IV. At war
Our company's combat operations took place in the vicinity of Kabul, near Charikar, Jebal Ussaraj, Bagram and Gulbahar, three operations in Panjshir, fought twice in the Togap Gorge, in the Sarobi region, near Jalalabad in the Tsaukai Gorge, beyond Kunar near the Pakistani border, near Gardez and in other places.
I didn’t feel hatred for the enemy and there was nothing to take revenge for. There was a fighting passion, a desire to win, to show oneself. When losses occurred, a feeling of revenge was mixed in, but in battle the combatants are equal. It’s bad when some people take out their feelings of revenge for their fallen comrades on civilians.
At first, no one really knew who we had to fight with; we were aware that the enemy was cruel and insidious. During the war, the Mujahideen began to be taken more seriously; they knew that they could commit bold, unexpected and desperate acts of sabotage. For example, they seized several regular buses on the road, disembarked the passengers, and drove through the checkpoints to the center of the village, shot and... left.
In designating the enemy, the name “Basmachi”, known in Central Asia, was first used, but then they were most often called “Dushmans”, translated from Afghan as “enemies”. By the way, it’s almost the same in Mari. This is where the derivative form “perfume” comes from. Very fortunately, they, like spirits, could appear from anywhere - from the mountains, from underground, from a village, from Soviet or Afghan units. Some dressed in Soviet military uniforms and spoke Russian better than our Turkmen and Uzbek fighters. The name “Mujahideen” (fighters for the faith) was known, but was not popular. Afghans called Russians “shuravi” from the word “shura” (council) in the meaning Soviet.
I saw leaflets and caricatures of enemies, they were Afghan leaflets, I still have one. I also saw posters with portraits of dushman leaders. The most common portrait was of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who led the Islamic Party of Afghanistan (IPA).
There are two reasons for our participation in that war. The main thing was to support the pro-Soviet regime and an additional reason was to protect our southern borders. Observing the poverty of the bulk of the population, we sincerely believed that we needed to raise their standard of living to ours, help them overcome difficulties, and protect them from rebels and foreign interference. That's how it was understood then.
The first battle took place on February 23, 1980, near the road north of Charikar, somewhere in the area of the Bayani-Bala village. Fighters for the faith approached the road and harassed the passing columns with shelling. We parachuted out of combat vehicles and, under the cover of machine guns, went on the attack in a chain. The rebels, firing back, began to retreat. We ran through fields and rolled down terraces. They have many terraces, since the country is mountainous and there is little flat terrain, and even fertile one. We didn’t catch up with them then and retreated according to orders; the commander did not want us to move away from the road. The most difficult thing then was to hold the chain, not to run ahead and not to lag behind. A group of fighters took a roadside house. Although they are made of clay, they are built like fortresses, and it is not always easy to take them with small arms. The house was the key of defense for the spirits. Sergeant Ulitenko shot an old man with a gun there. Initially, the dushmans were poorly armed: flintlock and hunting rifles, English “Boers”, and then in small quantities; there were few automatic weapons. Not everyone even had bullets; some fired shotgun pellets. They fought with whatever was at hand - with an ax, a stone, a knife. It’s bold, of course, but reckless with such weapons to go against artillery, machine guns, machine guns and rifles. In this battle we were dealing with a disorganized, untrained and poorly armed militia. Then four of our soldiers almost died: Vladimir Dobysh, Alexander Bayev, Alexander Ivanov and Pyotr Markelov. They did not hear the order to withdraw and went so far into the village that, in the end, they were attacked by superior forces of dushmans, who fired at them from behind a duval (clay fence). They did not have grenades, and they could not throw them at the dushmans through the duct, and bullets from machine guns did not pierce it. Only sniper Sasha Ivanov pierced the blower with his rifle and hit at least one. The rest of the guys, using their advantage in automation, lay down behind a pile of rubble and shot at any head that appeared above the fence. The appearance of the Afghan vehicle saved us. The soldiers stopped her, sat down and left the battlefield. The dushmans did not shoot at their villagers. The Afghan took our guys very close and, citing a breakdown, stopped, but this was enough to break away from his pursuers. The soldiers left the car and, holding their weapons at the ready, walked through the bazaar. The driver deceived him; as soon as the soldiers left, he drove away, but without him the guys could have died. They reached their home safely. Everyone was wounded. Bayev was hit in the back by a bullet, Dobysh received a through wound to the shoulder, and the rest were scratched. Markelov received several pellets under the eye. We later joked that they wanted to shoot him like a squirrel in the eye, so as not to spoil the skin.
The hardships of the war were perceived as written in the oath: “they steadfastly endured all the hardships and deprivations of military service.” A person gets used to everything: bad weather, inconvenience, and constant danger.
The losses and injuries were depressing. In two years, 17 people from our company died, and every 6th was wounded. In reality, the losses were greater, since I do not count the deaths of the signalmen, mortarmen, sappers, tank crews, air controllers, artillery spotters, etc. assigned to the company.
Many of those I wrote about above died. As written in the “Book of Memory”, on December 16, 1980, Alexander Bayev died from a severe infectious disease. You can write it this way if drug overdose is classified as an infectious disease. I was an orderly at the time and was the first to discover during the climb that he had died. One of the soldiers with whom we tried to “wake up” Bayev shouted to the others that he was cold. Sergeant M. Alimov, not understanding the meaning, said: “Let’s take him here to the stove, we’ll warm him up.” The doctor came running, but it was too late; the rescue was about 30 minutes late.
Deputy Ensign A.S. On June 6, 1981, Afanasyev suffered a blown skull on the road to Sarobi near the village of Gogamunda. I remember one warrant officer medic. When he first arrived from the Union and asked me how it was here, I said that they were shooting and killing. He cheerfully responded to this that, as a medic, he would not participate in battles. But in war, everyone has their own destiny. One has been constantly in battle for two years without a single scratch, the other dies at headquarters. In the same battle, when an armored personnel carrier was hit by a grenade launcher, this ensign’s head was torn off, only the lower jaw was hanging on his neck.
When we were standing on the Bagram road in the Karabagh region in the spring of 1981, such an incident occurred. Staff officers met the cryptographer at the Kabul airfield. He studied for six months in the Union and was supposed to work at the headquarters. We hurried, did not wait for escort, and five of us drove to the unit in a UAZ: a sergeant driver, a cryptographer, a senior lieutenant, a captain and a lieutenant colonel. The dushmans seized a ZIL on the road, overtook a UAZ, blocked the road and shot at the approaching car. The driver and cryptographer were killed, the senior lieutenant was seriously wounded. The captain and lieutenant colonel ran away. The first was shot in the back, but survived, the second was not injured. The Mujahideen cut the throat of the wounded senior lieutenant and went into the green area. The car, riddled with blood and spattered with brains, stood at the post for several days, recalling the proximity of death and the need for vigilance and caution. The cryptographer served in Afghanistan for several hours without even being included in the unit lists.
