Soviet Soldier in Afghanistan
I went on HuffPo live to talk about this story:
A former Soviet soldier has been discovered hiding in Afghanistan under an assumed identity 33 years after going missing.
Bakhretdin Khakimov disappeared during the first months of the nine-year war that was sparked when Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in late 1979.The ethnic Uzbek, originally from Samarkand, was wounded in battle in 1980 and rescued by nearby villagers, according to the BBC. He later adopted the local name Sheikh Abdullah and has lived by practicing herbal medicine learnt from his saviors.
Khakimov was found two weeks ago by members of the Warriors-Internationalists Affairs Committee, or WIAC, a nonprofit, Moscow-based organization, who spent an entire year retracing his steps, reports Russia’s RIA news agency.
Anyway, remarks below go something like this; events like this aren’t so unusual, as American defectors from Vietnam and Korean wars remained in both countries post-war (as well as third states such as Sweden); it’s hard to know how many more former Soviet soldiers might still be in Afghanistan; we don’t know if this gentleman’s story is true (some Soviet defectors, especially from Central Asia, joined the mujahideen for ideological reasons); and we’ll likely never get the full story. Enjoy…
mk.ru says that during the 21 years this WIAC existed it found 29 people. 22 returned, 7 refused and chose stayed in Afghanistan.
I don’t think there’s anything ideological here. Probably more like the ‘mutiny on Bounty’ sort of thing.
Also it should be recalled that the northern regions of Afghanistan are ethnically identical to the neighboring Central Asian states. There are a lot of Uzbeks, Turkmen, and especially Tajiks in Afghanistan. That makes it easier for an Uzbek from the Soviet army to remain in Afghanistan, he can already speak one of the languages.
i suspect that, as the soviet occupation dragged on, if you were a conscript from a close by area, this may have been a potentially attractive option.
i have wondered, given the brutality of the revolutionary-era british army (if you weren’t an officer), how many british soldiers, who had limited prospects back home, should they survive, defected to the colonial cause? seems like that would be a great topic for a graduate/phd paper.
Actually it was early on in the war that most of the defections of Central Asian conscripts took place. Initially they sent quite a few thinking it would give them an advantage in the war. Kind of like the British using West Indian troops in the Gold Coast. But, a number of Central Asians deserted early on. Later on the Soviet government was more careful about which Uzbeks and Tajiks it sent to Afghanistan. Although it could never do without them. Tajik or Dari is the second language of Afghanistan after Pashtun and Tajik translators really could not be completely dispensed with.
Certainly, some Hessian mercenaries did.
Captured in the battle of Trenton, sent as POWs to live with (german-speaking) Amish families, with all the local agricultural abundance and young female company, signed up for the American side and headed west after the War.
Washington was a pretty shrewd fellow, and converted POWs to his side and as future allies and citizens. Compare and contrast with a more recent dumbshit CIC.
There was a similar phenomenon in the Civil War, though it didn’t involve POWs.