They say that the war does not end until the last soldier is buried. The Afghan conflict ended a quarter of a century ago, but we do not even know the fate of those Soviet soldiers who remained captured by the Mujahideen after the withdrawal of troops. The data varies. Of the 417 missing, 130 were released before the collapse of the USSR, more than a hundred died, eight people were recruited by the enemy, 21 became “defectors.” These are the official statistics. In 1992, the United States provided Russia with information about another 163 Russian citizens who disappeared in Afghanistan. The fate of dozens of soldiers is unknown. This means that Afghanistan remains our hot spot.
Those who somehow managed to win freedom remained in their internal captivity and could not forget the horrors of that war. On the pages of our book, six former Soviet soldiers tell their amazing stories about life in captivity and after, in the world. All of them lived in Afghanistan for a long time, converted to Islam, started families, speak and think in Dari - an eastern version of the Persian language, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. Some managed to fight on the side of the Mujahideen. Someone has performed the Hajj. Three of them returned to their homeland, but sometimes they are drawn back to the country that gave them a second life.
This book is about how two incompatible cultures collide in the fate of one person, which one wins, and what ultimately remains of the person himself. Currently, the author of the book, photographer Alexey Nikolaev, is raising funds for its publication. If you liked the project, the author will be grateful for your support.
Arriving in Chagcharan early in the morning, I went to work with Sergei. It was only possible to get there on a cargo scooter - it was quite a trip. Sergei works as a foreman, he has 10 people under his command, they extract crushed stone for road construction. He also works part-time as an electrician at a local hydroelectric power station.
He received me warily, which is natural - I was the first Russian journalist who met him during his entire life in Afghanistan. We talked, drank tea and agreed to meet in the evening for a trip to his home.
But my plans were disrupted by the police, who surrounded me with security and care, which consisted of a categorical reluctance to let me out of the city to Sergei in the village.
As a result, several hours of negotiations, three or four liters of tea, and they agreed to take me to him, but on the condition that we would not spend the night there.
After this meeting, we saw each other many times in the city, but I never visited him at home - it was dangerous to leave the city. Sergei said that everyone now knows that there is a journalist here, and that I could get hurt.
At first glance, I got the impression of Sergei as a strong, calm and self-confident person. He talked a lot about his family, about how he wanted to move from the village to the city. As far as I know, he is building a house in the city.
When I think about his future fate, I am calm for him. Afghanistan became a real home for him.
- I was born in the Trans-Urals, in Kurgan. I still remember my home address: Bazhova Street, building 43. I ended up in Afghanistan, and at the end of my service, when I was 20 years old, I went to join the dushmans. He left because he did not get along with his colleagues. They all united there, I was completely alone - they insulted me, I could not answer. Although this is not even hazing, because all these guys were from the same draft with me. In general, I didn’t want to run away, I wanted those who mocked me to be punished. But the commanders didn’t care.
“I didn’t even have a weapon, otherwise I would have killed them right away.” But the spirits who were close to our unit accepted me. True, not right away - for about 20 days I was locked in some small room, but it was not a prison, there were guards at the door. They put shackles on at night and took them off during the day - even if you find yourself in the gorge, you still won’t understand where to go next. Then the Mujahideen commander arrived, who said that since I came myself, I could leave on my own, and I didn’t need shackles or guards. Although I would hardly have returned to the unit anyway - I think they would have shot me right away. Most likely, their commander tested me this way.
- For the first three or four months I didn’t speak Afghan, but then gradually we began to understand each other. Mullahs constantly visited the Mujahideen, we began to communicate, and I realized that in fact there is one God and one religion, it’s just that Jesus and Muhammad are messengers of different faiths. I didn’t do anything with the Mujahideen, sometimes I helped with the repair of machine guns. Then I was assigned to a commander who fought with other tribes, but he was soon killed. I didn’t fight against Soviet soldiers - I just cleaned weapons, especially since the troops were withdrawn from the area where I was quite quickly. The Mujahideen realized that if they married me, then I would stay with them. And so it happened. I got married a year later, after that the supervision was completely removed from me, before I was not allowed anywhere alone. But I still didn’t do anything, I had to survive - I suffered from several deadly diseases, I don’t even know which ones.
- I have six children, there were more, but many died. They are all blond, almost Slavic. However, the wife is the same. I earn twelve hundred dollars a month, they don’t pay fools here that kind of money. I want to buy a plot in the town. The governor and my boss promised to help me, I’m standing in line. The state price is small - a thousand dollars, but then you can sell it for six thousand. It’s beneficial if I still want to leave. As they say in Russia now: this is business.
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> appears on the lists.
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> The last expedition from Afghanistan has just returned. She returned, bringing the remains of three more Russian guys who died while performing international duty in Afghanistan. Until now, these guys were listed as missing. And there are still 270 such people left.
