkmen into Azerbaijan. They barely understood Farsi, and as far as he knew, spoke no Azeri at all. One of them seemed to be a person of some significance. Razmara saw the Department people consulting with the Turkmen, far more often than they consulted with him.
When the mission was first outlined to him, he was told to select a hundred and twenty men, preferably ethnic Azeris, who would retain discipline over a period of months away from home and in difficult circumstances. Men who would resist interrogation if captured.

This put him in a quandary. His best and most reliable men were in their mid-twenties to their mid-thirties, and a high proportion were married. In contrast, the younger men were mostly unmarried, but prone to discipline problems. He knew how hard it would be for him to be away from his family for months, and was reluctant to force others to do the same. Such men would cause problems in the difficult situations he anticipated.

When he sounded out his NCOs to see who would volunteer, and who they would select from the men under them, Razmara was gratified to find almost all said they would volunteer, if he were in command. In the end, he had no difficulty in finding his hundred and twenty men.

Razmara halted the column when they neared the position the Arab, they called the 'Sheik', had reported the sniper. He sent out a combat team led by one of his best men, even though he thought the lone sniper long gone.

The rest of the men lounged along the trail while he went forward, and studied the terrain through his binoculars. The patrol moved cautiously forward, and then disappeared from view around a turn in the trail.

A single shot rang out, then another, and another, three shots in total. He waited apprehensively for the patrol to return. Only the three men who had been at the rear of the patrol came back, all visibly shaken.

“What happened?”

One of the men answered. “I only saw the man in front of me, sir. After the first two gunshots he was turning back, when he was shot in the side of the head.”

He called for Sergeant Hushmand. “Go and see what happened, but exercise extreme caution.”

“Yes, sir!”

Sergeant Hushmand moved cautiously down the trail, then dropped to the ground in order to crawl on his belly around the curve, and disappeared from view.

Razmara waited anxiously, expecting to hear shots at any moment, but there was only silence from the trail ahead of him, and mutterings from the troops behind. Ten minutes later Hushmand crawled back and reported.

“All three are dead, shot through the head.”

A cold chill ran through his body. It must be a Russian Spetsnaz sniper team. Razmara wondered why a man crawling could survive when he made the best possible target for someone firing down from above. Yet, Hushmand had crawled into and out of the snipers' killing zone without harm. It must mean the snipers were in a position where a crawling man could approach them unseen. Experienced soldiers would not put themselves in such a position.

He turned to his deputy. “Khadil, tell the men to take defensive positions. See if any of the men are familiar with this area, and if they know of alternate routes.”

Razmara considered what he should do next. He was taking the Islamic Revolution to Azerbaijan because he was a career officer and those were his orders, not for a paradise populated by seventy-two virgins. That kind of nonsense was for the crazy Wahhabists.

The original plan was for the Arabs to travel with his men, and for the two groups to separate once they reached Azerbaijan. He had strongly objected, believing the arrogant attitude of the Arabs, and their Chechen and Uzbek fighters, would cause trouble with his men.

He was listened to, only after a fight in the camp between Sunnis and Shias, almost sparked a full-blown gun battle. The Arabs were told to leave as soon as possible, and they had departed three days before his men.

The Sheik had reported, he had got his men past the ambush, but didn't say how. Typical of the arrogant Arabs, all deceptions and conspiracies, while expecting others to do their dirty work. But they must have got past the ambush because otherwise Razmara's men would have met them returning to Iran. It meant there was a way past the ambush, perhaps a path through the mountains. He would wait for Khadil to report before deciding what to do next.

He trusted his officers to carry out their orders without his supervision. He retired a little way into the trees where he could still see his men, and found a rock where he could sit and enjoy the warm spring sunshine. Razmara wondered why his life had brought him to this remote valley where he was required to make life and death decisions.

Razmara had joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at seventeen, fresh from the village where he grew up. There were few prospects for a young man who had attended a rural religious school, a man with no knowledge of science or engineering, a man who had never seen a computer.

All his life he had a talent for giving people what they wanted. In school, they wanted him to learn the Koran, so he was the first in his class to do so, and had it memorized by the age of eight. When the local Mullah wanted to stop the visit of a reformist parliamentary candidate, he organized his classmates in a protest that drove the candidate out of the village.

His abilities as an organizer brought him to the attention of the local Revolutionary Guards Commander, who suggested he apply to join the Guards. After a cursory interview and a written test that seemed designed to ascertain his loyalty to the regime, or perhaps just his ability to read and write, he was selected for training in the capital.

As he rode the bus into Tehran, the first time in his life he had seen a city, he knew he was never going back to his village of a few hundred mud houses that baked in the summer heat, and froze in the winter snow.

It didn't take him long to impress his instructors with his zeal, intelligence, and capacity to organize his fellow trainees. He was a natural leader, and as a result, he was chosen to train for the Revolutionary Guards officers' corp.

He graduated as an officer, and was appointed second in command of a platoon. He soon learned his Commanding Officer's main concern was extracting bribes from shopkeepers and merchants in his district, and had amassed enough money to build a large house.

Razmara worked hard to impress his commander, and soon became his factotum and bagman. This led to invitations to the commander's home. It was the biggest, grandest house he had ever been inside.

One other thing caught his eye, the commander's youngest daughter. While not a handsome man, Razmara knew he had a certain air about him, and considerable charm when he chose to use it. He would have to clear it with the commander, but the daughter would suit him as a wife, and would guarantee the commander as his protector.

Khadil brought him out of his reverie. “Sir.”

“So Khadil, what did you find out?”

“One of the local men says there is a trail on the other side of the river two kilometers back that runs across a rarely used pass into Azerbaijan.”

“Is there another way to cross this pass apart from the trail we are on?”

“No, sir. The men who are familiar with the area say this trail is the only way across the pass.”

Then, how had the Sheik got his men past the ambush? Always assuming he did. An old proverb came to mind – 'Trust a snake before a Jew, a Jew before an Armenian, but never trust an Arab.'

They would take the trail over the secondary pass.

Razmara asked, “How do we get across the river?”

Khadil replied, “You can ford the river there in the summer, but the water is too high right now. We can rig a rope bridge to get the men across, but it means we have to leave the horses behind.”

“Good. I want a barricade built here to block the trail, and six men left to guard it. I don't want the Russians coming after us. Then move the rest of the men back down the trail to the crossing point, and we can start building the bridge. Send two men on horses back to inform headquarters the snipers are still here.”

Chapter 5