The topic of the 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, civil servants who were not lucky enough to be in captivity, but also relatives, friends, relatives, and colleagues. Meanwhile, there is less and less talk 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 since the youngest soldiers-internationalists. 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 servicemen were caught. But these numbers are most likely higher. Indeed, according to official data, 417 Soviet servicemen were missing in Afghanistan. Captivity for them was a real hell. The Afghan mujahideen have never followed and would not have followed the international rules for keeping prisoners of war. Almost all Soviet soldiers and officers who were in Afghan captivity spoke about the monstrous bullying that the spooks subjected them to. Many died a terrible death, someone could not stand the torture and went over to the side of the Mujahideen, before that, switching to another faith.
A significant part of the mujahideen camps in which Soviet prisoners of war were kept were located on the territory of neighboring Pakistan - in its North-West Frontier Province, which is historically inhabited by Pashtun tribes, akin 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 acted with the hands of Pakistani intelligence services and Pakistani special forces. The corresponding operation "Cyclone" was developed, which provided for the generous financing of Pakistan's military programs, providing it with economic assistance, allocating funds and providing organizational capabilities for the recruitment of mujahideen in Islamic countries. Afghanistan - part of the detachments that fought against government forces and the Soviet army. But if military assistance to the Mujahideen fit into the confrontation between the "two worlds" - the capitalist and the socialist, similar assistance was provided by the United States and its allies to the anti-communist forces in Indochina, in African states, then the placement of Soviet prisoners of war in the camps of the Mujahideen in Pakistan was already a little beyond what was permitted. ... 
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, chief of staff for the Pakistani ground forces, came to power in the country in 1977 in a military coup, toppling Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Two years later, Bhutto was executed. Zia ul-Haq immediately began to deteriorate 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 Pakistan held Soviet citizens who were tortured and brutally killed. Pakistani intelligence officers were engaged in the transportation of ammunition to the Mujahideen, trained them in training camps in Pakistan. According to many researchers, without the direct support of Pakistan, the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan would be doomed to failure.
Of course, the fact that Soviet citizens were held on the territory of Pakistan had a certain share of guilt and the Soviet leadership, which by this time was becoming 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 the Pakistani leadership's refusal to cover camp to take the most severe measures. In November 1982, despite the difficult relations between the two countries, Zia ul-Haq arrived in Moscow for the funeral of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. Here he met with the most influential Soviet politicians - Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov and Andrei Andreevich Gromyko. Both "monsters" of Soviet policy, meanwhile, were unable to fully put pressure on Zia ul-Haq and force him to at least reduce the amount and nature of aid to the Afghan mujahideen. Pakistan did not change its position, and satisfied Zia ul-Haq calmly flew home.
Numerous sources clearly testify to what happened in the camps where prisoners of war were kept - these are the memories of those who were lucky enough to survive and return to their homeland, and the memoirs of Soviet military leaders, and the work of Western journalists and historians. For example, at the beginning of the war, at the runway of the Bagram airbase in the vicinity of Kabul, according to the American journalist George Crail, a Soviet sentry discovered five jute sacks. When he poked at one of them, he saw blood flowing out. At first they thought that the bags might contain booby-traps. They called in the sappers, but they found a terrible find there - in each bag there was a Soviet soldier wrapped in his own skin.
"Red Tulip" - this was the name of the most savage and famous execution used by the Afghan mujahideen in relation to the "Shuravi". First, the prisoner was injected into a state of narcotic intoxication, and then the skin around the whole body was cut and wrapped up. When the effect of the drug stopped, the unfortunate person experienced a severe pain shock, as a result of which he went crazy and slowly died.
In 1983, a little after smiling Soviet leaders saw off Zia ul-Haq, who was flying to his homeland, in the village of Badaber, in Pakistan, 10 kilometers south of the city of Peshawar, an Afghan refugee camp was set up. 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 is located here, in which the mujahideen were trained by instructors from the 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, women and children who fled from the "Soviet occupiers" live here. In fact, future fighters of the formations of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, regularly trained in the camp. Since 1983, the camp in Badaber began to be used to contain captured servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Tsarandoy (Afghan militia), as well as Soviet soldiers, officers and civil servants who were captured by the Mujahideen. Throughout 1983 and 1984. prisoners were taken to the camp, who were placed in zindans. In total, at least 40 Afghan and 14 Soviet prisoners of war were kept here, although these figures, again, are very approximate and can be much larger. In Badaber, as in other camps, prisoners of war were subjected to cruel 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. In the end, a plan of escape was ripe for several of the prisoners of war. For them, who had been here for the third year, it 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 being tortured and abused every day. Until now, little is known about the events in the Badaber camp, but usually Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko, born in 1954, is called the organizer of the uprising. Then he was 31 years old. A native of the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, Viktor Dukhovchenko worked as a minder 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 civilian specialist who served as a driver in the 5th Guards Motorized Rifle Division.
