PHOTO ALBUM
WARS OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION


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   It was the summer of 1993 and I had been reporting from civil wars in the former Soviet republics for about a year. But in the last couple of months the publisher of the Moscow Tribune was committed to keeping me chained to my desk in Moscow.
    I enjoyed the work, but was increasingly frustrated by my distance from the field when we all got a couple of weeks off. While my colleagues left for more civilized regions, like Europe, I grabbed an Aeroflot flight to Tajikistan, where the Russians were helping reverse the fruits of the country's experimentation with democracy.		  

   I visited a Russian base in the center of the country, then hitched a ride on a tank column down to the Afghan border in the south. Officially, I didn't have permission and the area was off-limits to journalists, but all it takes is one soldier who wants to show off and you're in.
    In this photograph, Russian army soldiers take a break from digging in. The first barbed wire fense of the border is behind them to the right. There were several rows of barbed wire separating Tajikistan from Afghanistan, where many anti-Russian forces were based.