About the horrors of the Afghan war: the story of a participant in the events & nbsp. Crimes of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan (memoirs of veterans) Afghan prisoners

In the picture: Bahretdin Khakimov

In early March, Russian and world media actively retold the story of a former Soviet soldier found in Afghanistan and declared missing more than 30 years ago. Meanwhile, the story of Bahretdin Khakimov, who has managed to become a real Afghan over the years, is not unique. Since the mid-2000s, journalists have counted at least four such cases, and according to The Times, there may be about a hundred such "Afghans".

On March 4, former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev spoke about the discovery of Bakhretdin Khakimov, a native of the Uzbek city of Samarkand. Now he heads the Committee on the Affairs of Internationalist Warriors - an organization, including those involved in the search for soldiers who went missing during the Afghan war of 1979-1989. The fact that the Uzbek lives in the province of Herat, the committee staff knew for quite a long time, but they managed to meet with him only on February 23.

Khakimov, who served in the 101st motorized rifle regiment in the same Herat, disappeared in September 1980. Having received a serious wound, he could not reach his unit, and local residents picked him up and left. As a result, Khakimov became a member of the local semi-nomadic community, whose elder, who practiced herbal medicine, took him under his wing. The Uzbek himself, who is now called Sheikh Abdullah and who has almost completely forgotten the Russian language, is also engaged in quackery. He accepted the offer to meet with his relatives with great enthusiasm, but it is not known whether this means that he is ready to return to his homeland.

The story, which aroused the liveliest interest of journalists from all over the world, is not the only one of its kind. Despite the sworn assurance of the commander of the Soviet contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov about the withdrawal of every one of his compatriots from the country, in fact in 1989 more than 400 Soviet soldiers remained behind the Amu Darya. Some of them were captured, some went over to the side of the enemy voluntarily, and some, like Khakimov, remained due to an unfortunate set of circumstances. Now this list has been reduced to 264 names (half of them are Russians): some of the missing were found alive and returned home, the fate of others became known after their death. But there are those who voluntarily chose to live in Afghanistan - despite the opportunity to return to their homeland.

In the picture: Gennady Tsevma

One of the most famous Soviet defectors was the Ukrainian Gennady Tsevma. It was discovered in 1991, two years after the end of hostilities, by British journalist Peter Juvenal, who worked for the BBC. A native of the city of Torez Donetsk region came to the Afghan province of Kunduz in 1983 at the age of 18. After ten months of service, Tsevma, according to him, became bored, and one day, out of curiosity, he decided to go see the muezzin from a nearby village, who called the inhabitants to prayer every morning. On the way to the mosque, he was surrounded, and he was forced to surrender. Faced with a choice between accepting Islam and death, the Ukrainian chose the former. So he became an Afghan.

Tsevma, who is now called Nek Mohammad, claims that, despite going over to the side of the Dushmans, he never fired at his former compatriots. “Six years under supervision, and they were still forced to shoot at our people. They were sick in the head and did not understand what was good and what was bad. I say: “Go to hell, I won’t kill my own,” Tsevma is quoted by the Belarusian channel “Capital Television”.

In the end, the Ukrainian received freedom, but he was afraid to return to his homeland: in those days, all the missing were considered traitors, who were waiting for the tribunal. In 1992, the Russian authorities arranged for Tsevma to meet with his father, who had been specially brought to Afghanistan, but the former Soviet soldier was so frightened by the prospect of a trial that he flatly refused to return, even despite a general amnesty carried out in the late 1980s. In 2002, the Ukrainian authorities tried to return Nek Mohammad home, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

Tsevma still lives in Kunduz, he has a wife and several children. As of 2006, Nek Mohammad worked as a driver for a local jeweler, earning $100 a month. True, even then he could hardly move because of an old wound in his leg. And already in 2010, the media wrote that Tsevma almost stopped walking altogether - the eldest son was forced to take care of the household.

In the picture: Alexander Levenets

Tsevma's compatriot Oleksandr Levenets, who was born in the village of Melovadka, Lugansk region, and now known as Akhmad, spent about the same amount of time in Afghanistan. Unlike Nek Mohammad, Levenets, who worked in Kunduz as a fuel truck driver, went to the Mujahideen of his own free will in 1984 - he could not stand hazing (according to other sources, he fled punishment for trading with local residents). He left a part with his colleague Valery Kuskov. Both immediately got to the local field commander Amirkhalam, who, according to the Ukrainian, received them with open arms. Both fugitives converted to Islam without question and immediately joined the battle group that fought the Soviet troops. Kuskov soon died, while Levenets fought until the end of the conflict.

