AFGHANISTAN: Soviet Vietnam, text and photographs by Vladislav Tamarov, translated by Naomi Marcus, Marianne Clarke Trangen and Vladislav Tamarov, (Mercury House: $18.95)
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The then 19-year-old author kept this secret journal in words and pictures during the two years (1984-86) he served in Afghanistan as a mine sweeper. As the title suggests, Tamarov stresses the parallels between his reactions as an unwilling draftee and the experience of many American soldiers in Vietnam. Patriotic service becae a series of increasingly bitter disillusionments as he discovered the gap between the lofty government propagada and the real reasons for their presence in a foreign country; the evidence of widespread corruption; the ready availability of drugs; the psychological problems that continue to plague the veterans years after their return to civilian life. Eight years later, Afghanistan may finally be reaching the end of a civil war that has cost an estimated one million lives.
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