The war in Afghanistan left many unhealed wounds in our memory. The stories of the "Afghans" reveal to us a lot of shocking details of that terrible decade, which not everyone wants to remember.
No control
The personnel of the 40th Army, performing its international duty in Afghanistan, constantly experienced a shortage of alcohol. The small amount of alcohol that was sent to the units rarely reached the addressees. Nevertheless, on holidays the soldiers were always drunk.
There is an explanation for this. With a total shortage of alcohol, our military adapted to drive moonshine. This was legally prohibited by the authorities, therefore, in some parts there were their own specially guarded points of moonshine. A headache for homegrown moonshiners was the extraction of sugar-containing raw materials.
Most often they used trophy sugar seized from the mujahideen.
The lack of sugar was compensated for by local honey, according to our military, which was "lumps of dirty yellow color." This product was different from our usual honey, possessing a "disgusting aftertaste". Moonshine was even more unpleasant on its basis. However, there were no consequences.
Veterans admitted that there were problems with the control of personnel in the Afghan war, and cases of systematic drunkenness were often recorded.
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They say that in the early years of the war, many officers abused alcohol, some of them turned into chronic alcoholics.
Some soldiers with access to medical supplies became addicted to taking painkillers to suppress their uncontrollable feelings of fear. Others who managed to establish contacts with the Pashtuns became addicted to drugs. According to the former special forces officer Alexei Chikishev, in some units up to 90% of privates smoked charas (an analogue of hashish).
Doomed to die
The mujahideen who were captured by Soviet soldiers rarely killed immediately. Usually, an offer to convert to Islam followed, in case of refusal, the soldier was actually sentenced to death. True, as a "gesture of goodwill", the militants could hand over a prisoner to a human rights organization or exchange for their own, but this is more likely an exception to the rule.
Almost all Soviet prisoners of war were kept in Pakistani camps, and it was impossible to get them out of there. Indeed, for all the USSR did not fight in Afghanistan. The conditions of detention of our soldiers were unbearable, many said that it was better to die from a guard than to endure these torments. The torture was even more terrible, from the mere description of which it becomes uncomfortable.
American journalist George Crile wrote that shortly after the Soviet contingent entered Afghanistan, five jute sacks appeared next to the runway. Pushing one of them, the soldier saw the blood coming out. After opening the bags, a terrible picture appeared before our military: in each of them there was a young internationalist, wrapped in his own skin. Doctors found that the skin was first cut in the abdomen and then tied in a knot over the head.
The people nicknamed the execution "red tulip". Before the execution, the prisoner was pumped up with drugs, bringing him to unconsciousness, but heroin ceased to work long before his death. At first, the doomed experienced a severe painful shock, then he began to go mad and eventually died in inhuman torment.
They did what they wanted
Local residents were often extremely cruel to Soviet soldiers-internationalists. The veterans with a shudder recalled how the peasants finished off the Soviet wounded with shovels and hoes. Sometimes this gave rise to a ruthless response from the fellow soldiers of the victims, and there were cases of completely unjustified cruelty.
Corporal of the Airborne Forces Sergei Boyarkin in the book "Soldiers of the Afghan War" described an episode of his battalion patrolling the outskirts of Kandahar. The paratroopers amused themselves by shooting cattle with machine guns until an Afghan was caught in their path, driving a donkey. Without thinking twice, a line was fired at the man, and one of the military decided to cut off the victim's ears as a keepsake.
Boyarkin also described the favorite habit of some military personnel to plant dirt on Afghans. During the search, the patrolman quietly pulled out a cartridge from his pocket, pretending that it was found in the Afghan's things. After presenting such proof of guilt, a local resident could be shot right on the spot.
Viktor Marachkin, who served as a driver-mechanic in the 70th brigade stationed near Kandahar, recalled an incident in the village of Tarinkot. Previously, the settlement was fired upon from the "Grad" and artillery, in a panic the local residents, including women and children, who had run out of the village, were finished off by the Soviet military from the "Shilka". In total, about 3,000 Pashtuns died here.
Afghan Syndrome
On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, but the echoes of that merciless war remained - they are commonly called the "Afghan syndrome." Many Afghan soldiers, having returned to peaceful life, could not find a place in it. The statistics, which appeared a year after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, showed terrible numbers:
About 3,700 war veterans were in prisons, 75% of families of "Afghans" faced either divorce or exacerbation of conflicts, almost 70% of internationalist soldiers were not satisfied with their work, 60% abused alcohol or drugs, among "Afghans" there was a high suicide rate …
In the early 1990s, a study was conducted that showed that at least 35% of war veterans needed psychological treatment. Unfortunately, over time, old mental trauma without qualified help tend to worsen. A similar problem existed in the United States.
But if in the 1980s the USA developed a state program to help veterans of the Vietnam War, the budget of which amounted to $ 4 billion, then in Russia and the CIS countries there is no systemic rehabilitation of "Afghans". And it is unlikely that anything will change in the near future.
Taras Repin