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quoted1 > > When you hear the word expedition, you think of a serious rescue squad with powerful equipment. Or - a hike of young explorers in the style of Boy Scouts. But neither one nor the other is possible in the conditions of present-day Afghanistan, where the Taliban have already surrounded Kabul. An expedition is two people. Employees of the organization with the long name Committee for the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers under the Council of Heads of State of the CIS Member States Alexander Lavrentyev and Nikolai Bystrov. Lavrentiev says little about himself, which indicates his obvious involvement in foreign intelligence services. And Bystrov + Called up from the Krasnodar region in 82 and sent to serve in Afghanistan, soon captured, spent 12 years there, became the personal guard of the field commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, and then a relative of the minister of the Afghan government, Nikolai Bystrov is the main guide to Afghanistan.
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> For a colonel - "Volga", for a private - a ram.
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quoted1 > > 20 years ago, on the border of the USSR and Afghanistan, Army Commander Boris Gromov said, “There is not a single Soviet soldier behind me.” It sounded impressive, and this point of view expressed the official position of the USSR. At that time, up to 400 USSR citizens could remain in Afghanistan. But international organizations that turned to USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev with a proposal for help in their release received the answer: “Our state is not at war with anyone, so we have no prisoners of war!”
quoted1 > > However, they did not forget about the missing. On the contrary, Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB of the USSR and subsequently the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee under the KGB, created an OO - a special department that was engaged in searching for them and returning them to their homeland. But amazing political passions always raged around the Afghan captives; they became either heroes or traitors, or a way of pressure or encouragement.
quoted1 > > It is believed that the first prisoners - missing - from a limited contingent appeared in 81. Then, in January, four military advisers did not return from the Afghan regiment that rebelled. What is noteworthy is that in those days the disappearance of even a conscript soldier was regarded as an emergency and a real military operation began to search for him. And during the battle, our troops did not leave the bodies of the dead on the Afghan mountains - they were carried out, or when they retreated to the position, a landing party was later sent with one task - to carry out the bodies. However, the “missing” column was replenished.
quoted1 > > In 1982, the USSR asked the International Red Cross for assistance in returning prisoners of war in Afghanistan. In the conditions of the Cold War, given the position of the USSR that it was not waging the Afghan war, those rescued by the Red Cross were used as spit in the USSR. The conditions of their return were more than strange - the soldiers taken away from the dushmans were kept in complete isolation for two years in Switzerland, in the Zugeberg camp, where they paid 250 francs for work in a subsidiary farm and actively promoted Western values. 11 people passed through Zugeberg, and only three decided to return to the USSR, the rest “chose freedom.” It is clear that the Soviet Union refused help from the Red Cross.
quoted1 > > OO (Special Department) of the KGB in the 40th Army, which is engaged in summoning our soldiers from captivity, rescued about a hundred of our soldiers during the war. Including the Vice-President of Russia, and then the Deputy Commander of the Air Force of the 40th Army, Alexander Rutsky. According to the official version, Rutskoi’s plane was shot down near the border with Pakistan, on Afghan territory. Allegedly, at an altitude of 7 kilometers he was caught by an F-18 of the Pakistani Air Force and shot down by a Sadvinder. Rutskoi ejected and, using scraps of a map, discovered that he was 20 kilometers from Afghanistan, in Pakistan. As one of the KGB OO workers, Gennady Vetoshkin, says, in fact, Rutskoi’s unit flew to Pakistan to bomb a training camp for dushmans. But Pakistan pretended that there were no such camps, and ours pretended that they had not crossed the border. Rutskoi might not have gone on that flight; he had just returned from a combat mission, received an appointment as deputy commander, and he was tormented by bad premonitions,” says Vetoshkin. But he flew. Rutskoi spent a week in captivity and was transferred to the Soviet embassy in Pakistan. Why did he later say that he was terribly tortured and hung on a rack? The NGO employees do not really understand. Alexander Rutskoy received the Hero of the Soviet Union. And for his release they paid a huge sum for those times; with this money one could buy a Volga car.
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> > But a simple fighter from Belarus, Alexander Yanovsky, has a more tragic story..
> Sasha Yanovsky, drafted from Belarus, was captured just like many others - by accident. I went to get water and got hit on the head. Vetoshkin’s brigade received the first information about Yanovsky from the Islamic Society of Afghanistan party, which was headed by Rabbani. The Afghan police got involved and bargaining began. For Yanovsky, the spirits asked 60 rebels + They bargained that they would give us Sasha, and we would give them Sadar-agu, the leader of a local gang, sentenced to death and imprisoned in the central prison of Kabul Puli-Charkhi. The bargaining was helped by the information that Sasha was captured by his brother Sadar - aga, Shah - aha. But the first attempt at an exchange, which was supposed to take place on the Afghan-Pakistan border, failed. Vetoshkin’s group waited at the appointed place for six hours until a messenger appeared with a note that the deal was being postponed to a later date, and the spirits demanded to add another noble relative to Sadar-Aga.
