April 26, 1985: Uprising in the Badaber Camp

 

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Text taken from a V Kontakte post by THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR from Sergey Veter

UPRISING IN THE BADABER CAMP..... April 26, 1985

IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO DID NOT RECEIVE CAPTURE

The uprising in the Badaber camp is an episode of the Afghan war, during which on April 26, 1985, an unequal battle took place between detachments of the Afghan Mujahideen and the regular Pakistani units that supported the army, on the one hand, and a group of Soviet and Afghan prisoners of war, on the other. 

The prisoners of war's attempt to free themselves from the camp failed. As a result of the two-day assault on the Badaber camp using artillery, most of the prisoners of war were killed. 

In 1983-1985, in the small village of Badaber in Pakistan, 10 km south of Peshawar and 24 km from the border with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, there was an Afghan refugee camp. Under him, the “St. Khalid ibn Walid Militant Training Center” was organized, where, under the guidance of military instructors from the USA, Pakistan, China and Egypt, future Mujahideen were trained, intending to return to Afghanistan to continue resistance against the contingent of Soviet troops. 

In total, 65 military instructors worked in the camp, mainly from Pakistan and Egypt. Six of them were US citizens. The training center itself belonged to the Islamic Society of Afghanistan party, one of the most influential and large opposition groups opposing Soviet influence in the region as part of Operation Cyclone. It is known that the camp also enjoyed the tacit support of the Pakistani authorities.

The camp, together with the military base, occupied a huge area - about 500 hectares. In addition to adobe houses and tents, there were six storage rooms with weapons and ammunition and three prisons. Military personnel of the DRA Armed Forces and “shuravi” (Soviet prisoners of war) captured during 1983-1984 in Panjshir and Karabagh were brought here. Before this, they were kept mainly in zindans, equipped by each detachment independently. In total, in Badaber, according to various sources, there were about 40 Afghan and 14 Soviet prisoners of war.

During imprisonment, 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; they were brutally beaten for the slightest offense; At the same time, the dushmans persuaded the prisoners to accept Islam. The prisoners of war came up with a plan: to seize a weapons warehouse in the camp and demand that the Mujahideen leadership meet with representatives of the Soviet or Afghan embassies in Islamabad. Everyone knew what they were getting into: some had been in captivity for three years already, they had seen enough of the atrocities of the radicals, so they had no way back.

On April 26, 1985 at 21:00, when all the camp personnel were gathered on the parade ground to perform evening prayers, a group of Soviet prisoners of war “removed” two sentries from the artillery warehouses and on the tower, freed the prisoners, armed themselves with small arms and artillery weapons captured in the warehouses and tried to hide. The rebels had at their disposal ammunition for a coaxial anti-aircraft gun and a DShK machine gun, a mortar and RPG grenade launchers. According to another version, their main goal was to seize a radio station in order to go on air to report their coordinates. It is assumed that the organizer of the uprising was a native of Zaporozhye, Viktor Vasilyevich Dukhovchenko, born in 1954.

At 23.00 by order of IOA leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, the site of the clash was blocked by a triple encirclement ring consisting of 100 dushmans and military personnel, armored vehicles and artillery of the Pakistani army. Rabbani personally invited the rebels to surrender and promised to spare the lives of those who surrendered. But they responded with a categorical refusal and, in turn, demanded a meeting with representatives of the Soviet or Afghan embassies in Pakistan, as well as calling representatives of the Red Cross to the scene. The rebels promised to blow up the warehouse if their demands were not met. Rabbani rejected these demands and decided to launch an assault that lasted all night.

By 08.00 on April 27, it became clear that the rebels did not intend to surrender. During the assault, Rabbani was nearly killed by a grenade launcher, while his bodyguard received serious shrapnel wounds. Rabbani decided to end the assault by destroying the camp. At 8 o'clock in the morning, Pakistani heavy artillery shelling of Badaber began, after which the weapons and ammunition depot exploded.