On September 27, the driver of the armored personnel carrier, Urusyan Derenik Sandroevich, died along with two soldiers. Their car fell into the abyss. It was completely by chance that I did not go with them. Company commander Senior Lieutenant Kiselyov and platoon commander Senior Lieutenant Gennady Travkin and tanker Senior Lieutenant Valery Cherevik died in the same armored personnel carrier on November 7, 1981 in Sarobi. Soldier Mikhail Rotary from Moldova had his leg torn off at the knee by a mine, and we took him down from the mountains. Then I corresponded with him. He was given a prosthesis, and he worked at the military registration and enlistment office.
Each injury and death is a separate sad story.
In between fights, of course, they remembered home. In difficult times, memories of home and plans for the future strengthened the spirit.
When they went on the attack, they didn’t shout anything. When you run through the mountains in thin air, you can’t really shout, besides, we tried to listen to commands and sounds of battle, in the mountains the sound can be misleading due to the echo. We did not have psychological mass attacks on the enemy, and there was no need to shout. Most often, clashes took place in the form of skirmishes at long or medium distance; when moving forward, the enemy, as a rule, retreated. Another form of combat is action in the village and “greenery”, where contact with the enemy even reached hand-to-hand combat. Close combat also broke out when being ambushed or in the event of an unexpected collision or detection of the enemy.
I had to participate in events that were reflected in specialized and memoir literature. I came across one fact in the memoirs of Colonel General B.V. Gromov "Limited contingent". In 1980, he was the chief of staff of our 108th division. The general writes that at the end of May, in the middle of the day, 181 regiments were fired upon by dushmans and that as a result of the shelling, almost all warehouses with food and ammunition supplies were blown up, the regiment almost lost its battle flag, an officer and five soldiers were killed, the tank in which they climbed up. Gromov notes the professional shelling and writes that even now he does not know what weapon it was fired from - the dushmans did not yet have artillery, rockets - and even more so, and only mortars were used. The general suspects the Afghan military, whose training ground was nearby. This event was noted in other publications. V. Mayorov and I. Mayorova write this: “It was the last day of the second ten days of May. The shelling of the 181st Motorized Rifle Regiment began at noon in bright sunshine, when it was difficult to determine where the shooting was coming from. Almost all the ammunition and food depots were blown up into the air, and the regiment almost lost its battle flag.” It is further noted that an officer and five soldiers died while trying to fight the fire with tanks. The authors are also perplexed as to the cause of the explosion: “It was unclear who opened fire: the ‘spirits’ from the surrounding mountains or the Afghan soldiers from the tank brigade?”
Chief of Staff B.V. Gromov, of course, received official information in the form of a report, most likely from the commander of the 181st Motorized Rifle Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Nasyrovich Makhmudov. I can clarify something in this matter as a witness, although I cannot vouch for the final truth.
The doubts of the general and other authors are justified; it was not easy to blow up the warehouses. They were located in a hollow between the hills (by Afghan standards they cannot be called large, but for the inhabitants of the plains they would seem impressive). It was impossible to fire at the warehouses with direct fire; our units were stationed everywhere on the approaches, the area around was clearly visible - a relatively flat desert without any vegetation, only thorns. The shelling could only be carried out from a very long distance and from a mortar.
At this time, I was sent to carry out the combat mission of protecting and defending a repair battalion (rembat), which was located in front of the Afghan training ground and was engaged in the repair of Afghan equipment; in fact, there were two repair battalions. They had their own internal security around the perimeter, but external security at extended posts was carried out by motorized riflemen. There was also barbed wire, cobwebs and minefields. At the time of the incident, I was on duty and, sitting on the armored personnel carrier, conducted observation, because. it had a better view. There was a rembat behind us and we only had to look towards the warehouses and our other units, located at a distance of 1-1.5 km. I saw and heard the first fairly strong explosion in the area of the warehouses immediately, because at that moment I was looking there. It was quiet for some time, then the shells began to explode, scatter to the sides and, the further, the stronger. We have increased our vigilance just in case. The shell explosions began to get closer, but the warehouses were not close and they were protected by mountains, so not all the ammunition flew beyond them. However, several shells exploded at a distance of 500 m, and one 300 m from us.
Now my thoughts. I have a very big doubt that spooks or the Afghan military are to blame for the explosion of warehouses. As I already said, they could not get close to the warehouses, especially during the day. From a long distance and with one mine, it is extremely difficult to immediately hit a target hidden in a ravine. In addition, the mortar is not an accurate weapon. I did not see any flying mine (the flight of the mine can be traced). If we assume that the Afghan military was shooting from the firing range, then I did not hear the shot, and the firing range was located behind the rembat behind my back.
I cannot completely rule out the version of the shelling, but there are no facts to confirm it. A version of the explosion in the warehouse as a result of careless handling of weapons spread among the soldiers. It was based on the stories of those who were in the warehouses or near them. I listened to different fighters many times, and they said approximately the same thing. The storekeepers, out of curiosity or some other consideration, began to dismantle the NURS (Unguided Rocket Projectile), which led to an explosion, which in turn caused detonation and a fire. The heated ammunition began to explode. The disaster was aggravated by the fact that almost all the warehouses were located together: with ammunition, provisions, and things, and there was also a regimental hospital there. It was convenient to protect and use the warehouses, but it also burned down all at once. Subsequently, the warehouses were located separately. I was later at the scene of the explosion, walked on the scorched earth and saw a burnt tank. Indeed, the tanker tried to prevent the fire that had started, but did not have time.
If the regiment commander had reported the destruction of warehouses as a result of ordinary negligence and violation of discipline, he could have been punished, which is why they attributed everything to the dushmans. If we deal with all sorts of emergency situations in Afghanistan, it will be revealed that the dushmans performed many “feats” unknown to them. In war, it is convenient to attribute any incidents to combat losses. A soldier drowned - they reported that he was killed by a sniper, a car fell into an abyss due to a drunk driver - shelling from a grenade launcher from an ambush. One of our Uzbeks, having nothing better to do, began to sharpen an electric detonator with a file and caused a spark, and two of his fingers were torn off and both himself and the person sitting next to him were cut with fragments. The wounds were given out as the result of a mortar attack, otherwise it could have been classified as a crossbow. Physics should have been taught better at school. I looked through the “Book of Memory of Soviet Soldiers Who Died in Afghanistan” and became convinced that the deaths of many, whose deaths I know for sure, were described completely differently from what actually happened. In the posthumous award submission, it was required to state the circumstances of the feat, so the staff composed it. Moreover, even in those cases where death occurred in battle, it is described in a completely different way.
