Afghan International

The operations department at the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Afghanistan was located in the royal palace of Dar ul-aman (Gates of Peace) on the outskirts of Kabul. The palace, the district and the road to it, we called Darlaman.

Absolutely straight with the ideal highway coverage to the palace has long become a street. Yam and potholes on it, despite the active movement and driveways of tracked vehicles, were not noted, as on other roads built by the middle of the twentieth century under the guidance of German and then our specialists.

Both sides were hidden behind unbroken, blind gates with green gates. The fact that all the gates in Afghanistan are green, I learned not by chance and quickly. The reason was my duty - to participate in the establishment of people's power in the country.

PEOPLE'S POWER COUNTER

In the early years there was no focus on the military solution of everything and everything. They were expecting a victorious march of people's power, and they told me to keep its records. That is, the case was first assigned to my colleague Leonid Vasilievich Derkach. But he tired of it immediately and completely. He preferred to go on vacation, and when he returned, he did not demand his duty back. Especially since she has changed. Army General Alexander Mikhailovich Maiorov did not complain to the accountants and demanded activity. I had to retrain in a fighter for a brighter future for a variety of Afghans. Only independent Pashtun tribes, divided by the cunning Durand line, numbered 22. And with them - the Nuristanis, the Hazaras, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Persians, the Baluchis. When I hear that in a multinational country it is difficult to live and manage, I remember how they lived next to each other, managed, traded and did not interfere in the affairs of others.

Of course, I was not left alone with my errand. The establishment of people's power in the counties and volosts (it was not possible to know the difference between a county and a volost) was ensured by all.

I had to go to the PDPA Central Committee to our advisers through the executive authorities, to Tsaranda (MVD) and to receive information on how and in which areas the organizational cores accumulate. Most of our specialists knew that the East is a delicate matter, and the process was unhurried. Picked up secretaries, at first on the Soviet principle - from everywhere, but only not from the local, so as not to merge and not be subjected to uncontrolled influence. But the East prevented this by driving out strangers. He also banished the authoritative people from the locals with their intrinsic subtlety.

They supplemented the orgadro with teachers, medical assistants, other specialists, and procured a stock of material resources. I entered the data in the table. I saw her unchanged until the withdrawal of the 40 Army from Afghanistan in the hands of young officers, who also took the assignment seriously. It is found in some studies and memoirs.

As soon as the red color of readiness began to prevail in the line of the corresponding county or volost, the Afghan troops were planned and carried out a raid to liberate the county center. The Afghan battalion entered the settlement, and the so-called spooks did not get their weapon, looking at what was happening. The above-mentioned orgjadro was located on the spot and signed the act of establishing power (so as not to violate the statements). With a nucleus in the county, one company remained for a month or two.

Often this situation suited everyone, and the traditional course of life did not change. Often the orgjadro did not take root and went back along with the thinned army. There was always enough reason for doubt, and I’m not talking about the effectiveness of such activities. But we tried.

GREEN GATES

So the KGB office had to go. Our assistant with many years of experience in the country and already captain Yevgeny Klyukin explained that the place I needed is located on the left, somewhere in the middle of Darlaman, in a two-story house. The hallmark is the green gate to the courtyard.

It turned out that such a sign is inherent in all courts in all parts of the country. A single color, as ordered by Daud Shah, did not fade in the sun. Near the gate at the clay duvala, donkeys waited for the heat of the day for hours.

I still found the specified object and was not even late. The duty officer from the real representatives of the special service immediately deciphered my completely Afghan appearance, replacing the seized personal documents. He pointed out where to go, and sent unaccompanied. It was difficult to get to the embassy through the central entrance. Not only me, but pronounced Slavs had no confidence. But on the back of a long concrete fence for free entry, they inserted a small iron door that no one had guarded.

The lack of documents did not limit us in any way and did not cause moral doubts in our Soviet citizenship and trust in us. Not like at the present time.