Subsequently, according to Ahmad, the Soviet secret services tried to find him, but Amirkhalam, who considered the Ukrainian to be his relative, refused to extradite him. Levenets decided not to return home - instead he started a family and began working as a taxi driver.

In the picture: Sergey Krasnoperov

In a similar way, Sergei Krasnoperov, a native of Kurgan, now Nur Mohammad, also got to the dushmans. In 1984, the command convicted him of selling army property to the Afghans. Krasnoperov turned out to be a valuable acquisition for the Mujahideen: he repaired machine guns and artillery pieces that periodically jammed. Ultimately, the authority of Nur Mohammad turned out to be so high that he became the personal bodyguard of one of the leaders of the Afghan resistance, General Abdul-Rashid Dostum.

After the end of the war, Krasnoperov also refused to return home. Even the meeting with the mother, which took place in 1994, did not help. He settled in the city of Chaghcharan in the province of Ghor (it was there that military base, to which he was assigned), married and had at least six children. Nur Mohammad works at the local office of the Ministry of Energy and repairs trucks. The only thing that worries him now is the withdrawal of American troops. Without them, the former Russian is sure, complete lawlessness and chaos will come in the country.

In the picture: Nikolai Vyrodov

Quite little is known about Nikolai Vyrodov, another Ukrainian who went over to the side of the Dushmans. In 1981, he went to war in Afghanistan as a volunteer, but deserted just three months later. According to Vyrodov, he was influenced by the execution of 70 people in an Afghan village, including civilians. Like the rest of the "Soviet Mujahideen", he converted to Islam and took the local name - Nasratullah Mohamadullah. Soon, the influential field commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar drew attention to the demolition specialist, who made him his bodyguard (later Hekmatyar headed the Afghan government twice).

In 1996, Vyrodov returned to Kharkov, however, unable to adapt to old life went back to Afghanistan. As of 2005, he lived with his family in the province of Baghlan, where he was in the police service.

The stories of three more Soviet fighters developed in a similar way, however, unlike their colleagues, all three returned to their homeland. The very first among them (in 1981) a resident of Samara region Alexey Olenin, later Rakhmatulla. He was taken prisoner next year, on the day of the death of Leonid Brezhnev (November 10, 1982). A few years later, in captivity, he met with a native of the Bashkir village of Priyutovo, Yuri Stepanov (Makhibulla), who was captured by the same group of Mujahideen. It is not known exactly when this happened - either in 1986 or in 1988.

In the picture: Alexey Olenin

After the war, the Afghan authorities handed over the former captives to Pakistan. As Olenin recalls, they were met there by the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who gave both of them three thousand dollars. Around 1994, Olenin and Stepanov returned to their homeland, but both soon left back for Afghanistan: the first decided to pick up the bride left there, the second simply could not stand the change of scenery. Finally, both of them returned to Russia. True, Olenin managed to do this only in 2004 - the Taliban who came to power prevented him. It is noteworthy that in Afghanistan he met Gennady Tsevma, whom he tried to persuade to go home, but in vain. Stepanov returned even later, in 2006, and for a long time he could not decide whether to go to his homeland or not. Both are married to Afghan women.

The third Soviet soldier who was captured by the dushmans and then managed to return home is Nikolai Bystrov, aka Islamuddin. Serve in Afghanistan native Krasnodar Territory left in 1982, the militants caught him six months later. According to the Russian, this happened during a trip to a local village, where he was sent for drugs by old-timers. Like Krasnoperov and Vyrodov, he happened to become the bodyguard of one of the most influential field commanders - Ahmad Shah Masud, known as the Panjshir Lion, entrusted his security to Bystrov. After the war, Masud, already being the Minister of Defense, gave his distant relative as a Russian.

According to media reports, Bystrov left for Russia with his family in the late 1990s - allegedly at the insistence of the same Massoud. Now he is one of the most active participants in the search operations, which are conducted under the auspices of the Committee for the Affairs of Internationalist Warriors.

