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"The Battles of Zhawar were fought during the Soviet–Afghan War between Soviet Army units, and their allies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against Afghan mujahideen groups. The Soviets' objective was to destroy the Mujahideen logistic base situated at Zhawar, 3 kilometers from the Pakistani border. Zhawar The Zhawar caves in 2002. The Mujahideen base at Zhawar, situated in Paktia Province, served as a storage facility for supplies and equipment being transferred from neighbouring Pakistan to the various guerrilla groups operating in the region. It also served as a training and command facility. The Mujahideen had dug tunnels up to 500 m into the Sodyaki Ghar mountain, with accommodations including a hotel, a mosque, a medical point and a garage to house the two T-55 tanks that had been captured from the DRA in 1983. The troops defending the base numbered 500, and they were armed with a D-30 howitzer, several BM-21 multiple rocket launchers and five ZPU-1 and ZPU-2 heavy machine-guns for air defence. Additionally, other Mujahideen groups were active in the area, and they participated in the defense of the base when necessary. These groups were part of various movements including the Hezbi Islami, the Hezb-e Islami Khalis, the Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami and the Mahaz-e-Melli, though all in theory came under the authority of regional commander Jalaluddin Haqqani. The first battle The first offensive was launched in September 1985 by elements of the 12th and 25th DRA divisions, supported by Soviet airpower, at a time when the major Mujahideen commanders were absent, including Haqqani, who was performing the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The DRA forces first attacked from Khost, and succeeded in capturing the village of Bori, to the northeast of Zhawar. They then ran into heavy resistance and had to pull back. The main attack came on September 4, and was at first successful, capturing the village of Lezhi and killing a Mujahideen commander. Very soon the attack was halted at the Manay Kandow pass, that had been heavily fortified by the Mujahideen. For 10 days the defenders held out, but were finally forced to withdraw, under heavy airstrikes by Soviet aircraft. This enabled the DRA forces to cross the pass and capture the Tor Kamar position, overlooking Zhawar, from where they could direct artillery fire at the Mujahideen base. At this point the Mujahideen launched a counter- attack, led by their two T-55 tanks. The DRA were caught by surprise, as they had not expected to meet armour, and they fell back after sustaining heavy losses. The DRA commander tried to renew the assault, but by that time the Mujahideen had received reinforcements from Pakistan, and they were able to repel further attacks. Finally after 42 of days fighting, the DRA units withdrew to their bases. This victory considerably boosted the morale of the Mujahideen. The second battle The second offensive was conducted on a larger scale, and eventually involved 12,000 troops, including 2,200 Soviets, led by DRA General Nabi Azimi, with Soviet General V. G. Trofimenko serving as advisor. The offensive began on 28 February 1986, a short while after General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had announced the decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Thus the Soviet units were initially confined to supporting the Afghan offensive. The opening moves were conducted by DRA ground troops attacking from Khost and Gardez who made very slow progress, due to bad weather and harassment by the Mujahideen, reaching the approaches to Zhawar only one month later. The second phase of the offensive was to be an airborne assault carried out by the Afghan 38th Commando Brigade. The initial assault group, transported by Mi-8 helicopters, departed on 2 April, but they got lost in the darkness and accidentally landed on the wrong side of the Pakistani border. This force was quickly surrounded and taken prisoner. The main airborne assault came in the immediate vicinity of Zhawar, and was supported by precision airstrikes by Soviet Su-25 attack aircraft. These attacks caused some losses among the Mujahideen defenders, even trapping 150 of them, including Haqqani, inside a cave that had been targeted by a missile. Haqqani later escaped and led 700-800 Mujahideen in a series of counter- attacks against the DRA landing zones, that they overran one by one. After three days of fighting, the DRA 38th Brigade had ceased to exist as a fighting force, and 530 commandos had been captured by the Mujahideen. The DRA also lost 24 helicopters. This fiasco prompted the Soviets to take over the operation, whose command was given to General Valentin Varennikov. The DRA force was strengthened with Soviet units, and the aerial bombardment of Mujahideen positions was intensified and pursued round the clock. Eventually, on April 17, the offensive was renewed. After several unsuccessful attempts, the DRA/Soviet force managed to capture the strategic Dawri Gar mountain. At a crucial moment, a Hezbi Islami unit drew back from their positions without fighting. At the same time, Jalaluddin Haqqani was injured in an airstrike, causing rumours of his death to spread rapidly among the Mujahideen, and their forces abandoned the defense of Zhawar, that was overrun by government forces. The Soviet engineers tasked with destroying the base had very little time to do so, as the Afghan troops were intent on withdrawing as soon as possible, fearing a Mujahideen counter-attack. In the end they tried to do as much damage as they could by detonating explosives inside the caves, and laying seismic mines before withdrawing hurriedly. Aftermath and losses The Soviet and DRA losses remain uncertain, but were presumably heavy. The Mujahideen claimed to have destroyed 24 helicopters and 2 jets, and captured 530 prisoners, for a loss of 281 killed and 363 injured. Of the 500 Afghan prisoners, 78 officers were tried and executed by Haqqani and Khalis, including the commander of the 38th commando brigade, Colonel Qalandar Shah. The Afghan government celebrated their victory, and though the success had proved costly, it served to alleviate the pressure on Khost, that was then under siege. However, Zhawar was quickly retaken by the Mujahideen, who repaired the damage, and strengthened their defenses. Notes ReferencesFurther reading * * * Youssaf, Mohammad and Adkin Mark(1992), The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story; Leo Cooper Category:Battles involving the Soviet Union Category:Battles involving Afghanistan Category:Battles of the Soviet–Afghan War Category:History of Paktia Province Category:1985 in Afghanistan Category:1986 in Afghanistan "
