In 1985, a group of Soviet prisoners of war held a militant camp for three days, killing about 200 Mujahideen, Pakistani and American instructors

February 15 marks the next anniversary of the withdrawal Soviet troops from Afghanistan. On this day 22 years ago, the last commander of the Limited Military Contingent Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, Having crossed the border river Amu Darya, he told reporters: “There is not a single Soviet soldier left behind me.” Unfortunately, this statement was premature, since both Soviet soldiers who were captured by the Mujahideen and the remains of hundreds of our soldiers who died and were not taken out of a foreign land remained in Afghanistan.

According to official data, during the war in Afghanistan, the total losses of the 40th Army, in which about 600 thousand soldiers and officers served over a decade of fighting, amounted to 70 thousand people wounded, killed and captured. After the withdrawal of troops, about 300 people were listed as prisoners of war and missing. Documentary evidence of the heroic death of several of them was only recently declassified.

Ours fought like lions

Soviet prisoners of war began to be brought here, to the base where Afghan rebels were trained under the guidance of experienced American instructors, in 1983-84, shortly before the events described. Before this, they were kept mainly in zindans (pit prisons), equipped by each gang independently.

Soviet prisoners were used in the most difficult work - in quarries, when loading and unloading ammunition; for the slightest offense (and often without it), the emaciated Russian boys were severely beaten (according to some evidence, the prison commandant Abdurakhman beat them with a lead-tipped whip). At the same time, the dushmans persuaded the prisoners to accept Islam. In total, in Badaber, according to various sources, there were from 6 to 12 Soviet and about 40 Afghan prisoners of war.
Excerpt from an analytical note by the intelligence service of the 40th Army, which was only recently declassified: “ On April 26, 1985, at 21.00, during evening prayers, a group of Soviet prisoners of war of the Badaber prison (in Pakistan - S.T.) removed six sentries from artillery warehouses and, having broken the locks in the arsenal, armed themselves, dragged ammunition to a coaxial anti-aircraft gun and a DShK machine gun, installed on the roof. The mortar and RPG grenade launchers were put on combat readiness. Soviet soldiers occupied key points of the fortress: several corner towers and the arsenal building."

The situation developed like this. Only two rebels remained to guard the prisoners. Taking advantage of this, one of them, a native of Ukraine named Viktor (presumably Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko from Zaporozhye) tied them up and placed them in one of the cells where the prisoners had previously been sitting. They were guarded by one of the Afghan prisoners, a former Tsarandoy fighter, while they themselves, having broken the locks in the arsenal, armed themselves and dragged ammunition to a twin anti-aircraft gun and a DShK machine gun mounted on the roof. The mortar and RPG grenade launchers were put on combat readiness. Russian soldiers and their Afghan allies occupied all the key points of the fortress - several corner towers, the arsenal building, etc. They knew what they were getting into - some of these Russian guys had been in captivity for three years already, they had seen enough of Muslim atrocities and practices, so they had no way back.

However, an Afghan soldier, assigned to guard the former guards, bought into the promise of one of them about a reward and defected to the dushmans. The entire personnel of the base was immediately alerted - about 300 rebels led by instructors from the USA, Pakistan and Egypt. They tried to storm back control of the fortress, but were met with heavy fire from all types of weapons and, having suffered significant losses, were forced to retreat. Burkhanutdin Rabbani, the leader of the gang in charge of the base in Badaber, appeared at the scene of events (later, in 1992, he became the “president” of Afghanistan, but three years later he was overthrown by the Taliban, among whom a significant part were former functionaries PDPA, Tsarandoy and the armed forces of the DRA).

He invited the rebels to surrender, but the latter put forward their own, fair and legal, demands - a meeting with the USSR Ambassador to Pakistan, a meeting with representatives of the Red Cross, immediate release. Rabbani harshly rejected them all. A second assault began, which was also repulsed by the rebel Russian soldiers. By that time, the site of the clash was tightly blocked by a triple encirclement ring made up of dushmans and military personnel of the Pakistani army, armored vehicles and artillery of the 11th army corps of the Pakistani Armed Forces. Pakistani Air Force combat helicopters were patrolling the air.

"The brutal clash continued throughout the night. The assault followed the assault, the forces of the rebels were melting, however, the enemy also suffered significant losses. On April 27, Rabbani again demanded to surrender and was again refused. He ordered the heavy artillery to be brought to direct fire and storm the fortress. Artillery preparation began and then an assault, in which artillery, heavy equipment and a flight of Pakistani Air Force helicopters took part. When the troops broke into the fortress, the remaining wounded Soviet prisoners of war blew up the arsenal, died themselves and destroyed significant enemy forces».

The dushmans paid a heavy price for the death of Russian heroes. As a result of the clash, 120 dushmans, from 40 to 90 members of the Pakistani regular army and all 6 American military instructors were killed. The Badaber base was completely destroyed; as a result of the explosion of the arsenal, the rebels lost 3 Grad MLRS installations, 2 million rounds of ammunition, about 40 guns, mortars and machine guns, tens of thousands of missiles and shells. The prison office also perished, and with it, unfortunately, the lists of prisoners.

This “emergency incident” created a real commotion among the leaders of the Afghan gangs, who had never expected such a development of events. A kind of “recognition” of the courage of the Russian guys on the part of their opponents is the order issued by another Afghan bandit leader Gulbetdin Hekmatyar on April 29, which read: “Do not take Shuravi (that is, “Soviet”) prisoners.”

According to various estimates, from 12 to 15 Soviet servicemen took part in the uprising and died. The Mujahideen of Rabbani and the 11th Army Corps of Pakistan acted against them, the losses of which were: about 100 Mujahideen, 90 members of the Pakistani regular forces, including 28 officers, 13 representatives of the Pakistani authorities, six American instructors, three Grad installations and 40 units of heavy combat weapons. technology.

From the radio intercept report of the headquarters of the 40th Army in Afghanistan for April 30, 1985: “On April 29, the head of the Islamic Party of Afghanistan (IPA) G. Hekmatyar issued an order, which noted that “as a result of an incident in a Mujahideen training camp in the NWFP of Pakistan, and 97 brothers were wounded.” He demanded that the IPA commanders strengthen the security of captured OKSV prisoners. The order gives instructions “in future not to take Russians prisoner,” not to transport them to Pakistan, but to “destroy them at the place of capture.”

Classified and slandered

The Pakistani authorities and the leadership of the Mujahideen tried to hide what happened in Badaber. An issue of the Peshawar magazine Safir, which reported on the uprising in the fort, was confiscated and destroyed. True, the message about the uprising of Soviet prisoners in the Badaber camp was published by the left-wing Pakistani newspaper Muslim. This news was picked up by Western agencies, which, citing their correspondents in Islamabad, reported on the unequal battle waged by Soviet soldiers. The Voice of America radio station also informed listeners about this, but, of course, in its “objective” style: “at one of the Afghan rebel bases in Pakistan, an explosion killed 12 Soviet and 12 Afghan prisoners.” Although the Americans had full information about what happened from a message from the American consulate in Peshawar to the US State Department dated April 28, which, in particular, contains the following details: “The square mile camp area was covered with a dense layer of shell fragments, missiles and mines, and human local residents found remains at a distance of up to 4 miles from the explosion site. There were 14 Soviet soldiers held in the Badaber camp, two of whom managed to survive after the uprising was crushed."

The Soviet government immediately began to play the silent game, although it was informed in sufficient detail about what happened in Badaber both by the leadership of the 40th Army and by foreign officials. For example, on May 9, the USSR Embassy in Islamabad was visited by a representative of the Red Cross, David Delanrantz, and confirmed the fact of an armed uprising in Badaber. On May 11, the Soviet ambassador in Islamabad, V. Smirnov, expressed a strong protest to President Zia-ul-Haq in connection with the massacre of Soviet soldiers on Pakistani territory. His statement stated: “The Soviet side places full responsibility for what happened on the government of Pakistan and expects it to draw appropriate conclusions about the consequences of its complicity in aggression against the DRA and thereby against Soviet Union».

However, apart from classified diplomatic statements, the information was not disseminated anywhere else in our country. For a long time in the USSR I knew nothing about the heroes of Badaber, at least from official sources. Although rumors about an uprising in “some kind of fortress” have been circulating among the army since May 1985. Gradually they also calmed down. Until 1990, when the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper first spoke loudly about this feat, albeit without names.

No one knew them for sure at that time. After all, the prisoners were kept under nicknames.

Nameless prisoners

From the intelligence documents of the Ministry of State Security of Afghanistan: “The IOA rebel training center at the Badaber Afghan refugee camp (30 km south of Peshawar) occupies an area of ​​500 hectares. 300 cadets—members of the IOA—are trained at the center. The duration of their training is 6 months. The teaching staff (65 people in total) is staffed by Egyptian and Pakistani instructors. The head of the center is Major of the Pakistani Armed Forces Quratullah. He has six American advisers with him. The eldest of them is named Varsan. After completing their studies, cadets are sent to the territory of Afghanistan as heads of the IOA at the provincial, district and volost levels in the provinces of Nangarhar, Paktia and Kandahar.