FEW people remember now that not all Soviet soldiers crossed the border bridge in Uzbek Termez in February 1989. 300 of our guys, listed as “missing” (but in fact taken prisoner by the Afghan Mujahideen), remained on the other side of the border, in a foreign country. Today they are at war. There… FOURTEEN years ago, our troops left Afghanistan, a country that cost us almost 15,000 zinc coffins shipped to our towns and villages. Uniforms faded in the scorching sun, caps pierced by bullets, military field songs with a guitar about how a “basmach” is watching the “five-pointed star”, invalids in wheelchairs flashed and left the television screens - we tried to forget this war from memory. We succeeded: few people now remember that not all Soviet soldiers crossed the border bridge in Uzbek Termez in February 1989. 300 of our guys, listed as “missing” (but in fact taken prisoner by the Afghan Mujahideen), remained on the other side of the border, in a foreign country ...

Saint Lech:“We were foolishly captured. - Amanullah, according to the Afghan habit, eats pilaf with his hands, watching with a grin as I struggle to catch rice with a fork. - We celebrated the birthday of the company commander, went with a friend drunk at night to the village to buy more moonshine, they didn’t even take machine guns. They gave us something on the head in the dark, I woke up already at the spooks. The friend was never seen again. Captivity was hard. They often beat me bloody, fed me every other day, threw pieces of rotten meat and moldy bread on the ground. Those who converted to Islam were treated better. After suffering for six months, Sergei decided to change his faith. So he became Amanullah. “You know, at first I did it just so that I wouldn’t be treated like a dog. And then he began to read the Koran - and really believed. I haven’t taken alcohol in my mouth for many years - and I don’t pull. This is a terrible sin. If I had not drunk, I would not have been captured: this is how Allah showed me my mistakes. Did everyone accept Islam? It was different. We have one guy in the camp, his name was Lekhoi, flatly refused to convert to Islam: his mother put on a cross for him before the army. They tortured him, beat him to death. So no one will know about it that he accepted death for his faith.

But if you judge correctly, Lech is a saint.

From the dossier

When the American intelligence services consulted with the Russians before the start of the operation in Afghanistan (the Americans were then preparing for heavy losses), how to behave in Afghan captivity, they were given advice - not to oppose the adoption of Islam. All Soviet prisoners of war now living in Afghanistan changed not only their homeland, but also their surnames. So, for example, Valery Kuskov from Ukraine received the name Mohammed Yusuf Khan (now, according to some reports, he is in Pakistan), and Vitaly Virtanov from Vladivostok - Said Omar. Of the four Ukrainians rescued from Afghan captivity, one, Mykola Vyrodov, returned to Afghanistan, declaring that he could not "live among the infidels."

Russians shot down a US plane

In AFGHANISTAN did not calm down Civil War, and former Soviet prisoners also took part in it. Many ended up on different sides of the front. For example, one of the bodyguards of the late leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was from Novosibirsk, and two Soviet pilots flying MiGs fought on the side of the Taliban. By the way, according to Sergei, one of these pilots shot down an American Predator unmanned aircraft, the only US aircraft destroyed during the 2001 Afghan campaign.

From the dossier

As suggested by the Committee on Veterans Affairs of Ukraine, some Soviet prisoners actively fought on the side of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, and as field commanders. According to other sources, the detachment that first entered Kabul in November 2001 was under the command of a former Soviet prisoner from Kazan. In addition, there were unconfirmed reports in the Pakistani press that the group of Taliban militants that shot down two American Chinook helicopters in Paktia province in the spring of 2002 and massacred a dozen US soldiers was led by a former Soviet commando who was captured and converted to Islam.

“In general, there is nothing surprising in the fact that one of ours fought against the Americans,” says Sergey. - We are all in Soviet time We were taken prisoner, and before that we were taught: the United States is our enemy. But, probably, fifteen people remained in Afghanistan, if not less. Even under the Taliban, life was hard for us, they could have been killed if they knew that you were Russian.

When I again asked Sergei if he still wanted to return to Russia, he looked at me like I was an idiot. He was captured at the age of 20, now he is under 40, and most of his adult life was spent in Afghanistan. He is fluent in the local Pashto and Dari languages, has forgotten the taste of pork and does not drink vodka, goes to the mosque every Friday and feels more like an Afghan than a Russian. She does not react to the offer to hand over the letter to her mother: “Why disturb her? Let him die in peace." The birches are also not bored. The only thing I asked about was: is there still a group "Time Machine"? And having received an affirmative answer, he nodded with satisfaction: "Glory to Allah."

