PESHAWAR: Russia sends list of missing soldiers: Pakistan’s help sought
By Ismail Khan
PESHAWAR, July 4: Russia and Azerbaijan have sought Pakistan’s assistance to help trace hundreds of their missing soldiers during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Russia has forwarded a list of 304 Soviet soldiers, who had gone missing in action (MIAs) or had become prisoners of war (POWs) during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
The list includes Soviet soldiers of all nationalities that once made up the defunct Soviet Union. It also includes their names, and date and place where they had gone missing.
Pakistani officials, familiar with the subject, say arrangements were made to use the help of former Afghan mujahideen commanders to help trace the Soviet MIAs but acknowledged that the effort met with little success.
They say that their efforts led to them to about eight former Soviet servicemen who were married to Afghan women and had children from them and were living in Afghanistan of their own volition.
Subsequently, arrangements were made for a meeting between the former Soviet servicemen and Russian diplomats in Peshawar.
“The former Soviet servicemen told Russian diplomats they were in Afghanistan of their own volition and had no desire to return to the countries of their origin.”
Islamabad has been consistently saying it has no information of the presence of any of those former Soviet MIAs or POWs on Pakistani soil.
Afghan mujahideen commanders, who dealt with the Soviet POWs during the Afghan war, say that most of them had either been killed in action or had converted to Islam and settled in Afghanistan.
Others, they claim, had left Afghanistan and had taken up asylum in the West.
The list of Soviet MIAs is dominated by Russian MIAs with 153 servicemen followed by Ukrainians with 54 servicemen besides 25 Uzbeks. The list also includes several servicemen belonging to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Byelorussia, Tajikistan, Moldavia, Azerbaijan and Armenia and some from the former autonomous republic of Tataristan as well as one each from East Germany, the Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia), and Poland.
These Soviet servicemen had gone missing in Parwan, Kabul, Bagram, Heart, Baghlan, Jauzjan, Kunduz, Qandahar, Nangrahar, Paktia, Samangan, Wardak, Nimroz, Balkh, Ghazni, Bamiyan, Badakhshan, Logar, Helmand, Kapisa, Kunar and Laghman.
Significantly, this is the first time a consolidated list of former Soviet MIAs has been drawn up.
Previously, Russia and Ukraine had made separate bids to trace their countrymen missing while serving the Red Army in Afghanistan.
The Ukrainian ambassador in Pakistan has made a few trips to Peshawar in the past to locate his compatriots and had appealed for help through the press for any information that could help reunite the former Soviet servicemen with their families back home. His efforts, too, had met with little success.
In separate letters addressed to the interior ministry in Islamabad last month, the government of Azerbaijan on behalf of the State Committee for the Problems of Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Countrymen has sought Pakistan’s assistance in tracing former USSR army service of Azerbaijani origin, who went missing during the war in Afghanistan between December 1979 and February 1989.
The state committee of Azerbaijan said it was looking for seven Azerbaijani soldiers of the former 40th Soviet Army Division.
“The government of the Republic of Azerbaijan believes that these persons are the victims of aggressive policy of the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan and due to this reason intends to find the (living) Azerbaijanis —- and to establish their relations with their parents and close relatives living in Afghanistan”, reads the letter.
At least one of the Azeri MIA, Huseynov Alihuseyn Aghuseyn, the State Committee of Azerbaijan believes, has been living in Pakistan since April 1990. This could not be independently confirmed.
“Possibly, the indicated persons are alive living on the territory of Pakistan or Afghanistan”, the letter said, requesting Pakistan to help to inform Azerbaijan about the missing Azerbaijanis.