In battle, most often they did not think about death and wounds, otherwise fear would bind all movements and then trouble would not be avoided. They only thought about possible death when there were losses and shortly before transferring to the reserve. There was no fear of the commanders; we were not sent on obviously disastrous missions. There were, of course, officers who thought more about awards than about soldiers. For example, when another company of our battalion destroyed a group of dushmans in the gorge, the chief of staff, Captain Aliyev, having examined the weapons near the dead through binoculars, began to say: “Let’s go down, they have mortars there, let’s collect weapons.” The presence of captured weapons clearly demonstrated success, and one could count on rewards. To this, battalion commander Zimbolevsky told him: “You need it, you go down,” and did not give the order to go down into the gorge. In the mountains, those on the crest always have a huge advantage over those below in the hollows. We rarely went down into the ravines, and if we did, it was only with cover. They almost always moved along mountain ridges.
In June-July 1980 we fought in the Gardez area. Then the first close meeting with the dushman took place. Most often the enemy was invisible - he would shoot from a distant line or from a vineyard and retreat. If you saw it, it was out of reach of small arms, 1.5-3 km away - in the mountains visibility is good due to the clean thin air. There were cases when dushmans could not withstand the approach of significant forces and, like hares from under the bushes, ran away from ambushes, throwing away their weapons. Most often it was not possible to shoot such “hares”; several mines were sent after them. We were then on the first raid and unsuccessfully pursued the gang. We climb one mountain, they are already on another, we are on that one, and they are already on the third. “And the eye sees, but the tooth numbs.” In the vanguard there were only light small arms, the mortars were behind. When they drove out the dushmans, they themselves descended from the mountains into the valley. As always, we walked along the path in a chain. I was fourth from the bottom in the platoon. Suddenly an unexpected shot sounded, and the bullet hit very close to the feet of the last soldier. He thought that one of our people had fired an accidental shot and began asking loudly. Everyone stopped and began to look at each other in bewilderment - no one shot. These are spirits, we decided, and we began to examine the rocks above. So, they probably would have left without finding anyone, but the shooting dushman miscalculated. The fact is that they often attacked the latter, and those walking in front, not seeing where the shot came from, could not understand who was shooting. In our case, the last one was not the last; another platoon followed us with a small gap, and the soldier who came out from behind the rock managed to notice where the shot was fired from. Dushman was not sitting on the mountain, as we thought, but under our feet in a small cave near the path. The soldier who saw him opened fire and began throwing grenades. Everyone immediately lay down. I found myself in the line of fire above the cave and, spread out among the stones, I watched as fragments clicked on the stones around me and bullets ricocheted off; I didn’t want to die from my own people. Dushman managed to fire another unsuccessful shot and was killed. The corpse was pulled out of the cave. Grenade fragments tore his body and knocked out his eye. It was a boy of about 17 years old with a large-caliber old hard drive. He was a brave fighter, but he was unlucky.
In August, he had to participate in the second Panjshir operation against the formations of Ahmad Shah Massoud. The Afghan company and I approached the mountain to the right of the entrance to the Panjshir Gorge. Very close we saw a man quickly climbing the mountain. They started shouting at him to stop, but he didn’t pay attention and quickly got up. He could have been shot, but no one shot. They opened fire only when he began to hide behind the rocks, but it was too late; the mines fired in his wake did not hit him either. It was a messenger with a message about our advance, and he managed to warn his people.
There were no people in the nearest villages and no weapons were found either. Before sunset they fired at us from rifles. We saw a group of dushmans moving on a nearby mountain and even aimed a helicopter at them. The bomb exploded spectacularly at the very top. We calmed down and acted very carefree. The soldiers basked in the rays of the setting sun on the western illuminated side of the ridge. When a sniper bullet hit near one soldier, everyone was blown away by the wind - we ran to the eastern shadowy slope and opened fire back. The night in the mountains was cool. In the morning they shot at us from a house on the slope. We aimed helicopters at him and they dropped a bomb. It exploded 100 meters to the left of the dushmans’ position. The aircraft controller corrected and the next bomb fell... another 100 meters closer to us. The officer explained once again where to throw the bomb and it flew... towards us. The soldiers from the affected area ran incredibly fast, hearing the approaching howl of the bomb, then lay down. No one was injured from the explosion, but they did not explain the target location to the helicopter pilots anymore. This was the only case in my memory of such inept interaction between helicopter pilots and aircraft controller; usually the helicopters helped us out a lot.
Occasionally engaging in skirmishes, we went to the river in the gorge and crossed it. Then for several days they advanced deeper into the valley. Sometimes they sat on the mountains, insuring the advancing units, and monitored the progress of the battle, then changed roles. When we passed through occupied villages, we saw killed dushmans and residents who just happened to turn up, smoking houses and other traces of recent battles.
Then came the order to leave. This often happened - they came in, crushed or drove out the rebels, then they left and the dushmans returned there again. The soldiers joked: "People's power has been established - expel the people." If Afghan troops remained in the occupied territory, they could not hold out for long without our help. Our troops could not stand as garrisons throughout the country - the contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was indeed limited.
While leaving the gorge they fired at us, we responded with hurricane fire. The dushmans were mining the road, but a tank with a trawl was ahead of us and cleared the way. However, the ambulance UAZ still blew up - its bridge width was narrow, it did not fall into the rut and, in the end, ran over a mine. The wounded driver was pulled out, and the doctor and the orderly were burned to death. By evening everything had calmed down and there were only a few kilometers left before leaving Panjshir. We were about to go to bed in the armored personnel carriers, but then the column stopped. Dushmans blew up the road. There were rocks on the right, a raging mountain river on the left, and a failure tens of meters ahead. The only good thing was that it was night and the dushmans could not shoot. On the radio we heard a short order from battalion commander Zimbalevsky: “Soldiers, to the mountains.” I really didn’t want to get out of the cozy armored personnel carriers and climb these boring mountains. It was very dark and only the silhouettes of the mountains could be distinguished against the background of the starry sky. For every peak they strived for, a new one opened up, and so on. It had rained in the evening and the stones were slippery. Someone said that climbers are prohibited from climbing at night, especially after rain, but that’s for climbers. In my group, I crawled first and kept peering into the stones, waiting for the flash of a shot from the entrenched dushmans. At dawn we occupied the ridge of the surrounding mountains, built shelters from stones and began to wait. They knew that the dushmans would come to fire at the stuck column. In the morning a flock of sheep with three shepherds came towards us. They did not expect to meet Russians there, they tried to escape, but several bursts of fire left them on the rocks. Using shepherds for reconnaissance was a well-known enemy technique. Unfortunately, we were not able to fully enjoy the joy of victory. A group of 20 dushmans was noticed through binoculars as soon as it began to rise. The officers called helicopters from the nearby Bagram airfield and they shot them in the middle of the slope, when they had nowhere to hide. However, the dushmans walked without weapons. The officers concluded that it was somewhere near us on the mountains. We tried to search, but to no avail. Only on the third day was the order to descend when the sappers restored the road. The battalion immediately left the ridge and ran down, loaded onto the vehicles and safely drove out of the gorge. We worked then clearly and successfully; Ahmad Shah’s plan to lock us in the gorge and cause damage did not come true.
