Ahmad Shah Massoud
By Frud Bezhan
September 9, 2016
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Resistance fighter and anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Masud was killed by Al-Qaeda assassins on September 9, 2001, ushering in a chain of events that would place Afghanistan at the center of the global war on terrorism.
Two days after his death, Al-Qaeda operatives would carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Within a month, the United States military was leading a bombing campaign and invasion of Afghanistan with the intention of overthrowing the Taliban and capturing Al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 orchestrator Osama Bin Laden.
In life and as in death, the military strategist who had made his name as a commander of anti-Taliban forces would have a significant impact on life in Afghanistan. Here are some stories behind the man whose battlefield exploits earned him the moniker “The Lion of Panjshir.”
Northern Alliance Founder
He was a key leader of the Northern Alliance, a combination of Afghanistan-based forces that aligned in 1996 to counter the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. After the U.S-led invasion in October, 2001, those forces would play a key role as a coalition partner until a new government could be formed.
Larger-Than-Life Figure
Numerous books, films, and articles have been written about Masud, and to this day he is revered as a national hero in Afghanistan. Posters of the 48-year-old — wearing his trademark woolen hat, the pakol — still dot the capital, Kabul, where monuments have been erected and streets named in his honor.
Camera Bomb
Masud was killed in Khwaja Bahauddin, a far-flung area in northeast Afghanistan near the Tajikistan border that served as his base of operations.
His assassins were identified as Abdessater Dahmane and Bouraoui el-Ouaer — two men of Tunisian descent who posed as journalists and traveled on Belgian passports. They killed Masud by setting off a camera bomb as they interviewed Masud in his office.
One of the attackers died immediately, while the second was shot dead after he attempted to escape. Masud was mortally wounded and died while he was being flown by helicopter to Tajikistan for treatment.
Assassins Spent Time In Molenbeek
The Al-Qaeda militants who killed him were believed to have transited through the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which has since become notorious for being home to several suspects linked to recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris.
In 2005, a court in Paris found four men guilty of offering logistical support to Masud’s killers. The four Islamic militants were sentenced to between two and seven years. Those convicted were captured by French authorities, who traced passports found on Masud’s killers to a Brussels-based militant cell run by Tarek Maaroufi, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2003.
Revered In Neighboring Tajikistan
Masud, an ethnic Tajik, is widely revered in neighboring Tajikistan. In a sign of his enduring popularity, Masud has become a popular name for boys.
Masud received arms and financial backing from the Tajik government during the Taliban’s rule from 1996-2001. Some of his wounded fighters were taken to hospitals in Tajikistan. Masud’s own stronghold in northeast Afghanistan bordered Tajik territory and he often visited Tajikistan.
After his death, Masud’s family briefly moved to Dushanbe, where the family still owns a home. His family eventually moved to Iran.
Warned Of Attack On U.S.
“If President Bush doesn’t help us, these terrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon.”
Masud gave this warning in an address at the European Parliament in Brussels in April, 2001. He also told EU leaders that he had gathered evidence about an imminent terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda on the U.S. homeland.
His words proved prophetic. Months later, Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four passenger planes with the intention of flying them into U.S. targets. Two brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Altogether, the attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people, and injured more than 6,000.
Cold Warrior
A 1992 editorial in the Wall Street Journal described Masud as the “Afghan who won the Cold War.”
Panjshir was a bastion of resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the last stronghold of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
Masud’s Jamiat-e-Islami political party and military wing was the most successful Mujahedin group fighting against the invading Red Army. From his base in the Panjshir Valley, Masud’s men led a successful guerrilla fight against the Soviet forces, which launched several failed operations to claim control of the valley.
Panjshir still bears the scars of Masud’s fight against the Soviet Union and the Taliban. Hundreds of destroyed Soviet tanks are littered throughout the valley, as are weapons left by the Taliban in their failed attempts to conquer the area. Vast tunnel networks are carved into the mountains that the Mujahedin used to escape Soviet and Taliban bombardments, and dozens of mine-clearing operations continue on the rocky hilltops surrounding the picturesque valley.
French Connection
Masud spoke some French, having studied at the French-language Lycee Esteqlal school in Kabul, and was admired in France. In 2001, European Parliament President Nicole Fontaine invited Masud to address the parliament.
