More than 27 years have passed since the Soviet Union pulled its forces out of Afghanistan, ending a blood-soaked intervention that left one million Afghans and fifteen thousand Soviets dead. In Tajikistan, a country that shares not only a 1300-kilometre border, but close linguistic and cultural ties with Afghanistan, the memory of the war has all but disappeared from the public space. History books make little mention of it, newspapers speak seldom of it and top government representatives stay away from public commemorations of the war.
Only the war veterans themselves keep the memory of the conflict alive. Yet they are often cold-shouldered by government institutions and their fellow Tajiks.
Forgotten soldiers
Around 15,000 residents of Soviet Tajikistan took part in the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. They served in a range of capacities, from snipers and riflemen to interpreters and signallers. As many as 366 of them lost their lives, with more than 1,000 listed as injured. It was the biggest military involvement of Tajikistanis since the Second World War, when some 200, 000 Tajik men and women from the Central Asian republic served on the battlefields of Europe and Asia.
