To resist the Taliban who have regained power in Kabul, Ahmad Massoud, son of Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud assassinated in 2001 by Al-Qaeda, calls for US support in arms and ammunition for his militia in Afghanistan, he said in a column published this Wednesday for the newspaper Washington Post.
“The United States can still be a great arsenal for democracy” by supporting its Mujahideen fighters “who are once again ready to face the Taliban,” he says.
His father was a hero of the anti-Soviet resistance who later fought against the Taliban. He was elevated in 2019 to the rank of national hero in Afghanistan by presidential decree, although the troops of the “Lion of Panchir” also left mixed memories with the Kabul residents, caught in the early 1990s in clashes between rival mujahideen.
Ahmad Massoud, who heads a political formation called the “Front of the Resistance”, had already published a column in the French magazine on Monday. The rule of the game founded by writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, claiming to want to make his father’s struggle “his own” and calling on Afghans to join him “in our stronghold of Panchir, which is the last free region of our dying country.” In his column published by the Washington Post, he claims he was joined in the Panchir by Afghan army soldiers “displeased with the surrender of their commanders” as well as former members of the Afghan special forces.
Images circulating on social media show former Vice President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud together in the Panchir Valley, appearing to be laying the first stone of what would be a rebellion against the new regime in force. This difficult-to-reach valley never fell into the hands of the Taliban during the civil war of the 1990s, not a decade earlier during the Soviet occupation of the country. “But we need more weapons, more ammunition, more equipment,” insists Ahmad Massoud, assuring that the Taliban are also a threat outside the country.
“Under the control of the Taliban, Afghanistan will undoubtedly become a base for radical Islamist terrorism; here again, plots against democracies will be hatched ”. Since their return to power on Sunday, twenty years after being toppled in 2001 by a US-led international coalition following the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban have displayed arsenals of weapons and equipment seized from Afghan forces, most of them they supplied. by the United States. Ahmad Massoud believes that during these twenty years, Americans and Afghans have shared “ideals and struggles.” He asks Washington to continue supporting “the cause of freedom” and not to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. “You are our last hope,” he assures us.