"Merrill Moore (1903 - 1957) was an American psychiatrist and poet. Born and educated in Tennessee, he was a member of the Fugitives. He taught neurology at the Harvard Medical School and published research about alcoholism. He was the author of many collections of poetry. Early life Moore was born in 1903 in Columbia, Tennessee. His father, John Trotwood Moore, was a novelist and local historian who served as the State Librarian and Archivist from 1919 to 1929. His paternal grandfather was a lawyer from Marion, Alabama, who served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Moore was educated at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in 1920. He attended Vanderbilt University, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He also joined the Fugitives, a group of then unknown poets who met to read and criticize each other's poems. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1924. He took an M.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1928. He interned at the Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville for a year. Career as a psychiatrist Moore was a psychiatrist in the Ericksonian tradition. He taught neurology at the Harvard Medical School and the Boston City Hospital. He also conducted research on alcohol and addiction. In a 1937 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, he argued that alcoholism had become rampant in the United States, and he called for the establishment of special wards for alcoholics in hospitals. Two years later, in the same journal, he argued that the heavier an individual, the less likely they were to feel drunk. By 1943, in the Boston number of the Medical Clinics of North America, he argued that adult neurosis and alcoholism could be prevented if parents ensured children matched the skills of their peers and never "go off the track of normal development". He also published articles in medical journals about "drug addiction, suicide, venereal disease [...], the psychoneurosis of war, migraine headaches." Meanwhile, Moore also treated patients like Robert Frost's daughter, who suffered from paranoia and depression. During World War II, Moore served as a psychiatrist in the United States Army's Bougainville Campaign as well as in New Zealand. On September 22, 1942, Moore gave a speech about Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf entitled What Hitler means in "Mein Kampf" at the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado; a year later, it was reprinted in Military Surgeon. Moore served as Lieutenant-Colonel in Nanking, where he was "director of medical operations". He was the recipient of the Bronze Star Medal for his war service. After the war, Moore played a key behind-the-scenes role in the Ezra Pound controversy, as a member of a group of literary men who saw to it that the modernist icon escaped a treason trial for his radio propaganda in support of Mussolini. Moore was a close friend of one of the psychiatrists on a diagnostic panel that found Pound unfit to stand trial. Poetry Throughout his career Moore produced sonnets in a very high volume. Estimates vary but by 1935, Louis Untermeyer had counted 25,000 sonnets in Moore's files, according to a Time Magazine article that year; just over two years later, a 1938 Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker put Moore's total production of sonnets at 50,000. Moore discovered his affinity for the sonnet form while still in secondary school and is said to have learned shorthand during college in order to be able to write more sonnets between classes. Although some of his work, such as the posthumous quatrain collection The Phoenix and the Bees, is in other forms, the poet-psychiatrist wrote and archived his poems in a dedicated home office he called his "sonnetorium." Some of his books, like Case Record from a Sonnetorium or More Clinical Sonnets, were illustrated by Edward Gorey. It was Moore who put the young Robert Lowell in contact with literary men including Ford Madox Ford, Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, and who encouraged Lowell to become a student of Ransom after Lowell's sudden violent break with his family and departure from Harvard. Personal life and death Moore married to Ann Leslie Nichol in 1930. Together they had four children: Adam, John, Leslie, and Hester. He published articles about conchology. Moore died of cancer on September 21, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was 54. Published works Further reading * * References Category:1903 births Category:1957 deaths Category:People from Columbia, Tennessee Category:People from Boston Category:Vanderbilt University alumni Category:Harvard Medical School faculty Category:American military personnel who served in the Pacific theatre of World War II Category:American psychiatrists Category:American neurologists Category:Sonneteers Category:20th-century American poets Category:Writers of American Southern literature Category:Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts "