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Disclaimer I make no pretension to an “objective” portrait of Massoud. Those readers who wish to read an academic or historical treatment, one balanced between his adversaries and his admirers, will best look elsewhere. This is Massoud through the eyes of those who knew him, many of whom had worked and fought alongside him in the long Resistance. For those who would care to know the many sides of such an unusual man, this book is for them. —Marcela Grad Copyright © 2009, Marcela Grad All rights reserved. Photographs copyright © 2009, Hiromi Hagakura Webistan Photo Agency 122, rue Haxo – 75019 Paris Webster University Press 470 East Lockwood Avenue St. Louis, MO 63119-3194 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Permissions may be sought directly from Webster University Press at the above mailing address. Library of Congress Control Number: on file ISBN: 978-0-9821615-0-0 Printed in the United States of America 9 10 11 12 13 54321
This book is dedicated to: The memory of Sayed Omar Ali-Shah All the Afghan men and women who gave their lives to save Afghanistan My parents, Juana and Pablo My grandfather, Pedro Juarez, from Granada
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Foreword Preface Introduction Chronology of Events 1 The Seeds Are Sown 2 The Beginning 3 One of Us 4 The Commander 5 My Way to Massoud 6 A Warrior’s Will 7 For Many Years to Come 8 To Lead a Nation 9 The Finer Things 10 A Kind Heart 11 Personal Impact 12 The Man and His Opponents Image Gallery 13 In the Name of God 14 Room for All
15 Worth a Thousand Words 16 Kabul: Shadow of Victory 17 A Simple Life 18 The Panjshir 19 The Lighter Side 20 Afghan Spirit 21 Perfume of the Rose 22 The Second Dream 23 Beacon of Light Epilogue Appendixes Contributors Glossary References
I have read many books about Massoud, the hero of my homeland and of my heart, but Marcela’s book has reached my soul and it has brought memories of 23 years of friendship, of happy and not so happy moments, and of the difficult times we spent together. The cruel hands of time destroy many castles, many countries, many kings, many assemblies of poor and rich, just and unjust. But some beings with their stories remain in the memory of the universe. And Massoud is one of them. Marcela, I thank you in the name of Commander Massoud and my own heart. God bless you and bless those who publish your book for the English-speaking readers. Kabul, Afghanistan, June 18th, 2012 MASOOD KHALILI, Afghan Ambassador in Spain and one of the closest friends of Massoud
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest gratitude . . . First and foremost to God. To Sayed Arif Ali-Shah, for his constant guidance. To all my Afghan friends and those from all around the world who contributed to this book, for sharing their hearts. To my friend Marilyn Bernhardt, for her significant and substancial help editing and designing the book. To my friends Arlette Croels-Decker and Don Decker, for calling and inviting me to watch the documentary Massoud l’Afghan from Christophe de Ponfilly, which inspired me to begin the journey to Massoud. To my friend Eugenio Zanetti, for helping me find the essence of Massoud’s story and for a lifetime of friendship and shared subtleties. To Mary Strauss, for her support and for being an inspiration. To the Board of Directors at Webster University Press, especially David Wilson, Dean of Arts and Sciences; Laura Rein, Dean of University Library; and Don Conway-Long, Chair and Associate Professor, for their kindness and warm support. To the staff at Reedy Press, for their creativity in the final design of the book. To Matt Heidenry (Reedy Press) and Eileen Condon (Webster University) for their wonderful editing. To Hiromi Nagakura and Reza Deghati, for allowing me to publish their inspiring photos of Massoud and the Afghans.
Finally, to all my friends in two continents, for their patience, love, and support, especially Reynold Akison, Isabelle Artus, Claude Chauchet, Susan Diridoni, Marcelo Ferrero, Lilian Galdo, Aimée Guillard, Michael Hely, Cornelia Kiss, Michele Mattei, Mosfeq Rashid, Jan Skorstad, and Gloria del Solar.
FOREWORD When I was asked to read an early version of this work on Ahmad Shah Massoud, I leapt at the chance to learn more about this Afghan legend than I already knew: this Lion of Panjshir, anti-Soviet mujahideen warrior, charismatic Tajik, and anti-Taliban leader assassinated mere days before September 11, 2001. As an anthropologist who teaches on the Middle East and North Africa, on Islam, on masculinities and violence, I had been fascinated by the person and legend of Massoud for years. Each time I saw him in video footage or read about him in journalists’ accounts, I learned and wondered: Who is this man? Other mujahideen leaders were mere warriors, powerful, determined, but Massoud seemed somehow to be different from the rest. Then, in the latter part of the 1990s, he appeared to be the last bulwark against the hyper-reactionary Taliban, holding out against their total control of Afghanistan after twenty years of war to keep his nation free of despots of one form or another. Then came his assassination. And the legend grew. Years later, I was privileged to read this work by Marcela Grad. Massoud is not a conventional academic tome; instead, it is a meditation encompassing many voices from many places, an intermingling of stories and memories from family, friends, comrades, limning the often elusive character of a complex man. This work is the result of listening to and transcribing voices, leaving the work of interpretation to the reader. In that sense the author recedes to the background, but the essence of her process of respecting the people with whom she spoke, to whom she listened, remains. So the question
arises, can a work of memory such as this portray the “real” Massoud? It is never easy to sum up a man after his death: Do we seek an objective balance, do we focus on the good? Most religious traditions talk of how a person lives on in the memories of those who remain. In that sense, this meditation on Massoud is his legacy, his presence among us, his continuing representation as leader, spiritual figure, charismatic model. I invite you to enter this work as a journey into Massoud’s world, one not only bracketed by struggle and war, but also by the spiritual traditions of the East, vibrantly alive in the Hindu Kush and Central Asia. Much has been written on this fascinating part of the world, drawing many observers from Europe and the United States, and much has also been misrepresented. But this time Afghanistan is portrayed through stories told by participants themselves, by Afghans as well as visitors from afar, a dense tapestry of tales focusing on one outstanding person, the man who provides the design. And as you roam through these pages, you will inevitably be impressed by the intense dedication of Massoud to the survival of an idea called Afghanistan, where poetry and gardens once flourished, and where the great religious traditions of the planet crossed paths. Massoud awaits you. —Don Conway-Long, February 2009, St. Louis
PREFACE My journey to Massoud began one afternoon in Los Angeles eight years ago. A friend called to tell me that I had to see a documentary about a warrior from Afghanistan, an enigmatic man called Ahmad Shah Massoud. I had never heard of him, and for me Afghanistan was simply another faraway place—a land of fairy tales and legends, updated by horrible stories of the Soviet invasion and, more recently, the Taliban nightmare. Then I saw Massoud on film. From that moment on, I only remember his eyes, and the eyes of his followers. Incredibly, this man, a commander who had fought the Russians with furious bravery, was reading poetry to his soldiers. As I continued to watch, I glimpsed the extreme sacrifices these Afghans were making a world away from me in their remote Panjshir Valley, and I learned something about the extraordinary resources of the human soul. Then and there I had the strong feeling that I wanted to know more about Massoud and what made him do what he was doing. This happened “in the heart,” as they say. It is my belief that such things cannot be understood by the mind, so if you ask me why I decided to write a book about this man, I could answer only, “I do not know, but my heart knows.” I learned that Massoud came from a thousand-year-old tradition of rose gardens and storytellers, exquisite poetry, and ferocious wars. In his world, people speak of the future by saying, “Inshallah” (if God wills). Here was a similarity between his world and mine; we also say this in my mother tongue of Spanish. But we do not use it with the
conviction and the insistence of Massoud and the Afghans. One Western reporter used the words “soft as a Panjshir peach”* to describe Massoud’s faith. I learned that this kind of softness in a powerful warrior comes only from an illuminated heart. The son of a middle-class family, Massoud could have continued his studies at the French Lycée in Kabul and graduated an engineer, as planned. But he heard the call, while still very young, to defend his country and protect its values against foreign invaders. He fought the Soviets and their brand of communism for fourteen years, from 1978 until the end of 1991. Soon afterwards, he found himself in brutal battle once again. This time it was against the Taliban, Islamic extremists whom Massoud described as “intolerant people, far from God.” Although an extremely able military leader, Massoud’s greatest desire was for peace. However, he would not under any circumstances sacrifice the freedom of his people or his country for it. So, like a modern Sisyphus armed with his faith, his followers, and a demeanor that was both sweet and tough by turns, he fought and fought again. When he was assassinated on September 9, 2001, he was still fighting. In retrospect, we can see that he was the only Afghan leader who, during all those incredibly difficult years, always stayed with his people, no matter what happened. This book invites you to understand the life of a man, as told in the words of his friends and companions. In searching for true sources of information about Massoud’s life, I was put in touch with a remarkable group of people, with many of whom I became friends and in some cases almost family. Each of them urgently wanted to talk about Massoud’s life, to laugh and cry, then talk some more about the time they had spent with him—their leader and mentor whom they
called “father.” Every day, I was drawn more into their stories and their world. At the same time, I found myself facing towering problems in trying to bring the real Massoud to life. How could I illuminate the truth behind the emotions? How could I put Massoud into the cultural and moral realm from which he came? Could I reveal the secret roots of his inner search? I started by researching, asking questions, and hearing hundreds of stories. But when all had been assembled and recorded, I realized that I had not yet captured the essence of the man. My intuition told me that a certain elusive something was still missing. This is because the actions people take are the result of everything they have ever done, believed, or been taught, and because some key elements are complete “secrets of the soul,” as the great Jalaluddin Rumi calls them, and cannot be told. It may be that such secrets hold the key to why Massoud was chosen to be a man of destiny. This point is perfectly illustrated in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Kane’s famous last word, “Rosebud,” could only be understood in the context of the man’s whole life, including certain secrets nobody else could have known. So how could I access the Rosebud in Massoud’s life? As often happens, the best way seemed to be by analogy. I found the right one in an old Sufi story about a man with an inexplicable life, which features Khidr, the “green one” who is the hidden secret guide of the seekers after truth and is also identified with the biblical Elijah. Khidr appears at a crucial point in a person’s life to direct him or her onto the right path. But there is a catch: no one who has met Khidr can ever mention his name. Here is the story: Once upon a time, there was a man named Utta. He had his life well organized, had a good job, and everything seemed to be in the proper
place in his world. Then one day, while he was strolling along a river, he saw a man drowning. Before he could do anything, another man jumped into the water, and, unseen by the drowning man, became a floating log. This “log” drifted up to the man, who embraced it and was able to get safely to shore. Then it continued floating down the river, and soon became the mysterious stranger again. This can only be Khidr, thought Utta. Remembering that the legend said one must take hold of the bottom of Khidr’s robe to keep him from disappearing, Utta ran forward, grabbed the edge of the robe, which was still wet, and pleaded, “Please, please teach me!” The man looked at him for a moment, then smiled, and said, “Very well. Leave everything behind—work, family, and friends—and meet me tomorrow at this very spot at this very hour.” Utta went back to his village and did as Khidr had instructed. Everybody thought he had gone mad, but he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t even mention Khidr’s name, remember? The next day, when he presented himself, the green one said, “Now, jump into the river.” “But I cannot swim,” exclaimed Utta. “You must obey without thinking,” said the mysterious one. So Utta jumped in and had begun to drown when a fisherman happened to rescue him. He was an illiterate man who immediately understood that Utta was educated. “I’ll make a deal with you,” said the fisherman. “You teach me to read, and I’ll provide you with room and board.” Utta remained with the fisherman for a year, learning all kinds of things about fishing. Then one day at dawn, Khidr appeared at the foot of his bed and, pointing to the road outside said, “Leave immediately and take that road.” Accustomed to the simplicity of his instructions by now, Utta did as ordered. Soon he became lost. At a crossroads he met a shepherd.
After finding out that Utta had no particular purpose or destination, the shepherd proposed that they could work together. Utta spent a year with him and learned many things about sheep and wool. Then Khidr appeared again and ordered him to leave everything behind and go to Bokhara to become a green grocer. Utta lived in Bokhara for several years, becoming successful as a grocer, until one day Khidr appeared again. This time he said, “You must leave everything behind and go to Samarkand to become a carpet dealer.” Utta obeyed. Several years passed, and he became a successful rug merchant. Then a strange thing happened: people began to approach Utta, asking him to teach them. People came from all over the world to see him, and he became known as one of the important spiritual teachers of his time. Of course, when a great teacher appears, so do his biographers. They came, wanting to know everything about Utta: with whom he had studied and when and where. Utta agreed to tell them his story, but since he was forbidden to speak the name of Khidr, he could not mention the very thing that had been at the center of his development and advancement. Instead, he repeated the bare facts: “I jumped in a river, a fisherman saved me, I lived with him, fishing, for a year, then I went down the road and met a shepherd who gave me housing in exchange for my work with sheep. Then I left and went to Bokhara, where I became a green grocer for several years. Finally, I came here, where, as you can see, I sell rugs.” But the bare facts of Utta’s life did not make much sense to the biographers. They weren’t interesting or exciting. So they proceeded to invent a biography—one which was more adequate, more uplifting, and more becoming to such a great teacher.
And here we are, trying to do the impossible, trying to tell the life story of Massoud without the secret element. What cannot be named can only be traced by the perfume it leaves behind. May that perfume reach your heart. —Marcela Grad, February 2009, Los Angeles
INTRODUCTION Some knowledge of Afghan history is essential in order to understand the stories of those who knew Massoud. So, by necessity, I discovered that Afghanistan has a long, complex, and richly layered past. To me, the most amazing information was that, although Afghanistan has been invaded many, many times over the centuries, it has never been truly subdued. Why? After hours of conversations with the Afghans, it became clear to me that nothing can discourage these people for long —not even a thousand years of invasions and war. Their spirit is simply indomitable. It is not necessary for the reader to become an expert on Afghanistan, but knowledge of certain facts is essential as a framework on which to “hang” the stories that will be shared in this book. I have collected these basic facts into a thumbnail sketch, which is offered here as a tool to assist you on this journey. In the past, for information about events in Afghanistan we have had to rely on the media, which, for all its positive aspects, has packaged our knowledge into sound-bite-sized chunks or limited it to the word count required by this column or that article. More significant, the accounts have been most often written or reported by “experts” not completely familiar with the Afghan cultural milieu. These individuals have rarely spent more than a few weeks in the country, and they have relied upon information supplied by governments or factions with economic and political agendas to promote. We have been denied the marrow of the bone, a situation which I hope, in part, to remedy by this book.
These extraordinary stories have never been told before in print in this way—as a collection of memories recounted by the Afghan men and women who actually lived them and those from other countries, of East and West, who witnessed their struggle. They are a living history of their own, and I believe they have something to teach us about the depth of the human spirit and the abiding strength that can come from it—things about which we seldom speak today. I have found in the tales rare insight into a world I never imagined entering, into the hearts of a people, and into the being of a man, Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose stature has never been fully recognized here in the West.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS [Note: The Glossary at the end of this book offers additional information on many people, places, organizations, and concepts that appear in the following timeline and first-person accounts.] 1933 King Nadir Shah was assassinated, and his son, Mohammad Zahir Shah, took the throne. Zahir Shah ruled for forty years. September 2, 1953 Massoud was born of Tajik heritage in Jangalak, Panjshir Valley. He was the son of Dost Mohammad, an army officer, and Khurshaid (which means “sun”). Massoud was one of seven children. 1964 As part of his effort to modernize the country, Shah convened a jirga (council) of more than four hundred intellectual, religious, and tribal leaders, and they created a constitution, forming a government that supported more freedom and basic rights for the people. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was formed. Backed by Soviet Russia, its goal was to establish a communist form of government for Afghanistan. 1972–73 Massoud’s father was promoted several times, giving Massoud the ability to obtain an excellent education. He was in the second year of college when he joined the underground movement and could not continue his studies at Kabul Polytechnic Institute for Engineering and Architecture. While studying in Kabul in 1972, he became involved in politics, most notably the Muslim Youth Organization (Sazman-i Jawanan-i Musalman). Massoud’s connection to this underground movement brought him into contact with many future resistance leaders, such as Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and Abd al-Rabb Rasul Sayyaf. The
Muslim Youth Organization was a student branch of the Islamic Society of Afghanistan (Jamiat-i-Islami Afghanistan). 1973 A military coup ousted Zahir Shah. Mohammad Daoud was named president and abolished the rule of the royal family. Although earlier he had supported the PDPA, Daoud was uneasy with its communist roots, and, as president, distanced himself from the PDPA and Soviet Russia. July 1975 In a coordinated revolt under Hekmatyar’s leadership (who stayed in Peshawar), Massoud led the push against Daoud Khan’s government in the Panjshir Valley. The revolt was unsuccessful, and Massoud and other leaders fled to Pakistan. 1976 Rabbani and Hekmatyar developed different paths of resistance for the Islamist movement, with the latter forming the Hezb-i-Islami, with an extremist approach. Massoud remained with Rabbani with the Jamiat-i-Islami Afghanistan. 1978 The PDPA assassinated Daoud and took over ruling power. Its unpopular reforms and use of violence led to widespread popular revolt. Massoud participated in one of the first instances of revolt against the PDPA. The successful insurrection occurred in the Nuristan Province in July of 1978, and Massoud and other leaders determined that an open revolt against the PDPA would be backed by the Afghan people. Until this time, Afghanistan had been a popular tourist destination for Europeans and other Westerners, beloved for its beauty, hospitality, and rich cultural heritage. Many travelers felt it was like no other place on earth and returned time after time to partake of its exotic delights. July 1979 Massoud returned to the Panjshir and, with the backing of the people, rose up against the communist government. Massoud’s forces were severely under-equipped and undermanned, eventually leading to defeat. In addition to a leg injury, Massoud emerged from the revolt with the belief that guerrilla warfare was an essential tactic when fighting a better trained and equipped army. December 24, 1979 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan to support continuation of communist rule. They installed a Soviet-friendly communist
government, with Babrak Karmal as president. Resistance to the Soviets became increasingly organized under various independent political leaders and commanders from different ethnic groups.* Among the more prominent were Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud (a Tajik, Jamiat-iIslami), Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani (also from Jamiat), Ismael Khan (Tajik), Abdul Haq (Pashtun), Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (a Pashtun, Hezb-i-Islami), and Sayed Jagran (Shia [Arab] as leader of Hazara). General Rashid Abdul Dostum (an Uzbek associated with the Afghanistan Islamic and National Movement) served as a general within the communist regime, although he later changed his allegiance. 1980s The Soviet army became directly involved in the conflict beginning in 1980 and invaded Afghanistan. Massoud remained in the Panjshir and created a solid defense of the region while organizing and perfecting guerrilla warfare. The harsh terrain and determination of the people assisted Massoud and his troops to fend off large Soviet forces time and again in nine offensives from 1980 to 1985. Massoud’s guerrilla tactics were very successful not only with disrupting enemy supplies, communications, and logistics, but also with territorial expansion. His military system influenced a number of other mujahideen commanders. 1983 Massoud signed a cease-fire with the Soviets, which allowed time for his army to regroup, to reel in greater political support, to bolster resistance in other areas outside of Panjshir, and to take advantage of the mineral wealth of the area to finance his resistance. In July 1983, Massoud created a Supervisory Council (Shura-e-Nezar). The council coordinated 130 mujahideen commanders from several provinces (Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kapisa, Kunar, Kunduz, Laghman, Parwan, and Takhar) of different ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan. 1986 Dr. Mohammad Najibullah (PDPA) assumed leadership of the government in Kabul. 1988 At the age of thirty-five, Massoud married Sediqa, the daughter of Kaka Tajuddin, who was one of his close companions. Massoud became the father of six: five daughters
and a son. The family lived in secret locations inside Afghanistan. Later on, after the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, the family spent some time in Tajikistan. 1989 Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving behind a government of Dr. Najibullah and the Communist Party, which the U.S.S.R. continued to support. The various mujahideen commanders continued their resistance. Massoud and his men were ambushed by Hekmatyar. Although several of his main commanders were killed, Massoud and his mujahideen escaped. 1991 The communist regime withdrew from Kabul. 1992 Massoud and his mujahideen entered Kabul. They formed an interim government headed by Sebghatullah Mujadidi. During the twelve-year war against the Soviets, close to 2 million Afghans had been killed (over 10 percent of the population), another 6 million became refugees, and the resources of the country, including many entire villages and towns, were decimated. Large sections of Afghanistan were left strewn with live mines. April 1992 The Peshawar Accord was announced, which allowed a sharing of power among the mujahideen factions. Hekmatyar was not among those to sign the accord. The mujahideen government formed with Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani as president and Massoud as minister of defense. 1992–95 Mujahideen leader Hekmatyar declined the post of prime minister in the new government and attacked Kabul with Pakistani rockets and monetary support. Other mujahideen factions, such as that of Abdul Rashid Dostum, entered into various alliances and also attacked Kabul’s fledgling government, backed by funds from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries. 1993 Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation (Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta’wani Mohammad-e Ghazali), which gathered scientists, scholars, authors, and artists and provided free medical services.
1993 Massoud resigned his position as defense minister as part of an attempt to end the war with Hekmatyar. 1993–95 The foreign intervenors in Afghan power politics became disillusioned with failure of their mujahideen to take Kabul from the Rabbani government and began to transfer support, money, and resources to a movement that included Afghan religious extremists who had studied in madrassas (Islamic religious schools) in Pakistan, and who called themselves the Taliban, after religious students. With this support, the Taliban grew quickly and achieved a number of military victories resulting in their control of most of southern Afghanistan. 1996 To prevent further destruction and civilian casualties, Massoud withdrew the government’s troops and resources from Kabul under heavy Taliban attack. On September 27, 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul. Osama bin Laden moved back to Afghanistan, together with his Al-Qaeda organization, and allied himself with the Taliban. 1997 Mujahideen resistance led by Massoud regrouped in the Panjshir Valley and began new military initiatives against the Taliban, which was rapidly overtaking large sections of the country. 1999–2001 Massoud helped found the United Front (short for United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, also referred to as the Northern Alliance, in the West and Pakistan) to battle the growing power and dominance of the Taliban. The United Front included diverse ethnic groups (Pashtun, Tajik, Usbek, and Hazara). At times, the territory the United Front held was reduced drastically by Taliban incursions, to perhaps as little as 10 percent of Afghanistan. During this period, the United Nations and most countries continued to recognize the Rabbani government as the official government of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Taliban leaders in Kabul imposed increasingly punitive and vicious restrictions upon ordinary Afghans, especially women. Amputations and executions in the name of Islam became common.
2000 Massoud signed the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women in Dushambe, Tajikistan. 2001 Massoud embarked on a diplomatic mission to France and the European Parliament to warn world leaders of the dangers festering in Afghanistan, including the influence of Al-Qaeda and Pakistan over the Taliban. Massoud became famous in Europe and other parts of the world as “The Lion of Panjshir.” September 9, 2001 Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists. Although they had connections to AlQaeda, the responsibility of that group has not been proven. September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing two into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the third into the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, when passengers and crew attempted to wrest control from the hijackers. In all, 2,973 people were killed (in addition to the nineteen hijackers), and twenty-four are missing and presumed dead. October–December After Taliban leaders refused the demands of the United States 2001 to extradite Osama bin Laden, American and British military struck suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. The coalition then supplied ground forces, which joined with the United Front and other anti-Taliban groups to oust the Taliban and its leaders from power in Afghanistan. December 2001 Afghan factions met in Bonn, Germany, and formed an interim government headed by Hamid Karzai. 2001 After Massoud’s death, Afghan president Hamid Karzai named him “National Hero of Afghanistan.” June 2002 An Afghan loya jirga (grand council) of 1,500 delegates, including Mohammad Zahir Shah as well as women and other minorities, confirmed formation of the transitional government under Karzai, with nationwide elections taking place in 2003.
2001 to present Afghan fighters, troops from a coalition of countries, and, more recently, troops under NATO command have been increasingly challenged by a persistent insurgency made up of Afghan and foreign Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, supported by weapons and funds from those organizations as well as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other countries.
“Heaven and earth contain me not, but the heart of my faithful servant contains me.” —Hadith of Shihaduddin Yahya Surawardi The many voices that told me Massoud’s story are like a choir, narrating hundreds of memories. Some are very simple, just a gesture or a kind word, but all are unforgettable moments to those who spent time with him. In 1983, for the first time, we went to the north of Panjshir. Two hundred people went, and fifteen or twenty of them were old people. There was only one horse—Massoud’s. We had to walk for two days, and I remember he took turns with these older people on the horse. They rode for awhile and then he rode for awhile. On the way, we arrived at a city, Khost-i-Freng, whose people were expecting Massoud but didn’t know what he looked like. As we walked into the city, a man named Mohammad Shah Khan happened to be riding the horse, and Massoud was holding the reins as if he were a servant. The townspeople thought that the man on the horse was Massoud, and everybody was shaking his hand. We were
laughing because we knew that he wasn’t. Mohammad Shah Khan wanted to get off the horse, but Massoud shook his head: “No, it’s your turn.” (Sher Dil Qaderi)
1 THE SEEDS ARE SOWN One of Massoud’s interpreters, Mehraboudin Masstan, had this to say about Massoud’s family background: The family came to the Panjshir Valley from Samarkand, during the time of King Timur Shah, around 1780. One of Massoud’s ancestors was a local chief —a notable that was respected for having rendered services to the kingdom. In fact, he was decorated twice with special documents signed by the king. These remained in the family for many years. Another of his ancestors was a hero in the war against the British, and Massoud’s father was an officer in the army, so his family is one of the valley’s most significant ones. When the communists invaded the Panjshir, the Soviet troops and their Afghan Army burned down the family home. Sadly, all their documents were burned in that fire, but over time we came to realize that Massoud had surpassed all of his ancestors.
Among all of the voices that spoke to me, those of his family resounded strongly with longing and love: Mohammad Yahya, his older brother; Maryam, his sister and herself a heroine of the Resistance; Ahmad Wali, his youngest brother; Ahmad Zia, another brother and presently vice president of Afghanistan; and others. They talked with fervor about a man they not only loved as a brother but also respected deeply as their leader. Although their stories were told at many times and places, they gave me the sense that Massoud’s brothers and sisters had gathered together to speak of him to me, and I have presented their tales in this way, as a sharing of memories. YAHYA. Our father was famous in the Panjshir Valley because our grandfather was famous. He had a title, “khan,” which means “noble,” and he was an army officer and a devout man. AHMAD WALI. Some of the things my brother learned were from him —how devout he was, going to the mosque five times a day to become strong spiritually. We learned positive things from him. But as far as Massoud’s military career, I don’t think that came from our father. He did not want Massoud to be in the Resistance or to become a military leader.
YAHYA. Our father was not a poet, but he had many books about poetry. When we were in Herat, Kabul, or Panjshir, he gave us private teachers of literature and religion, because Hafiz [Khwaja Shamsu-dDin Muhammad-i-Hafiz], Bedil [Abdul Qadir Bedil], and other poets are part of our culture. A lot of poets and wise men used to come to our house to speak about prayers and to make comments about poets and poetry. So from childhood we became acquainted with all that. MARYAM. My father had a large library at home, with many books from Saadi, Bedil, Maulana [Jalaluddin Rumi], and many more. When he wanted to rest, he always read the Memorials of the Saints, by Farid Ud-Din Attar, a very interesting book about the Sufis. When you learn about the life of a Sufi, you learn so much about real life. Massoud asked Masood Khalili to read to him from the Memorials of the Saints on the last night of his life. I saw a child carrying a light, I asked him where he had brought it from. He put it out, and said: ‘Now you tell me where it is gone.’ —Hasran of Basra (from Farid Ud-Din Attar, Memorials of the Saints; as quoted in Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi, page 227) YAHYA. I remember one of our tutors was a mullah named Bismillah, who was supposed to be teaching Massoud and me the Koran. He was not teaching us but hitting us with a stick. We were in fifth grade. After school, he used to come to teach us and to hit us. Very cruel mullah. One day, we were alone in the house. Mother was gone and father was at his office. The mullah asked me to read the Koran. Massoud
was there, and suddenly he stood up and said, “Excuse me, I have to go. My mother is calling me.” He went out and then called me: “Mother wants to see you too.” The mullah was not happy: “When you come back, bring two sticks.” Then Massoud yelled to the mullah, “Leave this house now! We don’t want you to teach us anymore!” And the mullah left. I was a little scared because of my father. When he heard the story, he was very angry. He called our mother, “You see, your children have been very bad to our mullah.” So he got his belt out to punish Massoud, but Massoud said, “Alright Father, I want to tell you something, then you can hit me. First, the man is not teaching us, but beating us. Second, he comes at five o’clock in the evening. Usually the children watch soccer matches in the stadium at that time. We are children. We want to watch these matches, and instead we are here with a mullah that beats us!” My father laughed and did not punish us. After that, the Mullah Bismillah never came back. Many years later, in Pakistan, somebody came and said, “A mullah is here to see you.” It was the same Mullah Bismillah. After I asked him, “How are you?” I said, “You beat us, remember?” AHMAD WALI. But the main influence in Massoud’s life was our mother, not our father. She was a very strong character. She was the boss, and she was the one who made a strong impact on Massoud. She was very sure of her principles. A woman of strong principles and character. MARYAM. Our mom had many special qualities. She did not go to school, because in those times there were not many schools, especially for women. Even if she never went to school, she taught herself to write.
In smaller cities in Afghanistan, when there was a family problem between a man and woman, they went always to an older person in the town, and this person would decide for them, would tell them what to do. But, when there were problems close to the family in our town in the Panjshir, our father went to our mother and asked her, “What do you think? How can we solve it?” It was always our mom helping our dad. The good ideas came from mom. YAHYA. Here is a story about our mother. We were in ninth grade, and my father promised that if we had good marks he would buy us a gift, bachis. Everybody passed the exams with good marks, so I said to my father, “Now you should do what you promised.” He was happy because his children had done well. Then, my mother interrupted, “I don’t like this. I told you many times to teach your children to do things that are important in life.” I thought, now they are going to make some excuse so we won’t get the gifts. My father said, “What do you want? What should I teach my children? They go to school; they got good grades.” And my mother asked, “Can they ride a horse? Can they shoot a gun? Can they speak in front of people? Can they go to the mosque and say something relevant?” Father said, “What is the use of making the children do that?” And she answered, “These things are important for mankind. Their character should be built on these things. Education is not enough.” You see, in Afghanistan, using a gun is usual, it’s a symbol of bravery, but for a woman to say such things was unbelievable. Western countries have strong governments, and the police have the responsibility to protect the lives of people. But our government has always been weak. If you live in a village in Afghanistan, you have to be careful with your life; you have to be able to defend yourself. It happened in history, and it still does.
When our mother died of cancer in 1977, I was talking with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley and asked him, “Do you remember what our mother used to tell our father?” He laughed, because she was a very strong woman. She even predicted what was going to happen to us, that we were going to have to take guns and go to the mountains and ride horses. MARYAM. I think Massoud was our mother’s favorite, because he was brave, smart, and very responsible. He was helpful and understanding, and he never misbehaved. He was like our mother’s right hand. She never said anything to him about being a leader, but I heard her saying that school was not the only important thing in his life. “You have to learn other things. You have to learn how to walk in the mountains, how to ride a horse, how to do handy work.” Ahmad Zia answered, “Oh mom, you talk about that all the time. People will say he is crazy, walking in the mountains. Do you want everybody saying that we are crazy?” But Massoud had to be in the mountains all the time. He learned to ride horses, to do handy work. He was always the best, and he was always in the mountains. Asia is a living body, and Afghanistan its heart In the ruin of the heart lies the ruin of the body So long as the heart is free, the body remains free If not, it becomes a straw adrift in the wind. —Mohammad Iqbal So, Massoud grew up surrounded by his family and friends, and he showed early signs of many of the gifts
that would guide and sustain him later in life. MARYAM. When Massoud was young, my family had neighbors, a man and a woman. The man was traveling on business. She was alone with the kids, and his trip was long. One of her boys came to our house looking for Ahmad Shah (everybody knew him by this name) and the boy said, “My mom needs you.” He left everything he was doing and went with the boy to their house. The wife asked him to write a letter to her husband because she could not write. She was very upset. She asked him to write, “I don’t love you anymore. You don’t feel any responsibility for your family.” I was there, and I could read what Ahmad Shah wrote. He wrote: “I love you so much. I miss you. Please come back. Send us letters. I am so worried. I hope everything is fine with you.” The woman asked, “Ahmad Shah, are you finished?” And he said, “Yes, I am finished.” And she was so happy that now her husband could see how she hated him. She did not know that he had written just the opposite. When the husband received the letter, in two days he was back because it was a very lovely letter. Back at home, our mother asked him what he did, and Ahmad Shah said, “Oh my God. When ladies are unhappy, they are capable of saying anything. But I understand her, and she is right. I did what I think is the best for her and for him.” And it was the best, because the husband came back, and they were very happy. I have so many stories like that. YAHYA. In the neighborhood, I remember that twenty or twenty-five boys were under the “command” of Massoud. We lived very close to a hill, and Massoud used to take them to the “mountain” and train them. I remember the first day they played like a cowboy show.
Everybody had a “loaded” pistol and was hiding behind the big rocks. They were shooting against each other, just playing. Who knew that after this he would do the real thing in the mountains of the Panjshir Valley? AHMAD ZIA. In Kabul, as a teenager, my brother protected our neighborhood. He did not allow the troublemakers from other sections of the city to disturb ours. If there was a dispute among the soccer players, it was Massoud who intervened, settled the problem, and kept the peace. If there was an illogical or unreasonable person who bothered people in the neighborhood, Massoud would talk to him as the leader of the youngsters in Karte Parwan. MARYAM. Ahmad Shah wanted to teach others everything he learned. He felt not only responsible for his friends, he felt responsible for all kids. We had a garage, and he asked our father, “Please, let me use the garage. I want to do something with it.” Father gave him the garage. Massoud found some tables and chairs, and he made the other things himself. Then he was always going out and saying to the kids in the streets, “Have you done your homework yet? This is not the time to play.” He asked the teenagers and the younger ones to come into the garage, and he helped them with mathematics. Every day he taught them. He was sixteen years old. Wali was four years old, and he learned everything just by being around this classroom. He saw his brother teaching others, and he learned. When Wali started school, he passed the exams and was so good that they put him in second grade. So Massoud was a good teacher, and that’s a good memory. YAHYA. When he was young, he inquired about everything. When we bought a radio, he opened it up. He wanted to know how it worked.
After that, every time our parents bought anything, we said, “Ahmad Shah is going to open this up.” When my father built a house in Karte Parwan, Massoud told him, “I want to do all the electric lines.” This is very difficult because you can get a shock, but he told me that the connections to all the lines start in one place and then divide to others from there. He said, “Only this one part is difficult for me. I will ask somebody to teach me how it works.” And so he did. I think he was in ninth grade. AHMAD ZIA. Massoud’s interest and attention at a young age to the tenets of Islamic teachings strengthened his resistance and commitment and made him bold and fearless. YAHYA. Once when we were around eleven, fifteen or sixteen of us boys went to a big farm in Karte Parwan and picked apples from the trees. There were two farmers who saw us and came after us. We were all running in a line and were afraid that the farmers would catch us and punish us. Suddenly, we heard a voice shouting, “Disperse! Disperse!” It was Massoud. Everybody dispersed in different directions and the farmers could not get us. I remembered later, when he had control over all those commanders, that he had that kind of personality from the beginning. . . .
2 THE BEGINNING Here we are, all of us: in a dream-caravan. A caravan, but a dream—a dream, but a caravan. And we know which are the dreams. Therein lies the hope. —Bahaudin Naqshband, El Shah Massoud was always surrounded by his friends and companions—long walks, green tea, prayers, and a shared struggle. Masood Khalili was one of his closest friends, with whom he spent a thousand and one nights of poetry under the Afghan moon. These are his recollections.
THE FIRST TIME I MET HIM I met my friend for the first time in 1978. In April, the communists had thrown President Daoud from power and taken over. In October I tried to travel through Pakistan to Afghanistan, but I got stuck there for a week, and I met a few refugees who had just arrived. Mr. Rabbani, of Jamiat-i-Islami, asked me to come and have dinner. There I saw a young man, slim and bony with a hawkish nose. He looked tall, but among twenty or so people he did not attract my attention. I remembered only later his distinguished figure. He was sitting on the floor with his chin on his knee, which we often do in Afghanistan. This was at the beginning of the fighting, the beginning of everything, and it was all new, to us and to him. The next day, we both went to the market outside Peshawar to find some equipment for him to take to Afghanistan, because he was on his way to start his own military operation, although he was only about twenty-five. We took a bus, and the driver forgot to put in enough fuel, so we had to get out and take another bus, and we had two hours’ ride. On the way we talked about many things, and I realized that he was a sharp and energetic man who was very willing to go into Afghanistan and fight; he was committed. We talked about the past and the future. I was talking more, maybe because I was older, but I found out later that listening was his habit. We reached the market, and there was a narrow bazaar which we entered as we were talking. We each had less than $120 at that time, and we changed it into rupees. He asked if I could buy some grenades.
That made me realize that he was experienced—he knew something about this—because a grenade was something new to me. I said, “Let me think about this; it must be very dangerous.” I still remember, a beautiful smile spread across his face, his upper teeth pressing into the lower lip—I found out later that, too, was a habit—and he said gently, “No, Khalili, it’s not dangerous.” Then he handed a grenade to me, and for the first time I touched this weapon because of Commander Massoud. We had something to eat, and he started talking more. On the return from Peshawar, I remember he said he knew me from before, because I used to recite poetry on Radio Afghanistan when I was younger. Although I was young, somehow my voice was not so bad, and Massoud was one of the boys who listened to the Radio Afghanistan’s literary programs. When he told me he had listened, especially to the Song of the Night, which was a mixture of poetry and music, I said, “So you are interested in poetry?” and he said, “I am very interested in poetry.” We returned to Peshawar again later, and shortly afterwards I went back to the United States to join my brother, who had lived there for a long time, and my father, who was the ambassador to the United States. I was not a fighter and did not become one. I was always at the political level, but my friend became the Commander, a great man. (Masood Khalili) EVERYTHING STARTS WITH BISMILLAH In 1980, I was married in a mosque in New York. My father, my mother, my brother, and two kids were there, a typical wedding. My wife did not even have a wedding gown, but we were in a hurry
because I had to get back to the Resistance movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Shortly afterwards, I went to Pakistan and my first question was, “Where is Massoud?” At that time, his name was not very well known. The media in London had written a little about him, and there were one or two very short French documentaries. I finally found that Massoud had left in 1979 for Afghanistan through the mountains of Nuristan. It was the beginning of a very long road for him. I made my way to Commander Massoud through the southern part of Afghanistan close to Kabul and the Bagram base to the Shamali plains and from there to the Panjshir Valley. At the time, I had a toothache. Oh, that was a bad toothache! The pain of that tooth was even more than the pain of the Soviets. I was cursing myself: Why did you come with such a painful toothache? You are wrong; you are stupid. All this cursing, but in the depths of my heart I had something that was making me go to see this man. I went into those mountains and I was so tired, and I felt like the whole universe had sat on my tooth. I rested awhile and then went to a beautiful valley called Abdarak. It was summer and the time of mulberries. The weather was fantastic and the scenery in Afghanistan was beautiful—the poorer you are in the valleys the richer you are in their beauty. I took a nap, and my tooth was a little bit better, so I went to see him. There were five or six young men who came to welcome me and said, “The Commander is waiting for you. He has waited for two days. Which way did you come?” I told them how I had got stuck in a fight between Jamiat-i-Islami and Hezb-i-Islami and I couldn’t move for two days because of it. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [Hezb-i-Islami’s leader, whose troops battled rival mujahideen as well as communist forces] dominated those areas, and because of them I got stuck. I was
so naive I said, “Why don’t you fix that? Why do you allow Hezb-iIslami?” Later on, I realized what a stupid question I had asked. It was not like eating sweets; it was war! I met Bismillah (“In the Name of God”) Khan, young, with a yellowish face, green eyes, brown hair, and a nearly grown moustache. He was a simple man, this Bismillah Khan who is now chief of staff of the Afghan Army. I asked him, “Who are you?” And he said, “My name is Bismillah.” I answered, “Good. Everything starts with ‘Bismillah.’” I found out that these people were serious, but they also had sense of humor. He said, “The Commander is in the mosque, come on.” I met the Commander there. I saw his wonderful smile and his almond-shaped eyes, high nose, and eyebrows that you could see from far away. He had beautiful hair and looked very young, well-dressed, clean, and polished, like coming from a dancing stage. He stood and opened his arms and said, “It’s good you have arrived.” I said, “God bless you,” and we began talking. After a while, he told Bismillah Khan, “Masood has traveled for seven days and it has been hot, so arrange for him to go somewhere and take a shower.” Bismillah got me a nice clean towel and said, “Let’s go,” and after ten minutes, “This is the garden of the father of Commander Massoud.” I thought he was going to take me to a bathroom to shower. It was evening and it was getting cold, but he took me to a waterfall and said, “This is where you take your shower.” I thought that it would be better to die, because it was freezing, but he said, “This is the place Commander Massoud likes. He doesn’t allow anybody else to come here, but he asked me to bring you.” It was only later on that I realized, again, this was a war. It was not a joke. You had to be practical.
That night we went to a place called Astana. It was a beautiful night, and we sat up talking until three in the morning. We talked mostly about the future, about hope. Early the next morning, I wrote in my diary that I found something in him very vivid, distinguished, and strong: the hope he has for the liberation of Afghanistan. I wrote, “He is on the move, and while he is watching the mighty power of the Russians and their arsenal, he is planning how to defeat it with commitment. Sometimes God provides the energy.” I think I wasn’t wrong. Later on I wrote that not only I, but anybody, could predict that this man would be a great man for his country. That night we talked about how to reach the people of the world and convince them that the Afghan people would stand whether they helped or not. They would stand by their own will and would continue the fight to victory, whether others wanted it or not. We thought we could convince the world that it should help us, because whether we won or not, we would stand. If you help us, we help ourselves by your help and you help yourselves by helping us—that was the theme of that night’s discussion, and he said they had a plan to do it. In the meantime, while he was talking I was looking for a kind of discipline in him, because I thought, this man might not have perseverance. You know, Afghans talk very well, they plan, but often they don’t follow through. It is their nature. I wrote in my diary that I told him, “You have a lot of experience, you have studied and read, but you apply it on the ground, which is not easy to do. You also have to have perseverance. If you don’t persevere, you may be very good today, but what about tomorrow?” And he said, “A plan without perseverance would be ruthless.” In the early hours of the morning he said, “Would you mind if I ask you something? I love to hear poetry. I feel a little bit shy to ask,
but would you read some poetry?” He was very humble and didn’t want to embarrass me. So I said, “I love that! I love it, because wherever I go part of me is poetry, and a part is politics. Politics without poetry would be ruthless, and my poetry without my politics would be fruitless.” And I read some poetry for him. The night ended, but it was the beginning of my travels with Commander Massoud. For a week we went from one part of the valley to another. That was when I confirmed that he did have initiative and a plan for the future, and that he had something else even more important: the unfailing hope that he would reach his goals. (Masood Khalili) Weep not, oh heart, Noah shall pilot thee, And guide thine ark to the desired shore! —Khwaja Shamsu-d-Din Muhammad-i-Hafiz THE JOURNEY We spent a week traveling together, and at the end of that time he said that he would tell me a lot of things to keep in mind when I went to Europe and Peshawar. “You mean that I should leave Afghanistan?” I asked, and he said that it would be better for me to go back and forth between Peshawar, the world, and Afghanistan. So for six months I would go all over Afghanistan and then I would be six months out of the country. But mostly I was with him, and I enjoyed that. I felt I had a friend now who was worthy to be a friend—to love, respect, work for, and always, when I was far away, to remember. When you have such a friend and you admire and love him, then indeed you have the
motivation to fight for the cause. That is the irresistible attraction of a leader in whom you believe, with whom you hope. In his eyes you see the freedom of your country, of your people, of your own home. Then, especially when he is honest, pious, and believes in people and in liberty, you become proud of him. And then, you go through the mountains a hundred times and you don’t feel it. You go with your heart and you don’t get tired. That is the magnetism of a leader who is such a friend that you feel him as part of your own soul, your own heart, your own hope. At one point he said, “Now you are really going to travel.” I had gone out before through Bagram, which was flatter, easier, but this time he said, “Why don’t you go through Nuristan?” My wife is from Nuristan, and he knew that, so I said, “I will do that.” And then he suggested, “I will give you everything, like for a picnic,” and he counted the things with his fingers: “I will give you some rice, a mule, some salt, some cooking oil, and that will do it.” I said, “Well, that won’t be any picnic,” but he insisted, “It will be a marvelous five-star picnic.” To go by mule on a ten-day walk through Nuristan—with the lowest mountain more than thirteen thousand feet high and the highest nearly twenty thousand feet—was a five-star picnic! It was my first trip into Nuristan from the Panjshir. It took us two days to reach the bottom of Paryam, and it was my first experience being at the bottom of mountains so high, so gigantic, so rocky, so rough, but oh, so beautiful. Like Sophia Loren—so rough but so beautiful when she was fifty years old. The trip was bad that first time, and we were so exhausted that we never cooked the rice. It was hard going—ten days, seven high mountains, and then all the other mountains and valleys, so deep that it’s cold in July. There is snow in those mountains, and people die from lack of oxygen. Even the mule could not go well. It was so cold,
and we had very thin blankets, no heaters, nothing—just the rice of the Commander that we could not cook, and the cooking oil of the Commander that we could not use, and the mule of the Commander that we had to feed. Indeed, what the Commander gave us was not the rice, not the mule, not the cooking oil, but beautiful, sweet, unforgettable memories. On this road, there are high mountains and passes like Sim Pass and the Kantiwa Mountains and many more—all mountains, no flat areas. I remember once that it was very cold and it was twilight, and they wanted me to lead the prayers. It was the first time for me, and we couldn’t find a big enough rock where five of us could stand, and we couldn’t find a flat area, so we were facing down towards the river rather than towards God. Suddenly, I was staggering and fell down. I said, “Hold on. Take your prayers back because your mullah is down now.” And everybody started laughing, we were all laughing. They were holding their stomachs, and they asked, “What was that you told us?” I said again, “Bye, bye. I am just going down, I don’t know where, but you take your prayers back; I was not a good mullah for you.” When I see my friends, we remember that. Unfortunately, before reaching the last mountain I fell off the mule. I could not jump down—it was a little bit high—so I brought the mule close to a rock, and I jumped onto the rock. But the stupid mule of the Commander left me when I got my legs down and I fell. Really, I was more stupid than that mule, and I hurt my backbone. Hasham, who now is the council general in Uzbekistan, had them put me over a flat piece of wood. They strapped me to the wood, and they put the wood on the back of the mule and for two days they carried me that way. Each and every movement gave me a big pain; I could feel everything that came under that mule’s feet. Any small rock and I thought, ah that was a rock. And I would talk to the mule, “Please.”
We had no use for the rice, no use for the cooking oil, but we used the mule. And that’s what happened the first time I went to Afghanistan. I wrote in my diary that this man Massoud is impressive, convincing; he has got something. Whether you want it or not, you like him. That something I described was with Massoud throughout his life; it was in his character. Many people fought to the death in Afghanistan under his command, and not just because he was a big commander. Once you were with him, you always wanted to be with him. (Masood Khalili)
3 ONE OF US Oh rich man, if thou bring to God a hundred sacks of gold, He will say, “Bring the Heart as a gift to My door: Bring Me the Heart that is the Pole of the world And the Soul of the soul of the soul of Adam!” —Jalaluddin Rumi There seemed to be an unusual closeness and love between Massoud and his people. Massoud was the leader but walked side by side with them. He embodied their deepest longings, yet he was just one more mujahid.
A MULBERRY FEAST We had been fighting for three or four days, and we arrived at a village called Jangalak at twelve midnight. We were forty-three people, and we thought, now they are going to catch a sheep, kill it, and give us some food. At three a.m., they brought one glass of milk, a piece of bread, and three or four containers of mulberries. The bread and the milk were for Massoud, and the mulberries were for the rest of us. Massoud looked at the owner of the house and said, “Take the bread and milk home; we will all eat mulberries.” So he didn’t eat the bread and milk because it was just for him, not for all of us. We would have been more than happy for him to take it, but he wouldn’t do it. He said, “We are all at the same level here, in the same boat. If you don’t eat bread, why should I?” So after three days, the first meal we had was mulberries, and he sat there happy to eat mulberries with us. And then we moved on to another village. (Sher Dil Qaderi) MY HEAD UNDER HIS ARM We took part in an operation in the Panjshir Valley in 1975 and we were defeated. Then we had to retreat into the mountains, and it was very dark. Those mountains are fourteen thousand feet high. When it was too dark to continue, we had to stay at the top of the mountain.
We did not have enough clothes because we were coming from a warm area, and I think I got sick with three or four others. We could not get warm, but we could not move because of the enemy. Massoud sat up all night, and he kept my head under his arm to keep me warm. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) LIKE THE SIMPLEST SOLDIER In a crucial situation, Massoud always did the job himself. He showed the way, and others followed. He could have done like other leaders [when we left Kabul]—gone to the Panjshir and let the troops come after him—but he always put himself at the level of the simplest soldier. That was his greatness. He was the one who was in the front line, closest to the enemy. Seeing Massoud in the front line with them —his courage, his behavior—gave the soldiers courage for the times when they were lacking ammunition or food or were exhausted. In war, every soldier is looking for a leader. We had commanders who directed the war from their homes, but they were always defeated and the soldiers didn’t believe in them. Massoud was different. (Haroun Mir) HIS MEN He trusted the men under his command and worked hard to maintain their morale. He taught them ethics and piety more than military issues, and he was kinder to them than a father, closer than a brother. (Daoud Zulali)
WATCHING OVER THE TROOPS When I joined the mujahideen in the Panjshir, I was with a group of thirteen mujahideen staying in a house. Dinner was served. When we were finished, Massoud checked to make sure that everyone had enough, and then we prepared to sleep. Massoud had a room in the same building. It was cold, maybe December or January, and at ten or eleven when we were sleeping, Massoud came around to make sure that everybody had blankets and enough clothes to stay warm through the night. I have never seen a commander checking on his people like that. (Mohammad Shuaib) BENDING LOW When we went to Andarab, we crossed a very high mountain. On the way we passed through a village where the people understood that their hero would be coming. They were waiting, and they all wanted to shake hands with Massoud. One man approached Massoud to kiss his hand, and Massoud said, “I am not a shah; don’t do that,” and he shook the man’s hand instead. Massoud had been riding a horse, but three hundred meters before the village he got off the horse. Why? He said, “If I see the people of the village from a higher place it would not be proper, not polite.” So he walked, and he shook the hands of each villager, down to the last one. If I were the commander, maybe I would shake hands with one or two, but he shook hands with everyone in the village. In Afghanistan when people greet somebody they bend forward, out of respect. When the village people bent before Massoud, he bent
even lower than they did. He did it with everybody. It was surprising to me. He was a famous hero, and the others were village people, unknown people, but he showed respect to every one. (Hiromi Nagakura) NO WALL They told me this story after Massoud’s assassination: When he was building his house in the Panjshir, there was to be a wall between his house and the house of the lady who was his neighbor. And there was a willow tree that grew from the lady’s yard, leaning on Massoud’s wall and preventing him from completing it. He went to the lady and asked her, “Would you let me cut some branches off your tree so I can straighten the wall and build it higher?” The lady said, “No,” and this man, a commander and the defense minister with all his power, he just came back disappointed and didn’t do anything more about it. (Farid Amin) TOES STICKING OUT A visitor came from Pakistan and brought Massoud a gift: a pair of shoes. He took the gift, and he looked around. There was one of the mujahideen who needed new shoes, and Massoud handed them to him. You could see that Massoud’s toes were sticking out of his own shoes. We asked Massoud, “Why did you give away those shoes when you need new ones yourself?” He said, “Another visitor will bring me
shoes because I am the Commander. They always bring me something. I can find shoes, but this man can’t.” Many people would bring Massoud gifts, and he gave most of them to people around him. He wanted to make sure that they had the things they needed: enough food, enough clothes. (Sher Dil Qaderi) THE ROOMMATE When we had training, we all stayed in the same compound, and sometimes we slept in the same room. While we were actually training, Massoud was the trainer, but when we were in the house, he was just a roommate. If we cooked, he cooked with us; if we washed the dishes, he washed the dishes; when we cleaned the room, he cleaned the room. Afterwards, when we would go to gather wood for cooking, he would go with us. Even when we went to play baseball or soccer, he played with us. He was with us from 5 in the morning until almost 4 in the afternoon, and then he would go to the city to work, to take care of the business of the villages and the problems in his office. He would work there until 2 or 3 in the morning, walk in the mountains, and then sleep a few hours. While I was there, I heard that he did not sleep more than four hours a night because he was always working. (Sher Dil Qaderi) THE GUARDS’ LIST
The villages were under bombardment, and conditions were difficult. During the night, 1 percent would stay awake to guard the rest, and Massoud always said, “Wake me up, because I want to guard too.” We did not agree with that, but we could not disobey his orders. In the twenty-one years that I knew Massoud, I never saw him go to sleep before midnight; he worked hard. We had twelve or fifteen people on the guards’ list, and we always gave Massoud the turn at the end of the list, closer to the morning. We told him, “You are tired. We have enough people to be guards, so it is not necessary for you to do this. You can sleep the whole night.” But he said, “No, I would like to do it.” It was his habit in everything. (Salih Registani) THE LISTENER If you had a problem, in your home or whatever, you would go to talk to Massoud, and he would always listen. No matter whether it was a kid or a hundred-year-old man, when people came to him, he listened. He never said, “I am the leader, and this is your problem.” He took as much time as you needed, and if you had a suggestion he would hear that too. When he was walking and found a kid of eight or ten years old he stopped; he never passed them by. If the child had some question or idea he would listen. He encouraged that; he would say, “It is a good idea. We should talk about it.” He was a real friend to people. That made him different. As long as I live, the memories are with me. I am one of the lucky people who spent time with Massoud. (Sher Dil Qaderi)
I SAW HIS FACE Massoud gave me a gun, but he said, “You do not think, and someday a mine will blow you up.” The time came when the Russians withdrew from the Panjshir and left mines in a place called Rokha. The local people started to clean them out, and I remembered what Massoud had said. Then, there was the mine under my feet. I remember opening my eyes and Massoud was there. He came to see me when they were going to cut my leg. I wasn’t feeling anything at that time, but when I saw Massoud I suddenly felt all the pain and started to cry. He said, “Take him to a hospital and I will be there soon.” They took me to a hospital in Malaspa. When I was on the operating table, I saw Massoud’s face again, then I passed out. After three days, when they gave me the news of the amputation of my leg, Massoud came to my room. I looked at him and started to cry again. He said, “Don’t worry, you will walk again.” He talked about fixing the leg and other stories so I would focus on something else. While I was recovering, I was very happy every time I woke up to find myself looking into Massoud’s eyes. (Commander Gul Haidar) LIKE A KING He had so much popularity in Afghanistan that he could have lived like a king, but he chose not to. He washed his own clothes, even his socks. He was as down to earth as he could be with people, to make sure they understood that it was not about power, it was about working for people, defending people. He would insist, “This is not
about ‘I am the commander, you are not; I am at the top, you are not.’” (Sher Dil Qaderi) NOT WORTH IT Massoud was somebody who never, for one second, wanted to lose anybody. He tried his best to avoid casualties. He was the master of that; whether it was a commander, a civilian, or a soldier, it didn’t matter. To avoid casualties was the most important thing. The soldiers and the commanders knew that. So many times the commanders insisted that they wanted to carry out a military operation, but Massoud would say no. The commanders would say, “We can do this. If we have casualties, they will be very minor.” But Massoud said, “It is not worth it.” (Ahmad Wali Massoud) EVERY ONE I remember after the first operation in which I took part in Farkhar, a lot of young people had been killed. I saw that Massoud was very sad, but he never cried, he never talked about it, and he was present at the burial ceremony of every one of those young mujahideen. (Daoud Mir)
“We walked back to the spot where we had met Massoud and found him stretched out under a tree, having a nap. One of the Mujahedin tiptoed up and gently covered him with a pattu.” (Sandy Gall, Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation, London: The Bodley Head, 1988, 177)
4 THE COMMANDER A soft breeze touches the purple flower. My eyes weep a river of tears. Today my gazelle is burning with grief. Oh God, break the arm of the butcher. —Khalilullah Khalili There is an old Afghan saying that anyone who wants to conquer Afghanistan should beware, because under every rock of every mountain lies a sleeping lion. When Massoud was fighting the Soviets, they said, “And the lion is Ahmad Shah Massoud.” —Roger Plunk, The Wandering Peacemaker (Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads, 2000). Most Westerners who have heard of Massoud think of him as a man with an exceptional military mind, a
leader of troops, the victor in numerous battles against long odds. All this is true, and yet there is a very great deal more to be said and inferred. Despite the fact that Massoud and the mujahideen were always under attack and they seemed to be at the end of the world, there was a certain silence in their midst where a subtle presence was ever felt. Massoud was their commander, but was it he they followed?