This conversation took place two years ago. Having recently arrived in Pakistan, I again contacted Amanullah through acquaintances. He came to the meeting, albeit very reluctantly. The meeting lasted only a few minutes, and this time Sergei was clearly weary of my company - the second time he did not count on a conversation with a journalist from Moscow.

“I already regret that I approached you then. I thought, as in a train with a random fellow traveler, we will both speak out and part. I don't want to go back, you understand, and I don't want to give you my real name. They are looking for us, they come from some committees, but no one asked us if we wanted to return home. Too much time has already passed. Previously, it was necessary to look for us and rescue us, earlier. Now it's too late.

In the lists of the missing in the brutal Afghan war on this moment there are 288 surnames. On the anniversary of the withdrawal of troops, there was an occasion to remember these people and ask for forgiveness from them: from the dead and from the living. Just for not being able to get them out in time.

George ZOTOV, Islamabad - Moscow

Photo by Vladimir Svartsevich

According to official figures, during the Afghan war of 1979-1989, about 330 Soviet servicemen were taken prisoner. Of these, about 150 survived. Although, in fact, there were probably more people who were taken. What fate awaited those who had the misfortune to be in the power of the Mujahideen?

Afghan martyrs
Some prisoners of war were lucky. Some agreed to convert to Islam and even fight against their own - and remained alive, received new names, started families, even made a military career ... Others were exchanged or transferred to Western human rights organizations. But most ended up in hell, from where it was almost impossible to get out alive.

The traditions of radical Islam call for the martyrdom of the infidels - this is a kind of guarantee of "getting into paradise." In addition, fanaticism was supposed to serve as a means of intimidating the enemy - it was not in vain that the crippled remains of prisoners were often thrown to the Soviet garrisons.

“On the morning of the second day after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Soviet sentry spotted five jute bags on the edge of the runway at Bagram airbase near Kabul,” writes American journalist George Crile in his book Charlie Wilson’s War. - At first he did not give it of great importance, but then he jabbed the barrel of his machine gun into the nearest bag and saw blood come out. Explosives 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.”

These captured soldiers were subjected to a brutal execution called "red tulip". First, they were injected with a large dose of the drug, then hung up by the arms, the skin was cut around the entire body and wrapped up. When the effect of the drug ended, the condemned experienced a severe pain shock. As a rule, people first lost their minds, and then died a slow death ...

“One group of captives, who were flayed, were hung on hooks in a butcher's shop. Another prisoner became the centerpiece of an attraction called buzkashi, the cruel and savage polo of Afghans riding 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.”

Life in the underworld
If the prisoners were not going to be killed, then they were usually kept in underground "casemates". Here is the story of one of them, a native of the Khmelnytsky region, Dmitry Buvaylo, who was released in December 1987:

“For several days they were kept in shackles in a disguised hole-cave. In the prison near Peshawar, where I was imprisoned, the food was nothing but waste... In the prison, for 8-10 hours a day, the guards forced me to learn Farsi, memorize surahs from the Koran, and pray. For any disobedience, for mistakes in reading the suras, they were beaten with lead clubs until they bled."

In the Pakistani Mobarez camp, the captives were kept in a cave where there was neither light nor fresh air. Every day they were tortured and abused. Many could not stand it and committed suicide.

Death or betrayal?
Probably the most famous of the Soviet prisoners of war in Afghanistan can be called Major General of Aviation, Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Rutskoy - former vice president Russian Federation. In April 1988 he was appointed Deputy Commander air force 40th Army and sent to Afghanistan. Despite his high post, Rutskoi himself participated in combat missions. On August 4, 1988, his plane was shot down. Alexander Vladimirovich catapulted and five days later was captured by dushmans of Gulbidin Hekmatyar. He was beaten, hung on a rack ... Then he was handed over to the Pakistani special forces. It turned out that the CIA was interested in the downed pilot. They tried to recruit him, force him to reveal the details of the operation to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, offered new documents and various benefits in the West ... Fortunately, the information that he was in Pakistani captivity reached Moscow, and in the end, after difficult negotiations , Rutskoy was released.

For many Soviet prisoners of war, the only alternative to martyrdom was the betrayal of the Motherland, the agreement to cooperate with the Mujahideen or Western intelligence services. But not everyone chose life in exchange for conscience...

The war in Afghanistan lasted from December 25, 1979 to February 15, 1989. In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared an amnesty for all crimes committed by Soviet military personnel in Afghanistan.

