When the CIA determined to take again hundreds of stinger missiles from Afghanistan within the 1980s, fearing they might fall into the arms of Iran, they knew of just one highly effective warlord they might belief to assist.
US brokers held secret talks with the fabled hero of Afghanistan’s resistance towards the Soviets and the Taliban – Ahmad Shah Massoud, the guerrilla commander who famously warned the West about the specter of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden months earlier than 9/11.
Massoud was killed two days earlier than the assault on the World Commerce Heart, when two of Bin Laden’s suicide bombers walked into his dwelling within the Mujahideen fiefdom of Panjshir masquerading as journalists and blew themselves up. His then 12-year-old son Ahmad Massoud turned the undisputed inheritor of Afghanistan’s home resistance towards ultra-fundamentalist terrorism.
Massoud (centre) arrives to deal with a gathering on the tomb of his late father in Panjshir province in July 2021, earlier than Kabul fell to the Taliban
(AFP by way of Getty)
“He didn’t select to be the saviour of Afghanistan, he was born into it. It got here to him,” says one in every of his shut aides, as two armed younger males guard the now 34-year-old Massoud’s quarters in a 3rd nation that The Unbiased has agreed to not reveal.
Given the circumstances of his father’s loss of life, it’s not shocking that this uncommon interview with the youthful Massoud is performed with a excessive diploma of secrecy and thorough safety checks.
Twenty-two years later, the Taliban is again answerable for Afghanistan. The militant group seized Kabul on 15 August 2021 after the withdrawal of the western-allied forces that had invaded the nation after 9/11, and though the Panjshir Valley held out for a number of extra weeks as one of many fiercest pockets of resistance, Massoud lastly fled into exile in September.
Sitting together with his trademark woollen pakol (cap) resting in his lap, the chief of the Nationwide Resistance Entrance (NRF) is the spitting picture of his late father. He has adopted the clean-shaven, neatly dressed look of a diplomat slightly than that of a army chief, however he stays intimately conscious of and concerned within the grisly guerilla operations nonetheless being carried out by his forces within the mountain passes and gorges of northern Afghanistan.
A 12-year-old Ahmad Massoud, the son of useless commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, being comforted by the then Afghan president at a funeral ceremony after his father’s loss of life in an al-Qaeda assault
(AFP by way of Getty)
It has now been greater than a yr for the reason that NRF held territory in Afghanistan, however Massoud says his fighters are bringing the struggle to the Taliban in 20 of the nation’s 34 provinces, notably within the northern and western areas.
An aide says the NRF has killed a whole lot of Taliban militants since August 2021, and that the battle of resistance continues to be waged regardless of the curiosity of the worldwide neighborhood having shifted to conflicts elsewhere, such because the wars going down in Ukraine and Gaza.
“We’re arranging 15 to 20 army operations monthly in areas occupied by Taliban, and in every of those, we’re in a position to kill three to eight of their terrorists,” the aide says.
Massoud gained’t go into element about precisely the place and when his forces will strike, for operational causes. “I’ll positively not let you know what my forces are doing as we communicate, or what the world goes to see within the coming days. However let’s simply say the NRF is defending our Afghan folks, giving them a combating likelihood and a hope to defend themselves,” he says.
Ahmad Massoud (left) is among the many final remaining leaders of resistance actions towards the Taliban in Afghanistan. His aides say he inherited the struggle for a democratic Afghanistan from his father Ahmad Shah Massoud (proper)
(Sourced/The Unbiased)
“What we now have, as type of a army marketing campaign, is a defensive objective towards the tyranny, the barbarism and the fear of the Taliban. Behind the disastrous state of affairs in Afghanistan, solely the Taliban might be discovered responsible. Subsequently the Taliban leaves us with no selection however to defend ourselves [with whatever means are at our disposal],” he explains.
Specialists are sceptical of Massoud’s skill to loosen the Taliban’s grip on energy on his personal, however, with no reasonable prospect of allied worldwide forces coming again with boots on the bottom, the NRF is seen as one of the best wager to oppose the Islamist regime. Earlier this month, Massoud gathered quite a few allied teams for a convention in Vienna aimed toward forming a united anti-Taliban bloc.