Masud was also friends with French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, who visited Masud in the Panjshir Valley in the 1990s. Masud was known to have said that French President Charles De Gaulle was one of his political heroes.
French audiences got to know Masud after the release of a documentary — The Valley Against An Empire — by French journalist Christophe de Ponfilly in 1981, just two years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Reza Deghati, an Iranian-French photojournalist, traveled to Afghanistan and followed Masud from the 1980s until his death. His iconic photographs helped build the legend of Masud.
Again; I am asking you- why you don’t take my message. If you have any objection, please clarify it to me !
THESE ARE CRITICAL ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED AND DRBATED.
My Comments:
“FERUD” IS CLEARLY DEFINING AHMAD SHAH MASSOOD OVERALL COMPLEX ACHIEVEMENTS AND HIS PERSONALITY IN HIS DISTORTED SIMPLE VIEWS UNDER THE CONFUSED SITUATIONS OF INVASIONS- HE IS JUST STRIVING EXTREMELY HARD TO EXONERATE THE ORIGINAL PERPETRATORS; THE SCHEMERS OF CIVAL WAR, RIGHT AFTER THE SOVIET DEPARTURE.
THE FOREIGN “THUGS AND THUG-MARS”
DERAILED THE WHOLE PROCESS Of REBUILDING MISSIONS FOR THE COUNTRY THAT HE AND OTHER HONORABLE ISLAMIC LEADERS OF AFGHANISTAN WERE ENVISIONING.
“CRAZY” FERUD BEZHAN IS DISTORTING AND UNDERMINING THE TRUE PERSONALITY AND AIMS OF THIS ONE OF THE MAJOR FIGURE AGAINST THE SOVIET OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN.
AHMAD SHAH MASSOOD WAS ALSO LATER FORCED INTO ENGAGING IN A FIERCELY-FOUGHT AND CONTESTED IMPOSED CIVAL WAR AND DIRTY SCHEMES WHICH WERE INITIATED AND MAINTAINED BY FOREIGNERS AND IGNITED BY DOASTUM’S SLAVE BOY SOLDIERS. THEY WERE ALL SECRETLY FINANCED BY THE WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES.
THIS MAN IS TOTALLY OUT OF LINE BY INJECTING POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED FRIVOLOUS INFORMATION.
Look at his article; he is not talking about Ahmad Shah Massood- this is using the occasion to justify and focus one’s mind on savage intervention of the Anglo/US parasite in Afghanistan since September 11.
THE FOREIGN “THUGS AND THUG-MARS”
DERAILED THE WHOLE PROCESS Of REBUILDING MISSIONS FOR THE COUNTRY THAT HE AND OTHER HONORABLE ISLAMIC LEADERS OF AFGHANISTAN WERE ENVISIONING.
“FERUD” IS CLEARLY DEFINING AHMAD SHAH MASSOOD OVERALL COMPLEX ACHIEVEMENTS AND HIS PERSONALITY IN HIS DISTORTED SIMPLE VIEWS UNDER THE CONFUSED SITUATIONS OF INVASIONS- HE IS JUST STRIVING EXTREMELY HARD TO EXONERATE THE ORIGINAL PERPETRATORS; THE SCHEMERS OF CIVAL WAR, RIGHT AFTER THE SOVIET DEPARTURE.
The plot of the coward assassination has not been properly investigated yet.
ON
*A
“Sacred Mission”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••
===================
GREAT
AHMAD SHAH MASSOOD
OF
Afghanistan
.
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***
THE
HIGH RIVER VALLEY :
•••••••••••••••••••••
*
Strong sense of traditional Islamic piety
always dominated most aspects of lives; like
daily prayer calls- all through out the constellations of towns and villages that stretched below under the high peaked
glaciers and lower rugged terrains
along
the steep mountain slopes and swift-running river flows of Punj-Shayr high valley ((roughly 75 miles long)).
Interacting towns and villages are also dotted down bellow, along
the Punj-Shayr river banks and streams- on its winding pathways, from
“Gul-Bahahr” rapids and falls, all the way south
to
“Tug-Aub” hamlets,
of
“Kapisa” Province.