On April 26, 1985 at 21:00, the Badaber camp guards gathered for the evening prayer on the parade ground. At this time, several of the most courageous prisoners "removed" two sentries, one of whom was standing on the watchtower, and the other at the weapons depot, after which the rest of the prisoners of war were freed and armed with weapons at the depot. In the hands of the rebels were a mortar, RPG grenade launchers. Already at 23:00, an 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 the aid of 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 link of the Pakistani Air Force, were directly involved 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, as well as call the Red Cross. Burhanuddin Rabbani, who did not want international publicity for the existence of a concentration camp on Pakistani territory, ordered an assault. However, over the entire 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 shot 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, because of which the Mujahideen lost 40 artillery pieces, mortars and machine guns, about 2 thousand missiles 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 the usual herbivorousness. On May 11, 1985, the USSR Ambassador to Pakistan handed a note of protest to President Zia-ul-Haq, in which Pakistan was blamed for what had happened. And that's all. No missile strikes on Pakistani military targets, not even the severing 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 a concentration camp where Soviet people were kept. Ordinary Soviet citizens turned out to be heroes, and the leaders ... keep silent.
In 1992, the direct organizer of both the Badaber camp and the massacre of Soviet prisoners of war Burhanuddin Rabbani became the president of Afghanistan. He held this post for nine long years, until 2001. He became one of the richest people in Afghanistan and the entire Middle East, controlling several routes for the supply of contraband and illegal goods from Afghanistan to Iran and Pakistan and further around the world. He, like many of his closest associates, did not bear responsibility for the events in Badaber, as well as for other actions during the war in Afghanistan. High-ranking Russian politicians, statesmen of 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 of his own accord. On September 20, 2011, an influential politician was killed in his own home in Kabul as a result of a bomb blast carried by a suicide bomber wearing his own turban. As Soviet prisoners of war exploded in Badaber in 1985, so did Rabbani himself 26 years later in Kabul.
The Badaber uprising 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 an explosion of an ammunition depot and the camp itself. But how many more small uprisings could there be? Escape attempts, during which fearless Soviet soldiers died in a battle with the enemy?
Even after the Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989, there were a significant number of captured internationalist soldiers on the territory of this country. In 1992, the Committee for Internationalist Warriors was established under the Council of Heads of Government of the CIS states. Its representatives found 29 Soviet soldiers alive 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 have remained to live in Afghanistan, the majority are people who have 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, having accepted a heroic death for loyalty to the oath and the Motherland, were left without proper memory from their native state.
Afghanistan. More than 25 years have passed since the last conclusion, a lot of books, stories, memoirs have been written and published, but, all the same, there are still unopened pages and topics that are bypassed. The fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Afghanistan. Maybe because she was terrible.
Afghan spooks did not have the habit of killing prisoners of war doomed to death at once. Among the “lucky ones” were those whom they wanted to convert to their faith, exchange for one of their own, transfer them to human rights organizations “free of charge” so that the whole world would know about the generosity of the Mujahideen. Those who did not fall into this number were waiting for such sophisticated torture and mockery, from a simple description of which the hair rises.
What made Afghans do this? Is it possible that of all the feelings inherent in man, they only have cruelty? The backwardness of Afghan society, coupled with the traditions of radical Islamism, can serve as a weak excuse. Islam guarantees getting to a Muslim paradise if an Afghan tortures an infidel to death.
One should not reject the presence of residual pagan remnants in the form of human sacrifices with the obligatory accompanied by fanaticism. Taken together, it was an excellent means of psychological warfare. The brutally mutilated bodies of Soviet prisoners of war and what was left of them were supposed to intimidate the enemy.
What the "spirits" did with the prisoners, to call intimidation, does not turn the tongue. From what he saw - the blood froze in his veins. American journalist George Crile in his book gives an example of yet another intimidation. On the morning of the next day, after the invasion, the Soviet sentry sighted five jute sacks. They stood at the edge of the airstrip at Bagram airbase near Kabul. When the sentry poked the barrel at them, blood appeared on the bags.
The sacks contained young Soviet soldiers, wrapped in ... their own skin. It was cut in the abdomen and pulled up, and then tied over the head. This type of particularly painful death is called the "red tulip". Everyone who served on Afghan soil heard about this atrocity.
The victim is injected into unconsciousness with a huge dose of drugs and is hung by the arms. Next, an incision is made around the entire body and the skin is wrapped upward. The convict first went crazy with painful shock when the narcotic effect ended, and then slowly and painfully died.
It is difficult to reliably say whether Soviet soldiers suffered such a fate and, if so, how many. There is a lot of talk among Afghan veterans, but they do not give specific names. But this is not a reason to consider the execution a legend.
The proof is the recorded fact that this execution was applied to the driver of the SA truck, Viktor Gryaznov. He went missing on a January day in 1981. 28 years later, Kazakh journalists received a certificate from Afghanistan - an answer to their official request.