"... in the village, one of the sergeants, without hiding his emotions, noted that "youngsters are good."
The words of the sergeant, like a spark, set fire to everyone else, and then, throwing off his greatcoat, he moved towards one of the women:
- Row, guys!
In front of the elders and children, our internationalists mocked women to their heart's content. The rape lasted two hours. The kids, huddled in a corner, screamed and squealed, trying to somehow help their mothers. The old men, trembling, prayed, asking their God for mercy and salvation.
Then the sergeant commanded: "Fire!" - and first shot at the woman he had just raped. They quickly finished off everyone else. Then, on the orders of K., they drained fuel from the BMP gas tank, doused the corpses with it, threw them clothes and rags that fell under the arm, and meager wooden furniture- and set it on fire. A flame flared up inside the samanka ... "

"... order: poison the wells that we find. Let them die to hell!
And how to poison? Take a live dog, for example. And you throw it there. Cadaverous poison will then do its work ... "

"... we have always been with knives.
- Why?
- And because. Whoever saw the group is not a tenant!
- What does it mean?
- This is the law of special forces. When the group is on a mission, no one should see it. It's not easy to kill a man, though. Especially when it’s not some brutal dushman there, but an old man is standing and looking at you. And all the same. Whoever saw the group is not a tenant. It was an iron law...

"... yes, on caravans, you take a fly and point with your hand, here, they say, go. He comes up, you search him, and what to do with him next? Gather them together? Bind them? Sit with them, guard? Why is this necessary "Searched and everything - at a loss. With knives. In the end, the feeling of pity in us disappeared, it was exterminated. In practice, it was completely gone. It came to such situations when they even argued with each other, like, they say, you were the last time cleaned up, now let me..."

"... where did this girl in a sheepskin coat with a couple or three sheep come from?
Lyokha, seeing the movement in front of him, and realizing that the group was detected, completed his combat mission - he took aim and fired.
Cotton. Shot well. A US bullet [at a reduced speed] of 7.62 caliber flew into the girl's head, disfiguring this divine creation beyond recognition. The ensign coolly pushed the body with his foot to check the hands of the corpse. There is nothing in them but a twig.
I saw only out of the corner of my eye how a small, somehow awkward, leg was still twitching. And then it froze...

"... we tied the Afghan with a rope to an armored personnel carrier and dragged him along like a sack all day long, shot at him from machine guns on the way, and when only one leg and half of his body were left, we cut the rope..."

"... shelling of the village from the artillery division began, and the infantry was told to prepare for combing. At first, the inhabitants rushed to the crevice, but the approach to it was mined, and they began to be blown up by mines, after which they rushed back to the village.
We could see from above how they rush around the village among the explosions. Then, in general, x ... I didn’t understand it, all the civilians who survived rushed straight to our blocks. We all oh ... ate! What to do?! And then one of us fired a machine gun at the crowd, and everyone else started firing. For peaceful..."

"... remembering the burning villages and the screams of civilians trying to escape from bullets and explosions. Before my eyes were terrible pictures: the corpses of children of old people and women, the clang of tank caterpillars winding their guts on tracks, the crunch of human bones under the onslaught of a multi-ton colossus, and around blood, fire and gunfire..."

"...sometimes they hung it in a rubber loop to the barrel of a tank gun, so that a person could only touch the ground with his toes. They hooked the wires of a field telephone to others and twisted the handle, generating a current..."

"... for the entire time of service in Afghanistan (almost a year and a half) starting from December 1979, I heard so many stories about how our paratroopers killed the civilian population just like that, that they simply cannot be counted, and I have never heard that our soldiers were saved one of the Afghans - among the soldiers, such an act would be regarded as aiding the enemies.
Even during the December coup in Kabul, which lasted all night on December 27, 1979, some paratroopers shot at unarmed people who were seen on the streets - then, without a shadow of regret, they cheerfully recalled this as funny cases ... "

"... two months after the introduction of troops - on February 29, 1980 - the first military operation began in the province of Kunar. The main striking force was the paratroopers of our regiment - 300 soldiers who parachuted from helicopters on a high mountain plateau and went down to restore order. How can I the participants of that operation said, they put things in order as follows: they destroyed food supplies in the villages, killed all the livestock; usually, before entering the house, they threw a grenade there, then they shot with a fan in all directions - only after that they looked who was there; everyone men and even teenagers were immediately shot on the spot. The operation lasted almost two weeks, how many people were killed then - no one counted ... "

