This is only tangentially a military story, but it's a good one: the AP reports on several Ethiopian military pilots sent in 1989 to Tokmok, in the then-Kyrgyz SSR. The communist Ethiopian government collapsed around the same time as the USSR, and the pilots couldn't go home. Nine still remain in Tokmok today:

Tesgaye, once an aspiring fighter pilot, was one of 80 Ethiopian cadets sent to a Soviet military training facility in the remote republic of Kyrgyzstan in 1989 to master the art of flying combat aircraft.

"At that time in Ethiopia there was a military government, and because of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, they used to train pilots for the country's air force," Tesgaye explained...

Almost 20 years later, still fearing reprisals back home for the small role he played in the brutal rule of deposed Marxist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, Tesgaye is marooned here — a world away from a family that has grown older without him...

Some of the Ethiopians eke out a living as taxi drivers in Tokmok, the small town that once housed the military base.

A model of an Ilyushin-28 bomber still stands on a pedestal by the side of the main road to remind motorists passing through this sleepy and dusty spot of its aviation past. But the former training area, just a short walk from Tesgaye's cramped Soviet-era apartment, is now a desolate waste ground overrun by weeds and trash...