> Vetoshkin recalls that when Yanovsky was handed over. for a long time he did not understand anything. He shook his head and looked around wildly. Later he said that he decided that the spirits were leading him to test him with blood - there was such a custom. Give a prisoner a weapon and if he shoots at our people, he becomes one of his own. And Yanovsky, according to Vetoshkin, behaved heroically in captivity. Didn't say anything.
> However, it was already the 87th year, our people were preparing to leave Afghanistan, and the spirits did not kill the prisoners immediately, using the most sophisticated methods. From stoning to use in the game "buzaksh". This is something like polo, where riders take the body of a sheep from each other. In the camps, captives were used instead of sheep, the bodies were torn into pieces and fed to dogs. The only chance to stay alive is to convert to Islam. Convinced that at best a prison awaited them in their homeland, they did not return.
> At the end of 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Resolution “On the amnesty of former soldiers of the Soviet contingent in Afghanistan who committed a crime.” That is, everyone was freed from any responsibility before the law. And finally the first “returnees” appeared. At first, they were literally “torn out” from under the machine guns of the dushmans, who made sure that the prisoners refused to return. And then+ Then the prisoners began to be returned several times.
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>Victims of hot friendship.
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> Big politics demanded immediate results. As retired foreign intelligence colonel Leonid Biryukov recalls, it came to the point of “theft” of prisoners by liberation organizations. Biryukov, having retired, was engaged in the search for prisoners as a deputy. Chairman of the Committee of Soldiers-Internationalists. Having pulled out two people, in Kabul he waited with them for a flight to Moscow. These two were kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto handed them over to the Russian Federation. With great pomp, under television cameras and lush speeches, Bhutto even gave each captive three thousand dollars. Here, however, there was an embarrassment - having returned to their homeland in the 90s, these people were unable to settle down and soon returned to Afghanistan again. Moreover, illegally, secretly crossing the border. The Committee had already taken them out for the second time, arranging their fate in Russia.
> Alexander Rutskoy also messed up with the prisoner. Having arrived in Afghanistan, he really wanted to return with the liberated man. Well, the Pakistanis gave him a man. And on the plane, Rutsky’s advisers discovered that he did not speak any of the languages of the peoples of the former USSR. He turned out to be a former soldier of the Afghan army. Well, in general, dozens of organizations, political and humanitarian figures, commissions and committees were circling around the prisoners - making a name for themselves. With all their fuss, it must be admitted that they managed to get out of Afghanistan not only those who wanted it, but also those who were hesitant. But then the results became less and less, and a period of reckless friendship passed in politics. And since 2000, only the Committee for the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers continues the search. Not so much prisoners, but the remains of the dead and the establishment of their identities. Thus, with the help of various sources of information, it was possible to establish the names of almost all those who died during the uprising in the Bada Beri camp. This was the largest camp where the Khaled-ibn-Walid training regiment for training dushmans was based. 12 Soviet soldiers were also kept here, used for hard work and severely beaten.
> On March 26, 1985, having removed the sentries, Soviet prisoners, together with captured soldiers of the Afghan (friendly) army, took possession of the arsenal. The further success of the operation, according to current data, was prevented by a traitor known as Muhammad Islam. The camp was razed to the ground - Pakistan was not at all comfortable with admitting the presence of a dushman camp on its territory. Along with our prisoners, 120 Mujahideen, 6 foreign advisers, and 13 representatives of the Pakistani authorities were killed. From traitors and deserters, these guys turned into heroes.
> However, from the point of view of the law, in accordance with the amnesty of the Supreme Council, there are no traitors in the Afghan war. Even before the amnesty, the authorities were loyal to those who went to the mountains. Their parents and relatives did not know about the contents of secret search cases and received pensions on an equal basis with others.
> It’s a shock for parents to find out that their son is alive, but doesn’t want to come back. And not from any Western country, but from Afghanistan. Today we know for sure about four such people. And, realizing that the parents might not believe it, they were taken to meet their children. The former head of the search department of the Committee for Internationalist Soldiers, Leonid Biryukov, organized such trips in different countries. A mother lived with her son in the United Arab Emirates for a week. He didn't return. Whether there is blood on it, or life there was good - the Committee does not delve into it. We found it, organized a meeting, decided to go, we’ll take it out, no, even after persuasion, it’s his right.
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> Personal guard of Ahmad Shah.
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> Nikolai Bystrov is the main conductor of search expeditions in Afghanistan. His Russian speech is strange, a mixture of southern Kuban dialect with a clearly Arabic accent. When asked when he got married, he answers “in 1371+.” And, after a pause, “that’s in 94 in our opinion.” What is his wife’s name? Laughs in embarrassment. He says that if anyone asked in Afghanistan, he would immediately slap him in the face, he can’t say his wife’s name. Our name is Olya +" In general, as they say in the Committee, Bystrov is stuck between this life and this life.