On the territory of the center there are 6 warehouses with weapons and ammunition, as well as 3 prison premises equipped underground. According to agents, they contain Afghan and Soviet prisoners of war captured in combat in 1982-1984. The regime of their detention is especially strict and isolated. Who is kept in the underground dungeons is a mystery. None of the ordinary inhabitants of the training center have access there. Even those working in the kitchen leave cans of stew at the door with a lattice window. Security brings them inside. Only a limited number of people know about Soviet prisoners. The prisoners of the underground prison are nameless. Instead of given names and surnames, they are given Muslim nicknames. They wear the same long-skirted shirts and wide trousers. Some are shod in galoshes on their bare feet, others in tarpaulin boots with cut tops. To humiliate the human dignity of some prisoners, the most obstinate and rebellious, they are branded, chained, starved, and their meager food is supplemented with “chara” and “nasvay” - the cheapest drugs.”

What other evidence is needed?

In the summer of 2002, Russian diplomats managed to gain access to the journal of one of the economic divisions of the IOA headquarters, which kept records of the property of the Badaber camp. There the names of Soviet prisoners of war were discovered for the first time. After some time, they became known to representatives of the Committee for the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers, who subsequently twice petitioned for rewarding the participants in the uprising in the Badaber camp. But in vain. Here is an excerpt from the response from the awards department of the Main Personnel Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: “According to the lists at our disposal (Book of Memory of Soviet soldiers who died in Afghanistan), the internationalist soldiers you indicated are not among the dead. I inform you that the awarding for the fulfillment of international duty in the Republic of Afghanistan ended in July 1991 on the basis of the Directive of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR for Personnel dated March 11, 1991. Based on the above, and also taking into account the lack of documentary evidence of the specific merits of the former military personnel indicated in the list , at present, unfortunately, there are no grounds for filing a petition for an award.”

Appeals to Presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev (at different times) with requests to posthumously present participants in the heroic uprising in the Badaber camp for state awards also did not find a positive response. The motivation is the same - there is no documentary evidence.

How is there no evidence! - is indignant Victoria Shevchenko, daughter of Nikolai Shevchenko, one of the leaders of the uprising of Soviet prisoners. - I personally read the testimony of the former Uzbek prisoner of war Nosirzhon Rustamov, who instantly recognized Abdurakhmon, as Nikolai Shevchenko was called in captivity, there is the testimony of the Armenian Mikhail Varvaryan (Islomutdin), three captured soldiers of the Afghan army, whom his father released before the uprising, ordered to escape, and, finally, the leader of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan himself, Burhanutdin Rabbani, whose testimony no one is hiding now.

They told Russian search engines and television journalists (and this was documented on video) that in the spring of 1985, there were Soviet prisoners of war in the Badaber “refugee camp,” which was actually a militant training base. Next to the room where they were kept there was a weapons and ammunition warehouse. After one of the prisoners managed to escape in a water tanker, the Mujahideen guarding the slaves became brutal. One of the prisoners, Kazakh Kanat, went crazy from torture. After a football match between prisoners and mujahideen, initiated by Shevchenko (ours defeated the enemy), the dushmans became even more angry. Everyone was beaten, the young prisoner was raped. This overflowed the patience of the prisoners. On Friday, a holy day for Muslims, when almost all the faithful were in the mosque, and only a few dushmans were guarding the prison and ammunition depot, Shevchenko and his friends tied them up and armed other comrades.

Witnesses say that the leader of the uprising demanded that representatives of the Pakistani authorities, the USSR Embassy, ​​and the Red Cross Society come to the camp. Mujahideen leader Rabbani did not want the whole world to know that Soviet prisoners of war were being held in Pakistan, and ordered their destruction. But he didn't know who he was dealing with! Soviet soldiers showed heroic strength and will. It is amazing how the state thanked them for this. The Ministry of Defense sent the following note to my mother: “Dear Lydia Polikarpovna! We inform you that on September 10, 1982, your husband Nikolai Ivanovich Shevchenko, while performing his international duty in the DRA, near the city of Herat, went missing. He had no personal belongings at his place of work. Deposit book number such and such for the amount of 510 rubles 86 kopecks was sent to the Krasnoarmeisky branch of the State Bank of the USSR, Moscow, Neglinnaya street, 12.” All! It's embarrassing and painful!

Hero Names

Vladimir Vasiliev

We publish a list of currently known heroes of the Badaber uprising: Lieutenant Saburov S.I., born in 1960, Republic of Khakassia; ml. Lieutenant Kiryushkin G.V., born 1964, Moscow region; Sergeant Vasilyev P.P., born 1960, Chuvashia; Private Varvaryan M.A., born in 1960, Armenian; ml. Lieutenant Kashlakov G.A., born in 1958, Rostov region; ml. Sergeant Ryazantsev S.E., born in 1963 Russian; ml. Sergeant Samin N.G., born in 1964, Kazakhstan; Corporal Dudkin N.I., born in 1961, Altai region; Private Rakhimkulov R.R., born 1961, Tatar, Bashkiria; Private Vaskov I.N., born in 1963, Kostroma region; Private Pavlyutenkov, born in 1962, Stavropol Territory; Private Zverkovich A.N., born 1964, Belarus; Private Korshenko S.V., born 1964, Ukraine; employee of the Soviet army Shevchenko N.I.; Private Levchishin S.N., born 1964, Samara region.

The whole world, except the population of the USSR, learned about the events of April 26-27, 1985, which occurred near Pakistani Peshwar. But Western media are confident that the KGB took revenge in the most cruel way for the deaths of Soviet prisoners of war who rebelled in the secret prison in Badaber.

Badaber - undercover militants

The fortified area of ​​Badaber was built by the Americans at the beginning of the Cold War as the Peshewar branch of the Pakistani CIA station.

During the Afghan war, a humanitarian aid center was located in the village of Badaber, which was supposedly supposed to prevent starvation among refugees. But in reality, it served as a cover for the militant school of the counter-revolutionary Afghan party of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, where Soviet prisoners of war who were considered missing in their homeland were secretly kept.

The escape

30 years ago, on April 26, 1985, when the entire Soviet Union was preparing for the upcoming 40th anniversary of Victory Day, at approximately 18:00 shots were heard in the Badaber fortress. Taking advantage of the fact that almost the entire camp guard had gone to perform evening prayers, a group of Soviet prisoners of war, having eliminated two sentries at the artillery depots, armed themselves, freed the prisoners and tried to escape.

As the IOA leader, ex-President of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani later recalled, the signal for the uprising was the actions of one of the Soviet soldiers. The guy was able to disarm the guard who brought the stew.

After that, he released the prisoners who took possession of the weapons left by the prison guards. Further versions diverge. According to some sources, they tried to break through to the gate to escape. According to others, their goal was a radio tower through which they wanted to contact the USSR Embassy. The fact of holding Soviet prisoners of war on Pakistani territory would be significant evidence of the latter's intervention in Afghan affairs.

Storming the prison

One way or another, the rebels managed to capture the arsenal and take positions advantageous for destroying the security units.

Soviet soldiers were armed with heavy machine guns, M-62 mortars, and hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers.

The entire personnel of the base was alerted - about 3,000 people, along with instructors from the USA, Pakistan and Egypt. But all their attempts to storm the rebel positions were defeated.

At 23.00, the leader of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, raised the Mujahideen regiment of Khalid ibn Walid, surrounded the fortress and offered the rebels to surrender in exchange for their lives. The rebels put forward a response demand - contact with representatives of the embassies of the USSR, DRA, the Red Cross and the UN. Hearing a refusal, Rabbani gave the order to storm the prison.

Fatal salvo

The fierce battle that lasted all night and the losses among the Mujahideen showed that the Russians were not going to give up. Moreover, the leader of the IOA, Burhanuddin Rabbani, himself almost lost his life under grenade fire. It was decided to throw all available forces at the rebels. Salvo attacks on Grad, tanks and even the Pakistani Air Force followed.

And what happened next, apparently, will forever remain a mystery. According to declassified radio intelligence data from the 40th Army, which intercepted a report from one of the Pakistani pilots, a bomb attack was carried out on the rebels, which hit a military warehouse with ammunition, modern missiles and shells stored there.

This is how one of the prisoners of Badaber, Rustamov Nosirzhon Ummatkulovich, later described it:

“Rabbani left somewhere, and some time later a gun appeared. He gave the order to shoot. When the gun fired, the shell hit the warehouse and caused a powerful explosion. Everything went up in the air. No people, no buildings - nothing remained. Everything was leveled to the ground and black smoke poured out.”

There were no survivors. Those who did not die during the explosion were finished off by the attackers. True, if you believe the intercepted message from the American consulate in Peshawar to the US State Department: “Three Soviet soldiers managed to survive after the uprising was suppressed.”

Mujahideen casualties were 100 Mujahideen, 90 Pakistani soldiers, including 28 officers, 13 members of the Pakistani authorities and 6 American instructors. The explosion also destroyed the prison archive, where information about the prisoners was kept.

To prevent a repetition of the incident, a few days after the uprising, an order was issued by the leader of the Islamic Party of Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: “do not take Russians prisoner.”

Reaction

Despite the fact that Pakistan took all necessary measures to hide the incident - silence on pain of death, a ban on entry into the territory for unauthorized persons, information about Soviet prisoners of war and the brutal suppression of the uprising penetrated into the press. The Pershawar magazine Sapphire was the first to write about this, but the issue was confiscated and destroyed. Soon after this, the Pakistani Muslim Newspaper published this news, which was immediately picked up by the leading media.

