Abdul Kadir Dagarwal ( 1944 , Gore province (according to other sources - Herat ) - April 22, 2014 , Kabul [1] ) - Afghanistan statesman and military figure, Colonel-General ( 1983 ), ethnicity - Zara tribe Charaimak (one of the national minorities of Afghanistan).
| Abdul Qadir Dagarval | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date of Birth | 1944 |
| Place of Birth | Horus or Herat |
| Date of death | April 22, 2014 |
| Place of death | |
| Affiliation |  Afghanistan |
| Type of army | Air Force |
| Rank | Colonel General (1983) |
| Commanded | Air Force and Air Defense Chief of Staff Minister of Defense of Afghanistan |
| Battles / wars | Saurian revolution |
Biography
Family
Born in the family of Mohammad Akram.
Education
He was educated at the military lyceum and military academy in Kabul , as well as at the Frunze Higher Military Aviation School (Kant).
Army Service
He served as an officer in the Afghan Air Force. From a young age, he adhered to leftist political views. In the early 1960s, along with several other Air Force officers, he was a member of the illegal Maksudi group. In 1973, he was one of the leaders of the coup, as a result of which the monarchy was overthrown, and General Mohammad Daoud became the head of state. After the coup, he was appointed chief of staff of the Air Force and Air Defense, but in 1974 he was removed from this post due to disagreements with Daoud and was appointed chief of the Kabul military slaughterhouse.
Political Activities
In 1974, he created and headed the underground organization United Front of the Communists of Afghanistan (OFCA), which included Air Force personnel. The model for Abdul Qadir was the Free Officers organization of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in the 1950s. He was preparing a military coup to overthrow the power of Daud. Strict conspiracy led to the fact that Daud, not considering Abdul Kadir a dangerous rival, returned him in 1977 to the post of chief of staff of the Air Force and Air Defense.
Saurian Revolution
In April 1978, he became one of the leaders of the coup (later called the Saur - April - revolution), as a result of which the Daud regime was overthrown - in conditions when the main leaders of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) were preventively arrested. On April 27, 1978, he personally attracted the military pilots of the Bagram air base to his side and, according to some reports, he himself piloted a plane that launched a decisive rocket-bomb strike at Daud’s residence. On April 27-29, 1978 he was the de facto leader of the Revolutionary Council of the Armed Forces, on behalf of whom he announced on Afghan radio a message about the overthrow of the regime. He handed over power to the Revolutionary Council of Afghanistan, controlled by the PDPA. He became a member of this authority.
Activities during the PDPA board
May 1, 1978 was appointed Minister of National Defense and promoted to major general. However, he was not included in the Central Committee of the PDPA, and only 15 (out of several hundred) members of the self-dissolving OFKA were admitted to the party. He quickly came into conflict with the leaders of the Hulk faction in the PDPA, especially with Hafizullah Amin ; became close with another faction - "Brocade". He participated in the development of plans for the organization of a new coup, which was supposed to remove the "Halkists" from power.
On August 19, 1978, he was arrested on charges of plotting. Sentenced to death, which, at the insistence of the USSR Embassy, was replaced by 15 years in prison. On December 27, 1979, after the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, he was released. In January 1980, he was appointed head of the defense and justice department of the Central Committee of the PDPA, and was included in the presidium of the Revolutionary Council. In April 1980 he was promoted to lieutenant general.
On January 4, 1982, he was appointed Acting Minister of Defense - after the Minister, the representative of the Parcham faction, Mohammed Rafi, was sent to study in Moscow. On May 23, 1982 he was approved by the Minister of Defense with the release from membership in the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council .. He enjoyed the support of the leadership of the USSR Ministry of Defense, which considered him a more energetic military leader than Rafi. To strengthen the position of Abdul Kadir in the party, he was elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the PDPA (December 12, 1982), and on April 14, 1983 he was promoted to Colonel General. At the same time, representatives of the KGB of the USSR, who relied on the Parcham faction, were distrustful of him. The head of Soviet intelligence Leonid Shebarshin later recalled:
It soon becomes clear that Kadir’s personal chauffeur collaborates with Ahmad Shah Masoud , and much later he will have to think about the role of the minister himself. Already retired, strictly confidentially, he confessed to his friend that he had always been a follower of the head of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani .
- L. V. Shebarshin “Hand of Moscow: notes of the head of Soviet intelligence” [2]
Abdul Kadir’s position was weakened by the fact that he did not belong to any of the PDPA factions (and, therefore, was “alien” to both), and, being a charaymak, he could not rely on the support of one of Afghanistan’s two largest national groups - the Pashtuns or Tajiks. By 1984, the military leadership of the USSR, disappointed by the lack of progress in the fight against the Mujahideen, decided to nominate a representative of the Halk faction to the post of Minister of Defense. On December 4, 1984, Abdul-Kadir was transferred to the post of first deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Council of Afghanistan, and on November 21, 1985, he was removed from leading posts.
Specialist in the history and politics of Afghanistan M.F. Slinkin gave the following description to Abdul-Kadir:
It seems that A. Kadir was sincere in sympathy for the Soviet Union . Everyone who knew him closely from work noted his high professionalism, integrity, an acute sense of patriotism, duty and officer honor, and at the same time his quick temper, excessive straightforwardness and rigidity in relations with subordinates and superiors.
- M. F. Slinkin “The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan in power. The time of Taraki-Amin (1978-1979) " [3]
Emigrant Diplomat
In September 1986, he was appointed Ambassador of Afghanistan to Poland , but soon resigned due to disagreements with the policies of the new President Najibullah . He lived in Bulgaria . There is information that in the 1990s he was an informal military adviser to the General Staff at Ahmad Shah Masoud .
Moved to Russia. In 2004, the then Ambassador of Afghanistan to Russia, Ahmad Zia Masoud, stated that
About 40-50 thousand Afghans live in Russia now, about half of them are in Moscow. We have the warmest and most friendly relations with them. Despite the fact that many of them in the past were in leading posts of the PDPA regime. For example, the former Minister of the Interior, Mr. Gulyabzoy, or the ex-Minister of Defense, Mr. Kadir, we have very good relations with them. All of them are free to travel to Afghanistan.
- Interview by Ahmad Zia Masoud to the “Moscow Komsomolets” [4]
Notes
- ↑ Afghanistan. Ru | In Kabul, the participant of the Saur revolution, General Abdul Kadir Khan, died
- ↑ L.V. Shebarshin . Afghanistan // Hand of Moscow: notes by the head of Soviet intelligence. - M .: Center-100, 1992 .-- 352 p. - 50,000 copies. - ISBN 5-86082-011-9 .
- ↑ M.F. Slinkin . Appendix 1. Personnel // People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in power. The time of Taraki-Amin (1978-1979) . - Simferopol: Simferopol State University , 1999. - S. 228. - ISBN 966-7404-16-1 . Archived on September 30, 2007. Archived September 30, 2007 on the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Andrei Yashlavsky. Brother Leo // Moscow Komsomolets . - No. 897 .
Links
- Biography on the CenterAsia website.