Afghan historian Abd al-Hafiz Mansur in his book “Panjshir in the Age of Jihad” writes that Russian and government troops were defeated and lost more than 500 people in this operation, while the Mujahideen allegedly lost only 25 soldiers, but this is a very strong distortion. Our company had no losses at all during the Second Panjshir, and I also did not observe any significant damage in other units.
We had no cases of betrayal or capture. People died and disappeared without a trace - it happened. In Panjshir, a tall, thin Russian guy from the commandant's platoon from Tbilisi went missing. He had poor eyesight, and after the regiment was attacked and retreated into the gorge under the cover of artillery from the mountains, he was missing. For several days they took the villages and surrounding mountains in battle, searched through the ravines, lost several people dead and wounded, but this soldier was never found.
One incident of crossing a ravine must be related. In September 1980, we fought in the Tsaukai Gorge area in Kunar province, not far from Pakistan. The retreating dushmans were pursued along the ridge, and there were short skirmishes. We spent the night on the slope. In the morning, helicopters arrived and dropped food and, for some reason, ammunition on us. We had more than enough of ours left, these were extra, but we had to take them. When the company had already set out, a soldier came up to me and said that he had found zinc and ammunition in the bushes. We carried him up the mountain. It was a heavy and awkward to carry rectangular box containing a 1080 5.45mm AK-74 round. Several times we wanted to throw away this zinc, because of which we were considerably behind our company and were already in the rearguard of the battalion. But every time, after a short rest, they grabbed him and carried him up the mountain. We knew that dushmans were following us, and even if we hid the zinc, they could find it and these bullets would fly at us and our comrades. So, sweating profusely, we brought the cartridges to the top, where the battalion was gathering. There the company soldiers dismantled the cartridges.
By evening we found ourselves in front of a ravine. It would have taken at least a day to get around it; we needed to go to the opposite ridge. The climate in the Kunar and Jalalabad region is subtropical and the mountains are covered with forests, which made operations even more difficult. The battalion commander risked crossing the ravine in a straight line. The battalion moved in parts. When the first company was already on the opposite ridge, the Afghan company was below, and our third was still on this side. The problems started when we went down and started getting water. They started shooting from the slope we had just left. We quickly began to climb the opposite slope. At first they fired back, then they stopped - it was still impossible to see where to shoot. It was getting dark quickly, the nights were dark in the south. Among the trees and in the twilight we were almost invisible. Our uniform was new and therefore dark, it did not have time to fade. The Afghan soldiers, whose company acted with us, wore faded, almost white uniforms. Our people started shouting: “Don’t get close to the Afghans, they are clearly visible. Indeed, only one soldier was wounded among us; there were three soldiers among the Afghans. Our soldier’s wound was not serious, but unpleasant - he was shot in the buttocks. They carried him in their arms, and everyone wanted to help. With the onset of darkness, the dushmans also stopped shooting. When we were already in the middle of the slope, night fell, and lights were lit on the opposite slope, where the dushmans were. We had just passed there and knew for sure that there were no buildings there and there was nowhere for the lights to come from. This was done to put psychological pressure on us - look, Russians and be afraid, we, your enemies, are nearby. But there was also a practical purpose. Dushman put a flashlight on the stone, took a position to the side and watched the flashes of shots. If an inexperienced Soviet soldier starts shooting at the flashlight, the Dushman sniper will have the opportunity to hit him. We knew this trick and didn’t shoot, because even if you hit a cheap Chinese lantern, the spook sitting on the side won’t get hurt. Sometimes the lights moved; most likely, the dushmans, wanting to tease the Russians, hung lanterns on the donkeys and let them go down the slope. A year later, when we were on duty and we were tired of these wandering lights on the top of the mountain, we extinguished them with a shell from a tank, the lights no longer appeared there.
Having crossed the ravine, we safely occupied the ridge and stopped for the night. On a dark southern night it is impossible to move through the forest in the mountains. The Afghan company commander approached and asked Captain Zimbalevsky to order his soldiers to go down and pick up his three wounded soldiers. Surprisingly, the dushmans, with rare exceptions, always carried away not only their wounded, but also their dead, but these ones left theirs. The Afghan company acted somehow uncertainly, sluggishly, slowly trailing behind, lagging behind. When our battalion commander made a remark to the Afghan company commander, their officer replied that Russian soldiers walked very quickly. It was surprising for us to hear this; there were few mountaineers among us; lowlanders predominated. Even the Armenians, of whom there were several, said that although they lived in the Caucasus, they had not climbed the mountains that much. Most likely, the Afghan company did not really want to fight and was serving its military service.
The battalion commander refused the Afghan's request and told him to send soldiers of his company for his wounded and promise only fire cover. None of the Afghans ever went down to collect the wounded. In the morning the exit was delayed, Zimbolevsky harshly told the Afghan officer that if they did not bring their wounded by such and such a time, then our battalion would leave. The Afghans dejectedly went down and by the appointed time they lifted the wounded up the mountain, we moved further along the ridge. From the wounded they learned that the dushmans were approaching them and wanted to finish them off, but they said that they were mobilized and also Muslims. The dushmans just took their weapons and left. This happened, but if they found wounded Afghan officers, they did not spare them. At night they approached our military outpost, but did not dare to attack; we were expecting an attack and were ready to fight back, setting up positions of stones along the slope.
There weren't many cowards. We had one such soldier. During the shelling, he was seized with panic, he lay down among the stones, and no amount of persuasion could force him to move. The soldiers had to run to him through the fire-swept terrain and drag him by the arms under the bullets. Fortunately, there was only one such person. But among officers, manifestations of cowardice were observed more often. The commander of the mortar battery, senior lieutenant, was often in battle and upon his return talked a lot about his exploits. I thought with envy and delight: “What a hero, I wish I could do that.” In mid-October 1980, we fought in the Togap Gorge. The battalion moved through the village along the stream, while dushmans walked parallel along the other bank. We were the first to notice them, but did not pay attention - they were in civilian clothes with red bands on both sleeves - this is how “populists” usually identified themselves. These were self-defense units, i.e. people's militia who fought on the side of government troops, usually near their places of residence. We realized that these were dushmans only after their nerves lost their nerve and they started running. Several soldiers opened fire belatedly and killed or wounded someone - blood was found on the stones. During the shooting, I lay down in the ditch and looked out, looking for the target. At this time, the mentioned senior lieutenant kept crawling and crawling towards me, his eyes stunned with fear. So he crawled back somewhere, and not at all in order to organize the actions of his battery. Belarusian Nikolai Kandybovich made everyone laugh. When they stopped shooting, he came out from somewhere in the rear and began asking loudly: “Well, did you take anyone prisoner, did you capture the weapon?”