But the formal impersonality of the shuravi was agitated by the leadership of the Afghan General Staff. We received certificates of the simplest type, without photos. They were read from the last page and from right to left. Arab ligature associations did not cause. But, so as not to confuse, they did not carry the Afghan rusts of strict accounting with them. True, the translators, the same Zhenya Klyukin, when cross-polling first asked our self-name and with a smirk assured us that it was written about us. Unfortunately, the card has disappeared from my personal archive. And in the certificate from 15 Saura 1361 of the year to the Afghan Order of the Star, carved into an artillery workshop with a bastard file, an unknown clerk from the PDPA Central Committee neatly deduced my surname as a child in Cyrillic.

Afghans lived in their own, albeit alarmed, peace and lifestyle. They believed us by default, and we did not mislead them either in the case or in the case. There was no need for certificates and certificates, although they had great respect for stamped papers.

We also recognized each other in a flash. Flew, traveled around the country freely.

ONCE IN ZARANDGE

Once, the “struggle for power” was brought to the town of Zaranj in the Dashti-Margo desert, on the border with Iran. I just became a major, I did not find solidity, and General Arakelov flew with me as a sign of respect for the local comrades. Afghan colonels - the commanders of helicopters. The general in Afghanistan and the general, and to his question "Who are you?", Set in our style rather sharply, one of them calmly looked into his eyes and replied: "Man."

But he did not ask us about anything he had never seen. And, without asking for passports and permits, a man from the crowd who was besieging the parking lot took each 10 – 15 board. People had been sitting on the floor for an hour or two. Something they said, and in the flight no one was heard. After landing, no one moved until we stepped down from the stepladder to the hardened clay with traces of erosion from the melting glacial waters.

Immediately felt the desert. The local orgadro met us in full force. Neither the secretary, nor the officers of the KhAD, Tsarandoya and others - no one doubted how we introduced ourselves. It turned out that the senior on the trip - General Arakelov, with him the translator Manukov and I - all of the characteristic eastern type.

In the house of clay bricks worked powerful air conditioning. Outside, two soldiers, Tsarandoi, were splashing their hands with muddy clay from some vessel. So to say, the radiator of the cooler was cut in the wall of the house on the side where a tight stream of hot, dry air was coming from the desert. The phenomenon was stable, like the Hindu Kush. Part of the wind flowed through the wet reeds, cooled and gave us pleasure.

ON A FULL TRUST

Another hypostasis was the fact of complete trust of ordinary Afghans, which was manifested in the autumn of 1980. The sentry reported to me as an operational duty officer about two visitors, as it was thought, random. I go out to talk with them. Two stately tall old men in white clothes, next to them are the commanders of our and Afghan guards. The faces are dark, weathered. I ordered them to bring chairs and invited them to sit down.

What they said, the translator — the nineteen-year-old junior lieutenant — could not be understood. Then the Afghan officer explained in Russian that they were Pashtuns, they came to the Soviet command specifically. The answer to my remark that internal issues are solved on the floor above, the Afghan leadership, he translated something like this: “We know ours. That's why they came to you. We want your answer because your word is always firm. ”

The ambassadors were received by Vladimir Petrovich Cheremnykh, a highly respected chief of staff me and everyone I knew, and had a long conversation. The result of the conversation next year was a raid by Afghan troops with the participation of a company of the 40 Army in the territories of Pashtunistan near the borders with Pakistan. He led, but in fact spent a peaceful march, calmly talked and earned the trust of all the elders of the settlements in the blessed memory of General Peter Ivanovich Shkidchenko, who died in the spring of 1982 of the year. In the territories he went through, they did not fight for a long time, and caravans with weapons happened occasionally. There, exactly according to the order, they began to fulfill the plan of conscription to the warring army. They served their young people regularly, where they would be ordered, and never deserted.

It seemed that a way to solve the Afghan and our problems was found. But the Soviet Union still succumbed to the war, which lasted long 10 years.