The Old and New Worlds interpreted what happened differently. Europeans wrote about the unequal battle of Russian prisoners of war for their freedom, while the Voice of America reported on a powerful explosion that killed a dozen Russian prisoners and the same number of Afghan government soldiers. To dot all the points i, The US State Department on April 28, 1985 published the following “complete” information: “The humanitarian camp area, approximately one square mile, was buried in a dense layer of shell, rocket and mine fragments, as well as human remains. The explosion was so strong that local residents found shrapnel at a distance of four miles from the camp, where 14 Russian paratroopers were also kept, of whom two remained alive after the suppression of the uprising.”

But the fact of the uprising was confirmed by the representative of the International Red Cross, David Delanrantz, who visited the Soviet embassy in Islambad on May 9, 1985. However, the USSR limited itself to a note of protest from the foreign policy department, which assigned full responsibility for what happened on the government of Pakistan and called for drawing conclusions about what the state’s participation in aggression against the DRA and the USSR could lead to. The matter did not go further than this statement. In the end, Soviet prisoners of war “could not be” on the territory of Afghanistan.

Revenge of the KGB

But there was also an unofficial reaction from the USSR. According to journalists Kaplan and Burki S, Soviet intelligence services carried out a number of retaliation operations. On May 11, 1985, the Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Pakistan, Vitaly Smirnov, stated that the USSR would not leave this matter unanswered.

“Islamabad bears full responsibility for what happened in Badaber,” Smirnov warned Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

In 1987, Soviet raids into Pakistan killed 234 Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers. On April 10, 1988, a massive explosion at an ammunition depot occurred in the Ojhri camp, located between Islamabad and Rawalpindi, resulting in the death of between 1,000 and 1,300 people. Investigators came to the conclusion that sabotage had been committed. Some time later, on August 17, 1988, President Zia-ul-Haq's plane crashed. Pakistani intelligence services also directly linked this incident to the activities of the KGB as punishment for Badaber. Despite all this, these events did not receive public publicity in the USSR itself.

Photo: Like a look from the bottom of a zindan - an underground prison... Installation of a monument to the “Afghans” in the Hero City of Volgograd. There is no bell in the hands of the soldiers yet

Thirty years ago, on April 26-27, 1985, in the Badaber camp, on Pakistani territory, an armed uprising of Soviet soldiers who were captured by the “Mujahideen” broke out - in the most literal sense. They all died in that unequal battle.

PROLOGUE. UNRECOGNIZED HEROES

In today's Russia, few people still know the name of this Pakistani village and the camp of the same name for Soviet prisoners of war. Despite the fact that several films were made about the events that happened there in the spring of 1985. One of them, the first in a row, is “Peshawar Waltz”, which received many prizes at international film festivals. In 1994, director Timur Bekmambetov shot it as a thesis work - the same one who, many years later, would become famous for “The Watch” and conquer Hollywood.

“I just shot my first film, Peshawar Waltz. And I realized that no one needs cinema. The film went to festivals, won prizes, but people didn’t see it: in the cinemas there were furniture showrooms and spare parts stores,” the author of the film said bitterly.

Despite the unevenness of the film and the artistic re-interpretation of events, “Peshawar Waltz”, according to many veterans of the war in Afghanistan, became one of the most poignant and truthful films about that war - a memory of the feat accomplished in Badaber.

Ten years passed before a documentary investigation of Radik Kudoyarov appeared, with a trip to Afghanistan. The result of the trip was the documentary film “The Secret of the Badaber Camp. Afghan trap." The film provides unique testimonies of former “Mujahideen”, military instructors, journalists, high-ranking Soviet military personnel...

A lot of things fit between these two films - the hopelessness of the grief of the relatives, who nevertheless continued to believe in a miracle, and the searches that the “Afghans” still do not stop, and the indifference of officials.

“We found out what happened to our son in Afghanistan only last year, and before that, for 18 years, from the unit where our son served, and from Moscow, they only answered us that on February 11, 1985, Sergei went missing,” says a resident Crimea Vasily Korshenko. — Sergei was drafted into the army at the end of March 1984. He served in Central Asia for six months. From there he was sent to Afghanistan, where he disappeared four months later. Before that, he wrote that he drives an armored personnel carrier and guards convoys. I am not allowed to provide details. He promised to tell me everything when he returned home. It didn’t happen... However, we hoped that our son was alive, because there were cases when soldiers were captured and then handed over to the Americans. These guys got freedom and live abroad. But you never know how else the son’s fate could have turned out. We didn't give up hope.

For the first time in these years, my nephew managed to find out anything about Sergei. He was working in Germany and found information on the Internet posted by one of the members of the Pakistani parliament. It said that our Seryozha was in captivity in Badaber, on the territory of Pakistan. In April 1985, the prisoners rebelled and died during the storming of the prison, where ammunition allegedly exploded. But how to check if this is true?..

We decided to turn to the Prime Minister of Crimea for help. It turned out that by that time the Ukrainian authorities were already collecting information about Sergei. So we were soon invited to Simferopol - by decree of the President of Ukraine, our son was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.

Kazakhstan has not forgotten about its native. Today's Russia is a different matter; It’s like an impenetrable wall stands in the way of recognition of the feat accomplished in Pakistan. One gets the impression that officials are looking at the events in Badaber through Pakistani glasses and would like to finally write them off in the archives - due to the passage of time and the impossibility of establishing what and how it really happened there.

Here is the version of official Pakistan as presented by Mohammad Yusuf, who was the head of the Afghan department of the Pakistani intelligence center in 1983-1987. In the book “Bear Trap,” co-authored with US Army Major Mark Adkin, he writes: “One evening, when everyone was at prayer, they (that is, the prisoners - Author) attacked a single sentry, took his weapon and then broke down the door to the armory to grab more weapons. Having climbed onto the roof, they demanded that they be handed over to the Soviet Embassy. The Mujahideen did not agree to this. The Soviet prisoners spent a long night on the roof, completely surrounded by well-armed Mujahideen.

In the morning, the military representative Rabbani again tried to persuade them, but at this time the Soviet prisoners noticed a group of people trying to get closer in a hidden way. The prisoners opened fire with a 60mm mortar, killing one Mujahideen and wounding others. A battle broke out. Then one Mujahideen, without thinking, fired an RPG-7 at the building, hitting the armory directly. The explosion shook Peshawar, sending shrapnel in all directions and tearing the Russians and KHAD to pieces. Fortunately, although the fireworks occurred close to the Peshawar-Kohat road, no civilians were injured.

The Soviet press got wind of what happened and later portrayed the incident as a heroic feat in no-win circumstances, where the prisoners allegedly killed a large number of enemies before dying themselves. Our government found itself in a very unpleasant position because it had always categorically denied the existence of Soviet prisoners of war in Pakistan. We received strict orders that all prisoners of war were to be kept in Afghanistan. We learned our lesson at the cost of losing an important weapons cache and narrowly avoiding scandal.”

But he is a Pakistani who fought against our country. It would be strange if the Inter-Services Intelligence veteran overcame himself and gave credit to his enemies. But what are we?!

"THE STAINED KHALED-IBN-WALID TRAINING CENTER"

Badaber. Here, just twenty to thirty kilometers south of Peshawar, the center of the Afghan opposition, more than eight thousand Afghans found shelter. They were torn from their homes by the whirlwind of the April armed uprising, which took place in Kabul in April 1978 under the leadership of the PDPA - the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and which then broke out civil war. Years passed in terrible poverty and overcrowding, living on meager handouts from Pakistani emissaries.

Almost in the center of the camp rose the gloomy towers of the ancient fortress of Badaber, which gave its name to the entire area. The fortress was surrounded by an eight-meter adobe wall - a duval; There were guard towers with machine guns in the corners. Armed Mujahideen guards stood guard near the always tightly closed iron gates.

This is what eyewitnesses described as the main entrance to the military training center for militants of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan (Jamiat-e Islami of Afghanistan), one of the seven most influential Afghan opposition parties included in the Peshawar Seven.

During the 10-year war, the IOA caused a lot of trouble to both Kabul and the Soviet command. It was its representatives that were Ahmad Shah Masud in the north and Ismail Khan in the west, and the leader of the IOA, Burhanuddin Rabbani, became the first head of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1992.

The Islamists took the fight seriously. Young “Mujahideen” were specially taken to Pakistan and there they were thoroughly trained in guerrilla tactics, the art of marksmanship, the ability to set up ambushes, set booby traps, disguise themselves, and work for different types radio stations. In training centers located in the vicinity of Peshawar, up to five thousand people could study simultaneously. And these “universities” operated continuously throughout the war.

Based in Badaber, the “St. Khaled ibn Walid Training Center”, which occupied a huge area, was separated from the refugee camp by an eight-meter fence with clay towers in the corners. Inside the guarded perimeter there were several one-story houses, a modest mosque, a football field, and a volleyball court. In addition to adobe houses and tents, there were spacious storage rooms with weapons and ammunition, as well as underground prisons.

The leader of the IOA party, professor of theology Burhan ad-Din Rabbani, supervised the educational center. Fundamentalist in political views, with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and Islamic law, and so on and so forth.

...Today, there is practically nothing left at the site of the Badaber fortress, which is about two dozen kilometers south of Pakistani Peshawar. Fragments of a very dilapidated adobe wall, the ruins of several one-story brick buildings, gates that lead nowhere...