ALL IN HIS MIND Massoud’s vision, his military technique which operated successfully against the Russians—we defeated the Russians nine times—he never wrote it on paper; it was all in his mind. When we were fighting in a place called Kalafgan, we were hiding, and we had three or four factions with five or six commanders from each one, and every one of them had thirty to fifty people under his command. Massoud controlled the whole thing—three or four hundred people—and he would tell them, “Go here and do this, do this, do this,” the actual fighting. We were attacking and shooting rockets, and he was directing us in detail: “Okay, rocket, shoot. Infantry, move. There is a mine; don’t go there.” Before he led the commanders and troops, he would study the area from far away with binoculars, every place where there was a mine and where not, what would help, how we would go. Then he would walk you through it. No matter how much pressure was on you, he walked you through so calmly, saying something like, “Okay, don’t worry about it. Just walk a hundred yards and stay there.” He just took you through like you were walking in the park. He never gave you a piece of paper; it was all in his mind. There was another operation where he had twenty-three radio operators, all talking on their radios with him. He was working with all of them at the same time. I have never seen a mind like his. (Sher Dil Qaderi)
TO BREAK THEIR WILL He had a vision, how to get to the goal. During the times of the Taliban, he knew he could not win militarily against both them and Pakistan, but he was somehow giving us hope that we would do this, we could do that. The way he explained it all to the commanders, he had them thinking that maybe in two days we would seize all of Afghanistan. But Massoud really wanted to break the will of the enemy. Not to confront them face to face, but just to break their will. That is what he did with the Russians as well as the Taliban. So he was thinking ahead strategically, and he had a long vision. The commanders knew that he was thinking that way, and they knew he was doing his best to avoid casualties, to protect us. It was an incredible relationship. That is why Massoud’s commanders and followers were not there just to get paid. They were committed to the cause, and they put all their trust in Massoud. It was a unique relationship. (Ahmad Wali Massoud) THE MOMENT OF ADVANTAGE One of Massoud’s talents was that when he made key decisions, he made them at a time that would be to his advantage. He waited for a particular moment to do something, and he knew that when he did it at this time the outcome would be positive. He would never do anything out of aggression or frustration, but was patient and acted with logic, and always based on a study of the situation and the time. For example, he took all his forces into the Panjshir Valley even though he knew he was going to be surrounded. But then he waited,
saying, “Let me get all the enemy forces close to me.” He knew the Taliban would mass all its army in one location, so when he struck he would inflict major damage. (Commander Bismillah Khan) THE CHANGE Whenever Massoud stayed for more than one or two days in a place, the Russians would start bombing that area, showing how strong their intelligence was. He sometimes hid himself and his group for a week or two, even from the rest of his fighters, to divert the enemy’s attention and to get away so he could pray and find a little solitude. In his first appearance after he had been hiding for some days, a drastic change would be visible in his face. His eyes would have a sleepy look, his cheeks would be rosy, he would have a more humble step, and would speak more softly. (Daoud Zulali) A DEAL WITH THE RUSSIANS One of the most controversial things that Massoud did was to negotiate a peace treaty with the Russians. He realized that the people in the Panjshir were suffering and might not survive without a peace treaty. He also wanted to organize resistance elsewhere in Afghanistan, and a peace deal with the Russians would free him up to plan even better for their defeat. He did not have this sort of dogma that other commanders had: “No, I would never negotiate, I would never discuss with the enemy.”
He realized that in the real world it was actually a good solution to the problems he was confronted with. He said, “It will take us a couple of years, but right now we need some time to prepare, and besides, the very people we are trying to protect are suffering. There is no food, no shelter; we have to help them.” So they made a peace treaty, and as a result the CIA did not trust him again. They wanted someone who fought the Russians all the time till they died, no matter what. (Sebastian Junger) STRATEGIC VISIT Near a Russian base in the Panjshir, there was a Hezb commander [short for Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami Party], and he was in contact with the Russians. Massoud knew it and went to see him, showing his connection with the man so the Russians thought this Hezb man was playing it both ways. In fact, Massoud had no prior relationship with him, but his visit stopped the game that commander was playing with the Soviets. (Farid Amin) “We came upon a group of mujahideen. . . . Unusually for them, their handshakes were limp and their expressions dejected. We heard later that they had put up a poor performance the previous night . . . and had received a tongue-lashing from Masud (sic). Indeed, he had climbed in the dark to the scene of the action and personally taken command. I had not seen him in this light before: he had struck me more as a thinking general who stayed in the background.”
(Sandy Gall, Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal, London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1983, 84) WHEN THE TALIBAN BROKE THROUGH The first time that the Taliban got close to Kabul, they broke through one of our defensive lines, and approximately a hundred Taliban troops headed toward the city. There was panic among our soldiers. Massoud received this information during the night, and he came to Kabul with seven bodyguards. He had a Kalashnikov on his arm and went right to the front line with his bodyguards to defend the city. Some of the troops, the younger ones, were running from the lines, but when they saw Massoud, they stopped and returned to their fighting positions. That’s how Massoud stopped the fall of Kabul. The Taliban was very determined and very well prepared to enter Kabul, and they attacked several times. Every time Massoud came to the front line himself and defended it. (Haroun Mir) WHAT WILL YOU ANSWER? I remember there was a commander in the north who was behaving badly towards people. Commander Massoud collected all the information he had about it and then said to him, “You did this, this, and this. You say that you believe in God and that you will die for your religion, but you have done many wrong things. What will you answer to your God?” The man began to cry. He was a major
commander, and he said, “I am guilty. I repent and I will stop doing all those things.” (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) THE CHALKBOARD One day I saw Massoud in the middle of this room that he had inside of the mountain; at the end there was chalk and a blackboard. He was reading books and walking back and forth, back and forth, putting down marks: enemy, us, military strength, morale, resources, territory, terrain, accessibility, foreign channel supplies, domestic channel supplies. He put down all the positives and negatives so he could see exactly where we stood. In his mind, he divided the war into four stages. The first stage was self-initiation—you mount the first resistance. You move from that to strategic defense, then to strategic offense, and to national cohesion, which is the entire nation coming together. In order to achieve the final stage, you must work out the details at the beginning. You must work on each stage and be able to guide your men by example—by stories, by ethics, by teachings, by movements, by caring—all those different elements. (Haron Amin) LOSING GROUND We were in the Shamali Plains at one of the bases in 1996. Tony Davis [an Australian journalist] asked Massoud, “Would you ever flee Kabul?” Massoud said, “For me, the ground is not important. I know
my territory, and I know how to take it back. If I flee, it will be to avoid harm to the people and, second, not to lose my fighters or my guns.” You could see in his eyes, hear in his words, that he knew exactly what terrain was in his hands, that there was no issue with taking land or losing it. You knew that as long as he was there and had the people to fight, he would take it back. (Farid Amin) AN INVISIBLE ENEMY Guerrilla warfare is taking the war to the enemy; you don’t let them bring the war to you. You organize and attack at point A. The enemy tries to recapture point A, and you attack point B and point C so that their resources are divided. If you lose point A, B, and C at the same time, you withdraw your forces and what do you do? You attack points D, E, F, G, and H, so the enemy thinks, “My God, I have an enemy that is invisible and yet I keep losing people!” Massoud mastered guerrilla warfare in the mountains of Afghanistan. Nobody had done that before. When you are in flat land, you have a certain ratio of the enemy resources versus yours. The enemy has advantages: It has airplanes, helicopters, tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery, battalions and platoons and companies. What you do is, you attack the base from out of the mountains, and then you move back into them. Then, from these positions in the mountains what do you do? Every hour or forty minutes, in no specific order, you shoot one rocket so the enemy cannot sleep at night and during the day. The enemy is not familiar with the territory, so you begin to play psychological games.
As the enemy goes up in the mountain to claim the high positions, what do you do? Very simple; you go farther up. Up in these steep valleys, the enemy does not have support. Tanks are not able to come up, the enemy does not have armored personnel carriers, the heavy weapons are not with them. Now it is the enemy with light weapons and you with light weapons. If it is a hundred against thirty, you split your team ten-ten-ten. Then the enemy of each of your groups is thirty. You take it further, and you divide each ten into three-threefour and the enemy of each becomes ten. Then you choose which of the ten you want to shoot. So you take the war to the enemy, and you do it for a long period of time because it is your land. Your ancestors were born there and you are going to stay there. Time is on your side, but the enemy wants to finish right away. This is what Massoud did. (Haron Amin) MESSAGE FROM PESHAWAR Massoud told us, “Approximately a month after the Russian attacks, while we were trying to re-establish our forces and restore the contacts that had been disrupted, a messenger from the headquarters of the mujahideen in Peshawar [Pakistan], the Islamic Unity of Mujahideen of Afghanistan, brought us a letter which read: According to central reports, the resistance of mujahideen in the Panjshir Valley has been crushed and all areas have come under Russian control. Since resistance has ceased there, the Islamic Unity of Mujahideen of Afghanistan can no longer send aid to the Panjshir Front.
With a smile on his face, Massoud had said at that time, “When we started this path, we asked our God for help. We took this task up for His sake. We will see what God Almighty does about this.” In a very short but extremely hard period he restructured his forces, proved himself a most powerful military force, and expanded his territory beyond the Panjshir Valley to five other provinces. (Daoud Zulali) THE THIRST He was an extremely good commander, and he read—he knew his stuff. Once, I brought Massoud a book from a Swiss commander about guerrilla warfare, and he asked me to bring him other books. I would bring him books about the American Revolution and how the American soldiers conducted their guerrilla warfare against the British. He did not care if something was in English, French, or another language. He would try to read it or ask somebody to translate it. He had an incredible thirst for knowledge. (Edward Girardet) TWO DIFFERENT WARS Many commanders would constantly go to Peshawar. Some would spend the winters in Peshawar to get weapons and meet with party headquarters and leaders. That is something that Massoud never did. He made a conscious decision not to go to Peshawar. He fought a twenty-four-hour war, and that did not give him the time or the luxury to take holidays in Pakistan, where he knew he would have to
deal with the schemes and manipulations of the Pakistani military intelligence. There were two conflicting visions of how the war was to be fought. One was a vision from the Pakistanis, who saw it as a war against the Soviet Union in which Afghans, mostly the Pashtuns, would implement actions which would favor Pakistan. The other was the national vision of Massoud—of an independent center of command in Afghanistan. Nobody else was doing that. The question in his mind, and he was a pragmatist, was whether the war was going to be run by Pakistanis or by Afghans. He was fighting a war on two fronts: the war against the Russians and a cold war with the ISI [Pakistan’s agency for intelligence and covert action]. (Anthony Davis) ALONE IN THE GARDEN . . . When Massoud had to make a very important decision he would give me a letter that said: “If anyone comes to meet me, please let them know that I will be unable to see anyone today, without exception, because I have to be alone.” Afterwards I would see him in the garden at his house walking and thinking, thinking and walking. (Haroun Mir) CAN YOU PLAY CHESS? Before I met Massoud the first time, I knew he loved to play chess, so I brought a small chessboard for him. When I gave him the gift, I saw in his eyes that he was happy. He looked at me and said, “Can you
play chess?” Then he tried to beat me psychologically even before we started. He said, “It is a nice chessboard, but I don’t know if you can really play chess with me,” to make me believe that I was the weaker player. He did the same thing with the Soviets. (Reza Deghati) WAR GAME He was an excellent chess player, and chess is a great school of war because you are dispassionate. You do not blame the chess pieces for acting the way they do, you accept the terrible limitations, and you can see abstract patterns very clearly. That was the way Massoud’s mind worked. It’s my conclusion from the way we played together. He always had a portable chess set with him. (Professor Michael Barry) THE COMMANDERS SAID NO In the Khylab Valley in 1985, we were around 120 mujahideen. When the Russian forces heard that Massoud had begun serious activities in that valley, before he attacked any garrison or force of theirs, they decided to attack us. Their bombardment in our valley was very heavy, and we could not continue our training. Then they surrounded us. During the night, Massoud asked us, “What should we do? Should we continue to fight?” Some commanders said we had to continue, and some said we had to leave. Massoud decided to continue one
more day. There was more serious fighting, and at the end of the day Massoud asked us to see him again. We went, and he said, “The situation is bad; we have to find a way out.” There were no roads in the area, and there seemed no way to leave the valley over the top of the mountain. We finally found a dangerous way to leave—the only one—which was between two enemy posts. The space between them was narrow, maybe fifty or a hundred meters. We also had six or seven mujahideen wounded, and it was impossible to bring them with us because their legs were broken, so we hid them among the trees and left them food and water. We had to cross the top of the mountain one by one, and we had only three or four hours to do it. It was very slow because we had to crawl touching the ground with our chests, and we had lots of ammunition and material that might be seen or heard. Five hundred meters away from the two posts, Massoud ordered us to form groups of five. When he had organized ten or twenty groups, he ordered the first group to go. Everybody stopped and looked at Massoud. He asked, “Why are you stopping? Who is the first group? Go.” One of the commanders said, “We are not afraid to go, but what about you? You should go first. This is a very dangerous plan. If somebody makes a mistake, we will all have to stay here and maybe die. But you have to go because you have to continue fighting. You are the leader; we are only the mujahideen.” But Massoud replied, “I order you to go, right now.” It was the first time that nobody was ready to follow his command. He ordered the commanders, and they said no. It was very difficult. Finally, after ten minutes, Massoud got really angry and ordered, “Don’t waste your time and don’t wait for me. I said the first group must move now!”
When we saw that Massoud was angry, the first group was upset but began to move. Then everybody began to cross. People were praying that no one would make a mistake. We were all shaky because everybody was thinking about Massoud, and when we were across, we stood and looked at the top of the mountain, waiting for him to come. Nobody made a mistake, and Massoud was the last one to cross. (Salih Registani) THEY NEVER LEARNED One day Massoud was laughing, so I asked why. He answered, “Because the first time the Russian Army attacked us, I knew only one trick to stop them, and I used it and we won. The next time they entered the valley, I used the same trick, and again I beat them. I used it seven or eight times, but they never learned.” And it was true. (Reza Deghati) “There was a total of three destroyed tanks; Massoud thought they all could be salvaged. One was stuck in an alleyway between two houses, and the young commander said the passageway was too narrow for them to drag it out. ‘Buy the houses, destroy them, and get it out,’ Massoud said. ‘Get two more tanks from Rostaq; that’s five. Paint them like new and show them on the streets so people will see them. Then the Taliban will think we’re getting help from another country.’” (Sebastian Junger, Fire, New York: Harper Collins, 2002)
THE BEST NEWS When I was working in Peshawar, part of my work was to get the news from the mujahideen and give it to the media. We were getting at least a hundred reports from commanders all over Afghanistan about attacks and casualties, but we checked how reliable they were in terms of the casualties of Russians, because the Afghans tend to exaggerate. If it was one tank, they might say ten; if there were two soldiers they might say two hundred. When the information was coming from Massoud, we knew that we didn’t have to check. We gave the news reports that came from him directly to the BBC, Voice of America, Reuters, Associated Press, local news agencies, and they all knew that Massoud did not exaggerate. He didn’t try to add things, and he included the weaknesses of himself and his group. We trusted him completely, and the media did too. (Mohammad Shuaib) HE SPLIT THE SNAKE Dr. Abdullah once told me this story: Massoud came out of a lecture with the commanders, and he saw something that everybody else did not. There was a snake, and in its mouth there was a bird. The snake was about to eat the bird, and the bird was moving its wings trying to escape. But the snake, looking at the bird, psychologically disabled it, paralyzed it. When Massoud saw that, he asked a man for a gun, and he aimed and split the snake with a single shot. To me, the snake was the Taliban, the bird was the nation in agony, and the situation required someone to deliver the blow.
(Haron Amin) HOW THE MUJAHIDEEN SHOULD LIVE Massoud told the mujahideen, “If you have food, feed the prisoners first and you eat later.” When I heard that he was giving those orders, I said, “What a man! Who is this guy?” The mujahideen were hungry. We didn’t have food for long periods because the operation was very difficult, and he was telling his troops to give the small amount of food that they had to the prisoners first? I saw that the mujahideen accepted this, and I told myself that this was not the first time because, except for me, no one was surprised. I was a curious person, and I asked Massoud’s friends, “How can you accept giving away food you need to live and to fight this enemy?” They told me about other operations, similar stories. They explained that this was the way the mujahideen should live, because their goal was not just to kill, it was the liberation of our country, and they knew that a lot of those young soldiers didn’t even know why they were there. They were just sent by the Soviet Union and the Afghans who supported them. Because of this, Massoud had a huge reputation, not only in Kabul but even in Russia. There are books written by former Soviets praising him. (Daoud Mir) BEFORE GOD AND HISTORY
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar used to attack the Afghan people more often than the Russians did. He committed atrocities all around the Panjshir. During that time, Massoud told the villagers and the mujahideen only to defend, not to attack. He said, “Don’t attack, because if you attack and kill, I won’t be responsible as your Commander. It is my obligation to tell you that. You will be responsible before God, before the people, and before history, and you will get your punishment.” (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat)
5 MY WAY TO MASSOUD A thing which is not to be found—that is my desire . . . —Jalaluddin Rumi (R.A. Nicholson, ed., Selected Poems from the Divani Shamsi Tabriz, Cambridge: University Press, 1952) People from many different countries and political persuasions felt compelled to visit Massoud once and again, to talk with him and help him. Some of his enemies turned around and joined him, a young Afghan woman returned from exile to meet and work with him, and even a nun decided to write a book about him from the peaceful rooms of a convent in distant Europe. Here are some of the stories of those who were drawn to Massoud.
ISLAMUDDIN During the war against the Soviets, there was a soldier called Islamuddin, a name given to him by the mujahideen. He was originally captured during combat with the former Soviet Union, and one night he went to the mujahideen, presented himself as a prisoner of war, and joined them. He became a Muslim. For the first few months, they were afraid of him; they thought he was from the KGB and was trying to kill Massoud, but finally, they let this young Russian become a mujahid. Later, he even became one of Massoud’s bodyguards. As a bodyguard, Islamuddin was armed and was always with Massoud. That was amazing to me. When I saw him for the first time, I couldn’t believe it, and I tried to talk with him. I asked him why he was here, and he said, “Massoud gave me the choice to go back to the Soviet Union, but I chose to stay.” I asked Massoud’s friends, “How could you keep this Russian and give him a Kalashnikov and let him be a bodyguard?” I even asked Commander Massoud, but he just said, “Oh, that’s Islamuddin, an old friend of mine.” After a while, I also became friends with Islamuddin, and let me tell you, that Russian had blue eyes and was blonde. In order to become an Afghan, he dyed his hair darker, like the Afghans. He told me, “Friends send me hair color from Kabul.” When I asked him why, he replied, “Because I want to be like everyone else. I am tired of all
the journalists asking me about my background and every new person wanting to know why I am here.” Finally, after the liberation of Kabul in 1992, he went back to his country. Massoud told him that he had to go back because his family must be worried. When he went back to Russia, he told many people that Massoud had treated him well, and that made a big impression on the Russian soldiers. You could find the record of this guy in the Russian books if I knew his Russian name, but I know only the name they gave him, Islamuddin. (Daoud Mir) WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? The people saw that Massoud was somebody who was their own, natural. He talked about all the things that mattered to us; he had some solutions, and he could see a little further. When I was in Kabul I used to ask the people, “What’s the difference between the commanders?” They would say, “Massoud is young, he is energetic, and he knows more than anybody else.” They said that there was no comparison. I heard these things before even meeting him. Ordinary people who happened to see him, they could tell you which one he was because he would be walking very fast and carrying his own gun on his shoulder. Others would say he was very kind. People were impressed, so I was curious right from the beginning. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan I was at the University of Medicine in Kabul. At that time I expected life would change for the people of Afghanistan, but I wasn’t sure what I should do. Should I leave the university and go to the Resistance front or continue my
studies? From the beginning, it was my feeling that I should be more than a doctor. The only place that I thought to go was the Panjshir, to meet Commander Massoud. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) WE HAD BRUNCH I left Afghanistan when I was eleven years old because of the Russians, and the first time I came back was in 1999. I made the trip because I founded my own entity, Afghanistan Live On, to open schools for women and girls, clinics, and other programs for women in Afghanistan. Now we have five or six schools all around the country, we have a little clinic and a women’s magazine called Rose, an Afghan magazine with Afghan journalists, helped by Elle France. We have a lot of projects. The first time I met Massoud was when I came back. I was in Tajikistan, and I wanted to go to Afghanistan and see what had happened. I wanted to get inside because it would be the first time I would be back in my country and the first time I would go into the area of the Panjshir to tell the story that it was never conquered by the enemy, but was free. Unfortunately, on the twelfth of July in that summer the Taliban tried to attack the Panjshir. It was a hard period, and Massoud was very busy on the front line. I started with some schools. I went to the refugee camps, and I talked with people there, and after three days I asked, “Why can’t I meet Massoud?” [It was Massoud’s rule to see visitors only after three days, so they could visit refugee camps, hospitals, and schools before meeting him.] The people said, “Because he is at the front line.”
I was the guest of Massoud’s family in Badharak, in his home with his wife, who is now a good friend of mine. After three days I asked his wife’s brother to call Massoud, because I wanted to see him before leaving for Paris. He called, and Massoud said, “No, I am very occupied in the front line. It’s good that she came to help the women, but unfortunately I cannot see her.” So I took the phone. At this time I didn’t know him, and I wasn’t a big fan like, “Wow, Massoud!” For me he was a commander like other commanders. I asked to meet him because if I wanted to come back, I needed to know what he was doing for people, for women. He said, “I am so sorry I can’t come. As you know we are at war.” And I replied, “Do you think it’s easy for me to come from France, for thousands and thousands of kilometers? And you can’t come fifty kilometers to meet me?” In the room where I spoke to him there were three or four men, and all those men said, “Oh my God, don’t speak like that to the Commander!” But Massoud must have thought, this girl is not afraid and she speaks like a normal person to me, because he said, “Okay, then. Tomorrow morning.” We had brunch together in the morning. We talked, and I said, “I am twenty-four years old, I have finished all my studies, and I want to have my own organization. I want to help with women and schools.” And I was very surprised when he said, “Of course. I want women like you to come back and help women with clinics and schools.” If I am trying to do a lot for my country today, it is because of my first meeting with Massoud, because he was so open-minded. He knew everything from all around the world. We talked for an hour, and then he said, “Okay, then you will come back in two months with help for the women.” In three months I came back with a little help and some projects.
He was not just a commander. We could speak about women’s rights, schools, everything. Every time he saw me he said, “You are very courageous. I think you are one of the women that I admire the most.” That’s what I am trying to explain to you. Sometimes people think that Massoud was not open to women. If he was not open to women, how could he have worked with a young woman who had grown up in France and had come back like that? How could we have worked together for years? (Chekeba Hachemi) EVERYTHING WAS AFGHANISTAN I was trying to do a master’s degree in physics in France when I had an opportunity to go for a month to Kabul. That’s when I met Massoud. We had a conversation, and later on he gave me some small work to do—I helped as a translator for a couple of journalists. Slowly I became involved, and I forgot my studies in France. I lost my residence there, my documents became outdated, and eventually I stayed with Massoud from 1993 to 1998. Because of him, everything became Afghanistan. (Haroun Mir) FOR ONE MAN In 1980 I went to cover the war in Afghanistan. I felt the war, I witnessed the war, but I couldn’t report very well to the people how I felt.
