MIA (Missing in Action)
Place: Afghanistan. Time: 1979-1989.
The struggle for supremacy between the Marxist government in Kabul - backed by the might of the Soviet army - and the rebellious mujahideen warlords shows no signs of a clear winner.
Beyond Kabul, large areas of Afghanistan are rigidly controlled by the mujahideen who hate both the Marxists and their Russian backers and no mercy is shown to any captured Russian soldiers.
It has been said that most Russian prisoners of the mujahideen were put to death under the most barbaric of tortures and at the end of the war, the Soviets listed 311 of their soldiers as 'missing in action'.
What happened to these missing men is open to conjecture and perhaps we will never know for sure.
I came across this 2004 picture by Roberto Carlo and it suggested a story to me. I should add that what follows is pure fiction based solely on my imagination.
In my imagination, the scene portrayed in the picture is taking place in a remote area where the mujahideen reign unchallenged. Here, among the steep mountains and deep valleys, life is hard, living is at subsistence levels and farming is basic relying on primitive tools and strong beasts-of-burden. And slavery still exists.
It is a masculine world where women are jealously guarded by their menfolk and they are forbidden to leave their homes or dance in public. Indeed, the thinking of the local men is that 'women are for child-bearing and slave-boys are for pleasure.'
Here, we see three young Russian soldiers - survivors of a recent skirmish - being offered for sale as slaves. They are forced to strip naked before they are dragged through the crowd of spectators all eager to have a full 'hands-on' inspection of the new slaves.
Special interest will be shown in their pert, young arses - Slavic arse is a rarity in this remote corner of the world - and their virginity enthusiastically tested as they are probed for tightness, grip and responsiveness.
Once the inspections are completed, Dimitri, Grigor and Mikhail will each take their turn on the auction block and made to obscenely display their muscular, young bodies to the laughter, jeers and taunts of the mujahideen onlookers.
Who will buy them? Possibly a wealthy landowner who needs slaves to cultivate his opium poppy crop. Or perhaps a warlord to add to his harem of slave-boys.
However, one thing is for certain. They will never see Russia again.
Artwork by Roberto Carlo found on the internet. The fiction is mine.
Excellent. Id like to see them in coffle
ReplyDeleteA special THANK YOU, Chris for this post and for this “hint” for a possible future enrapturingly exciting longer story on this and/or similar subjects.
ReplyDeleteI would have many and many things to say about the very bloody Russian – Afghan war that lasted more than ten years, from 1979 to 1989, but here I will focus only on a few fundamental aspects, that certainly would deserve to be discussed individually in much more depth and detail.
Let me start from what you, Chris, rightly call the “MOST BARBARIC TORTURES” ruthlessly inflicted by the Afghani insurgents Mujahideens on the vast majority of the extremely unlucky Russian soldiers who had the supreme bad fortune of falling alive into the hands of those fanatic and savage Islamic guerrillas. Without going into too many details, let me recall that SKINNING ALIVE was the most frequently and widely practice of slow torture to the death applied by Afghani insurgents and villagers to a large number of poor “infidel” Russian prisoners of war.
Since centuries the skinning alive of vanquished and captured enemies had been in Afghanistan a fierce and shockingly sadistic warfare “tradition” among those barbarous mountaineer warriors. But in the case of the 1979-1989 guerrilla war against the Russian army, the religious hate against the “infidel” Russians increased even more the wild and bestial ferocity of the fanatical Islamic guerrillas).
Many and many young Russian soldiers were even filmed by their captors while they were slowly flayed alive, mutilated in various way and then left to slowly die with their skinned chests, faces and bellies drying in the sun. In most cases, the skinning was done very slowly, cutting the skin in small strips and peeling them one at a time. And those horribly gruesome films were then often given or showed to both Western and Russian journalists e.g. by the Mujahideen emissaries in Pakistan so to spread the indirectly the terror among Russian troops …… while the tortured and mutilated corpses of the miserable POW’s where intentionally left in places where they could be found by the Russian military so to create even more anguishing direct terror in the Russian soldiers.
