The head of the Belaya Rus party, Oleg Romanov, said that civilized society is represented not by the West, but by Belarus and Russia. As proof, he recalled the Afghan war.
“The Soviet army was in Afghanistan. But what was the Soviet Union doing there? They built plants and factories there, laid roads, treated people, and structured hospitals. Leaving there, the USSR left behind a civilized society with a normal system of government. The Americans came —how many times has drug production increased in Afghanistan?” he said on the air of the program “Editors Club” on TV “Belarus 1” on March 8.
The Soviet Union actually built 142 infrastructure facilities there. However, according to minimal estimates, half a million civilians were the victims of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—1988.
According to one of the studies, by the end of 1987, the war had killed 9% of the Afghan population, and the overall death toll was up to one and a half million.
A November 1999 survey by the International Committee of the Red Cross stated, 53% of respondents had at least one family member killed in war over the past 20 years.
The U.S. army invaded Afghanistan in 2001, after the September 11 attacks. The US withdrew its troops from there after 20 years. During this time, 173 thousand people died there. About 50 thousand of them were civilians.