Meanwhile, this piece of sun-scorched land has a rich past. The fortress, built by the Americans back in the 1960s, was initially a branch of the intelligence center of the US Pakistani station. It was from here, from a secret airfield, that the U-2 spy plane, piloted by the American pilot Powers, shot down over the Urals, took off on its last flight over the USSR.

With the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, a Mujahideen training center began operating here. The militants were thoroughly prepared for partisan actions against Soviet units. It is from this period that tragic events date, the truth about which was first carefully hushed up for a long time, and then got stuck in the nets of indifference of officials and society as a whole.

As the former US special representative at the headquarters of the Afghan opposition in Pakistan, P. Thompson, once stated, complete lists of participants in the uprising and those killed in the Badaber camp are stored in the safes of the intelligence services in Islamabad. However, it is still not possible to get acquainted with them. As one might assume, all the documents of the office were lost - the base was almost completely destroyed!

In general, in the 1980s, a whole network of “swords of Allah” sabotage and terrorist camps, disguised as Afghan refugee camps, was actively operating on the territory of Pakistan in the 1980s. The training center named after Saint Khaled ibn Walid was located in a camp next to the Badaber airfield.

The head of the center was Pakistani Army Major Quratullah, who had six American advisers. In total, 65 military instructors worked in the camp, mainly from Pakistan and Egypt. According to some reports, representatives of Maoist China were also here. Every six months, the training center graduated about three hundred “Mujahideen.”

From the intelligence documents of the Ministry of State Security of Afghanistan: “The IOA rebel training center at the Badaber Afghan refugee camp (30 km south of Peshawar) occupies an area of ​​500 hectares. 300 cadets—members of the IOA—are trained at the center. The duration of their training is 6 months. The teaching staff (65 people in total) is staffed by Egyptian and Pakistani instructors. The head of the center is Major of the Pakistani Armed Forces Quratullah. He has six American advisers with him. The eldest of them is named Varsan. After completing their studies, cadets are sent to the territory of Afghanistan as heads of the IOA at the provincial, district and volost levels in the provinces of Nangarhar, Paktia and Kandahar.

On the territory of the center there are 6 warehouses with weapons and ammunition, as well as 3 prison premises equipped underground. According to agents, they contain Afghan and Soviet prisoners of war captured in combat in 1982-1984. The regime of their detention is especially strict and isolated.

December 1984"

THE SMELL OF DEATH

The first prisoners began to be brought to Badaber closer to the mid-1980s. According to various estimates, by April 1985, up to 40 Afghan and 12 Soviet military personnel were held here. Few people knew that Soviet prisoners of war were kept in these casemates. All captives were given Muslim names and were forced to study Sharia law.

The “Swords of Allah,” fueled by the religious fanaticism of the mullahs, showed savage cruelty to our soldiers, the prisoners were in inhumane conditions. There are many documentary examples of this, and Badaber was no exception.

According to other accounts, the boys were starved for a long time, given only salty food and a sip of water per day. True, the Mujahideen themselves always claimed that in Badaber the “shuravi” were treated humanely, almost like family: they say they ate from the same pot with the cadets, played football with them and generally could move freely around the camp. But the events of April 26 suggest completely different thoughts.

“I was in Badaber prison for about four months,” said Afghan Mohammed Shah with pain. “The conditions there were terrible: the walls and floors were stone, we slept on wooden planks, without any bedding, they fed us like animals. From early morning, we Afghans, who were mostly former government officers, were forced to work all day under the scorching sun. They built warehouses and living quarters for the Mujahideen, unloaded vehicles with ammunition and missiles. Oh, that was terrible. We were apparently doomed; the guards didn’t consider us human; they abused us as they pleased. Often “whites,” as foreign advisers were called here, were present.

Somewhere at the end of the third month we were taken to unload shells. Suddenly, another group of prisoners under heavy guard was driven to another truck. To our surprise, they turned out to be Russians. There were only about twelve of them, all with almost traces of shackles and beatings. They behaved cheerfully and helped each other. Then we never managed to exchange a word - the guards were vigilantly watching each “shuravi”, and the vehicles with ammunition were standing far from each other. A few days later I met Russian prisoners again. This time I managed to speak with one of them, a young fair-haired guy (in Kabul I worked together with Soviet specialists and knew a little Russian). He whispered in good Farsi that the dushmans had been secretly keeping them in the Badabery dungeon for several years, mocking them, torturing them.”

Any communication with Shuravi and Afghan prisoners of war was prohibited. Anyone who tried to speak was scourged. Soviet prisoners were used for the most difficult jobs and were brutally beaten for the slightest offense.

“The prisoners were kept in the most inaccessible part of the fortress, close to the village of Linzani, fenced off from the general territory by a blank wall,” Lieutenant Colonel A. Oleinik wrote in the summer of 1990 on the pages of the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. “On one side there were warehouses where weapons and ammunition intended for the rebels were stored, and on the other there were dungeon casemates. In the corner of this tight triangle stood a tower with twin barrels of an anti-aircraft machine gun mounted in the center of the prison yard.

Who was in the underground dungeons and what happened there was a mystery. None of the ordinary inhabitants of the training center had access there. Even those working in the kitchen left cans of stew at the door with a lattice window. Security carried them inside. Only a limited number of people knew about the Soviet prisoners.

The prisoners of the underground prison were nameless. Instead of given names and surnames, they were given Muslim nicknames. They wore the same long-skirted shirts and wide trousers. Some are shod in galoshes on their bare feet, others in tarpaulin boots with cut tops. To humiliate human dignity, some prisoners, the most obstinate and rebellious, were branded following the example of fascist executioners, chained, and starved...”

“Masters of the Other World,” as their foreign advisers called the prison guards, came up with the most sophisticated tortures. Particular care was taken to ensure that from the first hour of captivity a person “breathed the smell of death.”

ONLY WITNESS

Thanks to the persistence and professional luck of director Radik Kudoyarov, with great difficulty and difficulty, it was possible to find the only former Soviet prisoner of war who survived the horror of Badaber. His name is Nosirzhon Rustamov. He was captured on his eighth day of service in Afghanistan. In October 1984, when their motorized rifle regiment was on its way out, Rustamov’s squad occupied a checkpoint near the village of Chordu to block the mountain paths leading to the airfield. That same night they were attacked by more than thirty “spirits.” For many, including Nosirzhon, this was the first and last battle. Of the nine fighters, three remained: Rustamov and two more Azerbaijani soldiers.

“We thought that they would come to our rescue in the morning - we could hear the shooting in the mountains far away,” recalls Rustamov. “But at dawn we were surrounded by the Mujahideen and driven to the field commander Parvon Marukh. He made us take off our clothes to check which of us were Muslims and which were not.

Rustamov never saw the Azerbaijanis again. He himself was sent to Peshawar. The road through the pass took seven days - we walked at night, holed up in caves during the day. In Peshawar, Rustamov was introduced to the leader of the IOA, whose ancestors were from Samarkand.

“He asked questions in Uzbek,” recalls Rustamov. “Then he gave the command to place me in the yard of engineer Ayub, where I was supposed to study the basics of Islam. For a month I studied the Koran at gunpoint, and then I was blindfolded and sent to the Zangali camp - where the uprising began a few months later...

The blindfold was removed from his eyes in the basement, where, in addition to Rustamov, two more officers of the DRA army were kept. A week later, the chief of security, Abdurakhmon, came down to Nosirzhon’s cell, never parting with a whip with pieces of lead woven into the tail. He suggested that the Uzbek go to the next cell with the Shuravi prisoners to make it more fun. But Rustamov refused because he spoke Russian poorly.

This is how he learned that, besides him, there were ten or so more Soviet prisoners of war in the camp. They all built fortress walls from clay.

“Then the mullah came into the cell. He asked: “Why don’t you go to the Russians? You will have a free regime, like theirs. They are preparing for jihad, and you too can become a Mujahid..."

The mullah was brainwashing Rustamov: they were waiting for Rabbani in the camp, and it was necessary to show the leader of the IOA that the fellow countryman of his ancestors was already ready to stand under the green banner of Islam.

It didn't work out. When Rabbani arrived and demanded him, Rustamov declared that his jihad was a prayer. And in the evening the guards beat everyone. The head of security, Abdurahmon, went over everyone with his terrible whip. Rustamov groaned in pain when Islomudin dragged his mattress into his cell. Under this name, the former private of the Soviet army Mikhail Varvaryan, who became a traitor, passed through the camp. With sparkling eyes, he said that he was entrusted with teaching the rebellious prisoner the Koran, Persian and Arabic. They communicated in Farsi, which Rustamov already knew a little.

It was Islomudin who whispered to Rustamov what caused the atrocity of the guard: it turned out that one of the Soviet prisoners managed to escape from the camp in the tank of a water carrier. And an inspection is expected from the Pakistani authorities, who do not want to be drawn into a war with the USSR. If they find prisoners in the camp, they will definitely hand them over to the Soviet embassy.

“There was an inspection,” says Rustamov, “but Rabbani ordered us to be hidden in another place.” As soon as the check was over, all the prisoners were returned to the camp...

FOOTBALL FIGHT

One day another Soviet prisoner of war ended up in the camp... Physically strong, tall, with a straight look - with his whole appearance he inspired fear in the “Mujahideen”, he dared them. Rustamov had never heard the Russian name of this man, but in prison everyone called him Abdurakhmon.