For “delighting the sadistic fantasy” of those savage guerrillas, other Russian prisoners were used e.g. as “living balls & targets” in matches of “BUZKASHI” the national Afghan sport, a rough and chaotic form of horseback polo in which a headless goat is normally the ball. During that war, LIVING Russian prisoners were sometimes used in Buzkashi matches in the place of the goat’s carcass, literally torn to pieces by the thick bats of the Afghan riders, among the incitements of the supporters of the two contending “teams” .
Other unlucky young Russian soldiers were crucified or impaled …… sometimes, they were tied or transfixed on long spits and slowly “roasted” on living coals …… or they were disemboweled and dismembered.
Not always those barbaric tortures were aimed to the death of the infidel prisoner.
As an extremely effective means for terrorizing even more the Russian troops, from time to time some young captured Russian troopers were castrated and sometimes even had also their ears, nose and tongue cut; then they were sent back towards the Russian lines.
The 19th and the 20th centuries have seen extremely ferocious and ruthless war-atrocities of all possible kinds; but I do believe that the Russian-Afghan war 1979-1989 has seen – for what concerns inhuman atrocities committed on fighting soldiers prisoners of war- probably the worst climaxes of sadism and barbaric behaviour.
KAREL
(CONTINUES BELOW)
Given these shocking savagery against Russian POW’s, it’s sad …… but obvious ! ……. that those Russian prisoners of war who had the fate of being KEPT AS SLAVES by their Afghan capturers, could somehow consider themselves as extremely lucky !
ReplyDeleteThe true “enslavement” of several young Russian soldiers, captured by Mujahideens, is not a “BDSM fantasy”; it is a well ascertained reality, well documented in several books and articles by Russian and Western journalists and that, once again characterizes that Russian-Afghan war 1979-1989 with elements of such striking barbarity and ferociousness so that it seems to look more similar to a war of the times of ancient Rome more than to a modern war.
It’s true, Chris, that the Soviet Government has always OFFICIALLY (!) stated that the soldiers “Missing In Action” were from 264 to 311 (according to two different “official” Soviet sources, in different times).
However these tiny numbers ……. just about 300 men in more than ten years of wars in a largely unexplored land ! …….. are judged as largely underestimated by all scholars and historians that have studies this war. That number is certainly much larger and probably around at least a few thousands.
Why the Russian government, still today !, always tried to minimize the number of MIA Russian soldiers …… most probably in their majority, ended up into a TRUE SLAVERY ?
For the same reasons that Soviet leaders always officially “ignored” the atrocious tortures committed on Russian POW’s …… for the same reasons why the coffins of the tortured Russian prisoners were returning to Russia sealed and their families were forbidden to see for the last time their sons and the signs of those barbaric tortures on their mutilated corpses.
For the Russian Government it was essential to cover up as much as possible all these events, both for not further terrorizing and demoralizing Russian troops and the public and also for not publicly admitting a clear military defeat of the super-powerful Russian army !
So, several Russian prisoners, so lucky to escape those savage tortures inflicted on most of their captured comrades, were really ENSLAVED and TREATED as slaves by Mujahideens.
To “own white infidel slaves” was considered by those fierce Afghan mountaineers as a sign of great power and wealth; and also of great bravery in war, if those enslaved Russian captives had been directly captured in some battle or ambush by some guerrilla-leader.
Many Afghan warlords and Tribe-Chieftains were proud of owning and showing off their “Russian slaves”; those prisoners of war, like all slaves during centuries and millennia, were viciously exploited for the heaviest toils, labouring in the fields, pasturing flocks, guarding and caring the horses of their Afghan Masters, carrying loads in caravans through the inaccessible roads of those mountains etc.etc.
Even recently, after more than 30 years, some of those Russian slaves have been “discovered” in some secluded village of Afghanistan’s interior. The ones who have survived their barbaric slavery till present days, at a certain point had accepted to convert to Islam and were therefore freed by the Muslim Masters, becoming “Afghan villagers” under most aspects.
But they are no more than two or three dozens; what happened of all the thousands of others remains a mystery !
This is HISTORY !
However, Chris, allow me to finish by saying: I hope ….. and I think most readers here warmly hope ….. that one day you will write a MUCH LONGER story on the enslavement of Russian prisoners of war in Afghanistan, taking inspiration from real history and further “adorning” it with your masterly creativity and Art, like in the very short exciting “hint” that you posted above. Thanks.
KAREL