are the bad guys really that bad??

Yes, they're that bad. Bear in mind, these are guys who get plucked from their villages maybe, or radicalized from an early age but besides, maybe, firing a few celebratory rounds into the air, have probably never tried shooting at moving targets, and especially not targets that shoot back at them.

You may run across the occasional fighter who understands tactics better, maybe trained with Pakistan or veterans of the Soviet occupation. In the case of this movie, I was just assuming their leader wasn't really all that concerned with tactics and was used to intimidating other villages by sheer numbers... villages that apparently don't fight back. That would explain the "shooting wildly while running" style they seemed to adopt against the French commandos. A tactic that, as became apparent, was highly ineffective. :)

The spray and pray method of combat.