“General Boris V. Gromov, the commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, walked across the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan on February 15, 1989. ‘…Our nine-year stay ends with this.’ The Soviets had lost fifteen thousand lives and suffered more than thirty thousand casualties. Between a million and two million Afghans perished, perhaps 90 percent of them civilians.”
– Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Page 157