There are different versions about the causes of this explosion. According to one source, a weapons and ammunition depot exploded due to volleys of rocket launchers. The subsequent series of explosions destroyed the Badaber camp. The three shell-shocked survivors were dragged to the wall and blown up with hand grenades.

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. After which all the prisoners and guards who remained locked inside the warehouse died.

The enormous force of the explosion is confirmed by witness testimony:

A powerful explosion occurred. The missiles exploded and scattered in different directions...

What I saw at the site of the explosion... were fingers in one direction, a hand in another place, ears in a third. We were able to find only the body of Kinet intact and half of the body of another prisoner, which was torn off and thrown aside. Everything else was torn into pieces, and we didn’t find anything whole anymore.

- Ghulam Rasul Karluk, in 1985 - commander of a training company in the Badaber camp

Rabbani left somewhere and some time later a cannon 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. And there was literally an earthquake in our basement.

Rabbani said: “Drive everyone out of the basement, let them come here.” And he told us: “Come on, gather everyone. All that remains of your fellow countrymen." And the remains were widely scattered. We brought them in pieces and put them in a hole. And so they buried... Mujahideen with machine guns stand: “Come on, come on, faster, faster!” We walk, collect, cry.

— Rustamov Nosirzhon Ummatkulovich, prisoner of the Badaber camp.

The SVR report clarifies that the forces of the regular army of Pakistan helped suppress the Rabbani uprising:

Information about the heroic uprising of Soviet prisoners of war in the Badaber camp is confirmed by the documents of the US State Department at our disposal, materials of the Ministry of State Security of Afghanistan, testimony of direct eyewitnesses and participants in these events from the Mujahideen and Pakistanis , as well as statements by the leaders of the armed formations B. Rabbani (IOA), G. Hekmatyar (IPA) and others...

The area of ​​the uprising was blocked by Mujahideen detachments, tank and artillery units of the 11th Army Corps of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The 122mm BM-21 Grad MLRS and a flight of Pakistani Air Force helicopters were used against the rebels. Radio reconnaissance of the 40th Army recorded a radio interception between their crews and the air base, as well as a report from one of the crews about a bomb attack on the camp. Only the joint efforts of the Mujahideen and Pakistani regular troops managed to suppress this uprising. Most of the rebels died a brave death in an unequal battle, and the seriously wounded were finished off on the spot.

According to documents of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, more than 120 Afghan mujahideen and refugees, a number of foreign specialists (including 6 American advisers), 28 officers of the Pakistani regular troops, and 13 representatives of the Pakistani authorities were killed. The Badaber base was completely destroyed; as a result of the explosion of the arsenal, the rebels lost three 122mm BM-21 Grad MLRS installations, overtwo million rounds of ammunition, about 40 guns, mortars and machine guns, about 2,000  missiles and shells of various types. The prison office also perished, and with it the lists of prisoners.

The incident caused a stir among the Pakistani leadership and the Afghan Mujahideen. On April 29, 1985, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the President of Pakistan, decided to classify all information about the incident. Between April 29 and May 4, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, Lieutenant General Fazal-Haq, and personally Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq visited the scene of events, who had a difficult and unpleasant conversation with the leaders of the dushmans. 

After this conversation, his order was distributed among Gulbetdin Hekmatyar’s formations that in future “shuravis” should not be captured, but that if captured, they should be destroyed on the spot.” (this directive was distributed only among the units of the Islamic Party of Afghanistan, was in force during 1985 and was canceled under pressure from American advisers). The Pakistani authorities completely confiscated the issue of the Peshawar magazine "Safir", which talked about the uprising in the fortress. However, the popular leftist Pakistani newspaper Muslim published a report about the uprising of Soviet prisoners. This news was then spread by Western media.

1985, the Soviet leadership also imagined the scale of the incident:

According to the aerospace service, a large explosion destroyed the Mujahideen training camp of Badaber in the NWFP of Pakistan. The size of the crater in the image obtained from the communications satellite reaches 80 meters

- from the report of the Aerospace Service Center, April 28. 1985

The camp's square mile area was covered with a layer of shell fragments, rockets and mines, and human remains were found by local residents at a distance of up to four miles from the explosion site... 14-15 Soviet soldiers were kept in the Badaber camp, two of whom managed to survive after the uprising was suppressed...

