by Ettore Mo
We re-propose Ettore Mo’s article to remember Ahmad Shah Massoud, a proud opponent of the Taliban who was killed in an attack two days before the attack on the Twin Towers
BAZARAK (Panshir Valley, Afghanistan) – I don’t know if this dry, sand-covered and sun-baked hill will ever become a place of worship for the Islamic population of Central Asia: surely it is due to the nature of the territory – with the barrier of mountains, swirling rivers and an archaic network of poor and impassable roads – is not conducive to wandering and mass gatherings. But for the Afghans of these and other regions, the tomb of Ahmad Shah Massud will remain an enduring symbol of the history and tragedy of a people, or simply the sarcophagus shrine of the hero whom they already called the Lion of Panjshir in the early 1980s.
This is a country I have been visiting for a long time, and I deeply regret not having arrived in time for Massoud’s funeral at Sarecha Hill (north of Bazarak, the capital of the district of the same name), which they immediately renamed Salari Shahedan, the Martyrs’ Hill. They made him sleep in a warm sand pit on which they spread a pile of grassy clods of earth. However, this is a temporary arrangement, as the tomb will eventually be found in a circular cave with rock walls and a mosque and a tower will rise around it, and there are already plans to build the mound, which is in the center of a circle of larger and more impressive sisters, but without tufts of grass, to be transformed into an oxygen-rich park of trees, flowers and fountains.
A handwritten sign in Farsi reads: “A man who was like an angel is buried here, follow him slowly.” His name is Massud. At the burial ceremony, celebrated at the commander’s headquarters seven days after the attack on Kajabauddin, there was a huge crowd: a sea of people even in the surrounding hills. A sea of suffering. The widow and seven children, six girls and a boy, the youngest of the group, 13 years old. Of course, the hierarchy of the Northern Alliance, which has been fighting against the Taliban since 1996, was present: Professor Buranuddin Rabbani, still the legitimate President of Afghanistan, the Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah (right-hand man of Massoud and tireless negotiator), comrade in arms in the almost ten-year jihad, the holy war against the Russians, like Abdul Sayaf. But other courageous and sometimes controversial commanders who, after leaving him alone in the fight against the “Warriors of God”, had recently come close to him again and placed themselves at the disposal of the Lion of Panjshir, could not come to the final appointment.
Missing was the Uzbek general Rashid Dostum, master of Mazar-i-Sharif, who from 1979 onwards often changed his faith and his flag, allying himself now with one, now with the other, with the strength of a band of mercenaries and owner of the few combat aircraft, that the Soviets left behind. Missing was Commander Ismail Khan, the former governor of Herat, who had escaped from the prison in which the Taliban had imprisoned him and was now fighting against them on the Western Front, on the border with Iran. Above all, Commander Abdul Haq, a wanderer between Dubai and Europe (I spoke to him on the phone in Rome a few days ago), who always had great respect for Massoud, was missing. The Russians feared him the most. Because of his specialty they called him the bomber. If a power plant exploded, if a bridge collapsed, if an arsenal burned, you could be sure he was behind it. Almost always. While Gulbuddin Heckmatyar – Massoud’s indomitable rival – was agitating for the Taliban from Tehran and saying he was ready for jihad if the Americans ever attacked Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, Abdul Haq and Dostum had cemented an agreement with the “Northern Alliance” that would The act should have led to a massive and decisive offensive against the Kabul army. An agreement that the sudden, tragic death of the Tajik commander of Panjshir could have jeopardized, since the only, irreplaceable leader had died.
It is no wonder that the alliance’s mujahideen are now relying heavily on American support to deliver the final blow to Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Taliban. US special forces units have already entered Afghan territory to discover the hiding place of the Saudi wolf Osama Bin Laden. Only the naive could have thought that the elimination of Ahmad Shah Massoud was not connected to the attacks in Manhattan and Washington: If you want to blame the Saudi multi-billionaire and the regime that harbored and protected him for years, then that is it It is not absurd that the first victim of the fundamentalists’ crazy project was to become the fiercest and most indomitable opponent of the Taliban. Like the pilots of the planes that crashed through New York’s two skyscrapers and destroyed the Pentagon, the two Arab pseudo-journalists were suicide bombers.