A year after that, I saw a report about Massoud. When I saw him on TV, I was surprised that he was so young. When I was a student in 1975, I stayed a year in Afghanistan, and I thought, this country is dominated by old men. The older people have very strong opinions, and the young people cannot say anything. So when I saw Massoud on film I was surprised that he was young, and in that report they mentioned two or three thousand mujahideen under his leadership. I went to Afghanistan in 1983 because I wanted to meet this young commander who was in the middle of a war and was not afraid to die. This time I would go for one man, not just to cover the war. A young man like Massoud . . . maybe I could do some good reporting for the Japanese so they would feel sympathy for this young leader, so I just went by myself. In the beginning I went to Peshawar, and I spent more than a month waiting. I met some mujahideen who came from the Panjshir. I became friends with them, so they told me, “Okay, we’ll take you to meet Massoud.” I traveled for twelve days to the Panjshir: I climbed high mountains, and it was a terrible trip—no shelter, no food. Sometimes we saw houses, but they were locked and nobody helped us. When I got to the Panjshir, I asked, “Where is Massoud?” The Russians were trying hard to kill him, so it was dangerous for him, but the people were funny. They said Massoud is there, maybe there, you should go over there. They tried to help me, but when Massoud was going somewhere he did not tell anybody, not even his driver. Before departure, he would say to the driver, go there, or go to that house, so nobody knew where he was going. Finally people said he was at a certain house. I entered the room, and there he was. But he was sleeping, taking a nap. I waited, and when he woke up and saw me he was surprised because my clothes
were so dirty. I had only one change, and so I was very dirty after crossing the mountains. My skin was also dark with dirt, and my face was almost burned from the sun. I started to talk in their language, not very well, but I could talk. I said to him, “I want to stay with you, not just for a few days. I want to stay as long as possible—two, three, four months—because I want to report about you. Japanese people do not understand this war, but if I report about you, people will understand.” I talked to him very passionately. He told the person beside him, “He speaks Farsi,” and was surprised, and after talking with me he said, “Tashakor [thank you],” which meant that he accepted. And I stayed a hundred days with him. (Hiromi Nagakura) MOUNTAINS AND DESERTS Following the cease-fire of 1983 between the Resistance and the Soviets, I walked for thirteen straight days through mountains and deserts to join the Resistance front against the Soviet invaders in the Panjshir Valley under the leadership of Massoud. I finally found the one I was looking for, and I found thousands of others that shared my feelings, gathered there from all corners of the country. I had planned to stay with them for six months, but I stayed for almost six years. Seeing Massoud for the first time with his men who just returned from the front, I was confused. I wasn’t sure which one was him; however, I noticed one among them who had a face more glowing, eyes that were sharp and restless, a tall slim body. He had a forehead with deep lines that I associate with profound thoughts and good leadership qualities. My assumption turned into certainty as a mujahid
next to me pointed, saying, “That man of God is Amer Saheb Massoud.” (Amer Saheb is an expression we use for a person devoted to God and at the service of people.) After a brief introduction, I felt as if Massoud and I had known each other for years. That was how he was with everybody. (Daoud Zulali) THROUGH HIS EYES The big event of my life was Massoud himself. I am not from the Panjshir. I wasn’t a member of the Islamic parties. I had no contact with the politics in Afghanistan because I left when I was very young. I was just a young student in France. One day some of my classmates at the university told me they were going to have the first show on TV about the Afghan Resistance. I was very interested. A journalist, Christophe de Ponfilly, for the first time went clandestinely to Afghanistan. The French called it “Reportage on Massoud in Panjshir Valley,” and the program was called “A Valley Against an Empire.” The name sounded very good to me—the Panjshir Valley against the Soviet empire. On the program, I saw a young person called Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was talking in a slow French to the journalist about how he was sure that he was going to win the war against the Soviet Union. At that time they were saying in the West that the Resistance could not win. I became interested in knowing this man who was so sure of himself and the mujahideen and the jihad. The journalist asked him if he was afraid to be killed by the Red Army, because it was a big army and he was alone, didn’t have any support, etc. Massoud couldn’t think of the word for paradise in
French, so he said, “Never mind if I get killed; I will go to the garden of God.” He translated the word paradise as “the garden of God.” This man was so sure that if you are killed you are going to paradise, he continued his combat and the Resistance! So I saw Massoud for the first time in 1981 on that French TV program. He attracted me in every way, and I said to myself, “I have to meet this man at least once in my life.” It took me five years. I had been out of Afghanistan. When the communists took power my father was killed indirectly by the Communist Party, and my family had all left, but I went back because this man impressed me more than Afghanistan itself. I was attentive to his interviews, and one day I just decided as a student to go to meet Massoud for a month in the summer, because I wanted to look in his eyes and tell him, “Bravo, congratulations!” That was my initial contact, but when I was there everything changed for me because of Massoud. For me he was a big brother, a friend, a leader, and we became very close as he tried to make me aware of the situation of my country, my religion, my culture. Because of him I became very interested in Islam, in Afghan history, and in Afghanistan’s multiethnic culture. All of this he taught me as a teacher, step by step. Then one day, he sent me back as a representative. Massoud changed my life; I became a diplomat, a politician, for him and for Afghanistan. And I think it is because of him that I love my country, because I have seen Afghanistan through his eyes. (Daoud Mir) ON A WHITE HORSE
The very first time I met Massoud, in 1984, I was with Tony Davis, who had met him before. We were walking with the mujahideen, the sun was going down, and its light was reflected on the mountains. Suddenly they all stopped. There was a commotion, and they said, “Massoud is coming. You are very, very lucky.” And along came Massoud on a white horse, like some kind of ancient knight. He stopped and said hello and was incredibly cheerful. Then he leaned down and looked straight at me and said: “Now, would you like to have a ride on the horse? Why don’t I give the horse to you and I will walk? Are you tired?” It was weird. You have to understand that Massoud was very much “the man”; everything revolved around him. I had planned for six months to make this trip with Tony, and he had been telling me that Massoud was the savior of Afghanistan, that there was no guerrilla commander who could come close to him. When he turned up in the late afternoon dusk with the light in pink rays reflecting off the mountain, it was all just too much. So I was completely taken aback and said, “No, no. I could not dream of taking your horse. I am very happy to walk.” He said, “Well, if you are sure, then I will meet you in Dasht-i-Rewat and we will have a good chat,” and he disappeared into the distance. It was a very romantic introduction, and the most memorable moment of my life. (Chris Hooke) BEYOND PHYSICAL EXISTENCE I think that each person has a mystic inside. A person is an economic being because that person spends money, is a physical being because
that person eats, thinks so he is a psychological being, and meditates so he is a metaphysical being. All these sides, and there are also moments of inspiration that help us come together with ourselves. One has to really search for that deeper level beyond physical existence. I noticed that each language has a core, certain things that are fundamental to it. In Persian literature, it is the poets who laid this foundation. Reading them, you begin to realize a sense of spirituality, a sense of selflessness for the greater good, and it helps you look at life from another perspective—not so much from the outside, not so much just about caring about oneself, but beyond that. Then, I began to better understand men like Massoud, who dedicate their lives to advancing the human cause. By the time I returned to Afghanistan, I had already thought about this person who was greater than life. The foundation was laid, so when I saw Massoud in person, I was able to connect him to the values that I had read in Hafiz and Rumi. (Haron Amin) I CANNOT EXPLAIN I didn’t direct myself to Afghanistan from Algeria, thousands of miles. I hadn’t learned about Massoud before in school. How lucky I was that God sent me from Algeria to the inside of Afghanistan, to this man! How lucky I was that when I went to Peshawar I didn’t come under the influence of Hekmatyar. I could have become part of the Arab forces which fought with Hekmatyar against Massoud. Even today, I feel that I have energy preserved from Massoud from the first time I met him in 1984. In my political life, in my business
life, in my relationships, with my enemies and friends, Massoud is a light and a resource of energy for me. There are many things inside my heart that I cannot explain to you in an academic way; he is like an energy in my life. When I first met Massoud, I went not to live with him but to give him a report about one of his commanders. When I saw him, something happened in my heart, and I decided that this was my place, that I was going to stay for the rest of my life with this man. I decided that in the first minute I saw him. I wasn’t a political or military expert or a businessman; I was twenty-four years old, and I don’t know what Massoud had that made me stay, but when I met him I felt this special situation. When I tried to find the reason, I found only one: thank God for giving me this opportunity. (Abdullah Anas) “A MEETING WITH MADAME MASSOUD” “. . . [T]he protocol demanded us to quote only the first initial of her forename, ‘S.’ But, apart from convention, the most important thing remains the ever-present problem of the security of the family, prime and permanent target of the enemy. . . . Therefore we were astonished when the object of our interest opened the door herself. S__ is a pretty young woman of twenty-nine years, with chestnut hair and green eyes, to which six pregnancies have left a slight roundness. She has a beauty spot above her lip and wears a lightly sequined, long, black dress. Her heeled shoes reveal her lacquered toenails. In the rest of the country, occupied by the Taliban, this would suffice to result in a flogging. . . .
“For a short time now, the children—a boy of eleven years and five girls of three-to-ten years—have lived with their mother at Dushanbe, for their security, but also for that of the population. Only during the holidays do they return to the valley. ‘When we are in Tajikistan, their father is calmer, knowing that the people do not take any risks because of us.’ . . . “Unlike her husband, who is from Kabul, S__ was born in the [Panjshir] valley, at Bozorak to be exact. Her father was a merchant in one of the wooden stalls in the main street, which is still today lit with paraffin lamps. She went to school with the youngsters of the village until the invasion of the country by the Soviets. . . . “The night is beginning to fall. . . . It is in this twilight that S__ begins to retell her life: In 1979, her father, Koko Tadjeddin, was one of the first to support Massoud in the resistance. She is the third of four children. Very rapidly, the family was flung from one hiding place in the mountains to another, because Tadjeddin was following the commander, whom his wife treated like a son, like a shadow. “‘We walked for hours, with nothing to eat, under the bombs which never ceased to fall. All my energies were taken up with protecting my little brothers and sisters. We went from one hovel to another, and when one could, one hung on to the tail of a donkey, in order to avoid falling asleep “en route.” It was the life of all Panjshiris, but since my father was fighting at the front, we were also the prime target of the Russians. And because of spies, they always knew exactly where we were.’ . . . “‘One day, at the very beginning of the resistance, during a bombardment, my aunt had commenced labour, her other baby with her. My uncle had left to put my cousins in a shelter. A bomb fell on my aunt. The next day, it was I who collected the remains of her body. I was nine years old.’
“Another time, S__’s mother and her children just had time to hide in a hollow gap in the mountain, normally used by animals, when a landslip blocked the entrance. Nobody thought there would be any survivors. When they did get out, they could not stop counting themselves, marvelling at their escape. Only S__ had been wounded on that day. She will always carry a scar on her forehead. Her brother Ahmad Shaed, a year younger than her, remembers the incredible courage of his sister. One night, whilst listening to the sound of ongoing combat, their pregnant mother asked the other women to take guns and follow her to fight at the side of their men. . . . [And] Ahmad Shaed says that he will never forget the vision of his sister, on horseback, galloping at full speed under the bombs to rescue and hide the children. . . . “Sometimes, Massoud would appear in this valley of Parande, with about sixty of his [m]ujahedeen. All the women and young girls would set themselves to cooking around the two great casseroles. ‘Some of them had eaten nothing for days’, explained S__. ‘They killed a sheep, thinking that these men would perhaps themselves be killed the very next day. So we put all our energies into preparing a meal.’ “Massoud? Of course, he was her idol. As a trained engineer he was full of compassion for all these children who did not even know school. So when he had the time, he gathered them around the fire to inform them a little of poetry and arithmetic. . . . He could have well stayed unmarried, like a warrior monk. But it was necessary for him to give an example. Contrary to the tradition which dictates that it is the women of a family who make the approach to ask for a marriage, Massoud went on his own to ask his trusted aide de camp for his daughter, who was seventeen years [old] at that time. This was his way to show his intimacy and friendship. A choice sometimes criticized, even today, by his close relations who feel that she was not
sufficiently educated, but always willingly defended by Massoud, a man obviously very attached to his wife. “‘It is strange that I can still recollect with precision the scenes of bombing but I have completely forgotten the details of that day,’ explains S__ without any coquetry. ‘What a shame that the happy memories fade! I only remember that my parents asked me solemnly my opinion, and that I answered formally, “It is for you to decide.” But in my heart I was in the seventh heaven of delight.’ An arranged marriage then? She replied that in the Panjshir, this had always been the custom, and further, as young men and women did not see each other, it was not possible to meet and even less to fall in love. “Three months later, without having known that delicious time of ‘engagement,’ was the marriage. For reasons of security, only four people were present. ‘My own brother was not there, but the Russians, yes. Two days later they marked us and took aim at us.’ And once again, it was flight to the mountains, the hovel, the hiding, and the fear. The only change was that she was not following her father, but her husband. He had promised to come [home] once in a fortnight, but sometimes it was up to six months, and once it even was a whole year that he was unable to leave the front. Thus he was unable to be at the birth of his children. . . . “S__ and her children never stay more than one year at the same place. Thrown from a tent to a military house in Panjshir; Kabul—or today in Tajikistan—for twenty years she has known nothing but flight and bombardment. . . . “Today, at last, for the first time in her life she lives in a real house of her own. Yesterday Commander Massoud arranged the furniture, like any husband and father of a family moving into his new home. He could not even believe it himself, and declared jokingly that it is never too late to discover a new talent. ‘In this pretty house, we
resemble a real family, but everything could be taken away at any minute. The firing of rockets, the attempts at assassination of the father of my children, the escapes, the people massacred, . . . but enough talk of me!’ S__ gets up to change her youngest daughter Nasreen into pajamas. Does she sometimes wear the Chadri, like some women one sees on the road walking between two villages? She is indignant: ‘Never!, nor does my mother. This situation is one of the direct consequences of the war against the Taliban. I do not possess one myself, and if you wish you may verify this in my closet. . . .’” (Excerpts from Marie-Françoise Colombani with Chekeba Hachemi, “A Meeting with Mme. Massoud”; Elle no. 2906, September 10, 2001; translated by M. E. Clarkson, November 2001)
6 A WARRIOR’S WILL Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly through the air? You are not better than a gnat. Conquer your heart—then you may become somebody. —Kwaja Abdullah Ansari of Herat (1005–1090) During all those years of what seemed to be a neverending war, and in their many desperate moments, it was the power of Massoud’s presence the Afghans remembered the most.
ONE BY ONE Massoud’s reputation is not because of family or a position he was born into but because of a lot of hard work. In Afghanistan, it is not possible to become as famous as he was with one victory; there is no central power who appoints individuals that everybody has to obey. It is the type of society where you have to win the trust of individuals, one by one. You have to talk with the people in this village and that village and motivate them; you know, the motivation in one is different than another. It is very complicated, but that is how he became famous. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) “Massoud, who by now had been appointed a Jamiat commander . . . returned to Panjsher in the winter of 1979. He went into battle, but nearly died before he began from a leg wound. His already tiny force had dwindled to ten men with only mulberries to eat. ‘All the people had left us,’ Massoud recalled. ‘We joined hands and promised ourselves that we would either liberate our country or die here, but that we would never leave.’” (Gary Bowersox, The Gem Hunter, Honolulu: Geovision, Inc., 2004)
LIKE A ROCK It seemed that the whole struggle hung on Massoud’s morale. The commanders would start to crumble, yet he would stand like a rock. He didn’t tremble in any way, and he told us, “Things will get easier. We will prevail.” He had this complete resolve—not giving up, standing in the face of distress, no matter how big or small—and the objective remained always clear in his mind. It may not have been clear for the rest of us, but it was clear to him: We would move forward, and eventually we would achieve a just government for the people. (Haron Amin) IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A CATASTROPHE The night we had to retreat from Kabul, I arrived in Jabul-Saraj, Massoud’s stronghold, at 1 a.m. I was surprised to see that Massoud was already there—in the middle of a tangle of a hundred military and civilian vehicles that were stuck at the two main entrances to the Panjshir Valley. He was trying to open the road, and he was alone. I told him, “This is not your job.” He was exhausted because he hadn’t slept for two nights, but still he was working to open the way to traffic, to make sure that these vehicles found a way to get in. This took until 3 a.m. At the same time, Massoud had to take care of most of the leaders from Kabul, like Rabbani and Sayyaf, and he was also trying to get more troops to the defensive lines in and around the Shamali Plains. The next morning, it became clear to me how important it had been for Massoud to open those roads. The Taliban didn’t bombard
our troops in retreat during the night, but when daylight came they would have been able to send planes to easily bomb any who were still stuck. It would have been a catastrophe. He had made an important decision at a time no one else was thinking about it. There are a hundred stories like that. (Haroun Mir) THE LAST HOPE In 1996, in a collective effort, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the Pakistan’s ISI [agency for intelligence and covert action] launched a major offensive on Massoud’s strategic stronghold. The main objectives were to assassinate Massoud and dismantle his mujahideen forces. The three were willing to use anything and do anything to accomplish their goals, and they brought troops from all over Afghanistan. We defended ourselves for two weeks. Every day we were losing strategic territories, and we were not able to recapture them. We suffered major air attacks. After two weeks of heavy losses, Massoud decided that he didn’t have any choice but to pull back his forces from certain areas north of Kabul to his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley. The Taliban knew that the Panjshir was Massoud’s last main territory, and if they were successful in capturing the Panjshir Valley and surrounding him, there would be no way out for him. The soldiers and the people of the Panjshir feared that this was their last chance to keep from being conquered by the Taliban. The Panjshir Valley is small, not equipped to have hundreds and thousands of people coming in. There were not enough houses, institutions, schools. There was chaos.
For the different ethnic groups in the north of Afghanistan, even for them Massoud was the last hope. If the Taliban captured the Panjshir, they would have immediately taken the North, so the fate of all of them depended on Commander Massoud. People were so scared that they actually considered how they were going to give up to the Taliban, and they started trying to establish some kind of connection with them for their own survival. The morale of the whole population in the Panjshir was so low. They had lost all hope, not only the population but Massoud’s troops. Even though they showed courage in front of Massoud, deep down inside they were very fearful that the Taliban would be successful. At this moment Massoud made a decision. He said, “No! We are not going to give up. We are going to fight the Taliban and the foreign forces who want to take over our country. We are the force of the Afghan population. We have to defend Afghanistan, and that is what we are going to do.” Three days after Massoud’s decision, the whole world was in shock at how he was able to recapture all the territory he had previously lost. All around Commander Massoud you could hear people say: We have recaptured that territory? That one? So positive —everything seemed so positive that they began to expect they would recapture more and more territory. Anything seemed possible! The international community and Western military analysts, none of them had believed that Commander Massoud had a chance, especially that he was going to be able to recapture it all, but he did it. In the counterattack, a thousand Taliban prisoners were captured, including some of the top leaders, and hundreds of their forces were killed. I have read many military stories, but I have never witnessed or known of such a successful attack. (Commander Bismillah Khan)
A STEEL SPRING Massoud was dangerous when forced under enemy pressure into retreating. After that, he resembled a steel spring that coiled under strong pressure and was ready to fly back with a fierce jolt into the face of his enemy. (Daoud Zulali) INTO THE CROSSFIRE During the years of fighting in Kabul, one day I was at his base and I went to see him. News came to Massoud while he was in a meeting that two groups were fighting near the French embassy. He asked one of his commanders what had happened, and the commander did not know. Massoud suddenly asked to end the meeting, and he left and jumped in a car. I was in a car behind which followed him. Near the French embassy, I saw two groups of fighters shooting at each other. Massoud stopped his car a bit away from the fight, and I saw him walk by himself towards the crossfire. He shouted, “Stop! Don’t fight, don’t fight. I am Ahmad Shah Massoud, don’t fight.” And the fighting stopped. (Hamed Elmi) NOBODY DARES TO TELL The war was sometimes here, sometimes there, so Massoud had to go around to different places. During the Resistance against the Russians,
he once went to Takhar, and on the way there was a village. When they got to this village, it was getting late and dark and they couldn’t go on. There was an old man there who had a guesthouse, which was actually a restaurant, but people could also stay there. Of course, when the old man saw who had come to his place he was willing to offer it, but others were already staying there. The old man gave a special room to Massoud and his close companions, but there wasn’t any place for the others, the mujahideen. Massoud went to his room because he was tired, and he didn’t pressure the old man. The old man kept saying, “I don’t have any place to give them.” One high-ranking individual with Massoud (and an important person today too) kept pushing him, and they got into a fight. Massoud found out, and he called the old man. “Come here. What’s going on?” The old man was crying and said, “He hit me because I didn’t give a room to the mujahideen.” In front of the old man and two other people, Massoud said, “This old man is crying; I cannot stand for this! How could you hit him? I am putting my life, my people’s lives, in danger because of the old people and the children of this country and you do that? In my name?” And then Massoud hit that very important man, hit him just the way he had hit the old man. That’s a true story that nobody dares to tell. Massoud was different. He was beyond what people say about him—an extraordinary man. (Anonymous) NO SECRETS
One day, there were reporters in the room waiting to interview Massoud, and he needed to meet with his commanders. When the commanders arrived, he asked one of them, “Did you get those guns?” The man responded yes, and Massoud asked him how many. I think the man said six Kalashnikovs. “Only six?” “Yes.” So Massoud picked up the walkie-talkie and contacted the commander who had delivered the weapons. After saying assalam aleikum to him, Massoud said suddenly into the radio, “You thief!” “What are you saying?” we heard the commander ask. He sounded scared. Massoud said, “How many guns did you deliver?” The man told him. Then, “Didn’t I tell you to give him such and such a number? Why didn’t you give him the number I told you?” The point that I am trying to make is that Massoud was not one who hid anything. In front of the cameras, reporters, and other commanders he called that commander a thief. Massoud was a man who dealt with reality, not one of those generals who defend his people at any cost. (Farid Amin) A WALK AMONG THE MINES They told me that Massoud was walking in an area where there might be land mines. I warned him, but he said, “We should not show weakness. If I show that I am afraid, then it will become difficult to convince other mujahideen to go to that area.” He believed he had a mission. His life would come to an end on the day when God wanted,
and he thought that signs of weakness from their leader would affect the population—that they would lose trust in him and become fearful. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) EIGHT GUYS I had an extraordinary hour watching Massoud yell at his commanders for making mistakes in a battle. They really looked like schoolboys. Some of them were twenty years older, but they were like ten years old with Massoud. What’s interesting is that afterwards, Reza Deghati, the photographer that traveled with me, told me what happened, but for two hours he allowed me to just watch people’s body language, to watch Massoud talk and watch the others react. Those are the kinds of things that you are blind to if you listen to words; I was kind of forced to take it in visually. It was an impressive sight, these twenty men, some in their sixties, some in their twenties, all very capable in what they do. But some of them had not followed Massoud’s battle plan, and, I think, eight guys had been wounded by land mines. Probably half of them died. I saw those guys right after they were wounded, and it was the most horrible thing. Massoud was just furious. It was his respect for people. These were just the sons of peasants, just good soldiers in a militia. I have been in wars in Africa and all over the place, and commanders don’t care about those guys, but Massoud was furious. I was very impressed with the concern that he had for these guys who were just very poor people, twenty-year-old soldiers who had no say in anything. (Sebastian Junger)
SPECIAL FAVOR I think the most important thing about Massoud was his face. It was so strong, and the way he looked at people. But this was only the façade. The real thing is that when you started talking with him, you immediately understood the power of the man—the power that was behind his eyes and behind his face—the integrity of the person. He never compromised; he never once compromised. He was very straight, and he never played dirty political games. One day, the chief of a village came to him. He said, “I need to ask a favor. My son is twenty years old and he did something wrong. He wounded someone.” He asked Massoud to get his son out of trouble, out of jail. Massoud looked at him and said, “You know, until now I thought you were a good commander and a good governor of your region, but you have made me change my opinion about you.” “Why?” he asked. “Because if you are asking me to do this for your son, it means that your son may have done something against the law, and the judge will decide about that, not me. We have a judge, we have a court— people that take care of this. If your son is guilty he will go to prison; if he is not guilty he won’t go to prison. But if you ask me to get him out of trouble, you are a corrupt person and you may do other wrong things.” Not only did Massoud dismiss the idea of releasing the man’s son, he also dismissed the man from his government post. (Reza Deghati) A HOUSE IN THE PARK
There is a diplomatic court in Kabul where most of the embassies are, and it had a park, mostly for children, but it was never really put together because of the situation. When I was in the city during 1996, one commander who worked under Massoud wanted to build a house for himself there. Massoud warned him more than once not to do it, not to put his house there, because it was a park. The man had already built a wall, and the foundation was about seventy-five centimeters high when one day I heard Massoud tell somebody, “Go tell him again not to do it.” He said, “If he doesn’t topple it, tomorrow I will.” The day after, I went to see what happened. I went with my camera, and I filmed a Massoud tank toppling that house. It was gone! (Farid Amin) MY FAMILY IS HERE There was a point where Massoud was cut off in the Panjshir and surrounded by the Taliban and doing badly. The Taliban really had him surrounded, and it was a very, very bad situation. They were confident that they had finally got him. Massoud had the freedom to fly out of Afghanistan anytime; he had helicopters to go back and forth to see his family, which was in Dushanbe. This time, he sent the helicopter to Dushanbe, got his wife and children, and brought them into Afghanistan to be with him. He wanted to make a statement to his men and the Taliban that he wasn’t even considering surrender, because once your men start to wonder if their commander is thinking about other possibilities—like maybe I can escape from this, maybe I should negotiate this—the whole thing falls apart. He brought in his family, and he said, “Your families are
stuck here. Now my family is here with me. We are not going to lose it. We are not going to surrender.” The Taliban were absolutely shocked. It made them reassess if he was as weak as they thought he was, and in the end it worked. Imagine an American military commander doing that! (Sebastian Junger) TALLER AND LOUDER The perception in the world was that the Afghans were poor, illiterate people against a superpower, and that they could not win freedom. But Commander Massoud was a master and contributed much toward convincing the people by his interviews, his actions, his organization, his character. He had the bravery to say, “This perception is wrong. We do want freedom!” This was a great challenge twenty-five years ago. Imagine the power of Leonid Brezhnev, of Soviet Russia, the propaganda all over the world. Imagine that half the world was under their influence, that Asia was partly under their influence, and Africa, and this small nation of seventeen million people who were very poor, spoke loudly and stated, “We will win the war for freedom!” Commander Massoud was taller and louder than anyone, in action and in words, in honesty and in bravery, and in his love of freedom and his hope for the future. (Masood Khalili) AMONG THE MUJAHIDEEN
We were with Massoud and the mujahideen before a battle, and there was a terrific sense of morale, a camaraderie, the sense that they were in control and everything was going to be fine. And they had absolutely no fear of the Russians. There was no sense of hatred, no sense of animosity. The times I was with the mujahideen in the Panjshir, I could see that they were in control of their emotions. They tended to be wise in that, when they took prisoners, they understood that if they treated them right others would surrender much more easily. I had the feeling that Massoud’s people were trained very carefully, and they thought about what they were going to do and about the ramifications of their actions. I was with Hezb-i-Islami, and there was none of the sense of intelligence I saw in Massoud’s group. The people of Hezb always seemed to be extreme—always shouting and screaming and bragging. The Panjsheris were more modest. (Chris Hooke) SOMETHING OF HIMSELF The calm with which he conducted himself in the most violent situations, amidst the most barbaric things that you find in wartime! And he succeeded in imparting this calm to his troops. Look at how Massoud’s troops returned from an operation—there was no dancing, joy, or applause. They accomplished the duty that they had to accomplish for the sake of what they loved. This is how Massoud succeeded, because he was able to impart something of himself to his troops. (Humayun Tandar)
Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. —William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 3.2.69-71)
7 FOR MANY YEARS TO COME When you talked to him you felt like he saw thousands of miles further than you. If I am looking at what I will do tomorrow, a week or a month from today, Massoud could see years ahead—a person spiritually above the normal. It changed my life. —Suraya Zikria What was the purpose of Massoud’s life? During more than twenty years of war, he struggled to preserve the old traditions, to save one life at a time, and to design a new world in the middle of the night with just the light of a candle. In the life of Massoud, past, present, and future seemed to be constantly intertwined.