The corpses of three Afghans mistaken for "spirits" - two men and a woman

"... in the second half of December 1980, they surrounded a large settlement (presumably Tarinkot) in a semicircle. So they stood around three days. By this time, artillery and Grad multiple rocket launchers had been brought up.
On December 20, the operation began: a blow from the "Grad" and artillery was struck at the settlement. After the first volleys, the kishlak plunged into a continuous cloud of dust. The shelling of the settlement continued almost continuously. Residents, in order to escape from the explosions of shells, ran from the village into the field. But there they began to shoot from machine guns, BMD guns, four "Shilka" (self-propelled units with four twin heavy machine guns) fired non-stop, almost all the soldiers fired from their machine guns, killing everyone: including women and children.
After the shelling, the brigade entered the village and finished off the rest of the inhabitants there. When the military operation ended, the whole earth around was strewn with the corpses of people. They counted something like three thousand bodies ... "

"... what our paratroopers were doing in remote areas of Afghanistan was complete arbitrariness. Since the summer of 1980, the 3rd battalion of our regiment was sent to Kandahar province to patrol the territory. Without fear of anyone, they calmly drove along the roads and the desert Kandahar and could, without any clarification, kill any person who met on their way ... "

"... the Afghan went his own way. The only weapon the Afghan had was a stick with which he drove a donkey. A column of our paratroopers was driving along this road. He was killed just like that, with machine gun fire, without leaving the BMDshek armor.
The column stopped. One paratrooper came up and cut off the ears of the dead Afghan - in memory of his military exploits. Then a mine was placed under the corpse of the Afghan, for the one who finds this body. Only this time the idea did not work - when the column started off, someone could not resist and finally fired a burst at the corpse from a machine gun - the mine exploded and tore the Afghan's body to pieces ... "

"... the caravans they met were searched, and if they found weapons, they killed all the people who were in the caravan. cartridge, and, pretending that this cartridge was found in the pocket or in the things of the Afghan, they presented it to the Afghan as evidence of his guilt.
Now it was possible to mock: after listening to a person warmly making excuses, convincing that the cartridge was not his, they began to beat him, then watched him beg on his knees for mercy, but they beat him again and in the end - they still shot him. Then they killed the rest of the people who were in the caravan ... "

"... it all started with the fact that on February 22, 1980, in Kabul, in broad daylight, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Vovk, a senior instructor in the Komsomol of the political department of the 103rd Airborne Division, was killed.
This happened near the "Green Market", where Vovk arrived in an UAZ vehicle together with the air defense chief of the 103rd Airborne Division, Colonel Yuri Dvugroshev. They did not fulfill any task, but, most likely, they simply wanted to buy something in the market. They were in the car when suddenly one shot was fired - the bullet hit Vovk. Dvugroshev and the soldier-driver did not even understand where they were shooting from, and quickly left this place. However, Vovk's wound turned out to be fatal, and he died almost immediately.
And then something happened that shook the whole city. Upon learning of the death of their comrade, a group of officers and ensigns of the 357th Airborne Regiment, led by the regiment's deputy commander, Major Vitaly Zababurin, got into armored personnel carriers and went to the scene to deal with local residents. But, having arrived at the place, they did not bother to search for the culprit, but in a hot head decided to simply punish everyone who was there. Moving along the street, they began to smash and crush everything in their path: they threw grenades at houses, fired from machine guns and machine guns on armored personnel carriers. Dozens of innocent people fell under the hot hand of officers.
The massacre ended, but the news of the bloody pogrom quickly spread throughout the city. The streets of Kabul began to flood thousands of indignant citizens, riots began. At that time, I was on the territory of the government residence, behind a high stone wall Palace of the Peoples. I will never forget that wild howl of the crowd, inspiring fear, from which the blood ran cold. The feeling was the worst...
The rebellion was crushed within two days. Hundreds of Kabul residents were killed. However, the real instigators of those riots, who massacred innocent people, remained in the shadows ... "

"... one of the battalions took prisoners, loaded them into MI-8 and sent them to the base. Having radioed that they had been sent to the brigade. The senior officer of the brigade, who received the radiogram, asked:
- On x .... I need them here?
We contacted the escort officer flying in the cabin of the helicopter. He himself did not know what to do with the prisoners and decided to let them go. From a height of 2000 meters ... "

"... the only more or less significant reason that forced the special forces to kill civilian Afghans was due to" precautionary measures ". Being in the desert or mountains on a combat mission in isolation from the main forces, any special forces group could not allow its location to be revealed From a random traveler, whether a shepherd or a picker of brushwood, who noticed an ambush of special forces or his parking lot, a very real threat emanated ... "

"... during the flight around our area of ​​​​responsibility, the Afghan bus did not stop after the third warning burst. Well, they "soaked" it with NURSs and machine guns, and there were old men, women and children. Only forty-three corpses. We then counted. One the driver survived...