I can explain the courageous behavior of most soldiers not so much by courage, but by the disbelief of 19-year-old boys in death and confidence in their own strength. For a long time, Afghanistan was more of a war game for us than a real brutal war. Awareness of the seriousness of what was happening came over time with the losses and injuries of comrades.
In the same Togap Gorge we cleared villages, and from time to time there were skirmishes. When we were on guard duty, we met a group of ours and Afghan sappers who were blowing up the houses of gang leaders. Then I thought: “Why blow up houses, will this make their owners stop fighting?”
In the villages, the Mujahideen would jump out from somewhere, fire a few shots and quickly disappear. When checking houses, a soldier was always left at the entrance. When a section of our company entered the next house, two dushmans with knives immediately jumped from behind the fence on the soldier Ildar Garayev from Kazan who remained at the door. They knocked the machine gun away from him and tried to stab him, he fought back with his bare hands, which were already covered in cuts. Then they managed to throw Ildar into the ditch, and they began to drown him in the water, without shooting, for fear of attracting attention. At the last minute he was saved by soldier Bikmaev, who saw what was happening from the window. The fighters jumped out into the street and shot the Mujahideen. Then I approached them and saw that their faces had been blown away by an abundant flow of lead. Ildar, bloodied and in a state of shock, was brought to the village square. There, at that moment, three elders of the village diligently proved to the commander of our company, Peshekhonov, that there were no dushmans in the village. As soon as Ildar saw them, he immediately shot everyone, miraculously not hitting any of his own; our platoon commander Alexander Vorobyov, who was passing near the Afghans at that moment, almost fell under the bullets. We later condemned Ildar among ourselves, but not for killing old people, of course, but for dangerous shooting.
It was scary to go on the attack when they didn’t shoot at us, because you don’t know where the enemy is and how many there are, what kind of weapons they have, whether a machine gun is going to hit you at point-blank range. When they started shooting, it was already possible to decide how to act.
I had to see the enemy alive often, almost every day. Guerrilla warfare lies in the fact that the enemy is everywhere and nowhere. Eastern mentality is special. The people there are so friendly and welcoming that it seems that there is no one better for him than you, and they will treat him, and give him a gift, and say good words. If you believe and relax, then trouble will creep up unnoticed. “They lay down softly - sleep hard.” The same person with whom you recently had a nice conversation can poison you, shoot you, or stab you to death, or commit another hostile act.
To turn into a peaceful peasant, Dushman only had to get rid of his weapons. For example, they are shooting from a village. We burst in there, and local residents, when asked: “Dushman ast?”, always invariably answered: “Dushman nest.” I think that even without translation the meaning of the dialogue is clear. Experience sometimes made it possible to identify dushmans among the peasants. For example, traces of powder gases, a dirty mark from a butt on the shoulder, they did not always have time or forgot to get rid of cartridges in their pockets, etc. One day we were checking out villages along the road to Kabul near Jalalabad. A young man of about 16 years old was captured in the village with cartridges in his pocket. They brought him onto the road. An old mother followed him, sobbing, and tearfully asked to let her son go. The officers did not know what to do and released the young dushman. The soldiers were unhappy, because he had recently fired at us. The major reproachfully said that there was no need to take him to the road. When an Afghan boy passed near us, one of the soldiers pushed him in the side with his butt. He stopped and looked carefully at the departing soldiers, trying to figure out who hit him. Behind him, sobbing, walked his mother, a simple old Afghan woman who had fulfilled her maternal duty and saved her son from death. The young Afghan man went into the village, not paying attention to the crying woman trailing behind. Our soldiers were also unpleasantly surprised by this.
One more episode. When moving through the village, Tajik Sergeant Murtazo (Name is not in the printed version - approx. Author) Alimov drew attention to a woman in a burqa sitting on her haunches and watching us. The woman was unusually broad-shouldered, which aroused suspicion. Perhaps it was a man hiding under a burqa - a Dushman intelligence officer. Alimov told the Afghan lieutenant about this. The conversation was conducted in Farsi, but I understood that the Afghan refused to check the “woman”. The Soviet sergeant and the Afghan lieutenant first argued, the further, the more furiously, and then they began to fight. We immediately separated them, otherwise we would have had to beat half of the Afghan company to the delight of the Dushman scout. Our officers were not nearby and, in order not to aggravate relations with the allies, we did not check the broad-shouldered “woman” in a burqa.
The fate of the captured dushmans was different. It depended on the orders of the commanders and the general mood of the soldiers. If it was ordered to take a “tongue,” if the unit’s actions were successful and without losses, the prisoners were treated quite humanely and were often handed over to the Afghan official authorities. If there were no clear orders regarding prisoners, and the raid group suffered losses in killed and wounded, then nothing good awaited the prisoners. Prisoners were usually forced to carry our heavy load, and were killed on the way to the deployment site. It all looked creepy. A group of soldiers surrounded the unfortunate man and beat him to death with their hands, feet, rifle butts, and knives, then a control shot. There was no shortage of performers. I didn’t like all this, and tried to get away so as not to hear the inhuman howl of the man being killed. Horrors of war. The American writer Ernest Hemingway, who fought a lot, said well about the war: “Do not think that war, no matter how necessary and just it may be, may not be criminal.”
In addition, I was not always sure that the captured people were really dushmans. But the dushmans, as the officers explained to us, were rebels, and they were not subject to the status of prisoners of war, therefore such actions towards them were justified. Even when they executed obvious spooks who killed and wounded our soldiers, it still looked disgusting. Maybe we should have shown more respect for the enemy and shot without cruelty. Cruelty begets cruelty, they dealt with our prisoners more sophisticatedly, where can we Europeans compare with Asians - they knew sophisticated methods of torture and execution and were inventive.
I witnessed how the regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel V.N., interrogated prisoners in the Togap Gorge. Makhmudov. At first he spoke to them, then he began to beat them with his own hands, since they were silent. In general, Afghan prisoners, as a rule, endured interrogations, torture and execution steadfastly, as befits partisans. Success in interrogating prisoners was achieved not so much through torture as through basic knowledge of the mentality of the Muslim and Afghan people. The Afghan is not afraid of death, since he is on the path of Allah - the holy war with the infidels “jihad” and after death he goes to heaven. But he must shed blood at the same time, and the threat of hanging terrified the prisoners, and they could give out information.
Dead dushmans who were already beginning to decompose were also found, although Muslims rarely left their own, only when they could not bear it, and if the entire detachment died.