TAKING APART A STONE One of Massoud’s great characteristics was his intelligence, and in the service of his intelligence was his goodness. This is a rare thing, and when you add courage, it is something even rarer. But his intelligence truly dominated everything. He had the art of taking apart a stone in three or four blows. When he did something he saw the advantages and the results. He told himself, “If I do this, that will happen and there will be three effects, three consequences.” That was the unique thing about the man. (Pilar-Hélène Surgers) A SENSE OF FREEDOM Everywhere near Massoud’s bases there were medical clinics. For the first time in the history of Afghanistan, in these remote places he cared about the moms. The mothers who were pregnant were always losing babies, and they could go to those clinics and learn about maternity issues. He wanted people to be educated, to know that education is the primary thing in a person’s life, because he knew its importance. It empowers you to read, and then you get access to human history. You can read from Cicero to Churchill, from Homer to Shakespeare. You can read books that give you unlimited access to knowledge. A sense of freedom—this is what Massoud was about in all aspects of life.
(Haron Amin) THOSE FIVE YEAR OLDS One of his big things was schools, building schools for both boys and girls in the Panjshir Valley, while he was fighting this offensive. At one point, I was driving down the road with some officers and Massoud in a convoy of five or six vehicles. We pulled around unexpectedly, and Massoud jumped out of the car, because we were passing a school that he wanted built. The school was halfway finished—they had put in the foundation and were starting to build the rest of it—and he jumped out, almost but not quite in the middle of the battle, and walked around the school. He was an engineer, so he saw that some things were good and some were wrong—sort of an architect, staring around. He looked at the plans and sort of tested the desks for the children, and then he asked for a notebook. Somebody brought one and he put it on the desk, and the notebook was bigger than the desk. He slapped the desk and said, “Children can not write in their notebooks when the notebooks are bigger than the desks! What are you doing?” In some ways, he was the ultimate micromanager. Here he was, almost in the middle of the battle, and he was furious about the sloppiness and shortsightedness of whoever built these desks for some five year olds because without those five year olds, if they were not educated, Afghanistan would not have a chance. He was thinking so far ahead, I was just amazed, and he had the same fervor and energy that he had about fighting the Taliban. To him, it was all the same fight, I think, that to fight a war you have to take care of every aspect of the society you are protecting.
(Sebastian Junger) MY PLAN I was lacking English, and, because of my experience in Afghanistan, I knew that there was a need for people to be trained in political administration. When I was going to France, I spoke with Massoud on the phone. He asked me what was my plan, and I told him that I was going to study for two or three years to learn English and administration so I could be helpful. He said that in the country there was plenty of fighting, but there was a need for education of young people. Massoud wanted to educate them but there were no professors in the north. He said he needed educated people, and he told me that if I needed money for my education he was willing to pay. I said no, because I know that my country is poor, but Massoud would have given money to help anyone. (Haroun Mir) WHO’S ASKING? Journalists who have met him can tell you that they would interview him and he would answer questions, but more than answering questions, he would ask questions of them about things that he was thinking about. He was constantly trying to see the totality. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
TEN THOUSAND CHILDREN Massoud loved children. He believed that they were the future of the country and the world. He loved them so much that, despite the tough financial situation, he provided schools for my children and the others in Tajikistan whose families were in the Resistance. He provided funds and established schools for ten thousand Afghan children. He always made sure that the teachers were paid on time, and he specifically indicated that the children needed TV programs, not only for education, but also for entertainment. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) TRAINING CENTER AT KHOST SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1988 “Today, after morning prayers, I went to the training center to talk with the friends. I gave a test to a class, had a discussion with the teacher, and studied grammar and religious jurisprudence. Although I was not able to perform much, I am pleased. “Very quickly, I found out that the surrounding area was different and new arrangements were apparent. The outside of the school was clean, blackboards had been installed, and bulletin boards were full of notices, charts, and new programs. Cleanliness, order, and pleasantness could be seen inside and outside of the school building and in the classes, which made me happy and satisfied. The teachers were pleased, and everybody seemed convinced that the subjects, cultural activities, and teaching programs were excellent. The office and the kitchen were also nice and clean and that made me glad.”
(Excerpt from the diary of Ahmad Shah Massoud, translated by personnel of the Afghan embassy, London, England) FAR BEYOND AFGHANISTAN I translated for the French journalists for hours and I learned a lot— about Afghanistan and about Massoud’s plans, his tactics and strategy. He explained why he organized the Shura-e-Nezar, his purpose and his objectives, and I thought, this man is different. During the night when we didn’t have any work, Massoud asked me questions about France, about the lifestyle in France, about food, politics, and I thought, he is more than just a military man. (My first impression and the impression of the journalists, from the stories about the fighting in the Panjshir Valley against the Soviet Union, had been that Massoud was a military genius.). He had a vision of politics, of economy, science. He asked me questions about things that were far beyond Afghanistan, about everything you can imagine: Paris, architecture, museums, movies, books. He asked me how many books I read per year. He asked me the names of some French writers, and he asked me if I had the chance to read the book of Henri-Christian Giraud, the French strategist, about the memoirs of de Gaulle. I was completely amazed. This man, how could he get access in these mountains? There is no electricity, no telephone, no library, no computers; there is nothing. He asked if I knew people in France who could send computers to Afghanistan for the organization of the loya jirga. (Daoud Mir)
REAL LIFE AND REAL PEOPLE I didn’t have the slightest idea that in the middle of all this Massoud would have time to read books. Then I saw that, aside from poetry, he would find an hour to read, for example, a book on management. Sometimes he read aloud. Most of the things I learned I knew as theory, but to apply them to daily life, that is something else. I had read a lot of books, but I learned from him how those things apply to real life and to people. Also something else that went with that: He would say, “Look, this will be needed in the future. Let’s say that one day we will have responsibility for a larger area. If you don’t have the knowledge of management. . . . These are things that other people have learned by making mistakes, and that knowledge is available. Why not use it?” (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) NOT A GOOD IDEA A certain Muslim group offered to be part of the coalition to fight against the Soviet-supported regime. Massoud discussed the possibility, and then he said, “We cannot be allies with these people for long because of their ideology. If we cooperate with them, they will expect us to be their friends. Since we cannot be friends for the long term, we would be using them and then turning against them, and that is not a good idea. The best way is to tell them now that it is not possible.” He did not want to give a false impression to somebody with whom he was not able to work, even to gain their help. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq)
WE CANNOT UNDO IT Once I heard Massoud say to a young man, “Even if I tell you something just once, think two or three times about how you will act on it, because if we make a mistake we cannot undo it. We should always treat people well because, if we offend them, apologies cannot make up for it.” It was good manners, it was his religion, and it was his own feeling. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) REZA (DEGHATI): “As a father, what do you tell your children about the future of Afghanistan? What do you teach them? What sort of future Afghanistan do you envision for them?” AHMAD SHAH MASSOUD: “When peace comes—and God willing, it will undoubtedly come—the first and foremost thing we should tell our children is about what kind of bloodletting, martyrdom, and sacrifice made possible such a peace, so that the future generations understand the value of freedom, of security, and of peace. Also, obviously every Afghan’s dream is that their children should live a future with peace, harmony, and freedom.” (Excerpt from interview with Commander Massoud from Into the Forbidden Zone, a video of the National Geographic Society) IT’S A MASSACRE
Even as the war continued, Massoud paid attention to everything: people, women, the environment. In the north of Afghanistan we have big rivers. Before the fighting against the Soviet Union, people used to fish in them, but afterwards they started to use grenades. Why? Because there was not enough food and people were hungry, the fighters were hungry, and they could get more fish using a grenade. Massoud ordered that this not be done, and he warned that if anybody used grenades or explosives they would be fined a thousand Afghanis and sentenced up to a month in jail. He said, “It’s not fishing, it’s a massacre.” He also ordered that the trees not be cut. We did not have gas or electricity, so some fighters cut trees for heat, but Massoud controlled that very strictly, and he had good intelligence information about it, too. (Salih Registani) “In Afghanistan, meals are traditionally eaten on the floor, sitting cross-legged around a cloth that acts like a dining table. Massoud himself spread the cloth out and served the food. Spring air flowed into the room, and the morning sunlight splashed around us. Peering out the window, I saw almond trees in full bloom and heard birds chirping. I told Massoud he had a beautiful garden. He told me, ‘The Soviets destroyed most of the trees. We planted these after they left. When peace comes, we will develop electricity and reforest the mountainsides.’” (Plunk, Wandering Peacemaker, 147)
KEEP IT FOR THE FUTURE If Massoud made a plan, it was not just for today or tomorrow but for the next twenty years. For example, in the beginning of the 1980s, we were fighting in the Panjshir and captured a lot of ammunition from the Russians. He put it all in a certain place in the mountains and said to just keep it there. Later, many times we were running out of ammunition, and we asked, “Why don’t we use that ammunition?” He said, “No, we are okay for now. We will just go and attack the Russians and take their weapons.” That ammunition is still there, twenty-three years later. He was thinking that, years later, nobody would help if somebody like the Taliban came, and we would have to have that ammunition to fight. (Sher Dil Qaderi) OLD ENOUGH I went to Farkhar, where Massoud’s education center was. The training was military and political. He was trying to make sure people knew why we were fighting. In three months of training I learned more than in four years in the university. I learned about myself as a human being. Every week Amer Saheb came to check on the course, and he would give us a talk to make our hearts confident. Once we were in the mosque, and I was sitting close to the mumbar, where the imam directs the prayers. Massoud sat right in front of me, and he started to talk. The mosque was full of muhasseleen (graduate students). He noticed that there were some who were very young, and I was one of
them. He said, “We will send back all the people who are very young. They need to be at home.” He sent the young ones home, but I did not go because I had a passion to be with Ahmad Shah and to work with him. I stayed, and later I would see Massoud, and he would smile at me because I was so young and had tried so hard to stay. He said, “I don’t want you young people to have the idea that this is just about fighting. I want you to be the leaders of the future and be able to help people.” (Eisa Khan Ayoob Ayoobi) TO EACH AND EVERY VILLAGE Once in ’98 or ’99 we were in Jabul-Saraj where we have a big property, and we were just walking and talking in the beautiful evening. Marvelous. It was close to twilight, but you could still see the sunset. He said, “Do you know, Khalili, what I really want?” “To defeat the Taliban and go to Kabul,” I responded. “No, that’s not the real thing. I want one time for you and me and two or three other friends with our boots and our jackets to go to each and every village, the remotest villages in Afghanistan, and give our wishes and message to each and every person in this country. I have to reach them.” When you see that somebody has this kind of vision in his mind, you know the future will bring no power grab. As a spiritual, political, and social leader, he wanted to reach the hearts of the people, to stay there, to work there, to live and die there. Massoud had this vision, and I believe that if an individual or a nation does not have a vision, it shall perish. Somebody who had this
kind of vision is not going for a temporary grab of power. He wants to receive power from the people, by the people, and use it for the people. That is the vision of a real leader. (Masood Khalili) TASK OF THE FUTURE One night, while telling stories in the Panjshir, Massoud suddenly said, “We believe in the victory of the mujahideen and the defeat of the Russians, but when an Islamic government is established by the mujahideen in Afghanistan, some countries which are friendly to us now will choose the path of hostility and enmity toward us whether we want it or not.” I could not keep quiet; I asked why. “Some of today’s friends will not tolerate an Islamic government in our country. It will be the task of the future leader to display the talent, potential, and creativity needed to convince them that Islam is a religion of peace and serenity,” he said. Alas, neither in Afghanistan, nor elsewhere in the Islamic world, has a leader come forward with those qualities to convince our friends, and many of them have not seemed willing to listen either. (Daoud Zulali) AFTER THE TALIBAN He was convinced that eventually Kabul and the Taliban would fall. In 2000, when I was there, he was already training a core of policemen in the Panjshir to keep order in the streets of Kabul, so that his soldiers would not be scaring people. He ordered police uniforms,
and we saw these guys being trained to deal with civilians. He did not want it to be chaos, and he knew that it would be if the Taliban pulled out. In a country that is soaked in war like Afghanistan, to think that way is just amazing. I happened to be there in a very interesting time. I did not know it then, but looking back I realize that it was. Massoud brought together Afghan leaders from all ethnic groups. They flew from London, Paris, the USA, all parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. He brought them all into the northern area where he was. He held a council of maybe fifteen or sixteen leaders, prominent Afghans from all over the world, brought there to discuss the Afghan government after the Taliban. He knew that the Afghans could not withstand any vacuum at all; they had to put in a government immediately. We watched this council. It happened in a field with a big circle of plastic chairs, and we met all of these men and interviewed them briefly. One was Hamid Karzai; I did not have any idea who he would end up being—just another well-spoken Afghan in the group. Massoud was so far ahead of everybody. He was thinking way down the road, I think, far beyond his death. He said very openly that there had been a lot of assassination attempts against him, and it was very possible that they would eventually get him. He was trying to get the country rolling so it could survive without him. (Sebastian Junger) SARICHA Massoud had the gift of vision. He was always thinking twenty or thirty years ahead. For example, I remember in 1980 he was talking about building a canal to bring water to a place called Saricha. He
wanted to make that place green. There is nothing there, just the mountains and a tree, that’s all. I remember there was a breakfast at my house and he was talking with my father about how to bring water to three villages from a source fifteen miles to the north. My father said, “Why do you want to bring water?” And Massoud said that some day it would be a place where visitors came for vacations. This is happening right now— people from all over the world go there to visit Massoud’s grave. (Sher Dil Qaderi) WINSTON AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL To me, Massoud is the perfect example of a single man who, as Winston Churchill said, “did so much for so many.” He made a difference. The Wall Street Journal called him “the Afghan who won the Cold War,” and he had the foresight to know that the threat of the Taliban was no less. (Haron Amin)
8 TO LEAD A NATION Everybody calls Massoud amir. It is a spiritual word in Islam, which means “leader,” and Amer Saheb means “respected amir.” —Abdullah Anas From the valleys to the top of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Massoud not only led the Resistance but also directed every community effort and received people from all over the world from all religions and walks of life. He was the leader of the great battle and the leader in each and every single task of his people and his land.
TWO FORCES IN HARMONY Having chosen to study architecture and loving literature, reciting poems—these are aspects of Commander Massoud that are extremely important. He did not love literature itself; what he loved was Afghanistan and its deepest expression—Afghanistan, the land of poetry and of mysticism. His choice of a field of study together with his attachment to poetry manifested this. It was modernity anchored in tradition. He is the incarnation of both forces at play, this exceptional being. This was the reason people wanted to follow him—because of his harmony with both of these forces in his culture. We faced an enemy ideology that said, “All that is old is bad and must be destroyed.” According to it, Afghan culture had to be rejected in the name of modernity and doing things a new way. Massoud was entirely opposed to this. Consciously or unconsciously, he was beating back the unbalanced modernity which was being imposed on the deep roots of Afghan society. (Humayun Tandar) NOT FOR ME TO SAY If you told Massoud anything about the West, he was very open to persuasion. However, when the British said that they could only be friendly to the Rabbani-Massoud government if they felt it would
move to some sort of democratic system, Massoud said, “I think the people should decide. It’s not for me to say what is going to happen. They should choose, and I will do what they need me to do.” I think he felt that genuinely. (Sandy Gall) LET’S TALK ABOUT MONEY We were in the middle of the war and Massoud was talking to the people about how much money we got, how much we spent, and how much we still had. I asked him, “What is the point of saying all this? Somebody may go to the enemy and tell them that we have this money. We should keep it secret and not reveal our finances.” He said, “Here is the problem: If we don’t talk about our finances, our friends will become suspicious. So even though it is not necessary to talk about it, I do it so people won’t have any doubts in their minds.” (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) “That evening we dined with some of the Dasht-i-Riwat emerald dealers, . . . three or four averagely villainous-looking men. . . . The shabbiest-looking Afghan hitched up his shirt, producing a small wad of tissue paper, which he unwrapped carefully to reveal fifteen or twenty emeralds. “The emeralds, which are found in certain rock formations in the mountains round Dasht-i-Riwat, used to be auctioned in the town. But because of the war, they are now exported to Pakistan, where dealers come from far and wide, especially Germany, to buy them.
Ten percent of all sales is paid over to Masud’s organization. He had told us himself how important the sale of emeralds was to his war effort.” (Gall, Behind Russian Lines) LAPIS AND TAXES In the upper part of the Panjshir Valley we have lapis lazuli. Before the Resistance, the people of the Panjshir dug holes into the mountains to get it. They worked for themselves and took the stones to other countries to sell them. It was very difficult, because the business was not organized. When the war started in Afghanistan, Massoud got some of the money from lapis lazuli—not the control of the production, but taxes on it. He used that money for the Resistance. Later on, he bought the lapis from the people directly and resold it. He paid more than others, and he worked for the Resistance, so the people were happier. People from the Panjshir who were working in Kabul also gave the Resistance 5 percent of their salary, even though they were not in the Resistance itself. Then, three years before he was assassinated, Massoud decided to organize the Afghans living in Europe and the United States to form a political party operating outside Afghanistan. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) OUR OWN RESOURCES
Wherever Massoud went he established new roads. Throughout the north he created a network of them. For him they were important for access to health care, and we did not want to isolate ourselves. There was always that issue of self-sufficiency; for Massoud it was immensely important. So our aim was self-sufficiency by being able to trade within the region with a long-term objective—to depend on our own resources. When it came to exchange and trade, he wanted to make sure that no country had an upper edge that would draw us into situations we didn’t want. Massoud thought that natural resources belonged to the nation, so whoever was willing to come and invest and take our stones, 10 percent should go to the state, and from that he would finance some of the cost of his soldiers. His calculation was, if we don’t provide the defense, you cannot take precious stones. Since they belong to the Afghan nation, the taxes should go to finance the war that will protect the nation. Everyone who could produce anything had to pay taxes to sustain the war. Massoud had three other sources of income. One was from the part of the Resistance organization that resided in Pakistan and from people in foreign countries—Arabs, non-Arabs, Americans, etc. . . . Another was what he collected in taxes locally, in Kabul, and in the North. The third source was his ability to convince people to let go of money they had earned. For example, people would come with mules from Pakistan. They would say, “Amer Saheb, we brought you these, and we need to collect the money for them.” And Massoud would say, “Did you do it for me, or did you do it for God?” And they would say, “We did it for God.” So he would say, “Then let it be for the grace of God, because we need the money.”
His magic was in the way that he was able to convince people. They would walk away happy, knowing they were doing something for the country and for God and not asking anything in return. If they were still not happy, then Massoud would give them the money, but he was able to convince most people that they had to do something beyond themselves. He had enormous powers of persuasion. (Haron Amin) THE LOSS YOU CANNOT RECOVER Massoud said about the Resistance, “Without the support of the people you cannot do anything.” Support of people can exist because the people are against the occupation, but you cannot keep those emotions unless you do something for people so they can survive and move forward—hope that they can have, hope for the future. For that, in every instance, Massoud had a civilian structure to which people would refer for their work and activities. He was saying, “The minute you lose hope, that is the loss you cannot recover. We should maintain the hope of the people. Then there will always be ways to get out of the other problems.” (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) THE SOCIAL FUND The mujahideen and Massoud used to have a small budget, and they gave us some charity—food and clothes or money. They called it baitulmaal, a social fund. But when they bought food or anything for Massoud or his family, he would pay that money back. He never used
money from the government or from anybody to buy anything for himself. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) EUGEN SORG: “In the areas you control, opium is grown. . . . We saw the fields in the villages.” MASSOUD: “There are some cultures in Badakhshan province. Ismailites are living there, an Islamic cult whose followers have been addicted for centuries. They are planting drugs for their own use. But if you go to Chay Ab, to the local jail, there you will find Ghollam Salim, a drug tycoon. In one raid we seized half a ton of opium on his estate. Now he is in jail for the third year despite all his money and influence.” (Farzana Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography,” www.afgha.com, August 31, 2006) WITHIN ISLAMIC TRADITIONS Massoud was very much part of that revolutionary generation among educated young Afghans of the ’60s and early ’70s, but he made connections with the deepest wellsprings of Islamic thought. He came to his conclusions in favor of parliamentary government, secular rule, equality in professional and educational opportunities for women and men, and alliance with Western democracies, entirely from within his Islamic traditions. This makes him absolutely unique among all of the twentieth century’s Islamic figures.
A decisive turning point for Massoud came in 1975, when he realized that Islamism was being used as a political tool by Pakistan. He was a dedicated Muslim. To him religion was a profound mystical commitment, not a political tool. (Professor Michael Barry) BUILDING BRIDGES Massoud was very talented in his sense of long term—thinking about what to do today, what should be done throughout the year, and that this year’s actions are part of what needs to be done in the next five years. So bit by bit we moved towards the goals. There was a health committee in the Panjshir, and there was a reconstruction committee! What was reconstruction at that time? Building a small bridge so the locals could walk one hour, instead of three hours to the big bridge. There were education, cultural, and military, and perhaps one or two other committees. As he liberated more areas, the committees spread their work into them. Then he had representatives for each committee in Peshawar. He had the representatives get in touch with non-government organizations and international organizations which were helping in their particular fields. In each village there was a shura [council]. Somebody with religious significance—an elder, a commander, or somebody educated —would be in charge of the shura, and for everything that affected the life of that village, those people had to be consulted. Moving up the chain of command to the district and the councils, it wasn’t just military thinking and military organization. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
“Masud . . . explained how his guerilla movement was based around twenty qarargahs [military posts] in the Panjsher. Each qarargah had a group of about thirty mujahideen for self-defence . . . and another mobile group of thirty—a strike force that could operate anywhere inside or outside the Panjsher. In turn, each qarargah was divided into political, military, economic, law and health sections, and each had a council of ten elected villagers to advise the Commander.” (Gall, Behind Russian Lines, 155) BETTER THAN THE ENEMY Massoud believed that war was only necessary when there was injustice. Ultimately human beings have to be mobilized and educated with the right values: taking care of rebuilding, taking care of the villages, administration of the right kind, collecting taxes, currency control. He did all those things so that people could live comfortably because justice had been provided. Every society is about the rule of law. If you can provide that better than the enemy, then you have succeeded because you have given your people an incentive, you win their hearts. When you rule with law and justice, you don’t have the law of the jungle in which the mighty dominate affairs. This is what Massoud was about. (Haron Amin) ORDINARY PEOPLE
His leadership was not a material thing. He started in an innocent way at the university and made a moral commitment to defend his country and to pave the way to a democratic government. He trusted the people; he believed that when they get together they can come up with good solutions. Once in the early stages, he said, “Maybe one day a bomb will come and kill us, so let’s make this war against the invader a thing that will endure, and the best way to do that is to get ordinary people involved. If we ask these people to send their representatives, then if we get killed, others will be involved to take our places—new, young people.” (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) PEOPLE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND Sometimes, Massoud made decisions that, even now, people cannot understand. For example, on a couple of occasions he did not launch military operations against Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with all his forces. The night that the Taliban came close to Kabul from Kandahar, they captured Hekmatyar’s control area, and Hekmatyar’s forces were escaping to Jalalabad in the south. We intercepted his troops, and our commander in the Baghram area ordered two aircraft to bomb them. Massoud was furious. He did not want to bomb these soldiers because, although politically and militarily it was to his advantage to defeat Hekmatyar, he wanted to save Afghanistan as a country, and he was sure that if he did such a thing he would divide south and north. Also, it is forbidden in Islam to fight troops that are only retreating. Any other leader would have destroyed Hekmatyar and
would have only the Taliban left to fight against. Only a few people know this. (Haroun Mir) TWO POLITICIANS For many politicians, politics is first and the people come behind it. Politics dictates that they kill people and destroy things, and they do it. The objective is power. Power is their god, and they will use any means to obtain it. There are very few exceptions, like Massoud, where the people were in front and politics came behind. Massoud was serving humanity, for peace, for dignity, not to be the leader or the president of this country. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) NOT MY JOB The big countries had some plans for Afghanistan because we beat the Russians, but Massoud told all of them, the United States, the British, the Europeans, “Contact our foreign ministry; that’s not my job. Because we are now an independent country, your foreign minister has to speak with ours. I have no time to speak with you secretly.” Because the United States helped during the war against the Russians, after that they wanted something from Afghanistan, but Mr. Massoud did not accept it because he was different. In my opinion, if he had, he would not have died, but they would have had anything they wanted in Afghanistan.