Shuravi Gryaznov Viktor Ivanovich was taken prisoner during the battle. He was offered to convert to the Islamic faith and participate in the holy war. When Gryaznov refused, the Sharia court sentenced him to death with the poetic name “red tulip”. The verdict was carried out.
It would be naive to believe that this is the only type of execution that was used to kill Soviet prisoners of war. Iona Andronov (Soviet international journalist) often visited Afghanistan and saw many mutilated corpses of captured soldiers. There was no limit to sophisticated atrocities - severed ears and noses, ripped stomachs and intestines torn out, severed heads thrust into the peritoneum. If many people were captured, the bullying took place in front of the rest of the condemned.
The military counterintelligence officers, who on duty collected the remains of people tortured to death, are still silent about what they saw in Afghanistan. But isolated episodes are leaked to print.
Once a whole column of trucks with drivers - 32 soldiers and a warrant officer - disappeared. Only on the fifth day did the paratroopers find what was left of the captured column. Dismembered and mutilated fragments of human bodies were strewn about everywhere, powdered with a thick layer of dust. Heat and time almost decomposed the remains, but empty eye sockets, severed genitals, ripped and gutted stomachs, even in impenetrable men caused a state of stupor.
It turns out that these captive guys were taken tied up in the villages for several days to be peaceful! residents could stab with knives maddened with horror young children, completely defenseless. Residents ... Men. Women! Old men. Young and even children !. Then these poor half-dead children were pelted with stones and thrown to the ground. Then armed spooks took over them.
The civilian population of Afghanistan willingly responded to proposals to mock and mock Soviet servicemen. Special forces company soldiers were ambushed in the Maravara gorge. The dead were shot in the head for control, and the wounded were dragged by the legs to a nearby village. Nine ten or fifteen-year-olds with dogs came from the village and began to finish off the wounded with hatchets, daggers and knives. The dogs grabbed the throats, and the boys severed their arms and legs, ears, noses, ripped open their bellies and squeezed out their eyes. And the adult "spirits" only encouraged them and smiled approvingly.
It was just by a miracle that one junior sergeant survived. He hid in the reeds and witnessed what was happening. So many years have been behind him, but he is still trembling and all the horror of what he has experienced is concentrated in his eyes. And this horror does not go anywhere, despite all the efforts of doctors and medical scientific achievements.
How many of them have not yet come to their senses and refuse to talk about Afghanistan?
Left in our memory a lot of non-healing wounds. 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 have adapted to drive moonshine. This was legally forbidden by the authorities, therefore, in some parts there were their own specially guarded points of moonshine. The headache for homegrown moonshiners was the extraction of sugar-containing raw materials. Most often they used trophy sugar seized from the mujahideen. [C-BLOCK]
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, having 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. [C-BLOCK]
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
Captured Soviet soldiers were rarely killed by the Mujahideen at once. Usually, a proposal 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 rather an exception to the rule. [С-BLOCK] 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 near the runway. Pushing one of them, the soldier saw the blood coming out. After opening the bags, a terrible picture appeared in front of 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 called the execution "red tulip". Before the execution, the prisoner was pumped up with drugs, driving 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 crazy and eventually died in inhuman torment.
Did what they wanted
Local residents were often extremely cruel to Soviet soldiers-internationalists. 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, there were cases of completely unjustified cruelty. Lance corporal of the Airborne Forces Sergei Boyarkin in the book "Soldiers of the Afghan War" described an episode of patrolling by his battalion in the vicinity of Kandahar. The paratroopers had fun, shooting livestock with machine guns, until an Afghan was caught in their path, driving a donkey. Without thinking twice, a line was launched at the man, and one of the military decided to cut off the victim's ears as a keepsake. [C-BLOCK] Boyarkin also described the favorite habit of some military personnel to plant incriminating evidence on Afghans. During the search, the patrolman quietly pulled out a cartridge from his pocket, pretending that it had been found in the Afghan's belongings. After presenting such proof of guilt, a local resident could be shot right on the spot. Victor 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 shelled from the "Grad" and artillery, in panic the local residents, including women and children, who ran 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 a peaceful life, could not find a place in it. Statistics that appeared a year after the withdrawal of Soviet troops showed terrible figures: About 3,700 war veterans were in prisons, 75% of Afghan families faced either divorce or aggravation of conflicts, almost 70% of internationalist soldiers were not satisfied with their work, 60 % abused alcohol or drugs, among the "Afghans" there was a high suicide rate. In the early 90s, a study was conducted that showed that at least 35% of war veterans needed psychological treatment. Unfortunately, over time, old mental traumas without qualified help tend to worsen. A similar problem existed in the United States. But if in the 80s the US developed a state program to help veterans of the Vietnam War, the budget of which was $ 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.
