Christina Ukolova
Afghanistan cannot be called a space power. All the more surprising is the fate of Abdul Ahad Momand, worthy of a solid Hollywood biopic. Details are in the Rambler article.
Abdul Ahad Momand was born on January 1, 1959 in the Sarda village of Ghazni province. He graduated from the Kabul Polytechnic Institute and was drafted into the army in 1978. So he ended up in the Soviet Union, studied at the Krasnodar and Kiev military aviation schools. Already in the status of a professional pilot, he returned to his home country and continued to serve in the Afghan Air Force, where he quickly rose through the ranks from a simple pilot to a chief navigator. In this sense, his fate was different from the fate of thousands of compatriots in a country that always maneuvered between the Middle Ages and eternity. But his main flight was ahead.
In 1984, Mohmand returned to the USSR, which at that time had already introduced a “limited contingent of Soviet troops” to the territory of his native country, which at one time was too tough for the British Empire. And Abdul Ahad Momand entered the Air Force Academy. A. Gagarin, which he graduated three years later. Then he took part in the selection of candidates for the first joint Soviet-Afghan space flight within the framework of the Intercosmos project.
The war was still going on, but it was clear that the withdrawal of troops was not far off. The joint flight was supposed to be a demonstration of what Afghanistan received from friendship with the Soviet Union, a manifestation of the USSR’s goodwill. The flight was prepared in a hurry in order to be in time before the Soviet soldiers left the inhospitable Asian country.
Abdul Ahad Momand became one of the eight main contenders, then the understudy of the main candidate. His main rival was Muhammad Dauran, whose track record was no less than that of Mohmand. In addition, he was higher in rank – a colonel, and not a captain like Abdul Ahad. But suddenly they changed places. Daurana seemed to have let down an attack of appendicitis. However, there was another version, a political one. Or rather, the national question, which to this day is tearing Afghanistan apart. Dauran was a Tajik, and Momand was a Pashtun, a representative of the titular nation.
Thus, 29-year-old Abdul Ahad Momand became a member of the crew of the Soyuz TM-6 spacecraft, the fourth Muslim in orbit and the first cosmonaut in Afghanistan. To the Mir station he took with him the flag of the country and two books of the Koran. During the flight, he took many photographs of his home country. Later, on their basis, the first Afghan cartographic atlas will be released. Mohmand participated in astrophysical, medical and biological experiments, treated the team to Afghan tea and spoke with President Mohammed Najibullah.
He then said that from a height, Afghanistan looks like a peaceful country and urged his compatriots to stop killing each other. It is a pity that his appeal was not heard. In response, the president organized a video call for the cosmonaut with his mother, who was summoned to the president’s office of the head of state for this.
And on the way back, an extraordinary situation occurred. He returned to earth with Vladimir Lyakhov on the Soyuz TM-5 spacecraft. After undocking with the station, there were problems with orientation sensors. The astronauts stayed for a day in a cramped capsule without a household compartment where food, water and a toilet were stored. But Momand managed to prevent the premature automatic separation of the ship’s aggregate compartment, without which landing would have been impossible at all. The second landing attempt was successful, the device landed in the Dzhezkazgan area. On September 7, 1988, Momand was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The withdrawal of Soviet troops did not improve the situation in Afghanistan itself. Najibullah’s government had no chance in the fight against the mujahideen, who quickly divided the country into ethnic zones of Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks. In 1996, the Mujahideen took Kabul and seized the UN mission building . The former president and his brother were tortured and then killed.
Abdul Ahad Momand was in India at that time, investigating a case of corruption among the personnel of the Afghan airline “Ariana Afghan Airlines”. Upon learning of the coup, he realized that he could not return. But his understudy Muhammad Dauran joined Ahmad Shah Massoud, a field commander who led the Tajiks, and then fought in the ranks of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).
Momand decided to move to Russia, but the Hero of the Soviet Union was denied a visa – other times have come in Russia. He tried to restore his diploma from the Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, which he also managed to graduate from, but was refused by the embassy.
Then he emigrated to Germany as the most ordinary refugee in the crowd of semi-literate compatriots. There, the first Afghan cosmonaut got a job in a printing house, asked for asylum, and in 2003 became a German citizen. Then he retrained as an accountant, got married, he has three children – two daughters and a son. He speaks German as well as Russian. It was only in 2014 that he, together with BBC journalists, went home, but, of course, did not stay.
