Ali Ahmad Jalali

“ Place and name spelling is based on Ali Jalali's best transliteration efforts. Consistency in spelling is difficult when two alphabets are involved—some spellings are different than in other books on Afghanistan. Although the Mujahideen always say 'Russian' instead of 'Soviet', we have used 'Soviet' throughout unless it is a direct quote. ”

“ In those cases where the person interviewed is theprimary source, we have written the vignette in the first person. Thevignettes are arranged chronologically by type of action. Occasionally,when the actions occur at the same place over time, we lump thoseactions together instead of chronologically. We have tried to make thebook as accurate as possible, but realize that time and retelling mayhave altered some of the facts. We have limited the span of the bookfrom the Soviet invasion until their withdrawal. The war startedbefore the Soviet invasion and continued long after their departure. ”

“ We plan to write about these battles in a future book. We used edition 2-DMA series U611 1:100,000 maps from the U.S.Defense Mapping Agency for the final preparation of the material.For those who wish to consult the map sheets, map sheet numbersare given with each vignette. We have numbered each vignette within the chapter and started each chapter with a country map showing the rough location of each vignette. ”