Panjshir Valley’s Lion Ahmad Masood: Like his father, ready to fight with Taliban …?

Panjshir Valley’s Lion Ahmad Masood: Like his father, ready to fight with Taliban …?

Asghar Ali Mubarak  

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Valley of Resistance in Afghanistan is called the Valley of the Lions. Ahmad Massoud, a son of former Afghan resistance commander in the Valley of Resistance, seems ready to fight for resistance if he does not get a proper share of power with the Afghan Taliban. In the past, Ahmad Massoud’s father also fought alongside Afghan fighters against the Soviet Union for decades. Ahmed Masood “Lion of Panjshir” father Ahmad Shah Masood, was killed in an attack by al-Qaeda suicide bombers two days before 9/11. The three assailants approached him as journalists with bombs in their cameras. According to media reports the Taliban had given Ahmad Massoud four hours to hand over the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, where he was accompanied by Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh. After the Taliban’s recapture of Kabul, Ahmad Masood demanded that a representative government be formed in the country through partnership. He warned that war would be inevitable if the Taliban refused to negotiate. Ahmad Massoud Northern Alliance commander has vowed to resist, saying the Panjshir Valley will not be handed over to the Taliban. Ahmed Masood told the Washington Post in an article that “I am writing from Panjshir Valley and I am ready to follow in my father’s footsteps.” 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 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. His father Ahmad Shah Masood lion of Panjshir was a political and military leader of Afghanistan. The Panjshir Valley is the only province in Afghanistan’s 34 provinces where Taliban control has not yet been established. About three hours from Kabul, Panjshir is known for its resistance to the Taliban. The province was not under their control during the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001. Panjshir “Five Lions”, is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country containing the Panjshir Valley. The province is divided into seven districts and contains 512 villages. As of 2021, the population of Panjshir province was about 173,000. Bazarak serves as the provincial capital. It is currently controlled by the Second Resistance, and with Baghlan is one of two provinces reportedly not controlled by the Taliban following the 2021 Taliban offensive. The territory was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century. The Parwan region, including the later Panjshir, was conquered by Ahmad Shah Durrani, and officially accepted as a part of the Durrani Empire, by Murad Beg of Bukhara, after a treaty of friendship was signed in or about 1750. The rule of the Durranis was followed by that of the Barakzai dynasty. During the 19th century, the region was unaffected by British incursions, such as the Anglo-Afghan wars. In 1973, Mohammed Daoud Khan took over power in Afghanistan and began making claims over large swathes of Pashtun-dominant territory in Pakistan, causing great anxiety to the government of Pakistan. By 1975, the young Ahmad Shah Massoud and his followers initiated an uprising in Panjshir but were forced to flee to Peshawar in Pakistan where they received support from Pakistan. Panjshir was attacked multiple times during the Soviet-Afghan War, against Ahmad Shah Massoud and his forces. The Panjshir region was in rebel control from August 17, 1979 after a regional uprising. Aided by its mountainous terrain, the region was well defended by mujahedeen commanders during the 1980s Soviet–Afghan War against the PDPA government and the Soviet Union.Panjshir became an independent province from neighboring Parwan Province in 2004. It is bordered by Baghlan and Takhar in the north, Badakhshan and Nuristan in the east, Laghman and Kapisa in the south, and Parwan in the west. There, the Northern Alliance fought the Taliban. Ahmad Shah Massoud has the status of a hero in Afghanistan. Former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh considers him his hero and leader. He had said in a recent Twitter message that he would not betray the legacy of Ahmad Shah Massoud. “We fought the Soviet Union and we will fight the Taliban,” said Former Afghan Vice President. Amrullah Saleh says that in the absence of the President of the country, he is legally the caretaker President of the country. At a time when US forces are finally withdrawn from Afghanistan, Ahmed Masood, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance’s resistance commander, is the center of hope for many in Afghani peoples Although it succeeded in driving the Taliban from power and stopped Afghanistan being used as a base by al Qaeda to attack the United States, it ended with the hardline Islamist militants controlling more territory than during their previous rule. Those years from 1996 to 2001 saw the Taliban’s brutal enforcement of their strict interpretation of Islamic law, and the world watches now to see if the movement forms a more moderate and inclusive government in the months ahead. Thousands of Afghans have already fled, fearing Taliban reprisals. More than 123,000 people were evacuated from Kabul in a massive but chaotic airlift by the United States and its allies over the past two weeks, but tens of thousands who helped Western nations during the war were left behind. General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S.A Central Command told a Pentagon media briefing that the chief U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, was on the last C-17 flight out. There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,” McKenzie told reporters. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out. “The leaving U.S. troops destroyed more than 70 aircraft, dozens of armored vehicles and disabled air defenses that had thwarted an attempted Islamic State rocket attack on the eve of their departure.

The Word ”Afghan’ ‘in Iranian Persian mean a noisy nation. This was told by Dr. Ali Raza Nqavi, the first ever PhD Persian scholar from Iran of Subcontinent, in his lecture-delver in December 1989 Iranian cultural consulate Rawalpindi. The people of the Northern Alliance Valley Panjshir in Afghanistan speak mostly Persian, and a study of them revealed that they are considered the best Guerrilla fighters in the world. The Taliban forces are closing in on the one part of Afghanistan they don’t control: the Panjshir Valley, near the imposing Hindu Kush mountain range north of Kabul. The Islamist group is pressing opposition leaders there to join a new government, threatening a military assault if they don’t. The head of the Taliban’s political office, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been return to Afghanistan from Qatar after exile. Politicians in Panjshir—who say they are backed by a militia of several thousand men, bolstered by the remnants of the Afghan army, and with military hardware such as helicopters—say they have rebuffed Taliban overtures, which they say fall short of the promises of autonomy they want. On Sunday, Taliban and rebel forces skirmished just outside the valley, a resistance leader said. Families of valley residents said the Taliban also cut telephone and internet connections to the valley. Since entering Kabul, the Taliban, who proclaimed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan when they first seized the country in 1996, have so far refrained from the kind of radical actions that brought world-wide condemnation in the past.