I found and spoke to some of Massoud’s bodyguards – mostly selected from Panjshir’s old schoolmates – tough, laconic, determined people who are ready to do anything to defend the “leader”. “But how – says one of them, Rashid – do you stop murderers who are ready to die and fall on you?” There is a hint of remorse in his words. The Tajik commander’s men are still dazed, stunned and depressed. “Believe me,” said one journalist after watching some footage of the funeral on television, “they were like dogs left without their pack leader.” Lost, lost. Now, as I return to the street in the village of Jagalek and look at his house up there – where a widow and seven orphans now live – I am reminded of our meetings from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, when Afghanistan was already firmly in place Taliban grip.
From the beginning, Massoud differed from the other commanders in one way: he never went “downstream,” he never appeared in Peshawar (Pakistan), where the seven jihadist parties had their headquarters, and he never interfered in politics. His role was that of a soldier and he took war seriously. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If you wanted to see him and talk to him, you had to climb up to Panshir, as I often did. There was only one other person who resembled him in this sense: Yunis Khal, leader of a small but warlike group operating in his province of Nangahar, who could be found in a poppy field, the ubiquitous Enfield 33 on his lap. He rejected Kalashnikovs. In Peshawar, Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Heckmatyar was a super hawk, a favorite of the ISI – Pakistan’s secret service – and also of the Americans, who believed he was the only man capable of defeating the Shuravi (the Russians), reigned supreme. That’s why they entrusted him with most of the Stingers – the surface-to-air missiles that changed the fate of the war starting in 1986 – and left the crumbs to others.
I follow the path from Bazarak to Roha with memories of fifteen, twenty years ago. It was 1981, Massoud was 27 years old. Shaken by the jolts of the truck, which, however, had saved me ten kilometers of mule track, I found myself in a small room on the Panshir River, where the commander gave orders and gave technical explanations. The voice was gentle, but there was no doubt that he was a man in command. His authority and prestige were enforced through sheer inner strength. When I saw him again three years later, in April 1984, he was already a legend. He had repelled the Sciuravi armored columns seven times. The seventh offensive, which the Russians dubbed “Operation Goodbye Massud,” also won, determined to eliminate him once and for all. “They had to come to terms with changing their name – he told me that spring day in the mountains with a bitter smile – au revoir Massud.”
Around the same time, Osama bin Laden had joined the ranks of Heckmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami and commanded the Arab force in the fight against the invaders and against the communist regime in Kabul. Little is known about his war exploits: But at this time, the scion of a very rich Saudi developer begins to dream and imagine a new millennium based on Sharia and the laws of the Koran, in which there is no longer any place for Western Christian culture that dominated the world for centuries. Their goal is to restore an Islamic theocracy: a goal that justifies the suicide bombers. “We love death in the path of Allah as much as you love life.” Under the pressure of this ideal, the Twin Towers and the Pentagon collapsed. Ahmad Shah Massoud has always shied away from this kind of enthusiasm. He too was a member of a fundamentalist party – the Jamiat-i-Islami – but his nature kept him on the path of moderation.
While the Taliban mummified women in burqas, depriving them of their will to live, Massoud dared to admit that he would not object to a female minister in his future government. And two years ago he floated the idea of a broad-based government that would not exclude the Taliban: nothing was done because the conditions they set were unacceptable. Massoud did not die for the cause of Allah. He loved his valley, his family, his people, his soldiers. I always had the impression that his gaze was not directed at the sky of martyrs and heroes, but rested and lingered on the people and events of this earth. Unlike Bin Laden, who lives and hides, Massoud died torn for the cause of all.
October 10, 2023 (modified October 10, 2023 | 02:32)
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