(Ahmad Jamshid) TAKING POWER The higher you go, if you are an honest man, the better you serve your country, serve humanity. The prophets were the highest. They did not accept worldly power, because they were higher than that and could serve people through spiritual means, but Commander Massoud was not the kind of person to avoid taking power. He was in favor of it— at the right time, with the right means, and for the right reasons. He was just not the kind of person that had the thirst for power. (Masood Khalili) A GOVERNMENT DIVIDED Massoud did not like the idea of a federal government divided among different ethnic groups. He thought there should be one government that treated all people fairly. In this he was different than Dostum, the Hazaras, and some others. It was his belief that if a government were divided among the ethnic groups, foreign influences would cause tension and discord among those groups. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) THE TRADITIONAL WAY Massoud was in contact with Taliban leaders, and he insisted that ultimately any settlement must include those of them that were
moderate. Although he fought the Taliban with tenacity and skill, he really felt that war was not the solution, that a lasting solution would have to come after the people sat and talked in the traditional way, over green tea. (Edward Girardet) “At the insistence of delegates who had the opportunity to meet Massoud, and who were convinced by his opinion and by the proof of foreign interference in Afghanistan, Massoud was invited by the European Parliament in April, 2001, to come to Paris to draw attention to his fight in Afghanistan. For his longstanding efforts, especially for women’s rights, the president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine, called Massoud the ‘pole of freedom.’” (Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography”) MEETING THE EUROPEANS Wali Massoud and I encouraged Massoud to go to Paris. We felt that it was necessary. He said that he would come, and we were in Paris making preparations. It was the first trip, and it was hard work. For two or three days we slept only two or three hours because of it. Afghans from different parts of the world came. There were meetings with the Afghans, meetings with the journalists, the doctors who went to the Panjshir during the years of the Russians . . . and finally Massoud arrived, and he was there for a few days and the program went extremely well. We had wondered how he might do,
considering that it was his first meeting with the Western leaders. He did perfectly, as if he had done it a hundred times. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) “He [Massoud] worked 18 hours a day, five days straight, meeting with journalists, with top-level ministers, with Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Médécins sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders] and former head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, and with the entire European Parliament. His message was simple: Force Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban regime and the war will end within the year. In addition, he asked for humanitarian help with the refugees and military help for the Northern Alliance, but that was secondary. Mainly, he warned that if Pakistan was not ostracized for its support of the Taliban, Afghanistan would continue to be a haven for terrorism and extremism. Ultimately, he said, the West would pay a terrible price. “‘If I could say one thing to President Bush,’ Massoud said at a press conference, ‘it would be that if he doesn’t take care of what is happening in Afghanistan the problem will not only hurt the Afghan people but the American people as well.’”* (Sebastian Junger, “Massoud’s Last Conquest,” Vanity Fair no. 498, 107–9) “For three days he recounted to his staff his trip and the result of his interviews. He was enthusiastic about his conversations with the officials and the Afghans of the Diaspora. ‘I transmitted my message
and they all understood it,’ he kept saying. He had the euphoric sensation of having accomplished his duty. More than ever he aimed for the solidarity of the whole country, and less than ever did he want to hear about Uzbeks, Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras.” (Sediqa Massoud, quoted in Chekeba Hachemi and MarieFrançoise Colombani, Pour l’Amour de Massoud [Paris: XO Editions, 2005], 226; translated from French by Michele Mattei, with the assistance of Arlette Croels Decker) THREE DIMENSIONS OF UNITY Massoud wanted to renovate the basic structure of the society, and in this way he was a great reformer. The other fronts of the Resistance espoused completely the traditional societal structure, but Massoud— this was the force of his personality—wanted to change that structure in his own organization. He did not leave his organization just at the village, district, ethnic, clan, or tribal level. From the beginning, he created unity among three dimensions: in the village, on the road, and at the group level. There had been no tradition in Afghanistan for such unity, and it is only by this innovation that Massoud succeeded in doing what he wanted to do. He did all this without clashing with society, which accepted his innovations because his modernity respected its culture and its traditions. (Humayun Tandar)
9 THE FINER THINGS This man is at war, and he always has a longing, ‘Oh God, give me the time, far from the sounds of the guns, far from the sounds of the bombs, far from the smell of gun powder, in the deepest valley, so I can sit with a friend and recite poetry.’ I wrote that, and I wrote that this man will not have the time to go to a deeper valley to be with a friend, listening and reciting poetry, because this is a war, a cruel war of survival against a superpower. And he is the Commander. —Masood Khalili In the story of Massoud and the Afghans, I have found courage, love, and honor, and what surprised me the most . . . subtlety.
THE DANCING BIRDS Massoud enjoyed walking around his garden; he loved flowers. There is a reason why he moved his headquarters to Takhar. Right after the cease-fire with Russia, we went to the north, where Massoud created an organization called Shura-e-Nezar with commanders from all over Afghanistan. On the trip, we were walking in the mountains of Takhar, and we saw red, white, and yellow tulips like a carpet in the valley. He said, “What a beautiful place,” and that was it. He moved his headquarters there. A few hours’ walk away, there is a place in the desert with a well and a couple of trees—another beautiful place. This is where I saw the dancing birds. The first time we crossed that desert was around four o’clock in the morning. The morning light was just coming out, and we saw thousands of birds flying high in the sky and singing. We were forty or forty-five people and Massoud, and we sat there and listened until the sun was up. We just sat quietly; nobody said a word. When the sun came out, the birds disappeared and Massoud said, “Look what things God created to give us pleasure. There is nothing in this desert, and yet these birds are dancing and singing so beautifully.” I will never forget that. (Sher Dil Qaderi) PRODUCT OF AFGHANISTAN
Massoud was very much an amazing product of Afghanistan, and Afghan culture is a very elegant culture. I think a lot of Westerners might find that difficult to understand, because they associate Afghanistan with poverty and fighting and weapons. But the Afghan culture is a very refined culture. (Anthony Davis) SHOWERED BY CHOCOLATES Massoud liked the poetry of my father very much. Once he asked me if I remembered a certain poem. It was a very simple poem, between classic and modern. It was something like this: Come, come that you and I will go to the field, Come that you and I will go close to the flowers. Come that you and I will sit there And I will bring you beautiful flowers, Purple, yellow, black, white, And I will make you a necklace. Let the rain come gentle, slowly, Over the flowers, over the trees, Over you, over your hand, and over your beautiful clothes, And I will watch your hair; I will watch you. I want only nature, no one else, I want nature to dominate, joy to dominate, laughter to dominate Between you and me.
It was something like that. It was long, and he was helping me with the words. He told me that he could not memorize poetry, but he could remember it when I was reading it. He would follow the rhythm of the poems, and would go up and up and say, “Ooh!” like a little boy who is showered by chocolates and is trying to get this one and that one— thinking, how many can I put in my pocket. I felt that he was so innocent; he had this beautiful way, yet he was at war. (Masood Khalili) A VITAL NEED My father spent most of our money on the best books: Saadi, Hafiz, Bedil, Attar, Rumi. He was very interested in books, and all our gifts were books. Massoud was busy with his studies in the university, but even when he was busy he always had books. My father told us, “I have a library, and you have to use it.” All the children did. One was interested in Saadi, the other in Hafiz, another in Bedil. The whole family read a lot. At the beginning of the jihad, Massoud was always in the mountains. When he came back, we, his sisters, wanted to wash his clothes. He had a backpack—every mujahid had a backpack in the Panjshir—and when we took his clothes to wash them, he had always three or four books in the backpack. He was very busy with the war, but he found time to read. It was like when you need to eat, reading was for him an important need—essential, vital. Once, early in the war, the mujahideen had to go up into the mountains. We had to go with the whole family. Somebody from France gave us a place to stay, and Massoud made one room only for
books, like a library. He had, like, six boxes of books at this time. He had to take them all. (Maryam Massoud) DEEP IN HIS SOUL He almost always had a poetry book in his pocket. Sometimes, when people asked him questions or he had something to say, even about the war and political issues, instead of using normal words he used poetry. I think he had poetry deep in his soul. (Reza Deghati) WAR AND CULTURE I was in charge of culture and the media for Tajikistan. During the Resistance in 1996, Massoud provided a budget and salaries to have an Afghani TV station in Tajikistan, and they broadcast culture— literature, poetry, and music programs. Even though the situation was so tough inside Afghanistan, Massoud emphasized those things. They had a newspaper which was published weekly, a radio, and some schools were established in Tajikistan so the children could work in the framework of the Farsi language and culture. And there were also programs of music for the people of Tajikistan. I was very grateful to Massoud. He was in such a bad situation financially and from the “civil war”—I shouldn’t call it a civil war because it kind of wasn’t—but Massoud was under a lot of pressure, and he still put this emphasis on culture and music in the Farsi language. The TV technicians, anchormen, and staff have come back
to Kabul now, but they are thankful to Massoud that he kept them going by providing the facilities to broadcast. For Massoud to support our culture at the same time he was fighting the Taliban and AlQaeda, that meant a lot. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) THE ART OF LEADERSHIP When we were at school, my brother was a very good artist. I remember when we were in sixth grade, the director of our school came and said that an Iranian school asked if we could send symbols for their school. They chose his painting of a girl who carried water from the spring to her house. Most successful leaders are artists, I think. If you don’t know the art of how to lead your people, you will never succeed. You cannot learn these things in school or even in the university. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) WHOLE SOUL OF THE MAN Once Massoud and I were talking about Rumi and Hafiz and the most important differences between them. I remember he said that each showed different parts of the human being—that Rumi was more our passionate side, while Hafiz was more epic and showed the struggle. He said that in life we have both: the passionate man and the epic man like a soldier, who must be ready to fight. This was the Massoud I really tried to understand—the first man, the man of culture. It has taken me seventeen years, from 1985 to
now, being with Massoud and talking with him, meeting him in different moments, to realize that this was the whole soul of the man: the poet. (Reza Deghati) “In 1993, Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation (Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta’wani Mohammad-e Ghazali). He called upon all scientists, scholars, authors, and artists, without regard to their ideologies, to participate in this foundation. Its commission for women made it possible for female Afghan artists, especially widows, to make a living through arts and crafts. The department of family consultation was a free advisory board, which was accessible seven days a week for the indigent. The foundation’s department for distribution of auxiliary goods was the first partner of the Red Cross. “Twice a week for half a day, the physicians of the foundation treated free of charge all patients who could not afford to pay. These patients also got the necessary medicines for a very small cost, sometimes free, from associated pharmacies. After Matbo’a ye Dawlatti (the state publishing house) was burned down by Hezb-e Islami, all newspapers, magazines, and weekly papers were printed by the Ghazali Foundation printing house. Massoud wanted to ensure freedom of press despite the difficult conditions. During the practice of their honorary activities for the foundation, two of its members were hit by Hezb-e Islami rockets and killed. “Although Massoud was responsible for the financing of the foundation, he did not interfere in its work. “. . . Establishing this foundation was one of Massoud’s most important achievements in the cultural field. He wanted cultural
institutions to create a common ground for mutual understanding, far from political ideologies.” (Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography”) WHEN THE COMMANDERS WOULDN’T LEAVE The commanders often visited Massoud to ask for ammunition, weapons, shoes, and food. Sometimes, Massoud did not have any of these things to give them, and sometimes when he said, “I don’t have it,” the commanders did not go home. They would be thinking, I cannot go without any ammunition or food, and it would be ten or eleven o’clock at night. At those times, Massoud would take a book from his bookstand and read to the commanders, and say, “I like this poem; I like this book.” They would not be happy, because they wanted something material and because they needed all those things. They were not interested at the moment in hearing poems, and in thirty or forty minutes, when they saw that Massoud was not going to give them anything, they would go home. For me it was very interesting, very funny. In my mind, if the leader says I don’t have anything for you, you would just go home, but instead Massoud would say, “Have some more tea,” and he would read to them. (Hiromi Nagakura)
THE LAST WEEK He spent the last week of his life with intellectuals and scholars. He invited different Afghan personalities from inside and outside the country to talk about creating a foundation that could gather together all Afghan writers, poets, scholars within the country and from the Afghan Diaspora outside the country. He was working toward revitalizing Afghan cultural heritage in opposition to all the destruction done by the Taliban. (Yunnus Qanooni) LIKE TWO POETS TALKING Massoud and I were very close friends, brothers in arms, during the war against the Soviets, fighting to liberate our homeland. Among other reasons, our friendship was due to the fact that I am a poet and Massoud loved poetry, especially the great Persian classics. In the evenings, while we were traveling between villages, or between Kabul and Jabul-Saraj, we talked about all kinds of things: mysticism, philosophy, and we analyzed poetry. In that realm we were very close, like two poets talking to each other. Sometimes, he would ask me to explain a poem of Hafiz or Rumi, and I would give him my interpretation of the meaning behind the words. We got into some very hot discussions. “It means this or that,” I would say. “No! I disagree.” “Yes, well that’s the way I see it.” “But you could be mistaken!” etc., etc. We could argue about a single word!
(Abdul Latif Pedram) TO REALLY KNOW PERSIAN I was probably one of the only Westerners to be deeply grounded in Islamic philosophy and mysticism and in the Islamic languages. This meant that in my conversations with Massoud he was at first surprised, then delighted, to see that I read the same Persian poets that he read. When we spoke early on, he asked me, “Do you really know Persian?” I said, “What do you mean—the ability to quote the poets?” He said, “Of course. That’s what knowing Persian really means.” (Professor Michael Barry) TWO WORLDS TOGETHER My brother Massoud loved Hafiz. Of course, he loved poetry of all kinds, but he especially loved Hafiz. The way Hafiz put his words together was extremely sweet, extremely meaningful, and, really, there is something amazing about him. Hafiz is not like some other Sufis who think about the other world, but not this one. He explains beautifully about what a man should do in this world, what a man should do in the other world, and how the two worlds can exist together. So my brother read poems from Hafiz, not only to read and listen, but to think about the deeper meaning. That was just the way he was. (Ahmad Wali Massoud)
WITH A CUP OF TEA Midnight or noon, whenever there was time for a cup of tea, he would take a book of Hafiz, and he would either recite from it or ask me to do it. Then we would talk about it, mainly the things which apply to human life today. To an outsider, to somebody who didn’t see and talk with him, this wouldn’t make any sense because they had a different perception; they thought he was someone else. After his assassination, when I went to the room where he used to sleep, I found the book of Hafiz which he read on his last evening. I gave it, along with a few other belongings, to his family. It had been sent to him from Iran, and he liked it more than any other. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) “Poetry was very important for my husband, and he awoke my taste for it early in our marriage. I remember one poem in particular that spoke of people who understand you without any need for words: How sweet to have someone by my side who understands the words of my heart without the need to move my lips. “He often recited that poem to me, for I adored guessing his thoughts and anticipating his desires. “I particularly liked a poem by Simin Bahbahani that spoke of waiting: Star of my heart, come quickly for the night begins to fall,
“She ends the poem saying: The heart of Simin is broken. Come back. “One night, I learned it by heart. When he arrived at four in the morning and saw that the table was set, he was very sad, for he had forgotten we were supposed to eat together and had already had dinner. But he kindly said to me, ‘I am so lucky; I am hungry and I did not have a chance to eat.’ After our ablutions and prayers, I recited the poem for him ending it with ‘Pari’s heart is broken. Come back.’ [Pari is short for Parigul, the nickname of Sediqa Massoud.] He was so happy! With a beautiful smile he said, ‘If you recite such lovely poems each time I am late, I will always make you wait for me.’ “My whole life is summed up in these words of Simin Bahbahani. ‘Night is drawing to its end, the first rays of sun are appearing and I am ever waiting for you.’” (Sediqa Massoud, quoted in Hachemi and Colombani, Pour l’Amour de Massoud)
10 A KIND HEART Holy God of absolute power and wisdom, I have this request of Your infinite grace: Whoever’s been the recipient of Your kindness, May his dignity be life-long. Don’t take it away. —Khalilullah Khalili To Massoud, every single being had a place under the stars and a dignity in the eyes of God. It seems to me that this feeling permeated every action of his life.
WHAT ABOUT THE LAMBS? We were coming into the Panjshir Valley. Massoud saw lambs being herded by nomads called kochis, in the opposite direction from us. The kochis usually travel in the summer to higher ground, and in the winter they go down to warmer places. Now they were coming down from the higher part of the valley. Commander Massoud had the driver stop the car, and he asked the sheepherder, “Why are you driving back?” The man said that he didn’t have the necessary pass. (For security reasons, some commanders handed out passes stating, I know this man and he does not have any connection with the enemy.) The sheepherder had been told by a soldier to go back and get the forgotten pass, so he had begun herding all his lambs back. The Commander went past the retreating lambs, but after a couple of minutes, he said, “This man has made the mistake of forgetting his letter, but what about the lambs? They are getting very tired, being driven in the middle of the night.” Massoud drove back and told the sheepherder that he should keep the flock where it was and send someone else to get the letter, because it was not fair to the animals to be driven so far. (Sher Dil Qaderi) NO PROBLEM
We always slept in the same room; times were difficult, and we didn’t have separate rooms. It was around one or two in the morning when I finished my turn as a guard and went back to the room. One of our friends was snoring, and I saw Massoud awake, lying on his back and holding his hat over his ears with both hands. I thought he must not want to wake up this friend and tell him, I can’t sleep, go to other room, so I went to wake him up myself. Massoud asked, “Is it his turn?” I said, “No, but he is snoring.” Then I lied; I said that the man had asked me to wake him up in case he snored because he didn’t want to bother his friends. But Massoud said, “No, don’t touch him, don’t bother him. It’s no problem.” Our friend probably snored until morning. (Salih Registani) FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS Massoud told me that when the Panjshir Valley was under communist occupation, he went to organize villages in the liberated areas. Everybody said, “Where is your ammunition? Where will you get the money? How will you feed your fighters?” And he didn’t have any clear answers. His only plan was to act, then capture materials from the enemy. Finally, one man intervened and said, “In this village Massoud is my guest. I will take responsibility for everything that is needed.” Massoud said he was with the family for twenty days, and the family fed all of his fighters who came in from the front. Then the man told him they were out of livestock, that they had to use the two cows left for milk to survive. About that time, some people from Kabul sent money and the situation changed.
That was twenty-five years ago, and until the day that man passed away a few years back, he kept his respect for Massoud, and the Commander always helped him whenever he could. He stayed aware of the family’s circumstances, even when they moved to Pakistan a few years after this story. Every year he sent a letter to them, and if somebody was traveling there, Massoud asked about them. After the man passed away, he kept in contact with his grown sons. To Massoud, the fate of one family was important. Imagine through all those years—the Russian occupation, the internal fighting, and the Taliban—and still he did not lose sight of one family that had helped him and the Resistance movement when they needed it. This sort of gratitude was with him all the time. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) HOW NOT TO CLEAR MINES In the northern areas, as a result of the fighting, there were many mines. People suggested that we send herds of sheep into the areas where the mines were so we could clear them that way. Massoud said, “Why should we make those animals suffer? What did they do to us? We have to clear the mines ourselves, and we have the ways and people to do the job.” (Sher Dil Qaderi) TEARS One night, in answer to someone’s question, Massoud told us, “There were only two instances in the war when I cried. I will never forget
them. “When Chernenko was president of the Soviet Union, there were fierce air and land assaults by the Red Army and infantry, and cruel armored onslaughts backed by field tanks. In order to avoid genocide, we ordered the evacuation of the Panjshir Valley. The refugees, particularly those in Kabul, were troubled by financial difficulties, unemployment, and pressure from a regime which called them ‘Panjsheri refugees.’ After four or five months Russian attacks declined, and representatives of the refugees asked that they be allowed to return. We said yes. “Less than a month later, our intelligence informed us of another vast Russian attack being planned on Panjshir. Thousands of Russian soldiers, tens of jets and gunship helicopters, artillery, field tanks, and armored vehicles were to participate. The attack would start in a week or ten days. I had no remedy but to order the area to be re-evacuated. Refugees were still returning to their homes, and some had just arrived, including children, women, the elderly, and the sick. Tolerating the news to re-evacuate was such a hard thing for them. Not able to walk and not having any money, many just sat beside the road, put their heads on their knees, and cried. Seeing this filled my eyes, too, with tears, and I prayed to God to bestow his mercy and grace upon them. “The second time was after the cease-fire. The Russians attacked the Panjshir Valley with all their might and conquered almost all the surrounding areas. There were constant killing, unending bombardments, and burning houses and trees full of fruit. We took refuge in the mountains, and from the high peaks as far as my eyes could see, flames and smoke were everywhere in Panjshir. It was such a horrible and sad scene, and I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. Except for God Almighty, there was no one to listen to my cry.”
(Daoud Zulali) TO SURVIVE AGAINST A SUPERPOWER In 1989, Massoud was drafting an army and a core group called the Commando Group. I was with him—on several occasions—in the room when he was accepting volunteers. The conditions were that they should not be the only son, not the only breadwinner, not married, to have the approval of the parents, to be at least eighteen years of age, etc. He also made sure that all volunteers went back to their villages after the battles, or during the break, to continue farming, as that was the only way to survive against a superpower. (Haron Amin) FOREVER WITH ME When Massoud came to Paris he brought a beautiful carpet—a big, beautiful carpet. He took it to Léïla, the wife of Mehraboudin Masstan. She asked him, “Is this carpet for me, for the embassy, or for my husband?” “Why do you ask?” “Because if it’s for the embassy it stays in this house, if it’s for my husband it goes in his office, and if it’s for me it stays forever with me.” He said, “Of course, it’s for you.” (Pilar-Hélène Surgers)
THE DUCK FROM ANDARAB In 1983, I was with Massoud in the Panjshir, and I told him, “Tomorrow I want to rest and celebrate because it is my son’s birthday.” He was going to be two years old. The next day I was drinking tea with friends when Massoud entered the house and said, “Come with me.” We went to another house, and there was a dinner laid out with lots of food. He said, “This is for your son’s birthday. Please, eat. And there is a duck from Andarab, the valley where I met you eight years ago, which I asked to be brought especially for you.” I was not a journalist or a political analyst, I was just a friend. And this was during the war. (Jean-José Puig) “Dear Brothers Engineer Eshaq and Ahmad Zia, “Assalam alaikum. “Fourteen brothers wounded by enemy land mines are being sent to you. To every sensible Muslim, these wounded mujahideen must be the dearest people on the face of the earth. They have sacrificed everything they had in the cause of God and are the best examples of true human beings of their time. I ask you to pay close attention to their needs, physical and psychological, so that their battered hearts can see glimpses of pleasure. . . . “Most of them have lost their legs in attacks on enemy posts. Efforts should be made to fit them with artificial limbs outside of Pakistan. If Peshawar (Jami’at headquarters) is not ready to pay for their limbs and travel expenses, I am ready to provide the money, no matter how difficult it may be for us. Try your best and let me know.”
(From a letter written by Ahmad Shah Massoud, October 2, 1982; translated by Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) THE BULL In my village, the Russians dropped bombs designed to look like toys, and when the children grabbed them they exploded. Several of those bombs were near a big bull when they exploded, and as we passed by we could see that the bull was suffering. Massoud stopped, asked us to clear the way, and put him out of his misery. He risked his life to reach that animal so that he would not suffer any more. (Sher Dil Qaderi) IT’S NOT SO HARD A British man came to visit Massoud. When he woke up in the morning, he felt very heavy and realized he had four or five blankets over him. He looked around and saw a sleeping man who was holding himself tightly and had no covers, and he realized it was Massoud. Later, somebody asked Massoud why he had given all the covers to the British man, and Massoud answered, “I have gotten used to these circumstances, so it’s not so hard. His situation, on the other hand, is different. He is accustomed to a better life, and the cold affects him more.” (Hamid Kandahari)
WHAT UPSETS YOU? During the war and the bombardments, killings, destruction, refugees, once I asked Massoud, “What upsets you more than anything else?” And he told me the plight of the people, the refugees. “When I see those poor people with their belongings—they leave their houses to go into the mountains. They have to stay days inside the caves, and with very little—the children, women, old, young. That is one thing I cannot tolerate.” He was a leader in warfare, but he had a very soft heart. Another thing that made him really angry was when a woman was raped. And if somebody told him that a commander had been married three times and was fifty years old and now he was marrying a twenty-year-old girl, he felt terrible. He had a very soft spot for the situation of women and girls. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) GREEN TEA WITH CARDAMOM After the Russians were defeated, the mujahideen took power. Massoud was the minister of defense, but he spent a lot of time in Jabul-Saraj in the north, with his family. He told them, “I don’t like titles. I want to work for my people, for my land, that’s all.” When he was in Jabul-Saraj, sometimes women who were in committees in Kabul went to see him. When they wanted to do something in Kabul, they could do it, they had all the power to do it, but they told each other, “No, we want to get advice from Massoud. If he says yes, we will do it, if he says no, then we won’t.” They went to Massoud because they expected more from him, and he was very
kind with them. He would ask, “What is your problem? What can I do for you?” He was always ready to help them and never let them go without eating something. He had them for lunch or dinner, and afterwards, he offered them green tea with cardamom. (Maryam Massoud) HIS PERSONAL FILE Once, two elderly people came to Massoud. They said that they had run out of food and they wanted his permission to go to Nuristan, north of Panjshir. It takes only two days to get there, but it is a very cold area, especially in the winter, and the road is very hard. Massoud told them, “Look, when you leave here it will be difficult. You have children with you, you have women with you, you don’t have enough horses to carry your belongings, and the winter will get cold.” Without imposing his will on them, he explained to the point that they were convinced that it was not a good idea. Then Massoud asked the military commander in the village to help the family, giving them part of the rations for the soldiers, and the family stayed in the Panjshir. After that, Commander Massoud left for the north, but throughout that winter he made sure, through the military commander of the area, that the man received food enough to live, to survive with his family. The next year when he came, he met with those people and told them that instead of Nuristan, they could go to Khost, a district in the north where people are friendly and help displaced families, and also that they could earn a living there. The minute he learned about someone’s situation, it became part of his personal file. The fate of every human being was important to him, even though at the same time he had the responsibility of the
whole country. That’s the point. If someone is a humanitarian worker, of course he would care for human beings. It’s different when you are leading a war and you have responsibility for the whole country, but you still have that amount of caring. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) KEEN ON SAFETY Three or four months after the beginning of the Russian invasion, I was in Kabul, and I went to see Massoud by car in the Panjshir. The city was under the control of the communist government, and I had a letter from the mujahideen in the north to deliver to him. It was written on toilet paper because of the danger of communist searches on the way. They put the toilet paper inside my jacket, and if you looked you couldn’t see it. When we got there we tore off the jacket and gave Massoud the letter. Massoud wrote a response, and I wanted to take it to Kabul and from there to the north. He said, “No, it’s not safe. If they catch you with this, your life will be in danger. It’s better if it is delivered to Kabul by somebody else, and you pick it up there,” and it was done that way. At that time I hadn’t even joined the mujahideen, but Massoud still cared. (Mohammad Shuaib) A FABULOUS MEAL One day somebody was visiting, and we were sitting with them. I asked that some special food be made, and I paid with my own U.S.
dollars for it. It was going to be a fabulous meal for us, because we don’t have good food in the mountains of Afghanistan. The food was almost ready when Massoud got a call about some urgent matter. He would have preferred to stay and eat his food, but he said, “No. I must go; it is about people.” So he left. (Haron Amin) WHAT WAS IMPORTANT One day, somebody got hurt badly. It was impossible to treat him in the valley, so Massoud asked the commanders to prepare a horse to take him out. Then he went and watched, to check how things were prepared on the horse so it would be more comfortable for the injured person. He was there for two hours, just to get ready to send somebody to Pakistan. He stood there until everything was to his complete satisfaction, because he knew that other people might not care as much. He had so many other things to do, but he spent all that time to make sure that the injured person would be a little bit more comfortable. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) STOP THE CAR He respected the older men, and many came to see him when they had problems in their villages. Massoud also took charge of village administration when there was no government post there. Many commanders did not pay enough attention to that kind of thing in their villages. They “respected the command,” but not from their
hearts, but Massoud took the time to talk with everybody who needed him. Massoud was using two jeeps that he had captured from the Russians, and because they were open cars people knew that he was coming. When they had a problem, they would try to stop the jeep. Usually the commanders would say to the drivers, “Never mind; go ahead.” But sometimes Massoud stopped the car, and if the problem was urgent, he would step out and tell the driver to take the person where he needed to go and then come back for him, but, “You must take him first.” And he would start walking. (Hiromi Nagakura) YOU DECIDE I had a brother younger than I who was killed. Then another of my brothers volunteered to take a gun, but Massoud said, “I won’t give the gun to him. I will give it to you. Take it to your home and follow your own feeling whether to give it to him or not, but remember, young boys are usually careless.” My brother wanted to do it so badly that we could not stop him. I think he fought for two and a half months before he was killed. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) HIS HANDS ON OUR SHOULDERS I saw his hardships and difficulties, and I wondered how he could be so strong and always smiling and tender to others. One day I went with him to climb a mountain called Pew, because he wanted to see
the front line from the top. At that time I was the last person in the group, and on the way I was taking pictures. Suddenly, Massoud came back to where I was. He placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “In this place there are mines. Don’t you want to go back to Japan? If you step on a mine you cannot go home.” I could not say anything; I just nodded. But Massoud worried. Before we started to climb that mountain, one commander at the post wanted to guide Massoud to the top, but when he tried to stand up, Massoud took his shoulder and pushed him back. He said, “Don’t. You need to stay here; you just recovered from malaria.” Because the man “recovered,” he had come to the front line, but maybe he was not doing so well, and Massoud knew that. (Hiromi Nagakura) NOW WE CAN FIGHT The day before an attack, Massoud would make sure that all the women and children were as safe as possible. He always placed more forces in front of the places where they were hiding, then he would say, “Now, we can go and fight the Russians.” (Sher Dil Qaderi) THE GIFT One summer day when the whole of Panjshir was free of Soviet domination, a man came and presented Massoud with thirty thousand afghanis, (approximately three hundred U.S. dollars) wrapped in a piece of cloth, quietly telling him an Afghan had sent it to him as a
gift. With a grin, Massoud told him, “May there be longevity to his dwelling,” (an expression of well-wishing to him and his family) and pointed to give the money to Tajuddin, a man who was close to him. He told Tajuddin just to keep the money safe. About a week after that, an old lady with grey hair came asking for Amir Massoud. He wasn’t there, and she asked at what time he would return. I did not know, so she said she would come back. She showed up again that evening and, when she found out Massoud was not back, said, “Son, tell him that I am a widow with no food to eat. I have had no news from my son, who went to Iran for employment. I leave the rest to you.” I told her I would give him the message and gave her the little food that was available, and she left. Amir Massoud came that night. He pulled off his army boots and went to the brook that passed through the middle of his yard to do the ablution before prayer. As he was drying his face and hands, I approached him and reported the old lady’s message. He listened carefully, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me to find Tajuddin and tell him to pay her ten thousand afghanis from that money. This was how Massoud was with his money, and this is one of hundreds of stories showing the kind of relationship he had with his people. (Daoud Zulali)
11 PERSONAL IMPACT It wasn’t that I joined Massoud. To me, it was more than that. You join a group or you join a political party, but he was more. —Farid Zikria Again and again I heard from the Afghans and others that their relationship with Massoud was like no other. Although it was not easy for some of them to express it, they all felt that there was something different about him.