“He told us that he was a simple driver,” recalls Rustamov, “he was transporting tea from Termez to Herat on a KamAZ.” The car was seized by a gang, and he was sent to Iran, where he studied the Koran and Persian for two years...

- Why did you decide that he was an officer?

“The driver cannot have so much military knowledge,” Rustamov answered the journalist naively. “He knew and was able to do everything that a commander should know and be able to do.”

Abdurahmon initially hid the fact that he was fluent in martial arts techniques. But one day he suggested that one of the guards break a light bulb on the ceiling with his foot. Or at least reach it. He couldn't do anything. No wonder - the light bulb hung at a height of two and a half meters. And then the Soviet prisoner, squatting down and contracting like a spring, quickly straightened up and knocked down a light bulb with his foot while jumping. “Mujahideen” came running from all over the camp.

- Well, shall we repeat it? — Abdurahmon, pleased with himself, asked them, grinning.

The head of the security ordered Abdurakhmon to be shackled. Then the “shuravi” challenged the camp security commander to a duel. His name was also Abdurahmon. Well-fed and strong, never parting with his lead whip, he kept the entire camp in fear. Our Abdurahmon offered to compare forces with the condition that if he wins, the Russians will have the right to play football with the Mujahideen. If not, then he is ready to wear shackles.

The fight was short. Abdurahmon threw the “Mujahideen” commander over himself with such force that he even cried from pain and shame. Our prisoners began to jump up and down for joy like children. Shaking off the sand and wiping the blood from his cheek, the chief of security rose from the ground and asked with hatred:

- Who will give me his word that you will not run away during the match?

Almost all the cadets of the training center gathered to cheer for the “Mujahideen” at the football match. Perhaps this was Abdurahmon’s goal: to count the number of a potential enemy. There was no one to root for our team except Rustamov, who was not included in the team because he did not know how to play football, and Islomudin, who himself did not want to play against his hosts.

Despite the fact that our exhausted players were not even given the opportunity to practice, the football match ended with a crushing score of 7:2 in favor of Soviet prisoners of war. Our captain Abdurahmon scored four goals. It was a truly significant match - like the legendary game between the exhausted athletes of Dynamo Kyiv and the fascist team in the occupied capital of Ukraine in 1941. That also ended in victory for our players.

The Mujahideen have tightened the conditions of detention for our prisoners. It was as if they had a presentiment of something. And a prisoner named Kanat was transferred to Rustamov’s cell. He went crazy from daily abuse and heavy work. The unfortunate man howled like a dog, gnawing on the walls and straining for freedom. He had three days to live.

Ending in the next issue.

Newspaper "SPECIAL FORCES OF RUSSIA" and magazine "RAZVEDCHIK"

Over 46,000 subscribers. Join us, friends!

In 2005, Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film “9th Company” was released and a scandal immediately erupted around it: the authors were reproached for the unreliability of the story. Now a similar story is happening with the series “Badaber Fortress”.

The theme is the same: the heroism of Soviet officers and boy soldiers who were not lucky enough to get into the Afghan war. Only the location is different: a camp for training resistance forces against Soviet troops.

Where does the series take place?

The militant training center was located in Pakistan, in the village of Badaber. In 1983-84, prisoners of war captured by scattered groups of militants began to be taken there.

Before this, ours could still recapture our own who were held in zindans on the territory of Afghanistan. But on Pakistani territory, in a large military camp with six weapons depots, our prisoners of war were inaccessible.

In addition to three hundred heavily armed mujahideen and hundreds of Pakistani military personnel, about fifty foreign military specialists were located in the camp. There were many fewer prisoners of war: 40 Afghans and 14 Shuravi - Soviet soldiers.

All of them were exhausted by hard work, unbearable living conditions, hunger and abuse from the guards.

Nevertheless, these people decided to openly revolt

Knowing that if they failed, they would face a brutal death, they tried anyway. According to some sources, they intended to fight their way through to their own people; according to others, they tried to seize a radio tower and send a radio signal to their own.

The prisoners seized one of the weapons depots and demanded to contact the Afghan authorities. But the Mujahideen commander Rabbani never took losses into account. At first, he threw the forces of the entire garrison against the prisoners barricaded in the warehouse, and when he realized that they were not going to surrender, he decided that destroying one of the warehouses would be cheaper than allowing an escape.

He leveled the warehouse. Of course, everyone who was in the warehouse died. During the preparations for the uprising, not everyone could be trusted, so several of the prisoners were left in the dark - they managed to survive. They later told what happened during the uprising on the territory of the Badaber fortress.

During the uprising, 54 people exhausted by captivity killed more than a hundred Mujahideen, 40-90 Pakistani military personnel (data vary) and 6 foreign instructors.

The series “Badaber Fortress” was filmed about the heroism of soldiers who reached despair.

Realizing that it is impossible to reliably recreate either that atmosphere or those events, we asked Director of the Center for Military-Political Studies, Professor at MGIMO Alexey Podberezkin, has he seen this series and what does he think about the way it was filmed?

“Of course, there is no question of 100% authenticity - this is a feature film, but I liked it. For the viewer, this series is good, because someone wants to watch documentaries, someone is looking for historical information, but this is a well-made feature film..

He noted that few films have been made on this topic:

“You know, now they are making a lot of good films. Both documentary and fiction. In the arts, they appeal to emotions. Only I think that few films have been made about the period of the Afghan war.

The Americans filmed all sorts of “Rambo” about their atrocities in Southeast Asia, but we filmed almost nothing about Afghanistan, where the guys did miracles.”

Actor Vasily Mishchenko, who played the Minister of Defense in the series, is proud that he was able to contribute to the memory of these guys. He says that it was very exciting to touch history and become part of its reconstruction.

“I played a small role. My hero is Minister of Defense Sergeev. I know him a little in life - he is a dry, reserved person, very strong and strong-willed. I tried to reproduce his character traits, but whether I succeeded or failed is up to the viewer to judge. I tried very hard to get as close as possible to his image,” the artist shared.

He also believes that the number of films about Afghanistan is not enough:

"Undoubtedly! This is a large layer of history that needs to be talked about. Moreover, the “Afghans” themselves do not speak kindly about what has already been filmed. I believe there should be more truth. Prohibit any slander and distortions.

Take Lungin's film, for example. Looting was always fraught: one could easily die. And no one wanted to die. What I mean is that the editing needs to be meticulous and the censorship to be correct.

What happened must be shown. Yes, there were unpleasant things on the part of our contingent, but this was not the main thing, there is no need to highlight it. If everything were like this, I don’t think our people would be remembered kind words, as it was after the departure of our troops."

What do you think? Should we make feature films about the war in Afghanistan or is it better to limit ourselves to dry documentaries, but without the slightest deviation from real events?

WHO IS HE, THE LEADER OF THE UPRISING?

On the evening of April 26, 1985, when almost all the Mujahideen who were in the camp of “Saint Khaled ibn Walid” in the town of Zangali (Badaber) gathered on the parade ground to perform prayers, Soviet prisoners of war went into their last battle.

Shortly before the uprising, at night, a large amount of weapons was brought into the camp as a transshipment base - twenty-eight trucks with rockets for rocket launchers and grenades for grenade launchers, as well as Kalashnikov assault rifles, machine guns, and pistols. As Ghulam Rasul Karluk, who taught artillery in Badaber, testifies, “the Russians helped us unload them.”

A significant part of the incoming weapons was soon to go to the Panjshir Gorge - to the Mujahideen detachments under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Nikolai Shevchenko (“Abdurakhmon”) in captivity. Drawing for the film “The Secret of the Badaber Camp. Afghan trap"

As I later recalled former leader Islamic Society of Afghanistan (IOA) Rabbani, the uprising was started by a tall guy who managed to disarm the guard who brought the evening stew. He opened the cells and released other prisoners.

“There was one stubborn person among the Russians - Viktor, originally from Ukraine,” Rabbani said. “One evening, when everyone had gone to prayer, he killed our guard and took possession of his machine gun. Several people followed his example. Then they climbed to the roof of the warehouses where RPG shells were stored and began shooting at our brothers from there. Everyone fled from the parade ground. We asked them to lay down their arms and surrender...

The night passed in anxiety. Morning came, Victor and his accomplices did not give up. They killed more than one Mujahideen, many of our brothers were wounded. The Shuravi even fired from a mortar. We again asked them through a megaphone not to shoot - this could lead to disaster: the ammunition in the warehouses would explode...

But that didn't help either. Shooting from both sides continued. One of the shells hit the warehouse. A powerful explosion occurred and the premises began to burn. All the Russians died."

Rabbani also complained that the story of the rebel Russians had soured his relations with the Pakistanis.

It is assumed that one of the organizers of the uprising was a native of Zaporozhye, Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko, who worked as a diesel engine operator at the Bagram KEC.

This is what the same Rabbani said on camera: “Yes, there were prisoners from different provinces of Afghanistan - from Khost, from the northern provinces, from Kabul. The Ukrainian, who was the leader among the other prisoners, especially showed himself. If they had any questions, he contacted us and solved them...

The others didn't cause any problems. And only a young Ukrainian guy, the guards told me, sometimes behaves suspiciously. That's how it turned out in the end. He created problems for us.”

Who is this extraordinary person, leader?