In the Tsaukai Gorge outside Jelelabad, one was captured. He sat on a rock with two old broken guns behind his back and offered no resistance. We got the impression that this was some kind of village fool, whom the spirits had deliberately left on the way to delay our progress. They succeeded. The prisoner said that he was not a spook and did not kill anyone. Perhaps this was so. We were in a good mood and fought successfully, so there was no bitterness, this eccentric was not killed or beaten, and the gun was not even removed, and in this form he was presented to the regiment commander to the general laughter of the battalion.
In early October they passed along the Pakistani border beyond Kunar. We spent the night near one large village. The residents showed extreme excitement, and it seemed to us that they were ready to attack us. We waited all night; noise was heard in the village, but no attack occurred. All the small villages along the border were empty, the population had fled to Pakistan. October 2 (the printed version erroneously printed “August” - approx.. Author) in one place we met a small detachment, actually not even a detachment, but a family. The Afghan military negotiated with them, but they were the first to start shooting with a sniper rifle and a hunting rifle. Then we lost one Kazakh soldier from the 1st company and from our company sniper Alexander Ivanovich Palagin from Cheboksary. The death of our fighters predetermined the fate of the Afghans. In the end, they were asked to surrender.
I also had to talk to an Afghan soldier who had previously fought as part of a Mujahideen detachment and then went over to the side of government troops. He told how he sat on the mountains with the dushmans and smoked hashish, and then they cheerfully shot at Russian and government columns.
The “Dushmans”, or Mujahideen, were the worst opponents of the USSR during the war in Afghanistan. Experienced, cruel and merciless warriors, they caused a lot of trouble for our soldiers. What distinguished the “dushmans” from other opponents of the USSR, what were their characteristics?
Lack of unity
The Mujahideen appeared in Afghanistan after the arrival of Soviet troops there. Initially, these were small groups of local residents, as well as people from neighboring countries - Pakistan and Iran. However, by the end of the 1980s, the number of “dushmans” opposing our soldiers exceeded 250 thousand people.
However, contrary to popular belief, there was no unity and cohesion among their ranks. The Mujahideen did not act as a united front against the Soviet troops; they often fought with each other no less fiercely than with the “shuravi” (as they called our soldiers).
Under the collective designation “Mujahideen” were hidden dozens and hundreds of groups, divided along national, religious and territorial lines. Shiites, Sunnis, Hazaras, Pashtuns and many others - all of them periodically entered into violent confrontation with each other, which made the task much easier for our troops.
In medieval conditions
Often the “dushmans” took refuge in the mountains, but when in populated areas they completely disappeared among the local residents. Soviet officers who were on raids and cleansing operations in cities and villages said that the Mujahideen lived in truly medieval conditions, little similar to human conditions.
Dirt and unsanitary conditions reigned everywhere; the militants considered it not very important to take care of the cleanliness of their homes. As our servicemen noted, the only reminder that in the 20th century were sometimes Japanese tape recorders, which somehow ended up in the hands of the “dushmans”.
Mercenaries for food
The militants themselves did not always want to fight, so they often used local residents for their purposes. And since poverty in Afghanistan was off the charts, people had no choice but to agree to go to the “dushmans” for food and water.
As Major Alexander Metla recalled, the peasant was given a mine, he placed it on the road where the Soviet column was being blown up. For a successful operation, the Mujahideen generously rewarded the accomplice; for failure, they could punish him. Ordinary peasants aroused less suspicion among Soviet military personnel, and the militants actively took advantage of this.
Weapon Camels
The main transport of the Afghan “spirits” were camels. They were mainly used to transport weapons. The Mujahideen preferred to move at night, when our soldiers had much less opportunity to track them. The “dushmans” weighed each animal with a huge number of bales, which is why even a machine gun would not take the camels.
Under the guise of peaceful products, Afghan militants managed to transport weapons. From above the animal was loaded with bales of fabrics and equipment. But below, under the belly, a weapon was imperceptibly suspended.
Compliant "dushmans"
There is a widespread opinion that it was impossible to come to an agreement with the Mujahideen; they were supposedly intractable and extremely principled. This is wrong.
In 1986, the Soviet command sent KGB Major Nikolai Komarov to negotiate with the militants. His task was to secure the gas field near Jizdan from attacks by “spirits”. Initially, the field commanders, one and all, refused to make a deal, but there were some who were accommodating. One of them is the leader of a large gang, nicknamed Jafar.
Komarov arrived at the negotiations without weapons, and began a conversation with the Mujahideen. When all the details were discussed and an agreement was reached, Jafar took pilaf from the vat with dirty hands and brought it to the major’s mouth. The officer swallowed the “offering,” which meant the deal was done.
The main thing is faith
Despite the fierce confrontation with the Shuravi, those of them who agreed to become Muslims were easily accepted into their ranks. Several hundred Soviet soldiers were captured during the war, some deserted and came to join the militants themselves.
One of these servicemen was Sergei Krasnoperov. The Mujahideen accepted him and brought him closer to the mullahs. The deserter quickly learned the language and converted to Islam. Soon he had children with a local woman. Krasnoperov still lives in Afghanistan; it is no longer possible to distinguish him from the native Afghans.
Inhuman cruelty
American journalist George Crile recalled that the brutality of the Mujahideen was rational in nature, reminiscent of the sacrifices of pagan times. He described a savage execution called the “red tulip.”
According to the journalist, one day at the base in Bagram, a Soviet sentry discovered several bags containing the bodies of USSR military personnel, wrapped in their own skin. All of them were killed by the "red tulip".
First, the “spirits” injected the unfortunate man with a strong drug that dulled the pain. They hung me up by the arms and cut off the skin around the body. After the end of the dope, the condemned person experienced severe pain shock and died.
The topic of Afghan captivity is very painful for many citizens of our country and other states in the post-Soviet space. After all, it concerns not only those Soviet soldiers, officers, and civil servants who were not lucky enough to be captured, but also relatives, friends, loved ones, and co-workers. Meanwhile, they are now talking less and less about captured soldiers in Afghanistan. This is understandable: almost thirty years have passed since the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the DRA, almost fifty years have passed for the youngest internationalist soldiers. Time passes, but does not erase old wounds.
Only according to official data, he was captured by the Afghan Mujahideen in 1979-1989. 330 Soviet troops were hit. But these numbers are most likely higher. After all, according to official data, 417 Soviet servicemen went missing in Afghanistan. Captivity was a real hell for them. The Afghan Mujahideen have never followed and would not follow international rules for holding prisoners of war. Almost all Soviet soldiers and officers who were in captivity in Afghanistan spoke about the monstrous abuses to which they were subjected by dushmans. Many died a terrible death, some could not stand the torture and went over to the side of the Mujahideen, before converting to another faith.