> Bystrov was captured in 82, after six months of service. Their three young fighters were sent by their “grandfathers” to the village to buy drugs. There is a short-lived battle, two bullet wounds and a shrapnel wound, captivity. Many years later, Bystrov says, he talked with the field commander who captured him. The spirits were lying in ambush on a tip from informants from the Afghan army, who reported that “Shuravi” would enter the village. And then they tied him up and took him from village to village at night for a couple of weeks, beat him severely, then somewhere in the mountains they gave him at least a chance to wash himself. He came out, says Kolya, and there were people standing there. Well, I approached the cleanest one and extended my hand to say hello. He laughed and shook hands. But the security attacked anyway. This is how Kolya met the Pandshir lion, the field commander Ahmad Shah Masud.
> There were 5 more Russians in the mountain camp. One day, Masud announced that everyone can choose their destiny - any country for residence, from the USA to India and Pakistan, or stay with him. Everyone decided to go to the West. Bystrov stayed with Masud.
> Then our offensive began, Masud began to leave the mountain village. He, four guards and Bystrov. Masud gave Bystrov a machine gun and a Chinese-made Kalashnikov. "We walked through the snow, I was the first to climb the pass. I see our missiles, the sound of battle. Below - Masud with nukers. I thought they were checking. I checked the machine gun - the firing pin was not cut off. The horn with cartridges was full. There was an idea to cut everyone off with a burst + But + Didn't cut it"
> Bytrov spent 12 years in Afghanistan. He didn’t fight against his own people, but he defended Masuda honestly in the conditions of the Afghan civil strife. And Ahmad Shah appreciated him, occasionally changing all his personal guards, and always kept Bystrov with him. And when he became a member of the Government of Afghanistan, after the departure of Soviet troops. But when the Taliban began to approach Kabul, I again faced a choice - “either die in a battle with the Taliban, or get married.” Bystrov's wife, although distant, is a relative of Ahmad Shah. They had two children in Afghanistan, but they did not survive. And again, Masud, according to Bystrov, forced him and his wife to go to Russia.
> Bystrov arrived + No work, nowhere to live.. I wanted to go to Afghanistan again. The Afghani wife refused. Their children, born in Russia, survived. The eldest is now 14, the youngest is 6. The middle one is 12, he is an excellent student at school. The wife works as a cleaner, and Bystrov is looking for the living and the remains of the dead.
> -It’s difficult, people are afraid that the Taliban will come to power again. Even through three intermediaries you get in touch with someone who remembers where the Russian’s body was buried, but they don’t risk taking him there. And yet the remains of three more were brought. I know where a few more are buried, I know how to find them+.
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> The war continues.
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> “We almost certainly know whose remains were brought, but I wouldn’t want to say the names until a DNA examination is carried out,” says the current head of the search team, who replaced Leond Biryukav, Alexander Lavrentiev. This week I will go to the Lipetsk region myself to take DNA samples from alleged relatives. Oh, there are such difficulties here, the laboratory is imperfect, they can only give results in the male line+ But at least this+
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> The work on the release of Afghan captives and the search for remains fluctuated along with the ups and downs of big politics. FROM a committee under the Presidents of Russia and the USA, with appropriate powers and money - to self-financing. Like, look for sponsorship money. But the remains found were impossible to identify. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stubbornly replied that money for DNA examination was provided only for those killed in the North Caucasus. And the remains were kept almost piled up until the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan offered his laboratory. Although not free, it is at a reasonable price. And it was this year, in Astana, that the Council of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Independent States decided to continue the search for missing people, their burial places, identification and reburial of them in their homeland. All heads of state of the CIS signed it, but real money went only under the signature of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The rest agree to look, but there is no money yet. However, of the 270 missing people, the majority are Russians - 136.
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> Russian Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov said that the war does not end until the last soldier who died in it is buried. There is nothing to add to this, just keep reminding
Probably, writing about such terrible things on New Year’s holidays is not entirely right. However, on the other hand, this date cannot be changed or changed in any way. After all, it was on New Year’s Eve 1980 that the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan began, which became the starting point of the many years of Afghan war, which cost our country many thousands of lives...
Today, hundreds of books and memoirs, and other various historical materials have been written about this war. But here's what catches your eye. The authors somehow diligently avoid the topic of the death of Soviet prisoners of war on Afghan soil. Yes, some episodes of this tragedy are mentioned in individual memoirs of war participants. But the author of these lines has never come across a systematic, generalizing work on the dead prisoners - although I very closely follow Afghan historical topics. Meanwhile, entire books have already been written (mainly by Western authors) about the same problem from the other side - the death of Afghans at the hands of Soviet troops. There are even Internet sites (including in Russia) that tirelessly expose “the crimes of Soviet troops, who brutally exterminated civilians and Afghan resistance fighters.” But practically nothing is said about the often terrible fate of Soviet captured soldiers.
