DOCTOR KUNTOROV: THE BEGINNING OF THE DYNASTY

The Mi-8 helicopter of the Usharal border air squadron performed a special mission on the Usharal - Makanchi route. Suddenly he disappeared from the radar screen. Later it turned out that the crew got into difficult weather conditions, the helicopter, having suffered an accident, fell in the snow-covered steppe.

 

Military doctor Kanat Bazarovich Kuntorov was on the list of those killed in the crash of the rotorcraft. People who knew him speak of him as a brave man. However, he did not like to fly in helicopters very much, preferred other means of transport - road, rail, and often got to the outposts on horseback. But when it was necessary to urgently deliver a sick soldier to the hospital, the doctor without hesitation took the place of the doctor on board the «turntable». Fulfilling his medical duty, Kanat Kuntorov helped a seriously ill patient, as it turned out, at the cost of his own life.

It was a time when the Kazakh army, including the Border Troops, lacked officers. The same shortage of personnel has developed in the military medical service. While studying at the Semipalatinsk Medical Institute, Kanat was trained at the military department, he had the military rank of «lieutenant». In 1994 he was drafted into the Makanchinsky border detachment.

Bakyt Kainelkhalykovna recalls that in early 1999 her husband went to the Tajik-Afghan border. At first, the doctor was supposed to stay there for two months, but spent eight months in Tajikistan, from January to August. The local mountains were strikingly different from Tarbagatai, which Kanat Kuntorov was accustomed to, where a Makanchin resident was accustomed to admiring the snow-capped peaks that turned pink at sunrise and the tulips blooming on the surrounding hills. In other people’s mountains, Kazakhstanis were surrounded only by gray stones, and in the morning even darker clouds floated by, clinging to the rocks hanging over the checkpoint. And at any moment one could expect surprises because of the «river» - that was the name of the Pyanj, which divided Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

- He said that he bypassed the posts of Kazakhstani fighters, checked his health, if necessary treated, - recalls his wife. “In mountainous terrain, this meant that many kilometers had to be covered on foot. The main thing is that everyone returned home alive and well.

The children were looking forward to his return, and when their father was supposed to arrive, they did not sleep all night. And they were rewarded with gifts from the southern country - fruits, nuts, and other sweets.

Kanat Kuntorov died with the rank of «captain». This rank in the army hierarchy is not very high. Despite this, he managed to do a lot, as if justifying his surname, inherited from his ancestors, becoming a life guide for family and friends.

Many of his brothers wear shoulder straps. After the tragedy, his wife, Bakyt Kainelkhalykovna, began serving in the Makanchinsky border detachment, followed by a whole dynasty of Kuntorovs in the Border Service.

 

 

You shouldn’t be surprised at this - the protection of borders in this region has long been passed down from generation to generation. So it was in the days of Kabanbai batyr. Throughout the 18th century, the Dzungar army haunted the Kazakh auls. In that troubled era, in every yurt «weapons were always hung on the kerega.»

To this day, many Makanchins associate their lives with service at the border, and not only in the east, but also in the north, south and west of our vast country. Many natives of Makanchi can be found among the cadets of the Border Academy of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is not surprising to become a border guard while living in Makanchi, because the border is nearby. Schoolchildren often become guests at the outposts, here they are shown how soldiers are on duty to guard the border, children can touch weapons with their hands, pet a dog or horse. And most importantly, they are introduced to the history of their native land.

Bakyt Kainelkhalykovna worked in a regional hospital, but after the death of her husband she decided to replace him, and was drafted into the Makanchinsky border detachment; in 2002 she became the Head of the medical service of the Ust-Kamenogorsk border detachment. In 2013, she retired with the rank of major, but did not quit her job as a doctor. At present, she is the Head of the rural medical outpatient clinic of the border village of Karabuta, Urdzhar region.

Son Kainar Kuntorov followed in his father’s footsteps, he is a career officer, in 2011 he graduated from the command faculty of the Military Institute of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan. His decision to become a military man, first of all, was influenced by his father, and his mother served at the border, they told him that when he grows up, he will enter the Military Institute. When his father died, Kainar was 10 years old, but his son remembers him very well.