On May 27, the general public of the USSR learned about what had happened from the materials of the Novosti press agency. The meaning of the message is purely political; there were no words of condolences to the relatives, no admiration for the feat of the prisoners, no sorrow for their tragic fate. Their deaths were used as a reason to once again criticize the Reagan administration.

Until 1991, Pakistani authorities responded negatively to all inquiries about the incident, citing ignorance. They insisted that there were no Soviet prisoners of war on their territory. According to Yusuf Mohammed, a Pakistani intelligence officer, the incident "could have quickly spiraled out of control or led to an international confrontation."

For the first time, an official representative of Islamabad admitted the fact of the death of Soviet soldiers in Badaber in a conversation with a representative of the Russian embassy in December 1991. This recognition followed only after the fact of their participation in the uprising was previously confirmed by B. Rabbani. In early 1992, Pakistan's Deputy Foreign Minister Shahryar Khan officially announced the names of six participants in the Badaber uprising.

On February 8, 2003, by Decree of the President of Ukraine, “for personal courage and heroism shown in the performance of military, official, and civil duty,” junior sergeant Sergei Korshenko was awarded the Order of Courage, 3rd degree (posthumously), and junior sergeant Nikolai Samin was awarded the Order of the President. Kazakhstan - the Order of “Aibyn” (“Valor”), 3rd degree (“for courage and dedication shown in the performance of military and official duty, as well as for feats accomplished in protecting the interests of the state”, posthumously).

Repeated appeals to the Russian leadership with the aim of perpetuating the memory of fallen soldiers and posthumously presenting them for state awards did not find a positive response. In 2003, the award department of the Russian Ministry of Defense informed the Committee on the Affairs of Internationalist Soldiers under the Council of Heads of Government of the CIS that the award procedure for fulfilling international duty was completed in July 1991 on the basis of a directive from the USSR Deputy Minister of Defense for Personnel. In 2004, the Committee was also further clarified:

the Ministry of Defense does not have information that would reveal the true picture of the tragic events that occurred in April 1985 in the Badaber Afghan refugee camp. The available fragmentary data are contradictory... Currently, after 20 years, it is difficult to objectively assess those events and the specific personal merits of their participants...

According to V.P. Alaskan, this position of the Russian leadership on this issue looks very ambiguous, since no less 10 people from the above list of participants in the uprising were called up for military service from the territory of the current Russian Federation.

In 2005-2009, V.P. Alaskan, a participant in the Afghan campaign and a member of the government delegation for the release of prisoners of war in 1995-1998, carried out an independent investigation into the circumstances of the events in Badaber, including using documentary materials from the US State Department, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russian and Afghan competent authorities, and established the names of most of the direct participants in the uprising. Numerous eyewitness accounts and archival data led to the conclusion that of the 17 participants in the uprising he identified, at least 10 were called up for military service from the territory of the Russian Federation.

The feat of Soviet military personnel formed the basis of the feature film by T. Bekmambetov and G. Kayumov “Peshawar Waltz” (1993) - according to the “Afghan” veterans, one of the most poignant and truthful films about that war, dedicated to the events in Badaber, which became a real monument to the soldiers.

The song of the Blue Berets group “April 27” and Alexander Rosenbaum’s song “We will return” are dedicated to the uprising in Badaber.

The uprising in Badaber is described in the novel “Sons” by the Belarusian writer Nikolai Cherginets.

In March 2013, the novel by St. Petersburg writer Andrei Konstantinov and Boris Podoprigora “If anyone hears me” was published. The Legend of the Badaber Fortress”, in the center of which is the uprising in the Badaber fortress. The novel is publicly available on the Fontanka.ru website. A film adaptation is being prepared. The plot of the 1991 Ukrainian feature film “Afghan” is based on the uprising.

ETERNAL MEMORY AND GLORY TO THOSE WHO DID NOT RETURN FROM THE BATTLEFIELDS!!!