Vodka and Caviar Gone With Troops, but Influence Remains : Soviets’ Legacy Lingers for Afghan ‘Children of War’

Abdul Raouf, 14, has a pen pal in the Soviet Union. He has been there twice, he says, on government-sponsored summer camp trips for rest and relaxation.

When Abdul thinks of his future--he says he wants to be a doctor--he thinks of going to Moscow to study.

His room in a dormitory at the Orphanage of the Homeland here mirrors his thinking. On the window ledge are a dozen pamphlets entitled “The Heart of Moscow,” which extol the virtues of the Soviet capital and its government.

“The Soviets are good; they are the only ones who are helping us,” said Abdul, whose father, a government doctor, was abducted by Afghan rebels six years ago and has not been seen since. “The Americans,” the boy continued, “are the imperialists who are giving arms to the extremists.”

In many ways, Abdul Raouf and the thousands of other Afghan children the government has cared for in 10 years of civil war are living examples of the Soviet legacy here, which is likely to affect the social and political scene in Afghanistan for decades to come.

In Kabul, which was the Soviets’ military headquarters from 1979 until they withdrew the last of their troops from the country in February, there is little evidence that the Soviets spent almost a decade helping the Afghan government try to put down an insurgency by the Islamic guerrilla force known as the moujahedeen.

The Brezhnev Bazaar--once a thriving downtown market where Soviet soldiers sold local merchants everything from uniforms to truck parts--is gone, bulldozed to make way for a planned government office complex.

On Chicken Street, lined with shops that catered to the Soviets, the shelves are all but empty--no more Russian caviar, no more crab meat, pickles and vodka.

Increasingly, in Kabul’s markets and dwellings, the Afghans, a fiercely independent people, can be heard complaining bitterly about the years the Soviets spent here.

“We are very happy the Russians are gone,” Sher Mohammed said the other day, even though the merchant, who had a shop in the Brezhnev Bazaar, saw his profits plummet after the Soviets left. “This is our country, and no amount of profit is worth sacrificing our independence,” he said. “Allah will provide for us now.”

A retired police officer, who spent years under the control of Soviet advisers and who asked that he not be identified by name, beamed proudly as he recalled the time he killed a Soviet soldier.

“The soldier was looting a shop,” he said, laughing. “I shouted, ‘Halt!’ but he kept running with his loot. So I emptied my machine gun at him, and he fell dead. I felt no guilt. I felt, well, good.”

In explaining this sort of attitude, a spokesman for the government of President Najibullah, which continues to get enormous military and economic support from Moscow, said the Soviet issue is the most sensitive in the country today.

“We are very independent people,” he said. “We see our culture and our history dating back four or five thousand years. Soviet history began when? The 7th Century? Of course, we must be grateful to the Soviets for all they have done here. Since Mr. Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, the Soviets have been helping us develop our energy, and Afghanistan has cost them dearly in money and in lives of their own. But the anger you hear from our people is the voice of Afghanistan.”

The anger is heard largely from the older generation, men and women who remember Kabul as an open, international city before a series of coups and countercoups in the late 1970s touched off the war and opened the door to the Soviet military presence.

According to independent analysts, the Soviet influence is likely to last longest among the children--”our children of war,” an official at the orphanage called them.

Another 14-year-old, Kabir Ahmed, has been at the orphanage for two years. Like many others at the compound on the outskirts of Kabul, he has not lost his parents, but his mother is a peasant and his father is in the army, so the state has been caring for him.

Kabir, asked if he would like to study abroad, replied, “Yes, I would like to go to the Soviet Union.”

Why?

“Because the Soviet Union is our friend,” he said. “They have done good deeds for us in Afghanistan. And the Soviet Union is a good place.”

How do you know that?

“Because we have books. We read in our textbooks about the Soviet Union.”

Do you also read about America?

“America? What is that?”

The orphanage, which is one of the cleanest and most efficiently run institutions in this impoverished country, is only part of the story. Of the 1,500 schoolchildren sent to the Soviet Union each year, only 200 are from the Orphanage of the Homeland. The rest are selected from Kabul’s public schools.

Massoma Esmati, chairman of the All Afghanistan Women’s Council, helps in the selection. Her group has helped care for hundreds of thousands of widows and children affected by the war.

Esmati, who has a master’s degree in education from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and is one of two women in Najibullah’s Cabinet, said in an interview that the foreign study program should be regarded as a step toward development, not political indoctrination.

“Of course, the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan was not something admired by all,” she said, “but this does not mean that the desire for advancement and development has stopped. The Soviets are more advanced technologically and educationally than we are. And we share a long border with them. They have offered their help, and we have accepted.

“I myself have learned that all encounters in the world between human beings have two sides. There are some negative consequences and some positive ones.

“For example,” she said, “when I came from my studies in the United States, I brought with me some concepts that were useful. I kept them with me and am developing them still. But there were certain aspects I did not like, and those I left behind when I came home.”

It is not clear whether the thousands of Afghan children studying in the Soviet Union are capable of making the same choice. When they come home, Esmati conceded, “I am sure they will bring both the good and the bad.”