Oral History of Sacred Defense

Commander of 19th Fajr Division

A Narrative of Mohammad Nabi Roudaki

Mahya Hafezi
Translated by M. B. khoshnevisan

2024-4-22

The book "A Narrative of Mohammad Nabi Roudaki, Commander of 19^th Fajr Division" has been interviewed by Alireza Refahiat and edited by Hussein Ahmadi. After his military service, Brigadier General Roudaki had various activities such as being a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a mission in Kurdistan, being in the southern front, commanding the 35th Brigade of Imam Sajjad (PBUH), creating transformations in the IRGC's combat organization, and commanding the 19th Fajr Division. The main and central topic of the book is about the process of the imposed war and the narrator's role in commanding and guiding the combatants of Fars province in the southern and western fronts of the country.

One of the features of this book is the selection of Alireza Refahiat as an interviewer. Refahiat, who has a long-standing friendship with the narrator and based on the responsibilities he took during the war in the management and command of the 19th Division, complements the narrator's words by expressing his memoirs and experiences. These interviews were conducted in 29 sessions and after editing, they were organized in the form of 24 conversations. As mentioned in the foreword of the book, in order to preserve the narrator's accent and expression, the sentences were minimally interfered with so that the originality of the text is preserved.

The first interview includes the period between the narrator's birth to his escape from military service. In the following, the book deals with the victory of the Islamic Revolution, membership in IRGC and the mission in the Kurdistan region. In the fourth to ninth interviews, the presence of the narrator in the fronts of Ilam and Abadan, participation in the operations of Saman al-A'emmeh, Tariq al-Quds, Bait al-Moqaddass, and Ramazan, as well as the formation of the Imam Sajjad brigade, have been explained.

The 10th interview deals with the changes and transformations of the combat organization and the formation of the 19th Fajr Division under the narrator's command. The 11th to the 23rd interviews also narrates the events of the preparatory Valfajr operations, Valfajr 1, Valfajr 2, Valfajr 3, Valfajr 4, Kheibar, Quds 3, Valfajr 8, Karbala 4, Karbala 5, Karbala 8 as well as the performance of various units of the 19th Fajr Division in the areas of Soomar, Badr, Komeil Headquarters, Fav Coast, the northwest Front, Shalamcheh and Majnoon Island.

In the final interview of the book, the issues related to the end of the war have been reviewed. In the final days of the war, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei as the President of the Islamic Republic, visited the 19th Fajr Division and met with the commander and staff of this division, the details of which are given in this section. At the end of this chapter, the narrator describes the internal developments of the IRGC after the end of the war and continues to mention his responsibilities after the Sacred Defense until now.

In this work, a lot of time, precision and patience have been spent on annotating the content. Many footnotes are seen on the pages. Another feature of the book is the use of many pictures next to the text. Wherever a person's name is mentioned, there is a picture of him or her. The images are not limited to individuals and wherever necessary, photos of operational areas, aerial images, war maps, etc. are also included in the text of the book. Also, the publisher has not used any restrictions for the color printing of the maps, and wherever necessary, the images have been printed in color. The final part of the book is documents and pictures.

The first edition of "A Narrative of Mohammad Nabi Roudaki, Commander of 19^th Fajr Division" was published in 2023 in 660 pages by the Center for Sacred Defense Documents and Research.