I didn’t make a reservation - precisely a terrible fate. The thing is that Afghan dushmans rarely killed Soviet prisoners of war doomed to death right away. Lucky were those whom the Afghans wanted to convert to Islam, exchange for their own, or donate as a “gesture of goodwill” to Western human rights organizations, so that they, in turn, would glorify the “generous Mujahideen” throughout the world. But those who were doomed to death... Usually the death of a prisoner was preceded by such terrible tortures and torments, the mere description of which immediately makes one feel uneasy.
Why did the Afghans do this? Apparently, the whole point is in the backward Afghan society, where the traditions of the most radical Islam, which demanded the painful death of an infidel as a guarantee of entering heaven, coexisted with the wild pagan remnants of individual tribes, where the practice included human sacrifice, accompanied by real fanaticism. Often all this served as a means of psychological warfare in order to frighten the Soviet enemy - the mutilated remains of prisoners were often thrown to our military garrisons by dushmans...
As experts say, our soldiers were captured in different ways - some were on unauthorized absence from a military unit, some deserted due to hazing, some were captured by dushmans at a post or in real battle. Yes, today we can condemn these prisoners for their rash actions that led to the tragedy (or, on the contrary, admire those who were captured in a combat situation). But those of them who accepted martyrdom had already atoned for all their obvious and imaginary sins by their death. And therefore, they - at least from a purely Christian point of view - deserve no less bright memory in our hearts than those soldiers of the Afghan war (living and dead) who performed heroic, recognized feats.
Here are just some episodes of the tragedy of Afghan captivity that the author managed to collect from open sources.
The legend of the "red tulip"
From the book of American journalist George Crile “Charlie Wilson’s War” (unknown details of the CIA’s secret war in Afghanistan):
“This is said to be a true story, and although the details have changed over the years, the overall story goes something like this. On the morning of the second day after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Soviet sentry noticed five jute bags on the edge of the runway at Bagram airbase outside Kabul. At first he didn’t attach much importance to it, but then he poked the barrel of the machine gun into the nearest bag and saw blood coming out. Bomb experts were called in to check the bags for booby traps. But they discovered something much more terrible. Each bag contained a young Soviet soldier, wrapped in his own skin. As far as the medical examination was able to determine, these people died a particularly painful death: their skin was cut on the abdomen, and then pulled up and tied above the head."
This type of brutal execution is called “red tulip”, and almost all the soldiers who served on Afghan soil heard about it - a doomed person, injected into unconsciousness with a large dose of a drug, was hung up by his hands. The skin was then trimmed around the entire body and folded upward. When the effect of the dope wore off, the condemned man, having experienced a strong painful shock, first went crazy and then slowly died...
Today it is difficult to say how many of our soldiers met their end in exactly this way. Usually there was and is a lot of talk among Afghan veterans about the “red tulip” - one of the legends was cited by the American Crile. But few veterans can name the specific name of this or that martyr. However, this does not mean that this execution is only an Afghan legend. Thus, the fact of using the “red tulip” on private Viktor Gryaznov, the driver of an army truck who went missing in January 1981, was reliably recorded.
Only 28 years later, Victor’s fellow countrymen, journalists from Kazakhstan, were able to find out the details of his death.
At the beginning of January 1981, Viktor Gryaznov and warrant officer Valentin Yarosh received the task of going to the city of Puli-Khumri to a military warehouse to receive cargo. A few days later they set off on their return journey. But on the way the convoy was attacked by dushmans. The truck Gryaznov was driving broke down, and then he and Valentin Yarosh took up arms. The battle lasted about half an hour... The ensign's body was later found not far from the battle site, with a broken head and cut out eyes. But the dushmans dragged Victor with them. What happened to him later is evidenced by a certificate sent to Kazakh journalists in response to their official request from Afghanistan:
“At the beginning of 1981, the mujahideen of Abdul Razad Askhakzai’s detachment captured a shuravi (Soviet) during a battle with the infidels, and called himself Viktor Ivanovich Gryaznov. He was asked to become a devout Muslim, a mujahid, a defender of Islam, and to participate in ghazavat - a holy war - with infidel infidels. Gryaznov refused to become a true believer and destroy the Shuravi. By the verdict of the Sharia court, Gryaznov was sentenced to death - a red tulip, the sentence was carried out."
Of course, everyone is free to think about this episode as they please, but personally it seems to me that Private Gryaznov accomplished a real feat by refusing to commit betrayal and accepting a brutal death for it. One can only guess how many more of our guys in Afghanistan committed the same heroic deeds, which, unfortunately, remain unknown to this day.
Foreign witnesses say
However, in the arsenal of the dushmans, in addition to the “red tulip,” there were many more brutal ways of killing Soviet prisoners.