"... our group opened fire on the caravan on the order of the lieutenant. I heard the screams of women. After examining the corpses, it became clear that the caravan was peaceful..."

"... Senior Lieutenant Volodya Molchanov, he was introduced to the Hero from our battalion in 1980 - he hated Muslims. He threw Afghans into the gorge, putting grenades in their pockets, they did not even reach the ground ..."

"... camp, building. Zamkombat pushes the speech:
- We fly out to opium villages, everyone shoots - women, children. Civilians - no!
They understood the team - to work for destruction.
Landed from helicopters. From the air, no cover, the sweep begins:
- Tra-ta-ta! Tra-ta-ta!
Shooting from all sides, not understanding, you fall, you throw a grenade at the duval:
- Baba!!!
Jumping, shooting, dust, screams, corpses under your feet, blood on the walls. Like a car, not a minute in place, jump, jump. The kishlak is big. In optics, women in headscarves, children. No confusion, pull the trigger. Cleaned all day...

"... once we were lifted up on five "turntables" ... They were thrown out near a mountain village. Well, we stretched out in groups and, interacting in pairs, went to scratch the village.
In fact, they shot at everything that moved. Before you enter behind the duval or anywhere, in general, before you look or look anywhere, be sure to throw a grenade - "efka" or RGD. And so you throw, you enter, and there are women and children ... "

An Afghan caravan destroyed without any clarification.

"... the soldiers sawed and chopped apple trees, pears, quince, hazel. Trees were blown up in two girths with plastids so as not to suffer for a long time. The tractor that came to the rescue filled up massive fences-duvals. Gradually we won back the living space for the construction of the "people's" government of socialism in medieval society. Our insolent and ate to such an extent that they selected only the largest and juiciest grapes, and threw the rest away. The green mass squelched underfoot. Sneakers were covered with a sweet shell, turning into bait for bees and wasps. Fighters sometimes even washed their hands with grapes .
We - expanse, and local dekhkans (peasants) - grief and tears. The only means of subsistence, after all. Having broken down the roadside villages, mined the karezes and blown up suspicious ruins, platoons and companies were now crawling out onto the highway. The Afghans, clinging to the side of the road, looked with horror at the results of our invasion of the Greenland. They were talking anxiously among themselves, apparently worried. Here come these civilized people and destroyed their native slums.
The column slowly moved towards Kabul, with the realization of a duty fulfilled ... "

"... the next day, the battalions descended from the mountains to the village. A route went through it to the equipment waiting in the valley. Life after our visit to the village froze completely. Cows, horses, donkeys lay everywhere, here and there, shot from machine guns. These are paratroopers vented on them the accumulated anger and rage.After we left the settlement, the roofs of houses and sheds in the yards smoked and burned.
Heck! You can't really set fire to these dwellings. One clay and stones. Clay floor, clay walls, clay steps. Only the mats on the floor are burning, and those woven from vines and bed branches. Misery and poverty all around. Paradox! According to our Marxist ideology, exactly those people live here, for the sake of whom the fire of the world revolution was started. It is their interests that the Soviet Army came to defend, fulfilling an international duty ... "

"... I also had to participate in negotiations with field commanders. I usually posted a map of Afghanistan with the designation of the places of concentration of the Dushman detachments, pointed to it and asked:
- Ahmad, do you see these two villages? We know that in one you have three wives and eleven children. In the other, two more wives and three children. You see, there are two divisions of Grad rocket launchers nearby. One shot from your side, and villages with wives and children will be destroyed. Understood?..."

"... from the air it was impossible to assess the successes presented in the reports, but the troops who continued on their way to the pass escorted hundreds of bodies of dead civilians carried to the road by the Afghans, so that we could enjoy the contemplation of what we had done..."

"... the three of them went on a water cart to the river. They scoop with buckets. The process is long. On the other side, a girl appears. They raped, killed - her and her old grandfather. He tried to prevent. The village broke loose, went to Pakistan. necessary..."