LIKE MAGIC No matter how angry a person was, how furious, if they said I am going to talk with Massoud about this and I am going to yell at him, when they met Massoud he always stood up and shook hands with them. He had a habit that no matter who was in the room, he shook hands, and as soon as Massoud shook a man’s hand you could see the change in the man’s face. He would become mellow, and as calm as could be. It was like magic. (Sher Dil Qaderi) A SORT OF COMFORT A few years ago, during an attack by the Taliban, their jeeps were coming and there was bombing. It was night, and Massoud was discussing the sale of emeralds with some people. This discussion continued for two or three hours, and everything seemed almost normal. We were laughing, and all these people were gathered around, and it felt like a dream. In the middle of all that chaos and depression, Massoud gave you a kind of comfort that was unexpected. He would be laughing but he was serious, and he somehow combined this seriousness with a sort of easy life—being easy with the people around him, making jokes and all that. Nobody mixed up the jokes with the real command, but it was as if you were in the middle of the storm and found comfort.
(Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) VISIT FROM A FRIEND In 1983, President Babrak Karmal, the first communist president under Soviet occupation, sent one of the directors of KHAD, the Afghani KGB, to kill Massoud. His name was Kamran, and he was a young man who had lived in the same neighborhood as Commander Massoud and had some acquaintance with him. Karmal and Dr. Najibullah, the head of information services, gave Kamran a pistol with four poison bullets and a silencer, and Karmal told him, “Go down to the Panjshir Valley and let Massoud think you are there just as a neighbor. You will be admitted; then kill him and you will get millions of dollars.” So Kamran went to the valley. He spent a couple of days, bit by bit moving closer. Within a few days he was inside Commander Massoud’s group of companions. After a few more days, he was in conversation with the Commander himself and asked him, “Do you know why I am here?” Massoud said, “Why, you are a friend, you are a neighbor, so you came by. There are dozens of people who come by. I don’t ask; it’s completely normal.” Kamran took out the revolver with the four bullets, saying, “I came to kill you, but when I saw what goes on here, what you are doing day and night, I couldn’t even think about it.” And he handed over the pistol. (Mehraboudin Masstan) DIFFICULT TO LEAVE
Dr. Abdullah and another doctor, Abdul Rahman (he became the second man after Massoud in the Panjshir Valley), were living in Pakistan. They were working with different charity committees in Peshawar as doctors. I sent them from Pakistan to the Panjshir Valley. When they went to the Panjshir, they said, “We will go for five or six months and come back,” but they ended up staying. Later, I said to Dr. Abdullah, “You told me that you would stay for only five months, but you stayed for years.” He said, “It is very difficult to leave Massoud.” It doesn’t mean that Massoud forced them to stay there or that they were obliged in any way. No, somehow he had such good relationships with his followers that they respected him and would never leave him. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) I NEVER IMAGINED Once, Dr. Abdul Rahman (later the minister of aviation) told me that two days after my first meeting with him, Commander Massoud said, “I think I have found somebody who will be a good friend.” I was concerned the first time that perhaps Massoud was less than what I had thought he would be, but he grew on me through the years. I doubted—am I right or not with these feelings? And always the answer was, yes, I am right. The first time I met Massoud was in September of 1985. From then until September of 2001, I was with him and worked with him. Before I met him, I had an image of him in my mind. From what I had heard he was an ideal Resistance leader. The thing is, after I met him that impression only got stronger and stronger as the days passed. I found things in him that I never imagined. I was impressed by his
attitude and by his behavior—as a friend, a leader of the country, and a commander. The whole story is a big memory which keeps me going in the work, even now. For a quarter of a century, Massoud dedicated his life to this country without asking anything for himself. It wasn’t just his political and military roles, but the impact that he left on me and others, his human qualities and values. He was a leader against terrorism and a politician, but on the other hand, he was a very good friend, and whenever we had time we used to talk about poetry, art, life, sports, and all other aspects of life. He never lost his morale. Even in the middle of the war and the suffering, he kept his sense of humor. He respected human beings, enemies and friends, so that you would imagine they were the same. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) WE HEARD HE WAS ON OUR SIDE I remember once there was very bad fighting in the Panjshir; the Russians were attacking from all over. Massoud was in the south of the valley and we were in the north, and we were really losing it. Massoud had been in hiding, and we hadn’t heard from him for two weeks. It was the worst time of my life—we were basically losing the war, and we were thinking to move out and go somewhere else. At that time we didn’t have radio communication—he had to go village to village to talk to people, to give people courage, saying, “I am here. Keep fighting! The Russians cannot beat us.” Then, somehow we heard that Massoud had come to the north of the valley too, and we were so encouraged that we took back all the positions we had lost in half an hour! We didn’t even see Massoud; we
just heard he was on our side, so we knew we were going to win. Everybody’s spirits were on the roof. We continued fighting, and we won that whole battle in two days. (Sher Dil Qaderi) WE WERE AFRAID Most of the success and harmony in the Panjshir is due to Massoud’s personality. If he had not been there, it is very clear that the Panjshir would not have achieved such a good reputation during and after the jihad. So what was Massoud’s secret? Why did he have this personality? He had very particular characteristics and different dimensions. He was not naive or simple; he was very kind but hard at the same time. That is why the people around him, all his followers, and even I, who was his brother, we all respected him. But we were also afraid of him. Yes, we were afraid of Massoud, but it was not fear that we would be punished. In that case, I would have simply left. When I say that we were afraid of him, I mean we were trying to do our best to show Massoud that there was nothing wrong with us. That was it—nothing wrong. We wanted to be our best for him. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) I FORGOT The people around Massoud were very polite, those young commanders, the young mujahideen, polite, clean, and nice, and I saw that they were under difficult conditions. The war was harsh in that
part of Afghanistan. There were bombardments every night and every day, but the people were not afraid. After a few months, I too forgot the fear. I was amazed, because before I went to Afghanistan I wasn’t sure if I would be killed or not, and it was very intense. But after a few weeks of being with Massoud, I completely forgot the fear of being killed. (Daoud Mir) AIMING HIGH In childhood you are trying to figure out what is your character, so you think, I am this or I am that. My idea was: I want to be like Massoud. I did not want to be a doctor or an engineer; I just wanted to be like Massoud, who shared with people with a clear heart, so brave and strong, and gave people the feeling that things made sense. (Eisa Khan Ayoob Ayoobi) ON THE TALIBAN FRONT LINE I recall one of the commanders of the mujahideen in the Mazar-iSharif region of the North, told me that on the day when Commander Massoud was assassinated, some of the Taliban soldiers on the front line cried. Someone asked them, “Why are you crying?” And one of them answered, “That man . . . he would have been able to achieve great things. If he is dead, it is sad.” (Mehraboudin Masstan)
DISCOMBOBULATED The first time I met Massoud, we shook hands. Engineer Eshaq was there, and he asked me to translate. I was in the middle of translating the first statement, and I totally blanked out and started to stutter. I mean, this was the person that I had come so far to see, and I went for a month and ended staying two years! The second they introduced him to me I began to stutter. Generals and people that have a thousand men under them—Massoud would come and began to talk to them, and they would start to shake. (Haron Amin) I DIDN’T SPEAK HIS LANGUAGE In my first experience in northern Afghanistan I was with Massoud off and on for six weeks. He was sick, physically—he had back problems and a terrible cold. You don’t expect that in people who have a place in history, but he did. He was incredibly sick, and he was in the middle of an intense battle with the Taliban and trying to orchestrate the offensive. I did not speak his language, but I was able to watch his impact on others. People revered him. I even found myself experiencing that feeling. I am at a loss to explain why, but there was something about him. He had an energy, an intensity, a dignity that was immediate and powerful and had an effect on everyone around him. When he was talking I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Something about him was just captivating. Obviously, he had that effect on many people; that was one of the reasons he was such an effective leader. (Sebastian Junger)
STUCK LIKE GLUE Whenever I was in a place where Massoud was, my eyes were stuck to him. I mean, I could not see anything else. When he peeled an apple, when he ate, when he talked, when he touched his face—no matter what he did my eyes were stuck like glue to him. I could not move them away. Even while I was listening to someone else, my eyes were on him. It’s something . . . I cannot tell you why. You know Sebastian Junger. I translated his article “The Lion in the Winter” into Farsi. When I got to the point where he said that whenever he looked at Massoud he could not turn his face away, that when you looked at him you got glued to him. . . . When I read that in Sebastian Junger I said, “I have exactly the same feeling!” Because I try to speak the truth and stand for the truth, I like people who are honest and down to earth. That is what I saw in Massoud. He belonged to the people. He wanted to defend the truth, and he was fighting for them. I think it was because of those feelings that I paid attention to him. (Farid Amin) INFINITE PAINS When we got to the Panjshir, the Russians were bombing the valley. We met Massoud, and it struck me then that, although he was facing a lot, he was still very calm, cool, and collected, very impressive. He said, “I have very good intelligence and the Russians are getting ready to launch a major ground attack.” We spoke what I would call good schoolboy French. He was obviously very busy, but he took the time to talk with us and said, “I am very glad you are here. You’ve come a
long way, and we will give you all the help we can.” He sent us to another side of the valley, to be away from the Russian attacks. He was absolutely brilliant, I thought, and never seemed to panic, although they were having quite a rough time because the Russians sent a lot of troops into the valley, and there was bombing all the time. He didn’t seem to lose his cool, and he planned everything very carefully. If he was doing an operation or an attack, he considered where the mines were, where the forces were, where the machine guns were, and he had a deserter from the government who gave him more details. So he made this table and briefed his commanders in detail on how the attack would operate and which commander would do what. You had to see him operate it to realize this was a man who took infinite pains to get it right. (Sandy Gall) AN EXTRAORDINARY VANTAGE POINT I recall one night in the Hindu Kush, at about five thousand meters [over sixteen thousand feet]—it must have been around midnight. Massoud and I were both on horseback with the mujahideen behind us, and we spoke of the time before all the fighting started. The war raged on, but talking with him I felt as if I were totally free. From this extraordinary vantage point, it seemed as if our forces controlled all of Afghanistan, and I was elated. To me, Commander Massoud was like a Ghandi, Che Guevara, or Nelson Mandela who fought for freedom. I never forgot that splendid night in his company. (Abdul Latif Pedram)
FIVE MINUTES WITH HIM Sometimes people would go and ask Massoud for something just as an excuse to see him. They would be with him for five minutes and walk away with energy for a lifetime. They would go back to their villages and say, “Oh God, I saw him, and this is what he said.” And they would all go and pray extra, as their way of making a contribution. People would come early in the morning, walking, and lining up to see him. It was a boost of energy for Massoud just to ask you, “Would you do this for God?” and you would be convinced in a way that only a charismatic individual can convince. I witnessed this a hundred times. Or, for example, he might have promised one of his commanders a certain amount of money or supplies. Then he would count the money and say, “We can only give you this amount. Take it, go and do the best you can with it. We don’t have the rest now, but when we have it in the future I will give it to you.” And that commander would leave with plenty of hope, would go into battle, and would win. (Haron Amin) VALUABLE When I was in Kabul, people came to me, especially old people, and said that at such-and-such a time and place, I was with Massoud and he gave me this letter with his signature. And these people had kept the letters in nice plastic because they were so valuable to them. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud)
HIGH IN THE TALIBAN RANKS When Massoud died, for a week the people in our country did not know. We kept his death secret, because we were afraid that if we didn’t, the Taliban would capture all our land. Without Massoud the enemy seemed invincible. After a week, the world knew that he had died. Then, when one of the Taliban said, “We should be happy because Mr. Massoud was killed,” the second or third person in the ranks of the Taliban regime slapped his colleague and told him, “Don’t be happy. When Massoud was alive, Afghanistan was alive.” I don’t want to say his name, because he was very important in the Taliban. (Ahmad Jamshid) COMPLETELY DIFFERENT In our culture, if a man is killed while on the right path, we think of him as somebody who was happy. Although it is a loss of life, we take pride in somebody like that. Sometimes we offered condolences to the families of the people who were killed in the fight against the Russians, but not often, because they were embarrassed that we did it. The division between right and wrong was very clear. When they killed Commander Massoud, though, it was completely different. It affected the life of every person in the country. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq)
12 THE MAN AND HIS OPPONENTS Love is the creed I hold: wherever turn His camels, Love is still my creed and faith. —Ibn El-Arabi (From Idries Shah, The Sufis, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964, 165) The power of Massoud’s presence was not limited to his friends and companions. He also made an impact on his enemies.
ARE YOU MUSLIMS? Muslem Hayat told me that one day the commanders brought a Soviet prisoner to Massoud. The man was shivering, because it was very cold outside, and instead of paying attention to who he was or what he had done, Massoud said to his commanders, “Aren’t you Muslims? Look at him! He is shivering, he is shaking. Why don’t you give him something to wear?” Only afterwards did he begin to hear the prisoner’s story. If you read Islam, you will find a story about a woman who was granted entrance to paradise because she had given water to a dying dog. Our tradition says that if you let your neighbor go to bed with an empty stomach, you are not a Muslim. (Farid Amin) THE WORK OF VIRTUE In a mujahideen ambush at an enemy base, a large number of fighters were captured. Among them was a widely known and high-ranking officer of the Communist Party. Following the initial investigation, our fighters who knew him well were complaining of the atrocities he had committed and insisting that he face justice. Massoud, after a long silence, said, “Brothers, killing a person is an easy thing. He will fall on the ground just by our pulling the trigger. It is not a work of virtue. The work of virtue and excellence in
life, rather, would be to forgive. If we do the same as our enemy does, then what difference will there be between us?” We were all quiet, for we knew he was right. That prisoner was freed and after some time joined the Kabul regime, but this time he worked in cooperation with those loyal to the Resistance. (Daoud Zulali) THAT WAS VERY STRANGE Massoud treated his prisoners well. This happened to such an extent that sometimes prisoners came with their guards to his house, asking for special meetings. They would tell him that they just wanted to talk with him, and Massoud would ask the guards to leave. That was very strange in a country like Afghanistan. These were the sorts of things for which even his enemies respected him, because he treated them well and at the same time he was honest and he kept his promises. If you see Russian books, you will find that they often say bad things about Afghanistan, but they say Massoud was a good example, that he was straight and did not play games. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) JUST AFGHANS When I reached the Salang and met my friends, they had a lot of criticism of Massoud’s soldiers in Andarab, and they asked me to transmit it to Massoud. I told him it was not the commanders but their soldiers who behaved incorrectly, so “Tell them to be fair with
the Andarabis.” He said, “I understand the mujahideen, because the Andarabis have not been very supportive, but you are right. We need to be for the Afghans and not only for the Panjsheris.” After this, there was a big Soviet offensive in Andarab, and of course they played on the lukewarm feelings of the Andarabis—for a month. Then they told the locals, “If you are with us, you must fight Massoud.” They conscripted young men from fourteen to forty and sent them to fight. Massoud captured them but did not hurt them, all those young people. He gave them money, a certain amount of afghanis to each one, and told them, “You can go back to Andarab. You are not prisoners, you are just Afghans.” I know the story from both sides, from Andarab and the Panjshir. (Jean-José Puig) WHEN MASSOUD CAME TO KABUL I was in Kabul in 1992 with Médecins du Monde when Massoud entered the city. I found it extremely interesting that the communist generals in Kabul surrendered the city to Massoud rather than to any of his rivals, because they received amnesty from Massoud. The way he extended amnesty to the entire communist bureaucracy in Kabul meant that the city paid allegiance to him intact. He even allowed the communist president, Najibullah, to take refuge in the United Nations compound and did not touch him. (Professor Michael Barry) PEOPLE ARE CRITICIZING
When Massoud started the Resistance against the Russians, there were communists from the Panjshir who went to work for the communist government in Kabul. One day I told Massoud, “People are criticizing you,” and he asked why. I said, “Because the communists from the Panjshir who are working in Kabul—none of them were killed by you when you were in Kabul. Why is that?” He said, “There are thousands of people working for the government in Kabul. It is not my policy to be a terrorist and kill people. To fight against the enemy is one thing, but I am not a terrorist.” On the other hand, he told me, “Look, these communists in Kabul, they believed in socialism and they believed that we would have a social revolution. They did not know that communism in Afghanistan was going to be in the hands of Russia. They have been put in the middle between the Russians and the mujahideen. If we have a policy, it is that we accept them.” (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) A DANGEROUS THING TO DO Once, some friends from Badakhshan gave out a list of twenty-five names of people who worked for the communist regime. A council of mujahideen decided to put these people to death. I asked them why, and they said because they are communists, collaborators, and so on. I called Commander Massoud for an explanation. The decision was frightening to him. He said, “I disapprove. That would be a very dangerous thing to do.” During the time Massoud controlled Kabul, not one of the prisoners from the Communist Party, nor any who fought against him, was ever put to death. This was very important in a country
which had been at war for years. He said very clearly: “I am against killing anyone because they believe in communism, liberalism, or any other ‘isms.’” (Abdul Latif Pedram) IT WAS JOLTING Once Massoud told me, “We’re going to eat at someone’s house, but you are the one who has to chat with him because I am not going to say a word.” I didn’t understand. We went to a house—the nicest in the neighborhood—and there he had set up the brother of the communist president, Najibullah, the worst of his enemies. It was the best place to protect this man and his wife and child at the time. The wife was extremely liberated, an old communist militant. I understood why Massoud did not want to go eat with them. He was shy in this type of situation, and the way this woman carried herself was very liberal—not just from the point of view of how she dressed, but it was jolting. In an Afghan village, a woman who would not let the men get a word in edgewise? Her husband could have formed an association of oppressed husbands. But we stayed rather late, and Massoud paid careful attention that this family should not feel bad. I think this was difficult for him, but he did it all the same. The man’s brother, the communist president of the republic, had asked Massoud for his protection, and Massoud’s emissaries went to Pakistan to make sure that the Pakistani Secret Service did not bother this family, and that as soon as they arrived, passports would be ready so they could leave for a Western country. When Massoud had assured himself of these two conditions, he told the family to leave the region, and to this day they are in the U.S. because of what he did.
(Humayun Tandar) DÉJÀ VU Massoud, remembering his youth, said, “When I was young, Dr. Najibullah and I lived in Karte Parwan in Kabul, and I was fond of soccer. Dr. Najibullah always said that the soccer court belonged to him and his team, but my team usually used it. That was the reason for a dispute that started between him and me. Dr. Najibullah gathered his team and attacked us, but my team defeated them with stones, sticks, and slings. “Then there came a time when he became the president of Afghanistan, and I fought him and his Russian supporters in the mountains of this country. Again, Dr. Najibullah wanted to eliminate me from his path. He not only asked the Russian generals to attack me in the Panjshir, he sent scores of Afghan army troops to capture me, but again, he did not succeed.” (Ahmad Shah Farzan) IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASY Think of this: Amidst the wartime hostility, which had no limits, no morals, no ethics, Massoud once had the opportunity to capture Najibullah, who, let us not forget, had been at one time the head of the Secret Service, and who had tortured and killed Massoud’s closest friends. It would have been extremely easy to kill him. To the contrary, Massoud worked out a budget for the food and well-being of this man.
(Humayun Tandar) NEVER DO THAT AGAIN Once they were moving cars, and one of the soldiers took his machine gun and started firing at Massoud’s car. They immediately captured the soldier. Then Massoud came over and asked him, “Why did you do that?” And he took the arm of the soldier and told him, “Look, never do that again; that’s something you just shouldn’t do. I know that somebody in the village has told you to do it, but don’t do it again!” And he released the man. We could not believe it! I can tell you that many who came with the mission of assassinating Massoud were released by him. (Ahmad Wali Massoud) FOR A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN In the middle of the war against the Soviets, they saw a man pointing a Kalashnikov at Massoud, so they overpowered him and put him in jail. When they asked him why he did it, he said he was contacted by government people in Kabul who told him if he would kill Commander Massoud they would give him a beautiful woman to marry. The mujahideen released him. That just does not happen in Afghanistan, that somebody like that is released, but Massoud said he was not mentally balanced. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq)
THE YOUNG TALIB Once, there was a young Taliban fighter, and the question was whether he was going to be sent to jail. Massoud said, “No, because he did not have time to learn any better. He should go to school instead.” (Dr. Mohammad Sidiq) THE PERSONAL TOUCH In 1996, when the Taliban came to Shariazar, west of Kabul, and then captured Kabul, Massoud and Muslem Hayat went to see them. Muslem told me that he had only a small pistol, and Massoud went to meet them without anything. He had no protection at all; they could have done anything to him. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to reach them. Because he knew that this war was for no reason. He had talked with them by walkie-talkie and phone, but he thought going personally would make a difference. (Farid Amin) “Mullah Yar Mohammad, a Taliban leader, said after being released from imprisonment by Massoud’s troops, ‘Massoud really is the son of the Afghan nation. . . .’” (Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography.”)
FRESH IS FRESH I found that the Commander was a man who didn’t have bad intentions towards anybody. Towards Hekmatyar, even, he did not have bad intentions, although many times he asked me, “Why does he do that? Why does he not come to the side of the people?” When Hekmatyar said he would come to Kabul, Massoud was one of the first to agree, “Why should he not come to Kabul and be prime minister?” I remember I said to him, “After he fired all these rockets and caused all that killing and tried to destroy Kabul, why should he be allowed to come back?” He said, “Well, fresh is fresh. Maybe he has done wrong, and now he will do good. You never know the future of people. Look, the man says he will come back and be good. Why should I have bad intentions toward him because of his past?” I never found any kind of revenge in his heart toward anyone. He was sad and angry sometimes, but he never told me he couldn’t forgive someone, or that he would take revenge. His attitude was, if an enemy comes and says I can treat you well now, you don’t look for revenge; you have forgiveness. You are happy, and you get on with it. I saw it happen many times. It was because Commander Massoud was looking through his own heart that he didn’t have bad intentions, and he thought that nobody else had them either. Many times he said, “Well, people can change, even the Russians.” You know his bodyguard was a former Russian soldier, Islamuddin. (Masood Khalili) AMIDST THE DAILY VIOLENCE
We have this idea that we call the insaan-e-kaamel, the complete man, and even in mysticism the objective is to arrive at this level. Massoud was one of those personalities who tended toward that dimension. No one he met felt indifferent towards him. Some adored him, some detested him, and some made war against him. It’s interesting to note that amidst all the daily violence, he had forgiveness and tolerance, and he even courted those who tried to assassinate him. When he got fed up with eating poorly, with foregoing life’s pleasures—he loved food but often he didn’t have any—he would locate a village with a house where he knew he could eat well. Anyway, there was a man to whose house Massoud would sometimes go to eat. The Secret Service from Kabul convinced this man to poison the food the next time he came, but Massoud was forewarned. He told this man to leave the valley because he couldn’t trust him any longer. Then what did Massoud do? He safeguarded the man’s journey to Pakistan, rented his own house to him and his family, and paid him a monthly salary. (Humayun Tandar) EVEN MASSOUD’S BROTHER When Abdul Rashid Dostum took power in Mazar-i-Sharif, he jailed some of the mujahideen and treated them very badly, but Massoud never thought, I will do the same to Dostum. One of Massoud’s brothers was killed in Pakistan and many people suspected Hekmatyar. In a country like Afghanistan, where personal revenge is so important, I never heard Massoud say anything about it. He was the kind of person who was looking far away. His goal was to unify and rebuild the country.