Italian journalist Oriana Falacci, who visited Afghanistan and Pakistan several times in the 1980s, testifies. During these trips, she finally became disillusioned with the Afghan mujahideen, whom Western propaganda then portrayed exclusively as noble fighters against communism. The “noble fighters” turned out to be real monsters in human form:
“In Europe they didn’t believe me when I talked about what they usually did with Soviet prisoners. How they sawed off the Soviets' arms and legs... The victims did not die immediately. Only after some time the victim was finally beheaded and the severed head was used to play “buzkashi” - an Afghan version of polo. As for the arms and legs, they were sold as trophies in the bazaar...”
English journalist John Fullerton describes something similar in his book “The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan”:
“Death is the usual end for those Soviet prisoners who were communists... In the first years of the war, the fate of Soviet prisoners was often terrible. One group of prisoners, who were flayed, were hanged on hooks in a butcher's shop. Another prisoner became the central toy of an attraction called “buzkashi” - a cruel and savage polo of Afghans galloping on horses, snatching a headless sheep from each other instead of a ball. Instead, they used a prisoner. Alive! And he was literally torn to pieces.”
And here is another shocking confession from a foreigner. This is an excerpt from Frederick Forsyth's novel The Afghan. Forsyth is known for his closeness to the British intelligence services who helped the Afghan dushmans, and therefore, knowing the matter, he wrote the following:
“The war was brutal. Few prisoners were taken, and those who died quickly could consider themselves lucky. The mountaineers hated Russian pilots especially fiercely. Those captured alive were left in the sun, with a small incision made in the stomach, so that the insides swelled, spilled out and were fried until death brought relief. Sometimes prisoners were given to women, who used knives to skin them alive...”
Beyond the Human Mind
All this is confirmed in our sources. For example, in the book-memoir of international journalist Iona Andronov, who repeatedly visited Afghanistan:
“After the battles near Jalalabad, I was shown in the ruins of a suburban village the mutilated corpses of two Soviet soldiers captured by the Mujahideen. The bodies ripped open by daggers looked like a sickening bloody mess. I have heard about such savagery many times: the knackers cut off the ears and noses of captives, cut open their stomachs and tore out their intestines, cut off their heads and stuffed them inside the ripped peritoneum. And if they captured several prisoners, they tortured them one by one in front of the next martyrs.”
Andronov in his book recalls his friend, military translator Viktor Losev, who had the misfortune of being captured wounded:
“I learned that... the army authorities in Kabul, through Afghan intermediaries, were able to buy Losev’s corpse from the Mujahideen for a lot of money... The body of a Soviet officer given to us was subjected to such desecration that I still don’t dare to describe it. And I don’t know: whether he died from a battle wound or the wounded man was tortured to death by monstrous torture.The chopped remains of Victor in tightly sealed zinc were taken home by the “black tulip”.
By the way, the fate of captured Soviet military and civilian advisers was truly terrible. For example, in 1982, military counterintelligence officer Viktor Kolesnikov, who served as an adviser in one of the units of the Afghan government army, was tortured to death by dushmans. These Afghan soldiers went over to the side of the dushmans, and as a “gift” they “presented” a Soviet officer and translator to the mujahideen. USSR KGB Major Vladimir Garkavyi recalls:
“Kolesnikov and the translator were tortured for a long time and in a sophisticated manner. The “spirits” were masters in this matter. Then both their heads were cut off and, having packed their tortured bodies into bags, they were thrown into the roadside dust on the Kabul-Mazar-i-Sharif highway, not far from the Soviet checkpoint.”
As we see, both Andronov and Garkavy refrain from detailing the deaths of their comrades, sparing the reader’s psyche. But one can guess about these tortures - at least from the memoirs of former KGB officer Alexander Nezdoli:
“And how many times, due to inexperience, and sometimes as a result of elementary neglect of safety measures, not only internationalist soldiers died, but also Komsomol workers seconded by the Komsomol Central Committee to create youth organizations. I remember the case of a blatantly brutal reprisal against one of these guys. He was scheduled to fly from Herat to Kabul. But in a hurry, he forgot the folder with documents and returned for it, and while catching up with the group, he ran into the dushmans. Having captured him alive, the “spirits” cruelly mocked him, cut off his ears, ripped open his stomach and filled it and his mouth with earth. Then the still living Komsomol member was impaled and, demonstrating his Asian cruelty, was carried in front of the population of the villages.
After this became known to everyone, each of the special forces of our team “Karpaty” made it a rule to carry an F-1 grenade in the left lapel of his jacket pocket. So that, in case of injury or a hopeless situation, one does not fall into the hands of the dushmans alive...”
A terrible picture appeared before those who, as part of their duty, had to collect the remains of tortured people - military counterintelligence officers and medical workers. Many of these people are still silent about what they saw in Afghanistan, and this is understandable. But some still decide to speak. This is what a nurse at a Kabul military hospital once told the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich:
“All March, cut off arms and legs were dumped right there, near the tents...