"... the very prestige of service in the units of the Soviet military intelligence obliged every soldier and special forces officer to do a lot. They were little interested in issues of ideology and politics. They were not tormented by the problem of "how moral this war is." Such concepts as "internationalism", " duty to help the brotherly people of Afghanistan" for the special forces were just political phraseology, an empty phrase. The requirements to observe the rule of law and humanity in relation to the local population were perceived by many special forces as a thing incompatible with the order to give a result ... "

"... then we were given medals "From the grateful Afghan people" at home. Black humor!
At the presentation in the district administration (there were a hundred of our people), I asked to speak and asked:
- Who among those present saw these grateful [Afghans]?
The military commissar immediately closed this topic, something like, - "That's because of such ..." - but the men did not support me either. I don’t know why, maybe they were afraid for benefits ... "

There is quite a lot of information about how during the Afghan war of 1979-1989 the dushmans treated Soviet soldiers. But there is almost no information about the stay of Afghan fighters in Soviet captivity. Why?

An eye for an eye…

For a long time, the heroic image of the Soviet soldier-internationalist was promoted in our country. Much remained behind the scenes, and only in the post-perestroika years, individual grains of information about the reverse side of the war in Afghanistan began to leak into the media. Then the public learned about the former Soviet soldiers who voluntarily went over to the side of the Mujahideen, and about the atrocities that the latter committed with our prisoners, and about the cruelty that our soldiers and officers showed towards the local population ...

So, journalist A. Nureyev was once told about a paratrooper officer who personally shot seven captured dushmans. The journalist was shocked: how could it be, because there is the Geneva International Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, ratified by the USSR in 1954. It states: “Prisoners of war must always be treated humanely ... Prisoners of war cannot be subjected to physical violence ... Prisoners of war must likewise always be protected, especially from all acts of violence or intimidation, from insults and the curiosity of the crowd. The use of reprisals against them is prohibited ... "

If at the very beginning of the war there were practically no acts of violence against prisoners and Afghans by the Soviet military, then the situation changed dramatically. The reason for this was the numerous atrocities of the Mujahideen, which they did with our military. Soviet soldiers who were taken prisoner were subjected to sophisticated torture, skinned alive, dismembered, as a result of which they died in terrible agony ... And it very often happened that after their death, comrades in unit went to the nearest village and burned houses there, killed civilians, raped women ... As they say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ...

Torture and executions

As for the captured dushmans, they were often tortured. According to eyewitnesses, the prisoners, for example, were suspended in a rubber loop from the barrel of a tank gun, so that the toes barely touched the ground. They could also drive needles under the nails, as the Nazis did during the Great Patriotic War. At best, the prisoners were simply severely beaten. The role of the executioner was usually played by some warrant officer, who possessed great physical strength.

In the summer of 1981, during a military raid in the Gardez region, a detachment of paratroopers captured six Mujahideen. The commander gave the order to deliver them by helicopter to headquarters. But, when the helicopter had already taken off into the air, the brigade commander from the headquarters sent a radiogram: “I have nothing to feed the prisoners with!” The commander of the detachment contacted the officer who accompanied the prisoners, and he decided to ... let them go. A small nuance: the helicopter at that time was at an altitude of 2000 meters and was not going to land. That is, dushmans were simply thrown down from a great height. And when the last of them left the salon, a ramrod from a Makarov pistol was driven into his ear ... By the way, the episode with dropping prisoners from a helicopter was far from unique.

Things like this don't always go unpunished. The press got information about how a military tribunal sentenced the deputy commander of a regiment stationed in the Ghazni region and one of the company commanders to capital punishment for shooting twelve captured Mujahideen. The rest of the participants in the execution received impressive prison terms.

Murder or exchange?

Former special forces say that they did not really want to take the Mujahideen prisoner, as there was a lot of "fuss and trouble" with them. Often the "spirits" were immediately killed. Basically, they were treated like bandits, interrogated with prejudice. They were usually kept in prisons, and not in the location of the unit.

There were, however, special camps for Afghan prisoners of war. Dushmans were treated more or less tolerably there, as they were being prepared for exchange for Soviet prisoners. The Mujahideen bargained, demanded that the exchange be not one-to-one, but, say, for one "shuravi" - six Afghans. As a rule, in the end they came to a consensus.

No matter how we are called to humanism, but war is war. At all times, the belligerents did not spare their opponents, tortured prisoners, killed women and children ... And violence, as a rule, only breeds violence ... The events in Afghanistan once again proved this.