The following step can be to assemble worldwide backing, however Massoud says he now not expects this to return within the type of army or monetary help. He and different anti-Taliban leaders stay jaded over the West’s resolution to withdraw in 2021, which they see as a betrayal. For now, it might be sufficient for main world powers to specific help for the resistance and refuse to grant the Taliban regime the worldwide recognition it craves.
Massoud (under) takes his father’s position as he speaks throughout a gathering with the European Conservatives and Reformists group on the sidelines of a plenary session on the European parliament in Strasbourg, jap France
(Sourced/The Unbiased)
“We don’t need army help or cash from the west,” he says. “However within the curiosity of democracy, they need to assist Afghanistan type a reliable authorities. The world mustn’t compromise [with the Taliban]. Everybody who’s watching Afghanistan proper now ought to stand sturdy with us.”
Massoud expresses anguish over the state of affairs confronted by members of his and different Afghan forces who stood by the US and Nato as troopers, pilots and logistical help and have been pressured to both flee their nation or face persecution and loss of life by the hands of the Taliban’s de facto authorities.
He’s cautious to not place an excessive amount of blame on the western withdrawal, however says the concept that the US brokered an “amnesty” with the Taliban in respect of the native fighters and the ousted authorities officers it left behind was nothing however a barefaced lie.
“The focused killing of NRF fighters by the Taliban nonetheless continues. 1000’s of individuals have been killed within the Taliban’s bloodshed. In fact, we now have killed many, many extra of their forces, and nonetheless face hundreds of them inside Afghanistan.”
Taliban fighters stand close to the tomb of late Afghan Mujahideen chief Ahmad Shah Massoud in Saricha in Panjshir province
(AFP by way of Getty)
To this point, no nation has formally recognised the Taliban because the reliable rulers of Afghanistan – a place that’s in keeping with that of the UN. However solidarity in condemning the forceful overthrow of Kabul’s democratically elected authorities is beginning to give option to pragmatism, as regional powers, together with China and India, start to reopen strains of communication with this strategically vital nation.
Professional-democratic leaders like Massoud battle to grasp how the world, and the west specifically, can keep so quiet concerning the Taliban’s management of Afghanistan after 20 years of actively combating them on the bottom; he says this means that the world is now “OK with what is going on in Afghanistan”.
“Sure, Afghanistan is now not a precedence for the west,” he concedes. “I [too] hope peace comes for the Ukrainians, for the folks within the Center East. [But] I hope for peace to return to Afghanistan, too.
“I wish to ask if the Biden administration is OK with a army group storming the federal government and taking energy from a democratic administration,” he says. “In the event that they weren’t OK with the Capitol riots, why are they OK with the Taliban?”
As for his personal future, Massoud says he’s saved up at evening as he struggles with the query of tips on how to end his father’s work, defeat the Taliban, and produce peace to Afghanistan. “I want I didn’t love the folks of Afghanistan, as a result of then I may depart this battle and be away from this. However I like them past hope,” he says.
A destroyed poster depicts the late Afghan Mujahideen chief Ahmad Shah Massoud alongside a message about resistance, on a roadside close to Dashtak in Panjshir province
(AFP by way of Getty)
If he manages to defeat the Taliban, Massoud, who was educated in each Iran and Britain, says he has no want to guide a civilian authorities. He suggests it might be higher for a lady to guide the nation, given how girls are at the moment struggling beneath the Taliban’s misogynistic regime.
“Hopefully, I cannot be in energy. The folks will resolve on a way more competent determine to be in cost – a lady, ideally – and depart me to a peaceable life.”
He additionally reveals that he’s a brand new father to a six-month-old child, and that the primary within the new era of the Massoud dynasty is a lady. He hopes that her expertise of childhood is just not like his personal, wherein, because the inheritor to a warlord, he shadowed his father as he gave interviews from army helicopters.
“I wish to be a instructor in a college. To be a professor – that’s my private name or ambition,” he says, including: “I wish to spend some extra time with my daughter.”