Farwell to a Hero
Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan
Sunday, September 16, 2001
"The Lion of the Panjshir"
1953 - 2001
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, hero of the jihad against the Soviet invasion and fighter for freedom of his country against the fanatic Taliban, is dead at age 49. He survived a bomb attack by two Arab terrorists posing as journalists in Khoja Bahauddin, northern Takhar Province but succumbed to injuries (three, four) days later.
His fellow Panjshiris and Afghans around the world are bereft of a friend and leader whom they adored and trusted ever since he rose to prominence as an unparalleled military strategist in the fight against the Soviet invaders
In today's world real heroes are hard to find. Ahmad Shah Massoud is Afghanistan's hero. He outfoxed and defeated the Soviet Goliath the seven times they tried to take the Panjshir Valley. The Soviets called him 'unbeatable'. Today, a visitor driving up the valley is never out of sight of rusting Soviet tank carcasses and other war junk along the road, in fields or in the river.
Also unlike other Afghan jihad party leaders he never lived or took a break in Peshawar enjoying the amenities of cinema, TV, and 'normal' peaceful life. He let his staff in Peshawar work to get their fair share of the military aid from the West, divvied out by Pakistan's ISI who gave over forty percent of it to their own favorite, the disreputable Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now residing in comfort with his stolen millions in Iran.
As the defense minister for the new government, the Islamic State of Afghanistan, Massoud had no time to rest. He was mobilizing government forces against the Hezb Islamia of Hekmatyar and the Hezb Wahadat parties wanting to wrest control from the mutually agreed upon government of Professor Rabbani.
The sudden and surprising rise of the Taliban — student militia — in November, 1994, sweeping the multitude of ex-mujaheddin and their commanders-turned-highway-robbers off the highways and capturing arms and ammunition led to their eventual taking Kabul in September, 1996. Enforcing their own extreme brand of Islam — women mustn't work outside the home, girls mustn't go to school and are ready for marriage at age nine, men must let their beards grow, they must wear the pehran-tambon and turban — they soon alienated Afghans who had at first lauded their arrival.
Massoud in his unrelenting fight against the Taliban was the first to identify Pakistanis and other nationalities among their forces trying to control the whole country. Among the war prisoners in the Panjshir prison I talked with just the week before Massoud was killed was a seasoned fanatic ideologue who calmly informed me that the over-all plan was to use Afghanistan, when it was all under Taliban control, as the center for disseminating the Taliban's extreme form of Islam.
Now, five years later, Pakistan's military support to the Taliban is an international concern as is their complicity in Osama bin Laden's residing in Afghanistan as a 'guest' to train terrorists for deployment around the world. Less well known is their gradual military, political and economic take-over of Afghanistan through their proxy, Mullah Omar, with infrastructure assistance (telephone system and repairing war-ruined roads) to allow Pakistani businessmen to expand their trading to the tier of former Soviet states bordering Afghanistan across the Amu Darya.
Massoud is not only Afghanistan's hero; because of his fight against the Taliban and their terrorist 'guest' he surely qualifies as an international hero, too. He loved his country and wanted it whole again. He made it clear to whoever asked that he did not want a position of power, unlike other party leaders. His aim and goal was to rid the country of the Soviet invaders. He engaged them for ten bloody years of resistance from 1979 to 1989 - Soviet Russia's Vietnam. For seven years, 1994 to 2001, he has battled the Taliban forces, saturated from foot soldiers to generals with Pakistanis and other fundamentalists and fanatics and supported with money, arms and fuel from Pakistan.
He is being buried today near his home in the beautiful Panjshir Valley, a place clear and clean and bright as a child's drawing. Under a cloudless blue sky and bright sun, bleak granite walls of mountains rise up to rough peaks ― guardian walls flanking the valley and the villages, protecting them and the lush green fields of ripening corn on each side of the willow-bordered sparkling blue river.
Amir Sahib, farewell and thank you for all you have done for your country and its people, for the cause of freedom and peace.
May you now rest in peace!
October 2011
