The assassination of the ambassador of any state is a disgusting event in all respects. Unfortunately, they still occur in our time: they are still alive in the memory of the tragedy of American Christopher Stevenson in 2012 and Russian Andrei Karlov in 2016. However, it is the United States that holds the sad leadership among all the states of the world in terms of the number of killed ambassadors who were in office at the time of the assassination.
The Afghan political group Setam-e Melli (National Oppression) was founded in 1968 by the ethnic Tajik Tahir Badakhshi, who was previously a member of the Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, but disagreed with the leadership of this party. Setam-e Melli emerged as a political platform for Turkmen, Tajiks and Uzbeks in their opposition to Pashtun domination. In 1978, Badakhshi was arrested by the secret service of Mohammed Daoud (Pashtun). Badakhshi was held in solitary confinement and severely tortured. Released during the April 1978 revolution, he was soon arrested again on charges of anti-state conspiracy and on December 6, 1979, was shot by order of the then prime minister, Hafizullah Amin (Pashtun).
The Setam-e Melli group became widely known in connection with the death of the American Ambassador Dubs. On June 27, 1978, 57-year-old Adolph Dubs was appointed US Ambassador to Afghanistan. It is interesting to note that Dubs is the son of former Volga Germans: his father Alexander Dubs (surname in German pronunciation) came from the Samara province. Together with his fiancee Regina Simon, who was also from the Samara province, he emigrated to the United States in 1913, where they got married, and their children were born there. Adolf was the third of four children.
On February 14, 1979, at about 9 a.m. Dubs was on his way from his residence to the US Embassy. Four men stopped his car. Some reports said that the men were wearing Afghan police uniforms, while others claimed that only one in four was wearing police uniforms. The men gestured to the ambassador's driver to open the bulletproof windows, and he complied. Then the militants, threatening the driver with a pistol, forced him to go with them to the Kabul hotel in the city center. Dubs was locked in room 117, on the first floor of the hotel, and the driver was sent to the US Embassy to report the kidnapping.
According to the recollections of an employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Army, Colonel Zakirzhon Kadyrov (on his father's a Tajik), who witnessed those events, at the hotel the kidnappers demanded that the Afghan government release religious or political prisoners, including the leader of the radical wing of the group, who is in prison. Setam-e Melli”by Abharuddin Baes (Tajik; in 1975 he raised an armed uprising in the north of the country, was defeated, captured and imprisoned), and also that they were given the opportunity to make political statements to foreign media. No demands were made on the American government.
US officials recommended waiting and not taking any action so as not to endanger Dubs's life, but the Afghan police ignored these recommendations and went to the assault. Dubs was found killed by gunshots to the head. Two of the kidnappers were also killed in the shootout. The other two were captured alive but were shot shortly thereafter. Their bodies were shown to US officials. The government of Mohammed Taraki (Pashtun) denied the American side a request for assistance in the investigation into the death of its ambassador.
The United States, led by Jimmy Carter, was outraged by the assassination of the ambassador and the behavior of the Afghan government. The incident accelerated the collapse of US-Afghan relations, forcing the US to rethink its policy in that country. So, after the murder of Dubs, the United States reduced humanitarian aid to Afghanistan by half and completely stopped military-technical cooperation with the Afghan government. The State Department announced the withdrawal of most American diplomats from Afghanistan, and by the end of 1979, the United States had only about 20 employees in Kabul. The new US ambassador to Afghanistan, Robert Finn, was not appointed until 2002.
The Afghan government, for its part, began to limit the US presence in Afghanistan and therefore reduced the number of volunteers of the US federal agency Peace Corps.
Responsibility for the abduction and murder of Dubs is attributed to the Setam-e Melli group, including according to the named demands of the kidnappers, but many experts consider this version dubious.