A significant part of the Mujahideen camps in which Soviet prisoners of war were kept was located on the territory of neighboring Pakistan - in its North-West Frontier Province, which was historically inhabited by Pashtun tribes related to the Pashtuns of Afghanistan. It is well known that Pakistan provided military, organizational, and financial support to the Afghan Mujahideen during that war. Since Pakistan was the main strategic partner of the United States in the region, the US Central Intelligence Agency operated through the hands of Pakistani intelligence agencies and Pakistani special forces. The corresponding Operation Cyclone was developed, which provided generous funding for Pakistan's military programs, providing it with economic assistance, allocating funds and providing organizational opportunities for the recruitment of mujahideen in Islamic countries, Pakistan's inter-services intelligence service ISI played a major role in the recruitment and training of mujahideen, who were then transported to Afghanistan - part of the units that fought against government troops and the Soviet army. But if military assistance to the Mujahideen fit well into the confrontation between the “two worlds” - capitalist and socialist, similar assistance was provided by the United States and its allies to anti-communist forces in Indochina and African states, then the placement of Soviet prisoners of war in Mujahideen camps in Pakistan was already a little beyond the bounds of what was permitted . 
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army, came to power in the country in 1977 in a military coup, overthrowing Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Two years later, Bhutto was executed. Zia ul-Haq immediately began to worsen relations with the Soviet Union, especially after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan in 1979. However, diplomatic relations between the two states were never severed, despite the fact that Soviet citizens were detained in Pakistan, tortured and brutally killed. Pakistani intelligence officers transported ammunition to the Mujahideen and trained them in training camps in Pakistan. According to many researchers, without direct support from Pakistan, the Mujahideen movement in Afghanistan would have been doomed to rapid failure.
Of course, in the fact that Soviet citizens were kept on the territory of Pakistan, there was a certain share of guilt and the Soviet leadership, which by this time was becoming more and more moderate and cowardly, did not want to raise the issue of prisoners on the territory of Pakistan as harshly as possible and in case of refusal of the Pakistani leadership to cover up camps to take the most severe measures. In November 1982, despite difficult relations between the two countries, Zia ul-Haq arrived in Moscow for the funeral of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. Here he held a meeting with the most influential Soviet politicians - Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov and Andrei Andreevich Gromyko. Both “monsters” of Soviet policy, meanwhile, were never able to fully put pressure on Zia ul-Haq and force him to at least reduce the volume and nature of assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen. Pakistan never changed its position, and a satisfied Zia ul-Haq calmly flew back to his homeland.
Numerous sources very clearly testify to what happened in the camps where prisoners of war were kept - these are the memoirs of those who were lucky enough to survive and return to their homeland, and the memoirs of Soviet military leaders, and the works of Western journalists and historians. For example, at the beginning of the war, near the runway of the Bagram airbase in the vicinity of Kabul, as American journalist George Crile writes, a Soviet sentry discovered five jute bags. When he poked at one of them, he saw blood come out. At first they thought that the bags might contain booby traps. Sappers were called, but they discovered a terrible discovery - in each bag there was a Soviet soldier, wrapped in his own skin.
“Red Tulip” was the name of the most savage and famous execution used by the Afghan Mujahideen in relation to the “Shuravi”. First, the prisoner was put into a state of drug intoxication, and then the skin around the entire body was cut and rolled up. When the effect of the drug stopped, the unfortunate man experienced a severe painful shock, as a result of which he went crazy and slowly died.
In 1983, not long after smiling Soviet leaders saw off Zia ul-Haq at the airport as he flew home, a camp for Afghan refugees was set up in the village of Badaber, in Pakistan, 10 km south of the city of Peshawar. Such camps are very convenient to use for organizing other camps on their basis - training camps, for militants and terrorists. This is what happened in Badaber. The “Khalid ibn Walid Militant Training Center” was located here, in which the Mujahideen were trained by instructors from American, Pakistani and Egyptian special forces. The camp was located on an impressive area of 500 hectares, and the militants, as always, covered themselves with refugees - they say that women and children who fled from the “Soviet occupiers” live here. In fact, future fighters of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, regularly trained in the camp. Since 1983, the camp in Badaber was also used to hold captured military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Tsarandoy (Afghan militia), as well as Soviet soldiers, officers and civil servants captured by the Mujahideen. Throughout 1983 and 1984. Prisoners were taken to the camp and placed in prisons. In total, at least 40 Afghan and 14 Soviet prisoners of war were held here, although these figures, again, are very approximate and could be much larger. In Badaber, as in other camps, prisoners of war were subjected to severe abuse.
At the same time, the Mujahideen offered Soviet prisoners of war to convert to Islam, promising that then the bullying would stop and they would be released. Eventually, several prisoners of war hatched a plan to escape. For them, who had been here for three years already, this was a completely understandable decision - the conditions of detention were unbearable and it was better to die in a fight with the guards than to continue to be subjected to torture and abuse every day. Until now, quite little is known about the events in the Badaber camp, but Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko, born in 1954, is usually called the organizer of the uprising. He was 31 years old then. A native of the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, Viktor Dukhovchenko worked as a mechanic at the 573rd logistics warehouse in Bagram, and was captured on January 1, 1985 in the province of Parvan. He was captured by militants from the Moslavi Sadashi group and taken to Badaber. The uprising was led by 29-year-old Nikolai Ivanovich Shevchenko (pictured) - also a civilian specialist who served as a driver in the 5th Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
On April 26, 1985 at 21:00 the guards of the Badaber camp gathered to conduct evening prayers on the parade ground. At this time, several of the bravest prisoners “removed” two sentries, one of whom stood on the tower, and the other at the weapons warehouse, after which they freed the remaining prisoners of war and armed themselves with the weapons available in the warehouse. The rebels found themselves in possession of a mortar and RPG grenade launchers. Already at 23:00, the operation to suppress the uprising began, which was personally led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. Units of the Pakistani border police and the regular Pakistani army with armored vehicles and artillery arrived to help the camp guards - the Afghan Mujahideen. Later it became known that artillery and armored units of the 11th Army Corps of the Pakistani Army, as well as a helicopter unit of the Pakistani Air Force, took a direct part in suppressing the uprising.
Soviet prisoners of war refused to surrender and demanded to organize a meeting with representatives of the Soviet or Afghan embassies in Pakistan, and also to call the Red Cross. Burhanuddin Rabbani, who did not want international publicity for the existence of a concentration camp on Pakistani territory, ordered the assault to begin. However, throughout the night, the Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers were unable to storm the warehouse where the prisoners of war were entrenched. Moreover, Rabbani himself almost died from a grenade launcher fired by the rebels. At 8:00 am on April 27, Pakistani heavy artillery began shelling the camp, after which the weapons and ammunition depot exploded. During the explosion, all the prisoners and guards who were inside the warehouse were killed. Three seriously wounded prisoners were finished off by blowing them up with hand grenades. The Soviet side later reported the deaths of 120 Afghan mujahideen, 6 American advisers, 28 Pakistani military officers and 13 representatives of the Pakistani administration. The Badaber military base was completely destroyed, which is why the Mujahideen lost 40 artillery pieces, mortars and machine guns, about 2 thousand rockets and shells, 3 Grad MLRS installations.