The corpses... They lay in a separate room... Half naked, with their eyes gouged out,
Once - with a carved star on his stomach... Previously, in a movie about a civilian
I saw this during the war.”
No less amazing things were told to the writer Larisa Kucherova (author of the book “KGB in Afghanistan”) by the former head of the special department of the 103rd Airborne Division, Colonel Viktor Sheiko-Koshuba. Once he had a chance to investigate an incident involving the disappearance of an entire convoy of our trucks along with their drivers - thirty-two people led by a warrant officer. This convoy left Kabul to the Karcha reservoir area to get sand for construction needs. The column left and... disappeared. Only on the fifth day, the paratroopers of the 103rd division, alerted, found what was left of the drivers, who, as it turned out, had been captured by dushmans:
“Mutilated, dismembered remains of human bodies, dusted with thick viscous dust, were scattered on the dry rocky ground. The heat and time have already done their job, but what people have created defies any description! Empty sockets of gouged out eyes, staring at the indifferent empty sky, ripped and gutted bellies, cut off genitals... Even those who had seen a lot in this war and considered themselves impenetrable men lost their nerves... After some time, our intelligence officers received information that that after the boys were captured, the dushmans led them tied up through the villages for several days, and civilians with frantic fury stabbed the defenseless boys, mad with horror, with knives. Men and women, old and young... Having quenched their bloody thirst, a crowd of people, overcome with a feeling of animal hatred, threw stones at the half-dead bodies. And when the rain of stones knocked them down, dushmans armed with daggers got down to business...
Such monstrous details became known from a direct participant in that massacre, captured during the next operation. Calmly looking into the eyes of the Soviet officers present, he spoke in detail, savoring every detail, about the abuse to which the unarmed boys were subjected. It was clear to the naked eye that at that moment the prisoner received special pleasure from the very memories of torture...”
The dushmans really attracted the civilian Afghan population to their brutal actions, who, it seems, eagerly participated in mocking our military personnel. This is what happened with the wounded soldiers of our special forces company, who in April 1985 were caught in a Dushman ambush in the Maravary gorge, near the Pakistani border. The company, without proper cover, entered one of the Afghan villages, after which a real massacre began there. This is how the head of the Operational Group of the Ministry of Defense of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, General Valentin Varennikov, described it in his memoirs
“The company spread throughout the village. Suddenly, from the heights to the right and left, several large-caliber machine guns began firing at once. All the soldiers and officers jumped out of the courtyards and houses and scattered around the village, seeking refuge somewhere at the foot of the mountains, from where there was intense shooting. It was a fatal mistake. If the company had taken refuge in these adobe houses and behind thick duvals, which cannot be penetrated not only by large-caliber machine guns, but also by grenade launchers, then the personnel could have fought for a day or more until help arrived.
In the very first minutes, the company commander was killed and the radio station was destroyed. This created even greater discord in the actions. The personnel rushed about at the foot of the mountains, where there were neither stones nor bushes that would shelter them from the lead rain. Most of the people were killed, the rest were wounded.
And then the dushmans came down from the mountains. There were ten to twelve of them. They consulted. Then one climbed onto the roof and began observing, two went along the road to a neighboring village (it was a kilometer away), and the rest began to bypass our soldiers. The wounded were dragged closer to the village with a belt loop around their foot, and all those killed were given a control shot in the head.
About an hour later, the two returned, but already accompanied by nine teenagers aged ten to fifteen years and three large dogs - Afghan shepherds. The leaders gave them certain instructions, and with screams and shouts they rushed to finish off our wounded with knives, daggers and hatchets. The dogs bit our soldiers by the throat, the boys cut off their arms and legs, cut off their noses and ears, ripped open their stomachs, and gouged out their eyes. And the adults encouraged them and laughed approvingly.
Thirty to forty minutes later it was all over. The dogs were licking their lips. Two older teenagers cut off two heads, impaled them, raised them like a banner, and the entire team of frenzied executioners and sadists went back to the village, taking with them all the weapons of the dead.”
Varenikov writes that only junior sergeant Vladimir Turchin remained alive then. The soldier hid in the river reeds and saw with his own eyes how his comrades were tortured. Only the next day he managed to get out to his people. After the tragedy, Varenikov himself wanted to see him. But the conversation did not work out, because as the general writes:
“He was shaking all over. He didn’t just tremble a little, no, his whole body trembled - his face, his arms, his legs, his torso. I took him by the shoulder, and this trembling was transmitted to my hand. It seemed like he had a vibration disease. Even if he said something, he chattered his teeth, so he tried to answer questions with a nod of his head (agreed or denied). The poor guy didn’t know what to do with his hands; they were shaking very much.
I realized that a serious conversation with him would not work. He sat him down and, taking him by the shoulders and trying to calm him down, began to console him, saying kind words that everything was over, that he needed to get into shape. But he continued to tremble. His eyes expressed all the horror of what he had experienced. He was mentally seriously injured."