- I remember my father in uniform, he was smart, a real officer, very sociable, sympathetic, he liked to joke, - says Kainar. - In the military unit, he was the chief medical officer, but he was mistaken for a career soldier. He was strict in the service. Probably, all this influenced my decision to become a border guard, and I began my service at the border in the Makanchinsky detachment.

Being the head of the family and children he brought them up in severity. He named his second son Yernur, and the youngest - Yerasyl, probably because he was born in Makanchi, on the land of Kabanbai batyr. The two younger ones were very young, and Kainar’s father took him to sports sections, he was engaged in taekwondo and other sports.

According to the recollections of his brother Lieutenant Colonel Erbol Bazarov, when he graduated from Semey State University with a degree in veterinary medicine in 1998, Kanat invited him to be drafted into the Border Troops. Today, Lieutenant Colonel Yerbol Bazarov is the Head of the security and support department of the SS KNB.  And now his eldest daughter Adina has followed in the footsteps of her elders, she is a first-year student at the Kirov Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg.  

 

 

Kanat Kuntorov took part in carrying out surgical operations by servicemen in the hospital in the village of Makanchi. The Head of the medical service, Kanat Kuntorov, spent almost all his free time in the medical unit, since the paramedics and hospital attendants at that time were from among the conscripts.   And calls to patients from border outposts come almost every day, and he himself went to the border.

In winter, there was no road to the outposts in the Tarbagatai mountains, the sick were brought on horseback where there was no way to get there by high-pass equipment.

Kanat’s relatives knew him to be gentle and smiling. He loved his parents very much, his family, especially his sons, and he pampered them. In those days, Kanat was one of the first border guards from the village of Kokterek. The command of the Makanchi detachment assigned him the participants of the Great Patriotic War, and every year on May 9, in his yellow Moskvich, he brought proud veterans to the parade held in Makanchi. A great respect for aksakals, perhaps, originated from the fact that he did not see his grandfathers. Grandfather Akysh Kuntorov died in battle in May 1942 near Smolensk, he was buried in mass grave No. 8 in the village of Dneprovskoe, Novoduginsky district, Smolensk region of the Russian Federation. His maternal grandfather, Bakenov Yessengeldi, died in battle in October 1944, and was buried in the civil cemetery of the Voevodeni commune (Vaida-Saint-Ivan village) in Transylvania, Romania. Unfortunately, information about the places of their burials became available only in 2010, when Kanat had already passed away.

 

 

According to the recollections of his relatives, he was a worthy son of his parents, an ideal husband, a wonderful father and brother. Thanks to his cares, his middle brother, Murat Kuntorov, is also an officer, police Lieutenant Colonel, in leading positions of the Police Department of the East Kazakhstan region, and his son Daniyar Bazarov is also a serviceman of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Nephew, Madi Kunturov, is a graduate of the KNB PS Academy - Head of the security group of the logistics department of the PS Department in the East Kazakhstan region.

“It often happens that military people unfamiliar to me hear my name and ask who I was to Captain Kanat Kuntorov,” his nephew, foreman Mukhit Kuntorov, admits. - One seasoned border guard told me how my uncle saved the life of a soldier. The young guy was hemming the collar and holding the needle in his teeth, and suddenly he accidentally swallowed it. Uncle gave him a massage and with the help of some other manipulations, he removed the needle. I have heard many times that he was a wonderful father and a good officer.

Kanat Kuntorov was brought up in a simple rural family, his father, Bazar Kuntorov, worked as a machine operator on a collective farm, and his mother, Kulyan Yessengeldina, was a teacher in a rural school. Like many young guys in Makanchi, Kanat Kuntorov served in the Soviet army in 1984-1986, and in 1994, after studying at the Semipalatinsk Medical Institute, he came to his native village for assignment and worked in the Makanchi district hospital as a doctor - anesthesiologist-resuscitator. But fate prepared another path for him - to protect the peace of the Motherland, the path along which many of his relatives and friends followed him.