((next to eastern high-peaked flanks
of
the
“Shamali’s big valley”)).
*****
***
*
Those loosely-connected
and
traditional networks of isolated communities were always culturally well-defined and tacitly maintained
under
unofficially-strict Islamic norms and jurisdictions which gave the whole region a rare form
of
“cohesive unity”- unparalleled
to
most other parts
of
the country at large.
*
Those deeply-held ancient symbolic expressions and religious devotions
((early 70’s)) were always acting as a sort of
counterbalance
to
whimsical
shifting cultural moods and trends
of
“Kabul City”
((roughly 60 miles southeast from the entrance to the Punj-Shayr valley))
*
Kabul City was rapidly modernizing
and
slowly turning into a major international political hub right in the midst
of
Central
and
Southwest Asia.
*
A case in point, was the presence
of
more than thirty embassies that were representing many countries across the world.
*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~
~~~
~
FOR
A
SACRED CAUSE :
••••••••••••••••••••
*
The intensification of tug of the cold-wars among the major international political power brokers and their collaborators,
((later 70’s and onwards)), began
to
gradually stir endemic regional instabilities that made the whole region, at times, greatly-vulnerable
to
extreme forms of social upheaval and foreign take overs.
*
*
The Capital was getting increasingly alienated, on
its social, economical and political platforms and affairs, from the rest
of
the strongly-established traditional rural lives, outside
the mainstreams of the Capital city where foreigners, ((even hippies)), were freely mingling and actively
pushing
and
selling
their unique agendas
to
agents of the government and local businesses
*
The political mobilization and later tactical resistance and stands of the alliance under
Ahmad Shah Massood’s charismatic ideological and military leadership against the Soviet invasion ((late December of 1979)) turned as a solid model,
for
most other parts of the country.
*
The mottos of his movement were closely resonated with the traditional cultural
and
religious aspirations
of
the majority
of
the people of Afghanistan
*
=================
Social mobilization
of
the Muslim people of
“Punj-Shayr”, ((a conservative and isolated river valley bastion)), was set
to
be used as a model
for
the rest of the country- it was the beginning
of
a “sacred cause” that soon transcended the
geographic boundaries
and
ethnic lines.
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The wise leadership formulated something special by embracing
deeply-rooted traditionally-practical schools of Islamic jurisprudence
as
an inspirational guide- it was all meant to address the cherished traditional religious norms, as well as, the cultural independence
of
those isolated folks that were increasingly coming
under
intense social pressures and harmful grips of foreign-inspired ideologies.
===================
===================
*
Ahmad Shah Massood was
keenly aware
of
his unique position and the required urgency
and
devotion to help counter the imposing agendas which were mainly serving the exclusive geopolitical interests
of
the imposing powers.
*
==========
=====
===
=
ON
A
STRAIGHT PATH :
••••••••••••••••••••
*
Soon, after the Soviet departure from Afghanistan, ((1989)), all hopeful signs
of
a peaceful Afghanistan dashed; and detracted -unquestionably, due to executions
of
new rounds
of well-calculated plots that were obviously meant to perpetuate
anarchies; destabilize the local economy derail peaceful process among the regular Islamic political parties inside Afghanistan.
*
*
The dilemmas of the presence
of
arrogantly-poised
foreign military and diplomatic corps, on one hand, and the critically-importance
of
a peaceful resolution as a final aspiration
of
the regular folks, on the other hand, kept
Ahmad Shah Massood
and
other honorable resistance leaders vigilant,
as
well as,
suspiciously-puzzled- all due to greedy and savage natures of the foreign-conceived
dirty schemes and their
direct
and/or
indirect
military interventions.
*
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***************
**********
*****
Obviously, the main purpose
of
the foreign perpetrators was to maintain the powerful mass movements of Afghanistan at bay- by keeping the internal infernos
aflame under the intense fires
of
imposed anarchies
and
disunity.
*
*
In spite of extreme efforts,
((by
Ahmad Shah Massood; his associates
and
other honorable Islamic leaders
of
Afghanistan)), for a peaceful resolution, the leaderships
of
the bullying international powers were
always opting for distraction and making sure
to
deprive
the regular folks
of
Afghanistan from restoration
of
civilized
law and order
*
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