Prisoners And Converts

For Private Mohammad Beg, a Soviet soldier stationed in an isolated outpost north of Kabul, the odyssey to confinement and conversion began with a dispute with one of his superiors in 1987. After beating the officer unconscious, the 21-year-old Uzbek from Tashkent deserted, and before long, Afghan villagers handed him over to the mujahedin.

Sergeant Viktor Nazaro, 23, a Ukrainian from Uzhdano, was captured by the Afghan insurgents while serving with a reconnaissance unit in the northern town of Kunduz in 1984. Private Leonid Vilko, 24, a Moldavian stationed at Bagram air base north of Kabul, was taken prisoner the same year while trying to defect to the West.

Beg, Nazaro and Vilko are three of 312 soldiers Moscow says are missing in Afghanistan and who it believes are being held by the mujahedin. The Soviet Union's desire to secure the release of its fighting men, however, may founder on an issue that involves their hearts and minds -- and even their souls -- for many simply do not wish to be repatriated under any circumstances. Some of the prisoners of war are defectors who, whether out of fear or conviction, have no intention of ever returning to their homeland. Others are converts who have embraced Islam, the religion of their captors and, for many Asian Soviets, of their parents as well.

According to a number of Soviet POWs held in northeast Afghanistan, who spoke to TIME, conversions to Islam have seldom, if ever, been made at gunpoint. Nor do they seem to owe much to the spiritual appeal of the Muslim faith. In most cases, isolation, fear and the promise of being socially accepted by their captors have drawn the prisoners to Islam. Beg, Nazaro and other Soviet captives say they are free to make occasional accompanied visits to local bazaars and encouraged to join in volleyball games with off-duty guerrillas. "I became a Muslim once I learned the language," says Vilko, or "Azizullah" as he is known among the Afghans.

A few defectors, particularly central Asians with a genuine commitment to Islam and an antipathy toward European Russians, have reportedly actually taken up arms on the mujahedin side. Almost to a man, the POWs who talked to TIME denied any desire to return to their homeland after the war. "I'd like to stay in Afghanistan and find a job," said Beg, explaining that he feared imprisonment or even execution if he returned home to the Soviet Union. "I'm free here," he explained. "As a Muslim, I'm not oppressed."

The final status of the POWs is far from certain. They could become pawns in a postwar tussle between Moscow and the mujahedin, who are insisting that the Soviet Union pay war reparations to a future Afghan government. Negotiations over the POWs will be further complicated by the task of separating those who decide to return to the U.S.S.R. from those who do not. Until then, most of the POWs are doomed to remain strangers in a strange land, trusted by hardly anyone. "To all appearances, they are Muslims and pray with us," says , Mohammad Payendah, an administrative officer in a guerrilla garrison. "But God alone knows what is in their hearts."