Politics
Afgantsy gather in record numbers at the Black Tulip
Thirty-three years after the Soviet withdrawal, and six months after the American one, more veterans of the Afghan war came to their memorial in Nurzhan than ever before.
From the Irad Times of 15 February 2022.
More than two thousand veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and their families, gathered at the Kara Kyzgaldak, the Black Tulip memorial in Nurzhan, this morning, on the 33rd anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal. The Union of Afghan War Veterans of Irad said it was the largest gathering since the memorial was unveiled in 1994.
The memorial is named after the planes that brought the dead home. The veterans gather there every 15 February and sing “Kabul Jolu”, the union's anthem. This morning, men in blue berets and old paratroopers' stripes stood shoulder to shoulder in the snow, many of them with grandsons.
After Kabul
Veterans said the reason for the numbers was last August. Over three weeks they watched on television as the Americans left Kabul, and as Afghan evacuees passed through Talas Air Base. “We left in 1989 and said it was over,” said the union's chairman, Arman Kassymov, a Kazakh paratrooper from Nurzhan who was wounded in 1981. “The Americans left last summer and said the same. The Afghans were the ones who stayed.”
Both sides
The union has about 3,100 members. Its veterans fought on both sides in 2007, but it leans toward the DPI, the Governor has been its honorary patron since 2008, and a 2009 directive gives its members a pension supplement. Nobody mentioned 2007 this morning. “Here we are all from the same company,” said a veteran from Talas who served in Kandahar. “We argue in the café afterwards.”
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