Qala-i-Jangi

[Cpl Steiner]

I would LOVE someone to make a scenario about this:

Qala-i-Jangi

There are some good 3D computer-graphic maps of the fortress in that documentary, which would help a lot.

I would make it for CM:SF + Brits + Marines and use the Brits as SBS and the Marines as US Special Forces. You would have Red Combatants for all Afghan forces (Taliban + Foreign Fighters and Northern Alliance).

A scenario based on this battle would have everything - gorgeous map (clever use of elevations could create the fortress walls and the basement of the "pink" building), multiple types of units (Brit, US, Red on both sides), a Northern Alliance tank, plus airstrikes.

To portray it accurately you would have to have something like a company plus of Taliban/Foreign Fighters and only a handful of Brit/US special forces and a somewhat larger force of Northern Alliance. I would also limit Airpower to maybe one or two bombs only by giving the air support reduced ammo in the editor. You would have to also give the Taliban/Foreign Fighters as much cover as possible in the form of foliage, flavour objects etc. It would probably be a massacre - much as in real life - but it should not be over in minutes. In the actual battle they held out for a couple of days!

[LongLeftFlank]

You might also need a Ryujin-type mod to put Western faces on Northern Alliance uniforms and gear -- US and British special forces working as advisers / FACs with native forces in an as-yet unconquered enemy country would tend to blend in a good bit rather than resembling regulars of their own forces. Their only distinguishing features besides their faces might be some state of the art commo gear and optics. And sporty sunglasses.

[Cpl Steiner]

You might also need a Ryujin-type mod to put Western faces on Northern Alliance uniforms and gear -- US and British special forces working as advisers / FACs with native forces in an as-yet unconquered enemy country would tend to blend in a good bit rather than resembling regulars of their own forces. Their only distinguishing features besides their faces might be some state of the art commo gear and optics. And sporty sunglasses.

Personally I would just use Brit and Marine troops so that they talk in their own respective dialect of English. Admittedly, SF units don't look much like regular troops, and in the case of the SBS one of them was using what looked like an M16. However, I could live with these inaccuracies more easily than I could with SBS or Delta guys talking in Arabic!

The map would be amazing if you used large elevation differences to create the walls of the fortress. Depending on which stage of the battle you were portraying, you could have Brits or Northern Alliance troops up on the walls firing down into the "court yard", with Taliban firing back from below with everything from RPGs to heavy machine-guns. Don't forget, they raided the armoury building at the start of the uprising, so they were very well armed.

I tried finding the fort on google maps and I think it's at 36.76765,66.899943 as the shape of the fort matches the 3d graphics in that film.

[Edit]

Nice description of the fortress here (extract from Doug Stanton's "Horse Soldiers"):

The line of six trucks halted inside the fort, and the prisoners stepped down under the watchful eye of a dozen or so Northern Alliance guards. Suddenly one prisoner pulled a grenade from the belly-band of his blouse and blew himself up, taking a Northern Alliance officer with him. The guards fired their rifles in the air and regained control. Then they immediately herded the prisoners to a rose-colored, plaster-sided building aptly nicknamed "the Pink House," which squatted nearby in the rocks and thorns. The structure had been built by the Soviets in the 1980s as a hospital within the bomb-hardened walls of the fortress.

The fort was immense, a walled city divided equally into southern and northern courtyards. Inside was a gold-domed mosque, some horse stables, irrigation ditches encircling plots of corn and wheat, and shady groves of tall, fragrant pine trees whipping in the stiff winds. The thick walls held secret hallways and compartments, and led to numerous storage rooms for grain and other valuables. The Taliban had cached an enormous pile of weapons in the southern compound in a dozen mud-walled horse stables, each as big as a one-car garage and topped with a dome-shaped roof. The stables were crammed to the rafters with rockets, RPGs, machine guns, and mortars. But there were more weapons. Six metal Conex trailers, like the kind semitrucks haul down interstates in the United States, also sat nearby, stuffed with even more guns and explosives.

The fortress had been built in 1889 by Afghans, taking some eighteen thousand workers twelve years to complete, during an era of British incursions. It was a place built to be easily defended, a place to weather a siege.

At each of the corners rose a mud parapet, a towerlike structure, some 80 feet high and 150 feet across, and built strong enough to support the weight of 10-ton tanks, which could be driven onto the parapet up long, gradual mud ramps rising from the fortress floor. Along the parapet walls, rectangular gunports, about twelve inches tall, were cut into the three-foot-thick mud -- large enough to accommodate the swing of a rifle barrel at any advancing hordes below.

In all, the fort measured some 600 yards long -- about one third of a mile -- and 300 yards wide.

At the north end, a red-carpeted balcony stretched high above the courtyard. Wide and sunlit, it resembled a promenade, overlooking a swift stream bordered by a black wrought-iron fence and rose gardens that had been destroyed by the Taliban. Behind the balcony, double doors opened onto long hallways, offices, and living quarters.

At each end of the fort's central wall, which divided the interior into the two large courtyards, sat two more tall parapets, equally fitted for observation and defense with firing ports. A narrow, packed foot trail, about three feet wide, ran around the entire rim along the protective, outer wall. In places, a thick mud wall, waist-high, partially shielded the walker from the interior of the courtyard, making it possible to move along the top of the wall and pop up and shoot either down into the fort, or up over the outer wall at attackers coming from the outside.

In the middle of the southern courtyard, which was identical to the northern one (except for the balcony and offices overlooking it), sat the square-shaped Pink House. It was small, measuring about 75 feet on each side, too small a space for the six hundred prisoners who were ordered by Northern Alliance soldiers down the stairs and into its dark basement, where they were packed tight like matchsticks, one against another.

There, down in a dank corner, on a dirt floor that smelled of worms and sweat, brooded a young American. His friends knew him by the name of Abdul Hamid. He had walked for several days to get to this moment of surrender, which he hoped would finally lead him home to California. He was tired, hungry, his chest pounding, skipping a beat, like a washing machine out of balance. He worried that he was going to have a heart attack, a scary thought at age twenty-one.

Around him, he could hear men praying as they unfolded hidden weapons from the long, damp wings of their clothing.

[Dietrich]

Déjà vu all over again...

Little by little I've been gathering info about this battle (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Qala-i-Jangi for an overview), so it's sounding plausible to design a scenario based on it...

Now that CMSF is pretty much complete, perhaps I actually should revisit this scenario idea.

I've been toying with the idea of making a American-to-British voice mod so that one can use US Army troops to stand in for SAS/SBS/etc. (so that they have M4s -- albeit not M4A1s with beaucoup attachments -- instead of L85A2s). That would enable as-accurate-as-possible loadouts for the core Blue pixeltruppen.

Similarly, the locally-dressed and AK-armed CIA operative "Dave" could be simulated by an IED triggerman (which has an AK in-game).

[Dietrich]

I tried finding the fort on google maps and I think it's at 36.76765,66.899943 as the shape of the fort matches the 3d graphics in that film.

At 36.76765, 66.899943 is the wall of an ancient city, possibly Bactrian. Qala-i-Jangi is at 36.666667, 66.983333; and it looks much more like a fortress.

[vincere]

Thanks for posting the link. Very interesting, including from the danger close aspect and the 'surprise' again about how many fighters survive heavy punishment.

I know CM doesn't do Special Forces, and I'm glad of it because I much prefer playing with an infantry company or so. But in SF in particular many battles could have incorporated them.