Afghanistan: Distant Drums

USSR leaves Afghanistan, February 15, 1989

For my student friends and me, greeting the New Year of 1980 was a rollicking good time. Even by Moscow standards it was frigid – 40º below – and getting around town was not easy for us girls with nothing but sheer stockings between our calves and the elements. But what fun it was for our jolly crew to tumble into a warm apartment already crowded with people, where music was playing and corks were popping. The cold just made it more of an adventure.

Nobody focused on the fact that, right before New Year’s, somewhere in Afghanistan, Soviet troops had stormed some presidential palace. The New Year, end of semester exams – who had time to follow the news? When one of my classmates came up to me in the wee hours and sarcastically congratulated me with the overthrow of “that bloodthirsty dog Amin,” I didn’t even know who he was talking about. Who was that? Ah, yes, some Afghan communist who came to power, overthrowing another communist, who had deposed an emir or something… It was all so distant.

But once people recovered from their holiday hangovers, they started to get their bearings. On television they showed the new president of Afghanistan – Babrak Karmal – addressing his people from Tashkent with absolutely dead eyes and a face gray from horror. Over the din of jamming, the BBC and Voice of America reported that Academician Andrei Sakharov had spoken out against the invasion of Afghanistan and then been exiled to Gorky. After a while, we learned that many countries would stay away from the Moscow Olympics, into which the Soviet people had put so much effort. Life was slowly taking a rather unpleasant turn.

At the university, everything went on as before, although stories came from various corners about boys who had been sent off to Afghanistan, and then about boys who would not be coming home from Afghanistan, or who returned as invalids or were otherwise unable to resume normal life. There was even a cynical joke making the rounds. Sherlock Holmes remarks, “I see you have just returned from Afghanistan, Watson.” “How did you know, Holmes?” “Elementary, my dear Watson. You’re in a zinc coffin.”

As one of Dostoevsky’s protagonists once said, “Man gets used to anything, the scoundrel.” And we got used to upbeat television reports about educating the Afghan people. And we got used to the horrors we heard from friends and acquaintances. The war was off somewhere far away, but it only touched those whose loved ones were there, and Academician Sakharov, and a few dozen madmen. The Olympics were over. Not many countries had attended, but the ceremony had nevertheless been carried off with all the usual pomp. The years passed one after another.

America elected a new president, Ronald Reagan, and tension between our two countries became almost palpable. And then one November morning, all the radio and television stations switched to classical music – a sure sign that something important had happened, that Brezhnev had died. Andropov took his place, and everyone started to hope for some kind of change, since this old KGB hand supposedly spoke English. Change took the form of raids in stores in the name of the struggle for discipline. Then Andropov died and his place was taken by Chernenko, a strange character from the comedy of the absurd. Then Chernenko died and we heard a new name – Gorbachev – and a new word – perestroika.

There were many interesting developments over those years, both in the country and in my life. I graduated from the university, went to work, married, and had children. And all that time, somewhere far away in Afghanistan, about which the only thing we had grown up knowing was that it was the first country to enter into diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution, a brutal, horrifying, and cruel war was underway. Villages were being burned, cities bombed, and our boys were being skinned alive. Those who survived tried to avenge the deaths of their comrades. It was horrific, but we became accustomed to living our lives against the backdrop of this horror. Everything was as it had been before, except for those who could not sleep at night, wondering when the next letter would come from their son, or those who had given up hope of ever getting such a letter.

Then perestroika began to gain momentum – there was greater freedom, new publications, poetry, forbidden books, Sakharov returned from exile, Gorbachev met with Reagan – but still the war raged on, and few gave it much thought. There were so many more important things happening in the country. Afghanistan? Sure, a very unpleasant business…

Then came 1989 and it was triumphantly proclaimed that the war in Afghanistan was over. We watched on TV as the troops withdrew, and saw how General Gromov was the last to cross the border. I can remember just how I felt at the time – “That’s great, of course, but there’s so much other interesting stuff going on.” Few paid much attention to the collapse of the pro-Soviet government as soon as our troops left, or to the hanging of President Najibullah, who had stayed behind, or to the Talibs who occupied Kabul. Who was this Najibullah? He headed the Afghan KGB or something… And now where is Babrak Kamal? They say he’s a merchant in a Moscow produce market, just like many other former Afghan officials and soldiers who were reluctant to stay in their own country, but were of little use to anyone in the country that they counted on for help.

A few months after our troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, the first Congress of People’s Deputies convened – now that was something which caught the country’s attention. Nobody got any work done; everyone sat and watched the live broadcasts of the congress. Academician Sakharov was one of the deputies elected, and a few months later he was set upon by “Afghans” – war veterans who accused Sakharov of defaming the valor of Soviet soldiers. In December 1989, Sakharov died, and thousands showed up to pay their last respects. But the war in Afghanistan was already forgotten against the backdrop of the collapse of the Union, food vanishing from store shelves, and the first signs of ethnic unrest.

Fifteen thousand boys never got to see what happened in the country for which they believed they were fighting. And many thousands more, no longer boys, but full-grown men, still suffer from “Afghan syndrome,” struggling to find their place in civilian life. We heard rumors that the “Afghans” [the veterans] had their own mafia, and that they exploited the various tax and customs benefits to which veterans and especially disabled veterans were entitled, building business enterprises that often skirted the law. There were a number of murders attributed to competing gangs of Afghan veterans. In the school where I taught, a boy enrolled whose father, a photojournalist, had fallen from atop an armored personal carrier when covering the the troops’ withdrawal Afghanistan, and was crushed by its treads. For some reason, the boy became a skinhead…

The years passed, and again so much was happening. The Soviet Union was no more. Russia and Afghanistan no longer shared a border. There was talk about their narcotics reaching us anyway, but by then we had so many new problems – economic reforms, President Yeltsin’s battle with the Supreme Soviet, the putsch, tanks in Moscow, a new constitution, political turmoil, and, finally Chechnya.

After Chechnya, it seemed as if hardly anyone gave much thought to Afghanistan. War in Chechnya, negotiations, more war, more negotiations, terrorists, elections, murders, problems – Chechnya is an ulcer that has yet to heal; it is still a painful wound.

Then in 2005, the film Ninth Company came out, based on the true story of the death of Soviet soldiers left in the lurch by military leaders. The film generated a lot of criticism, with some saying that is not how it was. People watched it and discussed it.

My son, who had been four when Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan, asked me, “Why did we get into that war in the first place?” There is no answer. When no sensible answer can be found, people always say, “There were geopolitical reasons.”

And what’s going on in Afghanistan now? Well, now, the Americans are there.

“Elementary, my dear Watson. You’re in a zinc coffin.”