Probably, such a reaction on the part of a 19-year-old boy is not surprising - even fully grown, experienced men could be moved by the sight they saw. They say that even today, almost three decades later, Turchin still has not come to his senses and categorically refuses to talk to anyone about the Afghan issue...
God is his judge and comforter! Like all those who had the opportunity to see with their own eyes all the savage inhumanity of the Afghan war.
Probably the most famous of the Soviet prisoners of war in Afghanistan can be called Major General of Aviation, Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Rutsky, former vice-president of the Russian Federation. In April 1988, he was appointed deputy commander of the air force of the 40th Army and sent to Afghanistan. Despite his high position, Rutskoy himself took part in combat missions. On August 4, 1988, his plane was shot down. Alexander Vladimirovich ejected and five days later was captured by the dushmans of Gulbidin Hekmatyar. They beat him, hung him on a rack... Then they handed him over to Pakistani special forces. It turned out that the CIA was interested in the downed pilot. They tried to recruit him, force him to reveal the details of the operation to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, offered new documents and various benefits in the West... Fortunately, information that he was in Pakistani captivity reached Moscow, and in the end, after difficult negotiations , Rutskoi was released.
There is quite a lot of information about how dushmans treated Soviet soldiers during the Afghan war of 1979-1989. But there is almost no information about the presence of Afghan militants in Soviet captivity. Why?
An eye for an eye…
For a long time, the heroic image of the Soviet internationalist warrior was promoted in our country. Much remained behind the scenes, and only in the post-perestroika years did individual pieces of information about the other side of the war in Afghanistan begin to leak into the media. Then the public learned about the former Soviet soldiers who voluntarily went over to the side of the Mujahideen, and about the atrocities that the latter committed with our prisoners, and about the cruelty that our soldiers and officers showed towards the local population...
Thus, journalist A. Nureyev was once told about a paratrooper officer who personally shot seven captured dushmans. The journalist was shocked: how could this be, after all, there is the Geneva International Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, ratified by the USSR in 1954. It states: “Prisoners of war must always be treated humanely... Prisoners of war may not be subjected to physical violence... Prisoners of war must also always enjoy protection, in particular from any act of violence or intimidation, from insults and the curiosity of the crowd. The use of reprisals against them is prohibited..."
If at the very beginning of the war there were virtually no acts of violence against prisoners and Afghans by Soviet military personnel, then the situation changed dramatically. The reason for this was the numerous atrocities the Mujahideen committed against our military. Soviet soldiers who were captured were subjected to sophisticated torture, skinned alive, dismembered, as a result of which they died in terrible agony... And it very often happened that after their death, their comrades in the unit went to the nearest village and burned houses there, killed civilians, and raped women... As they say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...
Torture and execution
As for the captured dushmans, they were often tortured. According to eyewitnesses, prisoners, for example, were suspended in a rubber loop from the barrel of a tank gun, so that their toes barely touched the ground. They could also drive needles under their nails, as the Nazis did during the Great Patriotic War. At best, the prisoners were simply severely beaten. The role of the executioner was usually performed by some ensign who had great physical strength.
In the summer of 1981, during a military raid in the Gardez region, a detachment of paratroopers captured six Mujahideen. The commander gave the order to transport them by helicopter to headquarters. But when the helicopter had already taken off, the brigade commander from headquarters sent a radiogram: “I have nothing to feed the prisoners!” The detachment commander contacted the officer accompanying the prisoners, and he decided... to release them. A small nuance: at that time the helicopter was at an altitude of 2000 meters and was not planning to land. That is, the dushmans were simply thrown down from a great height. And when the last of them left the cabin, a ramrod from a Makarov pistol was driven into his ear... By the way, the episode with the dropping of prisoners from a helicopter was far from isolated.
Such things did not always go unpunished. The press received information about how a military tribunal sentenced the deputy commander of a regiment stationed in the Ghazni region and one of the company commanders to capital punishment for the execution of twelve captured Mujahideen. The rest of the participants in the execution received impressive prison sentences.
Murder or exchange?
Former special forces soldiers say that they were generally not very keen on taking the Mujahideen prisoner, since there was a lot of “fuss and hassle” with them. Often the “spirits” were killed immediately. Basically they were treated like bandits and interrogated with partiality. They were usually kept in prisons, and not in military units.
There were, however, special camps for Afghan prisoners of war. The dushmans were treated more or less tolerably there, since they were being prepared for exchange for Soviet prisoners. The Mujahideen bargained, demanding that the exchange be not one to one, but, say, for one “shuravi” - six Afghans. As a rule, a consensus was eventually reached.
No matter how much we are called to humanism, war is war. At all times, the warring parties did not spare their opponents, tortured prisoners, killed women and children... And violence, as a rule, only begets violence... Events in Afghanistan once again proved this.