It so happened that a delegation of senior Soviet military doctors led by Colonel Alekseev was in Kabul at the time. Colonel Alekseev and Colonel Kuznechkov, a doctor from the embassy’s polyclinic, had been invited to the palace among other things to attend to Amin’s daughter, who had just had a baby.27 They arrived at about two o’clock in the afternoon, accompanied by a woman doctor and a nurse from Kabul. They were subjected to an unusually rigorous search when they arrived, and understood why when they saw people sitting and lying in the vestibule, on the stairs, and in the rooms. Those who had recovered consciousness were doubled up in pain. They had evidently been poisoned, allegedly by a long-standing KGB agent, Mikhail Talybov, who had been infiltrated into Amin’s entourage as a cook. Kryuchkov subsequently maintained that the substance administered was no more than a powerful sleeping draught. If so, they seem to have got the dose wrong.28
The Soviet doctors were summoned to Amin. He was dressed only in his underpants, with his jaw hanging and his eyes rolling. He was in a deep coma and his pulse was very weak. He looked as if he were dying. The doctors immediately set to work to save him and by six o’clock they had succeeded. When he opened his eyes, he asked, ‘What happened? Was it an accident, or was it sabotage?’
Alexander Shkirando, who had been working as a Soviet military interpreter in Afghanistan since September 1978, was also at the palace that day. He too ate whatever it was that had been used to poison Amin and his colleagues. He was taken severely ill, spent six weeks in an Afghan military hospital, and was then evacuated to hospital in Moscow. He did not go back to the military, but returned on many occasions to Afghanistan as a journalist.29
The doctors realised that something very odd was going on, so they sent the nurse and the woman doctor back to Kabul, out of harm’s way. They did not know, of course, that they had frustrated a plan to simplify the whole Soviet military operation by putting Amin out of action before it began.
Jandad was greatly disturbed by the incident. He posted additional guards inside and outside the palace and put the Afghan tank brigade on alert.
The time for the assault was altered several times during the day. But at about 6 p.m. Magometov ordered Kolesnik to begin the operation as soon as possible, without waiting for the explosion that was to destroy the communications centre. Twenty minutes later an assault group under Captain Satarov quietly moved out to neutralise the three entrenched Afghan tanks commanding the approaches to the palace. The men covered the last part of the approach on foot through snow up to their waists. The Afghan sentries were rapidly killed by snipers. The tank crews were in their barracks, too far away to get to their vehicles, and the tanks were soon secured.
Now two red rockets were fired to signal the beginning of the assault. It was by then about 7.15 p.m. The palace was fully illuminated inside and out, and the Afghans were sweeping the surroundings with their searchlights. The Soviet Shilka anti-aircraft guns opened fire. The palace walls were so solid that most of the shells simply bounced off, scattering splinters of granite but causing little serious damage.
The 1st company of the Muslim Battalion then moved forward in their armoured fighting vehicles. The KGB special forces groups under the command of Boyarinov travelled with them. They had orders to take no prisoners, and not to stop to aid wounded comrades: their task was to secure the building whatever the odds.
Almost as soon as they started, one of the BMPs (infantry fighting vehicles) from the Muslim Battalion stopped. The driver had lost his nerve, jumped out of the vehicle, and fled. He returned almost immediately: things were even more frightening outside the vehicle.30 The vehicles crashed through the first barrier, crushing the Afghan sentry. They continued under heavy fire, and for the first time the crews heard the unfamiliar, almost unreal, sound of bullets rattling against the armour of their vehicles. They fired back with everything they had and soon the gun smoke inside the vehicles made it almost impossible for the crews to breathe. The safety glass in the vehicles was shot out. A vehicle was hit and caught fire; some of the crew were wounded when they bailed out. One man slipped as he jumped and his legs were crushed under the vehicle. Another vehicle fell off the bridge which the Russians had constructed across the irrigation ditch and the crew were trapped inside. Their commander called for help by radio, and in doing so managed to block the radio link, paralysing the communications of the whole battalion.
The assault force drove as near as they could to the palace walls, disembarked, and threw themselves at the doors and windows of the ground floor. Confusion was increasing by the minute. Unified command had broken down and the soldiers were having to act in small groups on their own initiative. They were pinned down by fire from the defenders of the palace which the artillery had failed to neutralise. There was a moment of panic, and they froze for perhaps five minutes. Then a Shilka destroyed the machine gun which had been firing down from one of the palace windows, and the men picked themselves up and moved forward with their assault ladders.
They burst into the palace in ones and twos. Boyarinov was among them. The entrance hall was brightly lit, and the defenders were shooting and lobbing grenades from the first-floor gallery. The Russians shot out all the light bulbs they could, but some remained burning. They fought their way up the staircase and began to clear the rooms on the first floor with automatic fire and grenades. They heard the crying of women and children. One woman was calling out for Amin. A grenade cut the power supply and the remaining lights went out. Many Russians had already been wounded, including Boyarinov.
The Russians’ distinctive white armbands were by now barely visible under a layer of grime and soot. To make matters worse, Amin’s personal guards were also wearing white armbands. But in the excitement, the Russians were swearing horribly, using the choicest works in the Russian lexicon; and it was this that enabled them to identify one another in the darkness. It also meant that the defenders, many of whom had trained in the Soviet airborne school in Ryazan, now realised for the first time that they were fighting Soviet troops, not Afghan mutineers as they had thought. They began to surrender, and despite the order not to take prisoners, most of them were spared.
‘Suddenly the shooting stopped,’ one
During the fighting, Colonel Alekseev and Colonel Kuznechkov, the two Soviet doctors, had hidden as best they could in the ballroom. There they caught sight of Amin, walking painfully along the corridor in white shorts and a T-shirt, illuminated by the fires that had broken out, covered with tubes and holding up his arms to which the bottles of medical solution were still attached, ‘looking like grenades’. Alekseev left his shelter and removed the tubes and the bottles, pressing the veins with his fingers to stem the blood. He then took Amin to the bar. A child emerged from one of the side doors, crying and rubbing his eyes with his fists. It was Amin’s five-year-old son. Amin and the small boy both sat down by the wall.
Amin still not realise what was happening. He told his adjutant to telephone the Soviet military advisers: ‘The Soviets will help.’ The adjutant said that it was the Soviets who were doing the firing. Amin threw an ashtray at him in a fury and accused him of lying. But after he himself had tried and failed to get through to the Chief of the Afghan General Staff he quietly muttered, ‘I guessed it. It’s all true.’32
There are various accounts of how he died. Possibly he was killed deliberately, possibly he was caught by a random burst of fire. One story is that he was killed by Gulabzoi, who had been given that specific task.33 When the gun smoke cleared, his body was lying by the bar. His small son had been fatally wounded in the chest.34 His daughter was wounded in the leg. Watanjar and Gulabzoi certified that he was dead. The men from
The battle had lasted forty-three minutes from start to finish, apart from some brutal skirmishes with elements of the Presidential Guard stationed nearby, who were rapidly dealt with. Five members of the Muslim Battalion and the 9th Company of paratroopers were killed and some thirty-five suffered serious wounds.35 The KGB special forces groups also lost five dead. Among them was Colonel Boyarinov, who was killed by friendly fire right at the end of the battle. He seems to have been cut down by Soviet soldiers who had orders to shoot anyone who emerged from the palace before it was properly secured.36
Colonel Kuznechkov, the military doctor who had helped to cure Amin of his poisoning, was also dead, killed
