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"Zinky
Boys" and the ironies of history
Like angry dragonflies, Soviet helicopter gunships roared
over the barren, brown landscape. A stern major with
a hawk's face ordered our contingent of Moscow-based
western correspondents to disembark the Soviet Air Force
transport plane. Hopping aboard a military bus, we rode
through the dusty city of Termez in the now former Soviet
republic of Uzbekistan. Soon we reached our vantage
point, a hill overlooking a rusty steel bridge over
the Amu Darya River that stretched over to the border
with Afghanistan. After a wait, we heard a loud rumbling.
Into our view came a long column of camouflaged Soviet
tanks and personnel carriers, red banners flying. It
was February 1989 and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev
wanted us to tell the world that the Soviet armed forces
were withdrawing from Afghanistan. Coming to a close
was the Kremlin's hopeless, 10-year campaign to suppress
the mujahadeen, fundamentalist Muslims regarded as the
best fighters in the world.
What a difference 12 years make. A
big, big difference with roles reversed and presumptions
turned on their heads. Back then, President Ronald Reagan
had dubbed the mujahadeen "freedom fighters."
He armed them with critical supplies, including shoulder-held
anti-aircraft missiles. He described the Soviet Union
as the "Evil Empire."
Today, some of those same "freedom
fighters" are members of the Taliban, the fanatical
Islamic group that President George W. Bush believes
supported the terrorists that killed more than 5,000
Americans in attacks on Washington and New York City
Sept. 11. The Soviet Union has since disappeared. The
new republic of Uzbekistan is welcoming U.S. troops
and planes as a staging area for operations in Afghanistan,
letting Washington use some of the very same military
bases that I visited in 1989. And the Kremlin fully
supports the move.
This isn't the only bizarre aspect
of the current crisis. As our cover in this month's
issue shows, Virginia business executives are undertaking
precautions unimaginable not long ago. They are shoring
up their corporate databases, hardening the security
of their offices and factories and sending employees
to self-defense classes. Fearing anthrax attacks, some
are ordering gas masks.
At the very end of the Cold War, many
Americans regarded the Soviet intrusion into Afghanistan
as a massive human rights violation, not unlike the
invasions of Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968. The
Kremlin's line at the time was that Moscow had to do
something about the Islamic fanaticism that had gripped
strategic countries such as Iran and was creeping toward
its borders. Ordinary Soviets couldn't quite fathom
the war and weren't permitted to protest it. Their dead
sons, nearly 15,000, were known as "Zinky Boys"
because they came home in sealed, zinc-lined coffins.
Russians would tell me privately: "Of course it's
a waste, but you have no idea how vicious some of those
people are." Interesting advice from the other
side during the now distant time of the Cold War.
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