From documents of the Ministry of State Security of Afghanistan: “According to agents, 12 Soviet and 40 Afghan prisoners of war, captured during the fighting in Panjshir and Karabagh in 1982-1984, are secretly kept in the underground prison of the Badaber camp in Pakistan. The detention of prisoners of war is carefully hidden from the Pakistani authorities. Soviet prisoners of war have the following Muslim nicknames: Abdul Rahman, Rahimhuda, Ibrahim, Fazlihuda, Kasim, Muhammad Aziz Sr., Muhammad Aziz Jr., Kanand, Rustam, Muhammad Islam, Islameddin, Yunus, aka Victor.

A prisoner named Kanand, an Uzbek by nationality, could not withstand the beatings in February of this year. Mr. went crazy. All of these persons are kept in underground cells, and communication between them is strictly prohibited. For the slightest violation of the regime, the prison commandant Abdurakhman severely beats with a whip. February 1985"

Initially it was believed that the leader of the uprising was Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko (“Yunus”). Born on March 21, 1954 in the city of Zaporozhye. He graduated from eight classes of secondary school in the city of Zaporozhye and vocational school No. 14 in the city of Zaporozhye.

Memorial to the heroes of Badaber. Opened in the Stavropol village of Sengileevskoye on the basis of the Russian Knights club. The monument depicts Viktor Dukhovchenko. May 2013. Photo provided by Nikolay Zhmailo

He served in the Armed Forces of the USSR. After finishing his service, he worked at the Zaporozhye Electric Locomotive Repair Plant, as a driver in children's hospital No. 3 in the city of Zaporozhye, and as a diver at the rescue service station on the Dnieper.

On August 15, 1984, Dukhovchenko was voluntarily sent through the Zaporozhye Regional Military Commissariat to work for hire in the Soviet troops located in the Republic of Afghanistan.

Victor worked as a boiler room operator at the 573rd logistics warehouse of the 249th apartment maintenance unit. He was captured on New Year's Eve 1985 by Moslavi Sadashi's group near the city of Sedukan, Parvan province.

Red Star military correspondent Alexander Oliynik: “Feedback from his friend and fellow countryman, warrant officer Sergei Chepurnov, and stories from Dukhovchenko’s mother, Vera Pavlovna, whom I met, allow me to say that Victor is a man of unyielding character, courageous, and physically resilient. It was Victor who, most likely, could become one of the active participants in the uprising, says Lieutenant Colonel E. Veselov, who for a long time was involved in the liberation of our prisoners from Dushman dungeons.”

However, Victor spent several months in Badaber, and therefore could not have time to master the language (even if he began to do this from the moment he arrived in Afghanistan at the end of the summer of 1984) and gain authority in the eyes of the camp administration.

Later, Nikolai Ivanovich Shevchenko, born in 1956, from the Sumy region, began to be called the leader of the uprising. According to testimony and reports from Afghan agents - “Abdul Rahman”, “Abdurahmon”.

Nikolai Shevchenko graduated from eight classes of high school in the village of Bratenitsa, Velikopisarevsky district, vocational school No. 35 in the village of Khoten, Sumy district, Sumy region, with a degree in tractor driver, and driver courses at DOSAAF in the urban village of Velikaya Pisarevka. He worked as a tractor driver on the Lenin collective farm in his native village of Dmitrovka.

From November 1974 to November 1976 he served in military service: driver in the 283rd Guards Artillery Regiment of the 35th Motorized Rifle Division (Olympicsdorf, Group of Soviet Forces in the GDR), military rank"corporal".

On a voluntary basis, through the Kiev city military registration and enlistment office in January 1981, he was sent for hire to the DRA. He worked as a driver and salesman at a military store of the 5th Guards Motorized Rifle Division (city of Shindand, Herat province). He repeatedly made trips by car, delivering industrial and food products to military units and military camps throughout Afghanistan (Kandahar, Shindand, Herat and others).

Shevchenko was captured on September 10, 1982 near the city of Herat. Among the prisoners of Badaber, he was not only the oldest, but also stood out for his prudence, life experience, and some special maturity. He was also distinguished by a heightened sense of self-esteem. Even the guards tried to behave with him without being rude.

Unbroken! Nikolai Shevchenko in the Badaber (Zangali) camp. Pakistan. Photo from August-September 1983

“Among twenty-year-old boys, he, thirty, seemed almost an old man,” Sergei German wrote about him in the book “Once Upon a Time in Badaber.” “He was tall and broad-boned. Gray eyes looked incredulously and ferociously from under the eyebrows.

Wide cheekbones and a thick beard made his appearance even more gloomy. He gave the impression of a stern and cruel man.

His habits resembled the behavior of a battered, battered and dangerous man. This is how old, experienced prisoners, taiga hunters or well-trained saboteurs behave.”

But Rabbani was talking about a “young guy”?..

However, both Dukhovchenko and Shevchenko were over thirty. Besides, captivity - especially like this! - makes him very old... However, one must take into account the psychological factor: at the time of the interview, Rabbani was already an old man, therefore he perceived the events in Badaber through the prism of his past years. So the leader of the uprising was a “young guy” for him.

As for who was the leader of the uprising, there could well have been two of them - which, by the way, will be clear from the further story. Both are from Ukraine. Rabbani remembered the name of one of them - Victor. Although he could talk about Nikolai, seeing him before his eyes.

“THAT’S WHEN HE CAME, THEN IT STARTED!”

In fact, the only evidence from our side belongs to the Uzbek Nosirzhon Rustamov. He served in Afghanistan, was captured by the Mujahideen and ended up in Badaber. Did not take part in the uprising. He was released and handed over to Uzbek authorities from Pakistan only in 1992.

Looking at the photo shown to him by director Radik Kudoyarov, Rustamov confidently identified Nikolai Shevchenko in “Abdurahmon”: “When he came, that’s when it began! Came from Iran (was captured on the border with Iran - Ed.). Kamazist. Chauffeur. The jaws are wide. Exactly! And the eyes are so... scary eyes.”

There are two versions about how the events of April 26 developed. This is what Rustamov told in 2006 to former KGB officer of the Tajik SSR, Colonel Muzzafar Khudoyarov.

Colonel Khudoyarov feared that Rustamov would not agree to a frank conversation. However, Nosirzhon turned out to be a good-natured, smiling person. However, the conversation with him could end before it even began. Because when asked whether he was in the Badaber camp, Rustamov answered negatively.

The head of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan and the future President of Afghanistan Rabbani - it was he who gave the order to begin shelling the Badaber arsenal captured by the rebels

As it turned out, he visited camps in Zangali, Peshawar and near Jalalabad. But the name “Badaber” meant nothing to him. Khudoyarov nevertheless asked if he knew anything about the uprising of Soviet prisoners in Pakistan? And then Rustamov suddenly began to talk about the uprising in Zangali in 1985.

Later it turned out that Zangali (or Dzhangali) is the name of the area where the Badaber camp was located. But for some reason locals more often call this place Zangali.

“In the camp, besides me and the prisoners chained, there were 11 more Soviet soldiers who converted to Islam (forcibly - Ed.). They were kept not in the basement, but in the upper barracks. Among those eleven were Russians, Ukrainians and one Tatar. They had a freer mode of movement. These guys said they would not return to the Soviet Union. But I had no idea at the time that this was their tactic. In order to take possession of a weapon when the opportunity arises and break free.

The leader among these 11 prisoners was a Ukrainian with the Islamic name "Abdurahmon". Strong build and tall. Possibly a paratrooper or special forces soldier, because he was excellent in hand-to-hand combat techniques. Sometimes the Afghans staged wrestling competitions. “Abdurahmon” always emerged victorious in them.

The reason for the uprising was the outrage committed by two Mujahideen against a Soviet soldier named “Abdullo”. I think that “Abdullo” was a Tatar.

Taking advantage of Friday prayers, when almost all the Mujahideen were in the mosque, “Abdurahmon” disarmed the guard of the ammunition depot. He and his comrades quickly pulled machine guns, machine guns and ammunition onto the roof of the building.

First, the rebels fired a burst into the air to attract the attention of the Mujahideen and present their demands to them. The first thing they ordered was to punish the Mujahideen who abused the Russian soldier. Otherwise, they threatened to blow up the ammunition depot, which would lead to the destruction of the entire camp.

At that moment, the chained prisoners and I were still in the basement. The Mujahideen hastily took us away from the arsenal. They threw us into a trench and put a machine gun to each person’s head. They kept it like that until it was all over,” recalls Rustamov.

However, in Radik Kudoyarov’s film “The Secret of the Badaber Camp. Afghan Trap" (filmed in 2006-2008) Rustamov names a different number of captives - fourteen Soviet and three Afghan.

There, from a different angle, he talks about the event that preceded the uprising - the abuse of the fitter “Abdullo”, who, being a good specialist, was used only in the profile of his activity and had greater freedom of movement.

It turns out that one day “Abdullo” quietly slipped out of the camp and headed to the Soviet embassy in Pakistan. He was almost there when the police stopped him in Islamabad and took him back.

“We were hidden in another place,” Rustamov says to the camera. “The Pakistani police arrived and checked everything, but found no prisoners. They asked: “Well, where are these prisoners you were talking about? There’s no one.” And then the Mujahideen tell them: “This is not Russian, this is Babrak Karmal’s man. He just wanted to get away from us. Here, take it for your troubles...” Thus, the Pakistanis actually sold “Abdullo” to the Mujahideen, took the money and left.

As soon as the Pakistanis left, we were brought back. And they told us: “Look, if any of you decide to do anything like this again, the punishment will be like this...” And “Abdullo” was raped. After that, he returned to us, sat and cried next to us.

