The mujahideen resistance to the Taliban

Global Opinions

Opinion: The mujahideen resistance to the Taliban begins now. But we need help.

19 hours ago

The Washington Post

In December 2001, anti-Taliban Afghan fighters watch explosions from U.S. bombings in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan. (Erik De Castro/Reuters)

 

Opinion by Ahmad Massoud

19 August 2021 at 11:26 a.m. EDT

Ahmad Massoud is the leader of the National Resistance

Front of Afghanistan.

 

In 1998, when I was 9 years old, my father, the mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, gathered his soldiers in a cave in the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan. They sat and listened as my father’s friend, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, addressed them. “When you fight for your freedom,” Lévy said, “you fight also for our freedom.”

 

My father never forgot this as he fought against the Taliban regime. Up until the moment he was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, at the behest of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he was fighting for the fate of Afghanistan but also for the West.

 

Now this common struggle is more essential than ever in these dark, tense hours for my homeland.

 

I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban. We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come.

 

 

We also have the weapons carried by the Afghans who, over the past 72 hours, have responded to my appeal to join the resistance in Panjshir. We have soldiers from the Afghan regular army who were disgusted by the surrender of their commanders and are now making their way to the hills of Panjshir with their equipment. Former members of the Afghan Special Forces have also joined our struggle.

 

But that is not enough. If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us. The flag of the National Resistance Front will fly over every position that they attempt to take, as the National United Front flag flew 20 years ago. Yet we know that our military forces and logistics will not be sufficient. They will be rapidly depleted unless our friends in the West can find a way to supply us without delay.

 

The United States and its allies have left the battlefield, but America can still be a “great arsenal of democracy,” as Franklin D. Roosevelt said when coming to the aid of the beleaguered British before the U.S. entry into World War II.

 

To that end, I entreat Afghanistan’s friends in the West to intercede for us in Washington and in New York, with Congress and with the Biden administration. Intercede for us in London, where I completed my studies, and in Paris, where my father’s memory was honored this spring by the naming of a pathway for him in the Champs-Élysées gardens.

 

Know that millions of Afghans share your values. We have fought for so long to have an open society, one where girls could become doctors, our press could report freely, our young people could dance and listen to music or attend soccer matches in the stadiums that were once used by the Taliban for public executions — and may soon be again.

 

The Taliban is not a problem for the Afghan people alone. Under Taliban control, Afghanistan will without doubt become ground zero of radical Islamist terrorism; plots against democracies will be hatched here once again.

 

No matter what happens, my mujahideen fighters and I will defend Panjshir as the last bastion of Afghan freedom. Our morale is intact. We know from experience what awaits us.

 

But we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies.

 

America and its democratic allies do not just have the fight against terrorism in common with Afghans. We now have a long history made up of shared ideals and struggles. There is still much that you can do to aid the cause of freedom. You are our only remaining hope.

 

WED, AUG 11, 2021

Ahmad Massoud: Look to local leaders to save Afghanistan

New Atlanticist by Kamal Alam

Ahmad Massoud, son of the slain hero of the anti-Soviet resistance Ahmad Shah Massoud, waves as he arrives to attend a new political movement in Bazarak, Panjshir province in Afghanistan on September 5, 2019. Photo via REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail.

 

Just weeks before US troops fully withdraw from Afghanistan—and as Taliban fighters conquer more territory across the country—Ahmad Massoud says he is open to negotiations with the militants.

 

“I am willing and ready to forgive the blood of my father for the sake of peace in Afghanistan and security and stability in Afghanistan,” said Massoud, son of the anti-Soviet resistance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, in an interview with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Massoud’s father was assassinated by al-Qaeda days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

 

But he and other Afghans are not willing to “give in to the will of terrorism,” added Massoud, who is based in the government-controlled Panjshir province in northeastern Afghanistan. “We are ready to create an inclusive government with the Taliban” through political negotiations, he explained, but what’s unacceptable is an Afghan government marked by “extremism and fundamentalism” that would pose a grave threat not just to Afghanistan but to the region and the wider world.

 

Yet the Taliban’s sweeping military offensive in recent weeks suggests that the group is in no mood for talks. Its forces have seized provincial capitals, stoking fears among Western leaders and locals alike that the Taliban’s brutal reign could soon return. On Tuesday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and fellow political leaders reportedly agreed to arm civilian forces to resist the Taliban’s advances.

 

Massoud reflected on what brought Afghanistan to this perilous point and outlined the way forward for a peace process he believes has failed. The 32-year-old is among the prominent voices pushing for the resurrection of a coalition of anti-Taliban ethnic militias akin to the Northern Alliance of the late 1990s.

 

Here are some key takeaways from our interview:

 

The case for decentralization

• As a result of the corruption and misrule stemming from the country’s heavily centralized system of governance and security, Massoud argued, the Afghan government has failed to win the population’s backing. As the Taliban goes on the offensive, he said, “people do not trust that the system will be able to save them.” A diverse, multiethnic society like Afghanistan’s needs a decentralized political system and armed forces, he contended.

• Effectively fighting extremism requires empowering local anti-Taliban militias, Massoud argued, noting that the Afghan army, which he characterized as “one of the biggest achievements of the past two decades,” is at risk of being exhausted in its struggle with the Taliban. In fact, he added, reform-minded local military and political leaders resisting the militant group are “actually the backbone of the government right now.”

How to get the Taliban to negotiate

• Massoud believes the only way the Taliban can play a role in Afghanistan’s future is if its members cease fighting—a message he says regional powers must help deliver. “It is [the Taliban] who are spreading the fire, not us,” he stated.

• That, however, is a daunting task. Massoud explained that today’s Taliban fighters have become “even more radicalized than their fathers who fought in the 90s” thanks to their links with modern jihadist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. “The Taliban have not been reformed,” he asserted.

• While he said he respects the US decision to withdraw militarily from Afghanistan, Massoud blamed Afghanistan’s current plight in part on the timing and sequencing of the February 2020 agreement between the US government and the Taliban, which he argued should have come after the Afghan government and the Taliban had reached their own political settlements. As a result, and given the Taliban’s current “momentum,” he said, the talks in Doha between the Taliban and Afghan government are effectively “over” for now.

• The most effective way to pressure the Taliban to talk is through deterrence. Once the group’s leaders realize they can’t achieve their goals militarily in Afghanistan, they’ll likely be more open to political dialogue, Massoud maintained. The strongest incentive to dangle before the group, he added, is “regional and international recognition,” which he argued other countries should only grant to the Taliban if they come to power through peace talks or elections rather than war.

Watch the full interview

 

Ahmad Massoud and Kamal Alam speak on the current political and security situation in Afghanistan

 

2,820 views

Aug 10, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCgdaH7gHwE

Kamal Alam is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and a special adviser and representative of the Massoud Foundation, of which Ahmad Massoud is the president.