Until 1991, the Pakistani authorities completely denied the very fact of not only the uprising, but also the detention of Soviet prisoners of war in Badaber. However, the Soviet leadership, of course, had information about the uprising. But, which was already characteristic of the late Soviet period, it showed habitual herbivory. On May 11, 1985, the USSR Ambassador to Pakistan presented President Zia-ul-Haq with a note of protest, which placed all the blame for what happened on Pakistan. That's all. No missile attacks on Pakistani military targets, not even a severance of diplomatic relations. So the leaders of the Soviet Union, high-ranking Soviet military leaders, swallowed the brutal suppression of the uprising, as well as the very fact of the existence of the concentration camp where Soviet people were kept. Ordinary Soviet citizens turned out to be heroes, and the leaders... let us remain silent.
In 1992, the direct organizer of both the Badaber camp and the massacre of Soviet prisoners of war, Burhanuddin Rabbani, became president of Afghanistan. He held this post for nine long years, until 2001. He became one of the richest men in Afghanistan and the entire Middle East, controlling several routes for the supply of smuggled and prohibited goods from Afghanistan to Iran and Pakistan and further around the world. He, like many of his closest associates, never bore responsibility for the events in Badaber, as well as for other actions during the war in Afghanistan. High-ranking Russian politicians and government officials from other post-Soviet countries whose natives died in the Badaber camp met with him. What to do - politics. True, in the end, Rabbani did not die a natural death. On September 20, 2011, the influential politician was killed in his own home in Kabul by a suicide bomber wearing his own turban. Just as Soviet prisoners of war exploded in Badaber in 1985, Rabbani himself exploded 26 years later in Kabul.
The uprising in Badaber is a unique example of the courage of Soviet soldiers. However, it became known only due to its scale and consequences in the form of the explosion of an ammunition depot and the camp itself. But how many more small uprisings could there be? Attempts to escape, during which fearless Soviet soldiers died in battle with the enemy?
Even after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, there were a significant number of captured internationalist soldiers on the territory of this country. In 1992, the Committee on the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers was created under the Council of Heads of Government of the CIS States. Its representatives found alive 29 Soviet soldiers who were considered missing in Afghanistan. Of these, 22 people returned to their homeland, and 7 people remained to live in Afghanistan. It is clear that among the survivors, especially those who remained to live in Afghanistan, the bulk are people who converted to Islam. Some of them even managed to achieve a certain social prestige in Afghan society. But those prisoners who died while trying to escape or were brutally tortured by the guards, accepting a heroic death for loyalty to the oath and the Motherland, were left without proper memory from their native state.
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 sacrifices, 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 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 became completely 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 that 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 way. 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 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... Earlier in the movie about the 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 the mockery of 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 squeals and screams 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.
Perfume
Question
Tell me, since when and why are the Mujahideen called “Spirits”?
This has been going on since the Afghan war (1979-1989). “Dushman” in their language (Dari?, Pashto?) means BANDIT. At least that's what I remember from my school days. Abbreviated as "Spirit".
Because it takes a long time to pronounce the dushman, and it doesn’t sound. They shortened it, and it turned out to be a spirit. It sounds and fits the fanaticism.
And, since our wars began to call them SPIRITS among themselves, then naturally this name was passed on along the relay race, well, you probably understand.
This is how the spirit appeared.
A small addition. Dushman is a rare dialectical or accented pronunciation of Pashto. Basically the word enemy in Pashto is pronounced dukhman. We remove mana - we get spirit.
That's right, only not a "bandit", but an "enemy".
And Afghan men told me a long time ago that they began to be called “spirits” because they appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere.
The word "spirit" did not appear immediately. At first the word “Basmachi” was used, by analogy with films and books about the establishment of Soviet power in Turkestan. When you read the memoirs about the entry and the first operations, it sounds not “spirits”, but “Basmachi”, even though when these memoirs were written, the word “spirit” was already on everyone’s lips. After the introduction, our propagandists decided to introduce a new term “dushmans”, more understandable to local residents. Well, then the abbreviation “spirit” appeared, which fit well into our military vocabulary. The spirits were less fortunate; they had to pronounce a longer “shuravi”. By the way, I heard the word “Mujahid” much later, already in the Union.
And one more related question. What were the names of the spirits in the very first notes in the press, award lists and funerals dating back to the beginning of the 80th year? “Basmachi” reigned in the lexicon then, but I’m interested in what was said in official documents.
In the spring and summer of 1981, at least in 783 ORB, the word “darling” was already in full use.
They began to be called “spirits” because they appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere.
This is a literal quote from E. Kiselev’s film “Afghan Trap-2”. In my opinion, it’s so painful to speak so harshly about perfumes... They don’t deserve such respect....IMHO
At the beginning of the war, the Ikhwans were officially called “bandits”, unofficially “Basmachi” and “Ikhwans”, and “spirits” appeared a little later. Of course, from "dushman"....
P.S. And they began to call them Mujahideen later, when we had practically left there and it became clear that sooner or later the Americans would break in there. Like we fought with “bandit enemies” (seemingly for a just cause), but the amers fought with the Mujahideen (“ideological fighters for the faith” or whatever it is translated there)
Afghan Mujahideen(Arabic: مجاهد mujāhid, mujahiddin) - members of irregular armed forces motivated by radical Islamic ideology, organized into a single insurgent force during the civil war in Afghanistan in 1979-1992. Formed since 1979 from the local population with the aim of waging an armed struggle against the military presence of the USSR and the Afghan governments of Babrak Karmal and Najibullah. After the end of the war in the mid-1990s, some of the Afghan Mujahideen joined the ranks of the radical Taliban movement, while others joined the Northern Alliance units.
The word "mujahid" is of Arabic origin ("mujahid", plural "mujahiddin"), literally meaning "fighter for the faith", at the same time being the name of a jihadist or rebel. The Soviet army and the Afghan authorities called them dushmans (Dari دشمن - dušman, dushmon - “enemy”), and the Afghans called Soviet soldiers shuravi (Dari شوروی - šouravî, shuravi - “Soviet”). Soviet soldiers often, in everyday life, used the slang word “spirits” - a derivative of “dushmans” - to designate them.
The Dushmans wore the same traditional Afghan clothes as the local population, without outwardly standing out from them (shirts, black vests, turbans or pakol).