Among us was “Abdurahmon” - a tall, healthy guy. He said, “Let's start a rebellion! Things won't go any further like this. Tomorrow this could happen to any of us. There is no faith in this.”

The only one who survived from the Soviet prisoners of Badaber was Uzbek Nosirzhon Rustamov. Fergana, 2006

This is the guy who started it all. Before this, no one had even thought about an uprising. He said: “If you don’t have the courage, I’ll start it myself. What day should we schedule it for? Let’s do it next Friday, when the weapons will be taken out of the warehouse for cleaning.” “Islomudin” (i.e. Mikhail Varvaryan - Ed.) was among us then ... "

And then the unexpected happened - instead of cleaning weapons, the Mujahideen announced, there would be a football match. There is a version that one of the prisoners warned the dushmans. So I had to act according to the situation.

“Abdurakhmon” and another Russian said that one had a stomach ache, the other had a leg, and they would not play. They stayed and others went to play. During the football match we were sitting in the basement, there were six of us: “Islomudin”, me and another of our prisoners - a Kazakh. In captivity his name was “Kenet” (or Uzbek, aka “Kanand”, “Kanat” - Ed.). His head was bad. He was crazy - he sat in one place all the time. There were also three prisoners with us - Afghans from the army of Babrak Karmal.

We had a great view of the stadium through the window. Our guys won 3:0. This irritated the Mujahideen greatly. And they started shouting: “Shuravi - you donkeys!” A fight ensued.

The weapons warehouse was guarded by an old man. He was sitting next to the door. “Abdurahmon” approached him and asked for a light. The old man reached for matches. And then “Abdurahmon” knocked out the guard, took off his machine gun and shot at the warehouse lock. They broke into the warehouse, took weapons and climbed onto the roof. They started shooting in the air and shouted to the other prisoners: “Come on, run here!”

SECOND VERSION OF THE UPRISING

Now the second version from the same Rustamov. It is cited in his publications by Evgeniy Kirichenko (newspapers “Trud”, “Top Secret”).

Usually two dushmans were on guard: one was on duty at the gate, the other was on the roof of the warehouse with weapons. But at that moment there was only one left. And suddenly the electricity in the mosque went out - the gasoline generator on the first floor, where the “shuravi” were kept, stopped working.

The guard came down from the roof. He approached the generator and was immediately stunned by “Abdurahmon,” who took possession of his machine gun. Then he started the generator and gave current to the mosque so that the “spirits” would not guess what was happening in the camp.

"Abdurahmon" knocked down the lock from the arsenal doors. The rebels began to drag weapons and boxes of ammunition onto the roof. The leader of the uprising warned that whoever runs, he will personally shoot. Afghan army officers were released from their cells.

Among the rebels, only “Abdullo” was not present. In the morning he was called to the head of the camp. “Islomudin,” who was helping to carry boxes of ammunition onto the roof, chose an opportune moment and slipped away to the Mujahideen: “The Russians have risen!”

At this time, “Abdurakhmon” began shooting from the DShK, aiming over the mosque and demanding to release “Abdullo.”

- Tra-ta-ta, “Abdullo”! — Nosirzhon Rustamov reproduces the machine gun bursts and screams. - Tra-ta-ta, “Abdullo”!

“Aburakhmon” shouted for a long time, and “Abdullo” was released. Returning to his people, he sat down on the roof to fill the magazine with cartridges.

Meanwhile, having made their way into the fortress from the rear, the “spirits” pulled out Rustamov and two other Afghans who were in the basement and drove them into a field where a deep hole had been prepared. The traitor “Islomudin” also ended up there. The Kazakh “Kanat”, who had lost his mind, remained in the basement, where he was crushed by a collapsed beam.

Witness to the uprising in Badaber Ghulyam Rasul Karluk (center), in 1985 - commander of the camp’s training company

“We sat in the pit and listened to the sounds of shots,” says Rustamov. “I sat in silence, and “Islomudin” whined that he would be shot.

It turns out that Rustamov voiced two versions of the beginning of the uprising: one connects the performance with the second football match between prisoners and mujahideen, the other with Friday prayers.

When does Nosirjon tell the truth?..

Congressman Charlie Wilson among the "spirits." Organized the financing of a secret CIA operation that supplied weapons to the Mujahideen.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE REBELLIONS

Let's rewind the tape back. Having learned about what was happening, the duty officer at the training center, Khaist Gol, raised the alarm and took all possible measures to prevent the prisoners of war from escaping. By order of Rabbani, the camp was surrounded by Mujahideen detachments in a dense ring. The Pakistani military watched on the sidelines.

Ghulam Rasul Karluk, in 1985 - commander of a training company in the Badaber camp: “Since I had good, friendly relations with them (ha! - Ed.), I wanted to solve the problem through peaceful dialogue. We tried to persuade them to give up, and I asked: “Why did they do this?” They answered that they were “99% ready for death and 1% ready for life.” “And here we are in captivity, life is very difficult for us. And we will either die or be freed."

According to Karluk, the rebels demanded the arrival of “engineer Ayub,” a major functionary of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, or the head of the IOA Rabbani himself.

Word to Rustamov, who tells the camera: “Rabbani arrived and asked:“ What happened? Why did you grab the weapon? Come on, give it up." - “No, we won’t give up!” - was the answer. He was called to come closer. Rabbani's bodyguards warned that he might be shot. But he replied: “No, I’ll come!”

Nikolai Shevchenko (in the second row - on the right) together with colleagues in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSVG)

Rabbani alone, contrary to the warnings of his bodyguards, came close to the rebels. He asked: “Well, what happened?” “Abdullo” appeared on the roof. He asked: “Why didn’t your commanders punish me with whipping and shoot me if I was so guilty - why did they do this to me?” Rabbani asked him: “Which commander did this? Do you know the name? Do you recognize him? “I’ll find out,” answered “Abdullo.”

Rabbani called this commander and asked why he did this? Why didn't you punish him differently? This is contrary to Islamic laws... And he turned to the rebels: “What do you want me to do - for you to lay down your arms? As you say, so I will do.” “If you are telling the truth, then shoot him,” came the answer. “Let this be his punishment.”

And Rabbani shot this commander. I didn’t have time for the second one... Because immediately the Mujahideen started shooting at the roof. The rebels returned fire. After the shootout, the prisoners said the following: “Rabbani, your soldiers started shooting, not us! Now, until you call representatives of the Soviet embassy, ​​we will not lay down our arms.”

EXPLOSION OF BADABER ARSENAL

The battle gave way to negotiations, but the rebels stood their ground: they demanded the arrival of Soviet diplomats, representatives of the Pakistani authorities and international public organizations.

During the assault, Rabbani, according to him, almost died from a mine explosion or a grenade launcher, while his bodyguard received serious shrapnel wounds. According to some reports, he died.

The shelling of Badaber began with heavy cannon artillery, after which the weapons and ammunition depot was blown into the air. The rebels, of course, foresaw this scenario, but still deliberately went to their death. And this alone gives them the right to be called heroes.

There are different versions about the causes of this explosion. According to some sources, this was due to an artillery strike. The subsequent series of explosions destroyed the Badaber camp. According to other sources, the rebels themselves blew up the warehouse when the outcome of the battle became clear.

According to Rabbani, the warehouse exploded due to an RPG hit. Here are his words: “One of the Mujahideen, without a team, probably accidentally, fired and hit the arsenal. People were on the roof, and he ended up in the lower part of the building. Everything there exploded and there was nothing left of the house. Those people whom the Russians captured and many of those who were in the cordon also died... About twenty people died on our side in the end.”

Even from the army photograph of Nikolai Shevchenko it is clear that he is not a young man, but a real man!

Obviously, ex-president Afghanistan was shielding himself - which, however, is understandable!

Ghulam Rasul Karluk has a different version. He believes that the rebels, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, themselves undermined the arsenal.

Rustamov, on camera, describes what was happening like this: “Rabbani left somewhere, and some time later a gun appeared. He (Rabbani) gave the order to shoot. When the gun fired, the shell hit the warehouse, causing a powerful explosion. Everything flew up into the air - no people, no buildings, nothing remained. Everything was leveled to the ground, and black smoke poured out. And there was literally an earthquake in our basement.”

From the testimony of “Zomir”: “The dushmans brought up several BM-13 rocket launchers, and during the battle one missile hit an ammunition depot, causing a powerful explosion” (the source is not documented).

DOCUMENT (SECRET)

At 18:00 local time, a group of Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war, consisting of about 24 people, held for three years in a special prison of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan at the military training center for Afghan rebels in the Badaber region (24 km south of Peshawar), made an armed uprising in order to free themselves from captivity. Choosing a convenient moment, when out of 70 guards only two remained (the rest had gone to prayer), the prisoners of war attacked the guards of the prison and the ILA weapons and ammunition warehouse located on its territory. They took possession of weapons, took up defensive positions and demanded that B. Rabbani, who arrived at the scene of events, meet with representatives of the Soviet and Afghan embassies in Pakistan or a UN representative.

Negotiations with B. Rabbani were conducted using public address systems and by telephone. The scene of the incident was blocked by detachments of Afghan rebels and Pakistani Malish, as well as infantry, tank and artillery units of the 11th Pakistan Army Corps. After short negotiations with the rebels, the leader of the IOA B. Rabbani, in agreement with the Pakistani troops, gave the order to storm the prison, in which Pakistani units took part along with detachments of Afghan counter-revolutionaries. Artillery, tanks and combat helicopters were used against the defenders. The resistance of the rebels ceased by the end of April 27 as a result of the explosion of ammunition located in the warehouse.

All Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war who took part in the armed uprising died. As a result of the explosion and the resulting fire, a number of objects were destroyed, including the prison office, in which, according to available data, documents with lists of prisoners were kept. During the operation to seize the prison, up to 100 Afghan rebels were killed. There were also casualties among the Pakistanis […]

Unfortunately, it was not possible to find out the exact names of the participants in the armed uprising, due to the destruction of the lists of prisoners during the explosion of an ammunition depot and fire, as well as the measures taken by the Pakistani authorities and the leadership of the Afghan counter-revolution to isolate witnesses to the events in Badaber...

Sources of information: headquarters of the 40th Army, USSR Embassy in Pakistan, GRU General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, May 1985.

We specifically quoted the summary document, and the uncirculated report of Colonel Yu. Tarasov to the chief military adviser in Afghanistan, Army General G.I. Salamanov, dated May 25, 1985. It contains embellished, sometimes fantastic information. So, for example, it was alleged that the rebels removed six sentries, killed six foreign advisers, thirteen representatives of the Pakistani authorities and twenty-eight officers of the Pakistani Armed Forces. That three Grad MLRS and approximately two million (!) missiles and shells were destroyed various types, about forty artillery pieces, mortars and machine guns.

All these obviously unrealistic passages in the final message to Moscow were removed, as well as the fact that “among the Soviet military personnel, one, nicknamed Muhammad Islam, defected to the rebels at the time of the uprising.”

Viktor Dukhovchenko’s wife Vera Andreevna came to the Stavropol region to lay flowers at the memorial to the heroes of Badaber. Photo provided by the head of the Russian Knights club Nikolai Zhmailo

From the testimony of an active member of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan (IOA), Muhammad Nasser: “...On the morning of April 27, after Rabbani was convinced that the rebels would not surrender, he gave the command for the artillery to open fire. The prisoners also fired desperately from all types of weapons. Rabbani began to contact the command of the army corps, asking for more help. The Badaber area was surrounded by Pakistani vehicles. They filled all the streets where the camp and training center for the Mujahideen of our party were located.

Soon a Pakistani helicopter appeared over the fortress. The rebels fired at him from ZPU and DShK. Then another helicopter arrived. The fire on the fortress intensified, including from guns. One of the helicopters dropped a bomb. As a result, a strong explosion occurred at the ammunition depot. Everything exploded and burned for a long time. All the rebels died. The Mujahideen lost about a hundred people, and there were casualties among Pakistani military and civilians. Six military advisers from the United States also died” (source not documented).

SECOND WITNESS TO THE UPRISING

Former DRA army officer Gol Mohammad (or Mohammed) spent eleven months in Badaber prison. It was he who was in the cell with Rustamov and identified him in the photograph that journalist Yevgeny Kirichenko brought him to Kabul. Rustamov, in turn, identified Gol Mohammad as a “Babrakovite” officer who was sitting in the same cell with him.

The former DRA army officer believes that if it were not for the feat of the Shuravi prisoners, he would have been thrown to the dogs. The Mujahideen killed Afghans who fought on the side of government troops with bestial cruelty.

“There were 11 Russians. Two - the youngest - were imprisoned in the same cell with the Afghans, and the remaining nine were in the next one. They were all given Muslim names. But I can say that one of them was named Victor, he was from Ukraine, the second was Rustam from Uzbekistan, the third was a Kazakh named Kanat, and the fourth from Russia was called Alexander. The fifth prisoner bore the Afghan name Islamuddin.

Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war were kept in separate rooms, and the largest room of the prison was dedicated to an ammunition depot.

When the uprising began, we were outside the prison. And they saw how the Russians, having disarmed the guard, began to carry boxes of ammunition onto the roof and take up a perimeter defense. At this time, one of them fled to the Mujahideen. They blocked the exit from the fortress, and a battle began that lasted until the morning. The rebels were offered to surrender, but they blew themselves up along with their arsenal when it became clear that there was no point in resisting further.

Two of the Soviet prisoners - Rustam and Viktor - survived because at the time of the uprising they were in another cell, and the Mujahideen took them out of the fortress so that they would not join the rebels.”

Gol Mohammad claims that these two, along with the captured Afghans, were nevertheless later shot behind the fortress wall, and the life of the one who ran over to the Mujahideen was spared.

Something clearly doesn't add up here. And the Uzbek “Rustam” (i.e. Rustamov) survived, and the rebels freed all their comrades. Three people did not participate in the uprising - Rustamov and Varvaryan, as well as “Kenet,” who had lost his mind.

According to Gol Mohammad, the leader of the uprising was “Fayzullo”. In the photo album that Evgeny Kirichenko brought, he pointed to a photo of Sergei Bokanov, who disappeared in Parvan province in April 1981. However, he was not on the list submitted to the Russian Foreign Ministry by the Pakistani side in 1992.

One of the Russians, seriously wounded in the leg, as Gol Mohammad said, began to persuade Faizullo to accept Rabbani’s conditions. Then “Fayzullo” shot him in front of everyone.

At the decisive moment, “Fayzullo” called the Afghans to him and announced to them that they could leave. He gave them a few minutes so that they could move to a safe distance...

The first Soviet journalist to write about Gol Mohammad on the pages of Red Star was Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Oliynik. Despite all efforts, the author was unable to find the former captive in Kabul. But the Afghan Ministry of State Security preserved a detailed story by Gol Mohammad about the uprising in the Badaber camp.

According to Oliynik, the Afghan officer spent three and a half years in Badaber. Here are some excerpts from the recorded eyewitness testimony.

Freedom House representative Lyudmila Zemelis-Thorn with Badaber prisoners: Nikolai Shevchenko, Vladimir Shipeev and Mikhail Varvaryan. August-September 1983

“In early March 1985, Soviet prisoners at a secret meeting decided to organize a mass escape from the fortress prison,” testifies Gol Mohammad. “At first, we, captured Afghans, were not privy to this secret. I first learned about this from Victor, my friend, who taught Russian in short moments of meetings. All the captive Afghans loved him for his honesty and kindness. According to Victor, Soviet soldiers led by Abdul Rahman took part in the discussion of the escape plan.

Victor relayed his conversation with me to Abdul Rahman and said that I was ready to take part in the escape and that I could show the way in a car and take everyone to the Afghan border. Soon I met with Abdul Rahman and confirmed my agreement and named the names of those Afghans who could be relied upon. The officer warned that the escape should take place at the end of April.

On the morning of April 25, a column of trucks with ammunition arrived at the warehouses. Together with the Russians, we unloaded them all day. Some of the boxes with missiles were unloaded directly into the prison yard. On the evening of April 26, imitating preparation for prayer, at the command of Abdul Rahman, Soviet prisoners and Afghans removed their guards. Moreover, Abdul disarmed and killed the first sentry. Soon shooting began, several times turning into terrible hand-to-hand combat. Soviet soldiers and those Afghans who did not have time to escape repelled the first attack and took up defense on the roofs of warehouses and watchtowers.

I miraculously managed to escape in the chaos after the explosion of ammunition depots, where my Russian brothers also died. I think that from the photographs I will be able to identify the dead Soviet friends... October 16, 1985.”

The Red Star military correspondent clarifies that, according to the stories of the Afghan Ministry of State Security, Gol Mohammad was provided with photographs of about twenty OKSV servicemen from among those missing in those areas of Afghanistan that were controlled by the IOA rebels. He identified only two Badaber prisoners from photographs - “among them is not our officer whom we know under the nickname Abdul Rahman.”

At that time there was no information about Nikolai Shevchenko in the context of the uprising in Badaber. And Oliynik himself clarifies that Gol Mohammad was shown photographs of our military who disappeared in areas controlled by the Islamic Society of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the province of Herat, where Shevchenko was captured, was the zone of influence of the field commander Ismail Khan, better known as Turan Ismail (“Captain Ismail”).

Further, Oliynik reports a very important thing: “Another one among those whom Gol Mohammad identified from photographs was Muhammad Islam. The same prisoner who chickened out at the height of the uprising decided to save his own skin at the cost of betrayal. I don’t know all the details, I don’t want to be his judge. While there is no documentary and absolutely accurate evidence of this betrayal, I cannot give his real name.”

Who is this man? The question is still open...

Revenge of the KGB

According to journalists Kaplan and Burki S, Soviet intelligence services carried out a number of retaliation operations. On May 11, 1985, the Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Pakistan, Vitaly Smirnov, stated that the USSR would not leave this matter unanswered.

“Islamabad bears full responsibility for what happened in Badaber,” Smirnov warned Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

In 1987, Soviet raids into Pakistan killed 234 Mujahideen and Pakistani soldiers. On April 10, 1988, a massive explosion at an ammunition depot occurred in the Ojhri camp, located between Islamabad and Rawalpindi, resulting in the death of between 1,000 and 1,300 people. Investigators came to the conclusion that sabotage had been committed. Some time later, on August 17, 1988, President Zia-ul-Haq's plane crashed. Pakistani intelligence services also directly linked this incident to the activities of the KGB as punishment for Badaber. Despite all this, these events did not receive public publicity in the USSR itself.