(Haroun Mir) WHEN DOSTUM DEFECTED Dostum was with the communists and that style of life. When he defected from them, he came to see Massoud and had a discussion with him. Massoud said, “I have some advice for you. You have done something good and sided with the people. Now you should abandon drinking, because leaders should be like the people, and in Islam the people do not drink.” Dostum followed his advice, and afterwards he told Massoud he felt healthier and more alive. But later he returned to his old habits. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? There were differences between Hekmatyar and Massoud. Massoud never ever depended on other countries. Massoud welcomed people’s help, but before he accepted it he asked, “With what conditions? If you expect to get something from me, go help somebody else.” Hekmatyar was 100 percent supported by Pakistan and the CIA, and Dostum was supported by the communists. (Sher Dil Qaderi) “I told the Taliban delegations that came here for talks with us in the Panjsher, that you claim to represent the Pashtun tribes—fine, we agree. You say that the majority of Afghanistan is under our control—
we agree. You say that the people accept us—we agree. Fine, if there is such level of confidence—then let’s go toward elections. You [the Taliban] claim to hold the majority backed by popular acceptance; then what are you worried about? In place of so much warfare and bloodshed, move toward elections and legitimately attain power. Our position is still the same. We did not and do not consider a military option as the solution. . . .” (Interview with Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud by journalists and representatives of the “Women on the Road to Afghanistan” Conference, Azadi Afghan Radio, August 7, 2000, www.afghanweb.com/documents/int-masood.html) WE HAVE MADE A BIG MISTAKE My brother-in-law told me that every Friday in the mosque where he went in Peshawar, the mullah talked against Massoud, saying that he was an infidel and a servant of the CIA, and that he wished Massoud would die. After September 11 and after the Commander was killed, he was at that mosque, and the mullah spoke again about the Commander in a bad way. That day, a man stood up in the mosque, a tall man with a big, long beard and big eyes (he was Pakistani Taliban), and he said, “I am sorry to tell you that we have all made a big mistake. I was a prisoner in Afghanistan, and one day Commander Massoud came to our prison. He said, ‘I am Commander Massoud. Whenever your food is not good or my boys hit you, insult you, or you are abused in any way, you tell me. I tell you this in front of everybody. Keep in mind that you are prisoners, but you are human beings. If you are made
sad, in the next world God will ask me about it and I’ll be punished. If I have good food and you have bad food, I will be punished.’” The Talib told that mullah, “I can’t believe what you are saying about him. He was full of smiles and full of forgiveness. He even shook hands with us. There was a boy there who was thirteen years old. Massoud said, ‘It’s not right that you are in prison. Let him out. Go boy, you should not be here.’ In front of the boy, he said, ‘I came here to fight you. Well, you cannot kill me; I have lots of people. But you go back to your country. I promise that when the Taliban are gone, I will call you and invite you to my home and you and I will talk forever.’ And the boy was released.” And the Taliban man said again to the mullah, “You are wrong.” (Masood Khalili) TWO DIFFERENT BRAINS I was with Reza Deghati, a photographer, and he was able to translate for me. Massoud and I sat facing each other in two chairs, and we had cameras on us. He was very busy, so I felt a little bad to take an hour of his time. I had to ask him about an incident in Kabul in the ’90s where some Hazaras were massacred, and there were men under Massoud’s command that did that. My understanding was that this was not ordered by him, and was even without his knowledge, but they were men under his command and I had to ask him. He answered that it was a chaotic situation, and some very bad things were happening in Kabul that he really regretted, but it wasn’t something that he would have ever ordered himself. And I believe that.
If, basically, you are the kind of commander that can order a massacre of civilians it doesn’t happen only once in your career. In a violent situation like Afghanistan, you would see abuses over and over again. Abuses happen in the U.S. military, and this is the Afghan militias, and the chain of command is just terrible. I mean there isn’t a chain of command. They told me they had taken some Russian prisoners. One of the Russians with a machine gun had killed a number of Afghans, and the Afghans started to beat him. Massoud grabbed the guy who was beating this Russian prisoner and punched him and knocked him down and said, “This man is just doing his job the way you do your job, and I never want you to raise your hand against a prisoner again.” In my mind that same person could not order a massacre of civilians—just two different brains. And here is another example. We went to see the prisoners—he had some Taliban prisoners in what wasn’t even a prison but a stone house, escorted by four soldiers. And when we got there, they had just brought back an Uzbeck who had escaped three days earlier into the mountains and was chased down and captured. There was not a mark on him. If you escape from the police in Los Angeles you at least have a black eye. As a journalist you have to be skeptical, particularly with people you want to like. So I said, “Okay, Massoud is a wonderful guy, but let’s be on guard.” But I thought later, if this guy does not have a mark on him, in my mind that means Massoud had some very high ideals that he was able to impart to the society that he was running. (Sebastian Junger) THE CAPTURE OF SAYED JALIL
Once in Tang’i Farahar, near Bagram, Massoud’s commanders were assaulted by Sayed Jalil, a Hezb-i-Islami commander, on their way to a meeting in the north. My brother Haron was supposed to be part of their group, but Massoud had needed him so he did not go. On the way, there is a place called the gorge of Farkhar, and there Sayed Jalil slaughtered all thirty-six men. It was such a horrible story. Thirty-six very good commanders lost their lives at the same time, and the jihad was in great disarray. Afterwards, Jalil’s base was taken. He was captured, and Massoud and some other people were waiting when the mujahideen brought him in. Jalil had no shoes, his clothes were sort of ripped, he looked all dusty, and he was without a hat or turban. Massoud said to the mujahideen, “What is wrong with you? He was the commander of a group. You have humiliated him. Let him wash and dress and then bring him back. This is not right.” And they took him out and brought him back with respect. Massoud said, “The court will judge against him or for him, but you do not have the right to humiliate him.” (Farid Amin) LITTLE GESTURES For me the way a world leader treats his prisoners reveals everything about him or her. Massoud treated his prisoners with such compassion that Soviet soldiers preferred to surrender to him over anybody else, or to desert and go to his side. Back in the ’80s, I was involved in negotiations where Russian soldiers held by Massoud were helped to escape to Pakistan with French journalists so they could look like French journalists and ultimately find political asylum in the
West. Even though Massoud and his people were terribly poor and had very little to eat themselves, their Russian prisoners were fed no worse. You just had these little gestures. One Russian prisoner was about to be taken to Pakistan, and Massoud himself gave Nikolai a camera so he would look like a journalist, and a warm sweater to go over the mountains. When I found this out I was extremely impressed, because I knew about the way prisoners were horribly treated by other mujahideen groups. Commanders who torture and kill, if they come into power, they create a tyranny—it never fails. You can judge the way a future politician will be by the way he behaves in combat conditions in the Resistance. (Professor Michael Barry) “‘I had serious political conflicts with him over the years. We were not friends,’ said Abdul Bahir Turkestani, an aide to northern Uzbek warlord Adbul Rashid Dostum. ‘But with his death, I had to admit he was a good man.’” (Juliette Terzieff, “Pilgrimage Honors Slain Afghan Hero: Massood’s Shrine Thronged a Year After His Death,” September 8, 2002, www.SFGate.com) A VEHEMENT DISPUTE Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as a student activist and a member of Jamiat-e Islami at the time, was convinced that terrorism would make the group successful. I noticed that he did not exclude bombs, acid
attacks, and assassination of political enemies as means to achieve its goals. Even then [in the mid-1970s], Massoud voiced his dislike of extremism, and he and Hekmatyar had vehement disputes because of Massoud’s absolute opposition to acts of terrorism. He saw in them the destruction of the very people he wanted to serve. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) WHAT GOOD NEWS? One of Hekmatyar’s commanders was killed by the Russians in Parwan in 1984, and somebody said to Massoud, “I have good news. Niardi, one of the commanders of Hekmatyar, was killed.” Massoud was surprised. “That is good news to you? Niardi wanted to defend Afghanistan. He did not know about Hekmatyar’s intention. He was a good man and it’s not good news for me.” (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) NOT A COMMANDER I challenged Hekmatyar when he said, “We, the mujahideen, don’t have disputes among ourselves.” It was complete rubbish; of course they did. I said, “If you really want to show that you are collaborating as you say, why don’t we go with your people and take the matter to the people of Abdul Haq [a Pashtun leader], then go to Massoud’s people and do the same.” Of course, he never wanted to do that. I knew him very well. Hekmatyar was the first “commander” that I met in Afghanistan in 1979. He was a politician, not a commander, a very sly, conniving politician who would do anything to claim
victory, and was completely unabashed about it. Anything that served his purpose he would do. And he got rid of intellectuals, but I always made a point to have discussions with him. He had a good organization, but he was not a man of inspiration. On the other hand, I would describe Massoud foremost as a commander, and as a politician only in the sense that he knew he had to have the people on his side. But he was not a politician in the sense that he was just setting himself up for power. (Edward Girardet) WHAT HEKMATYAR SAID Even as early as the Resistance against the Russians, Hekmatyar was fighting against Massoud and his mujahideen. At first, Hekmatyar tried to prove that Massoud was not a Muslim. Before the Soviet regime, in Daoud’s government, Hekmatyar told people that Massoud was a spy for the government. He also said Massoud was a French spy. In 1982, when he did the cease-fire with the Russian army, Hekmatyar said that Massoud was with the KGB. Then, in 1992, when they took Kabul, Hekmatyar used to say that Massoud was a Tajik nationalist, that he cared only about his people, not about Afghanistan. Massoud was a Sunni, and Hekmatyar said he was not a Sunni but a Shia, which was like saying a Catholic is a Protestant. And at the end he said Massoud was working for India. Then we had to leave Kabul. When we were at Jabul-Saraj, after all that, Massoud ordered a helicopter to take Hekmatyar to a safe place in Takhar province. I was there when it happened. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat)
A SLEEPLESS NIGHT The Taliban took Mazar-i-Sharif, north of Kabul, while Mr. Rabbani and Hekmatyar were there. Mr. Rabbani was president of the Islamic State of Afghanistan at the time, and Hekmatyar was a renegade leader who opposed the government. I was with Massoud after the evening prayers. A helicopter came, and after a few minutes, a couple of cars stopped by the compound and two people got out: Rabbani and Hekmatyar. They had escaped from Mazar-i-Sharif. Hekmatyar, who fought Massoud from 1992 to 1996, before the Taliban took over Kabul, had accused Massoud again and again of wanting to assassinate him. As he was walking towards Massoud with Rabbani, I waited to see the reaction from Massoud, how he would receive a person who had accused him for so long. He stood up, walked towards them, and hugged them both in the Afghan tradition. After serving Hekmatyar Afghan tea and food, he called Mr. Fahim and ordered him to take Hekmatyar to a special guesthouse, and to place a group of soldiers there to protect him. He also gave orders not to let other soldiers pass near the guesthouse, so Hekmatyar would be safe, and he told them to make him very comfortable and take care of him. Next morning I found out that Hekmatyar did not sleep that whole night. He had accused Massoud so many times that he was scared something was going to happen now that he was Massoud’s guest, and he walked around the compound all night long. Since the Taliban was at that time very close, the next morning Massoud ordered a special helicopter to pick up Hekmatyar and Rabbani and take them to Badakhshan, another province, and from there to transport them to Iran, where they could be safe.
The night Hekmatyar was in the compound, I said jokingly to Massoud, “This man has said so many times that you are going to assassinate him, and he has tried to assassinate you many times, why don’t you take care of him tonight?” Massoud smiled—I remember that special smile on his face—and he replied, “I have no doubt that this guy has been my enemy and he has no good intentions when it comes to me or Afghanistan, but that is not our Afghan culture; it would be inhumane. This is a humane way of dealing with it.” Then he said, “Stop joking about this and go take care of your business. Don’t worry about what I am doing.” After Hekmatyar was transported safely to Badakhshan and then to Iran, he started the same propaganda against Massoud. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) ON ANOTHER LEVEL Massoud’s enemies envied him, but eventually they realized that between them and him there was a huge gap which could not be filled, a gap in personality and in character. At the beginning, Dostum thought Massoud would make him a good rival, but later on, even he realized that, no, you cannot be a rival of Massoud because he is on another level. Hekmatyar was in Iran, and of course he thought he was better than all Afghans, so he was an exception. But all the other leaders—Dostum, Karim Khalili, and all of them—learned this about Massoud. (Ahmad Wali Massoud)
“[I]n a very real sense, Massoud helped liberate the Russians too, by forcing their dictatorship to come to a military end, at long last, in the mountains and valleys of Panjshêr.” (Excerpted from a speech by Professor Michael Barry, “Thoughts on Commander Massoud,” at the Afghan Embassy in London, on September 9, 2003, published in Omaid Weekly 12, nos. 595–96, September 2003) AN UNUSUAL VISIT In 2003, the Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, came on an official trip to Kabul, and he asked to visit the shrine of Massoud. Fahim and other people were there when he went, and it was a very emotional moment. Ivanov said he had a lot of respect for Massoud. (Mehraboudin Masstan)
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© Hiromi Nagakura © Mary Patricia Quin Massoud signing the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women, in 2000. Among the women, seated to his left, is Chekeba Hachemi.
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© Masood Khalili Massoud with one of his closest companions, Masood Khalili, son of the most prominent contemporary Afghan poet, Khalilullah Khalili. © Hiromi Nagakura
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Massoud speaking in the European Parliament in 2000. Sitting on his left is the president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine. Sitting on his right is Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, one of his closest companions. © Hiromi Nagakura
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13 IN THE NAME OF GOD The heart of the Believer Disdains fear of stormy events. The Believer’s heart knows Only one ship captain: God. —Khalilullah Khalili
HE WENT ALONE Massoud was walking alone without a gun, even though it was very dangerous. His friends were shocked that he would go by himself, but Massoud told them that he trusted God, and that if God wanted to take him nothing could help him anyway. (Anonymous) WE THOUGHT IT WAS THE END Sometimes the other countries stopped helping us, and we, his secretaries, knew that. We knew, and we thought it would be the end. Between 1998 and 1999, the Taliban captured the lands of, for example, Dostum and Khalili, and the only force left against Al-Qaeda was us. The others stopped helping us because they thought that the Taliban was going to capture all of Afghanistan. Our enemy was absolutely different from us. They were so powerful and we were so poor, and they had the Pakistani ISI behind them. But Massoud always said that God would help us, and I have to write that He always did. (Ahmad Jamshid) THE VOICE FROM THE WALNUT TREE
One night, we were sleeping in Massoud’s small house. At three or four o’clock I went out to the toilet, because there was not a good toilet in the house. It was completely dark—no light, no moon—but there is one big tree in his garden, a walnut tree. When I was coming back to the house in the dark, I heard a voice coming from that tree. I was surprised and thought, somebody is there, let’s listen. I tried to listen very carefully, and soon I understood it was Massoud. He was praying verses of the Koran: “Ar Rahman, Ar Rahim” (The Beneficent, The Merciful), and he moved around the big tree. I couldn’t talk to him—I would have disturbed him—but I understood that when Massoud had a problem he talked to God. To me, Massoud was a very good Muslim, and really good Muslims are few—always trying to have contact with God, to talk to God. The Japanese, we pray sometimes, but it’s just a custom, and for most Muslims praying is also just a custom. But for Massoud it was not a custom; his contact with God was very important. In the beginning, in 1983, he slept an average of four hours per night, but in 1999, when the Taliban started the offensive against him, he slept two hours at the most, sometimes not at all, and he could still do his job. I asked why. I always asked. He is not a superman; sometimes he gets very tired. When I gave him massages, at the beginning he had muscles, “meat,” but when I did massage on him in 1999 and 2000, his muscles were going away, and he had become thin. He had hard times and he couldn’t sleep. He was very busy, but I think that he could do all that because he believed in God so much. (Hiromi Nagakura) JUST TWO HOURS TO SLEEP
He trusted God and was always thinking about Him, even when he made small decisions. If I do this, what would God think? During those years I never saw him sleep without praying, and I remember many nights when he didn’t sleep more than one or two hours. Very different—he had just two hours to sleep, but he would take fifteen or twenty minutes to pray. Imagine how much he loved his God! In my opinion, his success was because he really loved God. (Ahmad Jamshid) OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE One very beautiful day, Massoud came with us to the mouth of the Paryan Valley. There we stayed for the night. That night, we talked about many things, mainly about how to reach the outside world. That was the time when we thought, if we could not reach the world, then we would either fail in this war against the Soviet Union or it would drag on and on—we’d die, and our kids would grow up, and then our grandsons would see it. We had been under a kind of psychological domination by the Soviets. We were talking about Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Albania, Estonia, Yugoslavia. Once a Soviet country, always a Soviet country— that was in the back of our minds. So, oh God, if that’s the case, what should we do? The Soviet propaganda was very effective. At that time, the atmosphere in Afghanistan was to some extent ready for new ideas, intellectual ideas, but to us “intellectual” tended to mean socialism. An important concept that prevented some intellectuals from thinking along those lines was, if you go with socialism you lose your faith because religion is the opium of the people. It wasn’t the books of communism that concerned us—Marx
may have been a great philosopher in his time, and Hegel, too—but our perception of communism was that in their philosophy our religion and faith were like opium. Now that they had invaded Afghanistan, we had to not lose our faith, to not lose our religion, to not lose our moderate way of worshipping God. Ultimately, we thought, and the majority of the people in Afghanistan still think, that it is God in which you take refuge. So the Russians invaded, and people like Massoud, who were moderate Muslims, believed that ours was more than just a liberation movement. Love of your land makes you a freedom fighter, but love of faith makes you a holy warrior. That was the mixture twenty-five years ago. God was important; the faith was in our hearts. (Masood Khalili) THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PLAN Though Massoud was a devoted mujahid of Islam and a brave man of the battlefield, he also was a spiritual human being. He planned his military, political, and social programs on a map for implementation, using his effort and his human abilities. Then, he turned everything over to his God, saying, “Here is what we have done. Victory and success are within your power. Oh Allah, help us.” (Daoud Zulali) WHAT IS PERMANENT
One day Massoud was explaining about Islam, and he said something like this: “There are three ways to recognize your God. One we inherited from our ancestors. If you ask 90 percent of people why they are Muslims, they would say, because my ancestors were Muslims. Second is raah-e-shariat, the rules Islam teaches to its followers. In that way you get Hadith [accounts of what the Prophet Mohammad did, said, and approved in others], and through that knowledge you reach God. Third, you have to be a lover, and through love you reach God and see your Beloved. This is the way of tasawuf.” And Massoud was a lover of his God, not of Islam in the hands of politicians. In his job, God was before him, because he established a link—if it makes God happy, I will do it. This work for him was a path to reach the next level. He thought we should not believe in things that are not long-lasting, which means life in this world. It is not permanent; it is temporary. He asked why we should sacrifice the things that are permanent for something that is only temporary? (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) “There is a polish for everything, and the polish for the heart is the remembrance of God.” —Saying of the Prophet Mohammad REMEMBRANCE I read the book of spiritual guidance which he read, The Alchemy of Happiness from Al-Ghazali. Move out hatred from the mujahid, no hatred. If you hate, you are not a mujahid. Very beautiful. You have
to quell your emotions, your anger, your lust, your feelings of vengeance. Every evening, after hosting all his officers, visitors, or diplomats, he would retire for half an hour with only his closest friends and he would indulge in what Islamic mysticism calls “remembrance,” the remembrance of God. He would just lean his forehead against his fingertips for fifteen minutes or half an hour of mystical meditation, in which he would empty his heart of all anxiety, all anger, all frustrations. When he lifted his forehead again it was as if he had slept for hours. (Professor Michael Barry) THE GREATEST THING The greatest thing I remember about Massoud is his constant education of his close colleagues. I had the opportunity to be in his house, and after dinner I saw that he would talk to them about the essence of life, its purpose. He knew that everything in this world is ephemeral. There were so many people grasping for power and wanting material things. All the commanders wanted to have houses and travel around the world, but Massoud never dreamed of anything like that. He had a direct communication with God. I have never seen a man like him. (Haroun Mir) MASSOUD WASN’T TALKING
The year before, in Pakistan, I had met Rabbani and other people who were apparently talking about Islam, always Islam. But Massoud wasn’t talking about Islam, he was practicing Islam for himself, almost as a mystic person, as a kind of Sufi. I remember it was very hard for me to wake up at 5 a.m. for morning prayers because I wasn’t a military person, and for the first three years I was there, sometimes I couldn’t do it. Around Massoud, nobody insisted that I had to pray, not like those around extremists such as Hekmatyar. But the people around Massoud were deeply religious, and Massoud himself didn’t miss any prayers. Sometimes I saw Massoud talking, and I had the impression that he was talking with God. I saw him one night during a very complicated situation, and he just went off to walk alone. When he had to think about something, he walked alone, walked for long distances. He always asked the bodyguards to stay back, and after reading the Koran or praying, he would talk, he and God. (Daoud Mir) UNDER THE AFGHAN MOON The moon in Afghanistan is so bright and of a beautiful silver color, especially when you are in the mountains. You feel that you are touching the moon, it’s so close. And the stars are hanging like grapes in front of you, and you can count them and almost play with them. You talk to them and sing with them, and your ideas flow like air. It takes you up and down, and you forget the war—you forget everything. One night Massoud and I finished our talk about three o’clock. I got a blanket to go to sleep, but there was no room. There was only
something like a cave, small, but enough for two people. That night there was a beautiful moon, very bright—I think it was the sixteenth day of the moon—and the light was sparkling into our cave. I remember that I was half asleep when I heard some movement, and when I looked Massoud had just left. After ten minutes, he came back, sat down, and covered himself with a blanket, and I realized that he was praying there in the middle of the night. Before his prayers, he had gone out to do the ablution—to wash his hands, face, and mouth. If you wash at that time of night you can freeze. In such a case, most people don’t want to pray, not because of laziness but just because of the water. The next morning when he came for prayers, I mentioned what had happened. He just said, “I am so sorry if I woke you up. I tried not to.” Later, I wrote in my diary about this man who pretends to be sleeping but leaves his semi-warm bed, walks under the moonlight down to the valley—a ten minute walk—to wash his hands and mouth based on religious tradition, and comes all the way back up the mountain. And then he doesn’t want to wake you up! He covers himself with a blanket and murmurs something. What he said that night—he was “remembering.” I think he had the idea that in the middle of the night you worship God with your heart, because you don’t have any book to read. Anyway, I envied him. I was so lazy I couldn’t do it, but I thought it was beautiful. I remember I also prayed. I said, “Oh God,” indeed. (Masood Khalili) THE LOUDEST PRAYER
He was not a normal person in my opinion. I will never forget when the Taliban, Pakistan, and Al-Qaeda captured all of Afghanistan except the Panjshir. It was afternoon, and we were in the mountains between Panjshir and the Shamali Plains. We had seen the cars of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Pakistan coming forward with their weapons. They were destroying homes, schools, and towns, and they killed children, women, and elderly people. We had no more energy in the Panjshir to resist. At the afternoon prayers, we normally prayed quietly, but on this day Massoud prayed loudly. When he was finished, he told us not to follow him, and he went over to another mountain without bodyguards, then he cried out and asked God for help. He said, “Please help us. We haven’t got weapons, we haven’t got tanks.” Actually, we didn’t see him cry, but when he came back his eyes were red. It was the first time I ever saw that he had been crying. Our enemies were not a small group; they took down the towers in New York City. They had everything, and we had only God. But after that, everything changed. Some other countries gave us money and some helped with weapons. Although the help came from the neighboring countries, Massoud always said that they helped us partly for their own safety, because if the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Pakistanis captured our country, after that their plan was to take Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the rest. He said that God helped us through them, so it was God we had to thank. (Ahmad Jamshid) REZA (DEGHATI): “You have been fighting for twenty years. And during this time, each time that I have come here, some more of your friends and your companions have unfortunately been martyred. How
do you view death? How have you kept these losses in your heart? How have you endured?” MASSOUD: “[Truly], the martyrdom of these friends and these brothers who spent a lifetime in the Resistance together with us is difficult to tolerate. But, there are some things that we are forced to endure. First, it is because of the morale of the others—so that their morale is not weakened. And while it is a lot of pressure, it must be endured in order to reach our goal and preserve the morale of our people. “More importantly, the thing that makes it possible for us to endure, not only the martyr’s sacrifice but also other great hardships, is trust in God. It is complete submission to the will of God. And whenever something happens we say that God wanted it to be so, and so it was—and we must not waste time repining over it.” (Massoud, Into the Forbidden Zone, tapes 275–76) WHY THEY KILLED HIM At the time Massoud was killed, we were facing an insult to Islam, a thousand-year-old belief. There was fanaticism, intolerance, totalitarianism. I think this phase [the incursion and rule of the Taliban] did more to Massoud than the war against the Soviets, because what he believed in most deeply was being disfigured. He was up against people who had betrayed the message for which he fought. He was a counterexample to their fanaticism, and I think that was the most important fight he led. It was not only a fight for the freedom of the land or for prevailing over the enemy, he was
safeguarding his own culture, the expression of his people’s faith, which had been passed down through the centuries. I think that is why they killed him—because he represented an opposition which was not so much material as spiritual and religious. (Humayun Tandar) CRITICAL LINKS In the first half of the sixteenth century, Roman Catholicism had reached such a state of moral abjectness that I wonder how it was able to survive. Then you find Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican priest, who stood up on a pulpit on Christmas Day in 1507, looked at the Spanish colonists on the Island of Santo Domingo, and said, “I will not give you communion, and I will not give you absolution because of what you are doing to your fellow humans on the pretext that they are not Christians. It’s unworthy of human beings, unworthy of Christ. You enslave people, you massacre people. You are here only for your own greed. You pretend to be Christians, but I banish you from this church.” Although I am not a Roman Catholic by tradition, I am Catholic by culture because I grew up in France and speak French and Spanish and Italian, and I know that tiny group of Dominican priests of Antonio de Montesinos maintained the link between the Catholicism we have today and the original church of Christ. If it were not for a few people like them, the whole religion might as well have committed suicide. Massoud and the people immediately around him were such a group. They maintained the connection between the Islam of the Golden Age and a future, regenerated Islam. They appeared in our
time and were put to death. I don’t fear to say this, because my commitment to Massoud was based on long reflection. It was a profound and spiritual commitment, not just a humanitarian accident. Massoud and his little group were models; they were exemplary. (Professor Michael Barry)
14 ROOM FOR ALL Massoud: “For me, north, south, Persian, Pashto is absolutely meaningless. In our home, we can talk in every language.” —Farzana Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Biography,” www.afgha.com, 2006 A cup of tea with a Western reporter, a walk with a Jewish friend, a chat with a child who came to see him . . . the immense universe of Massoud in the remote land of the Panjshir he loved.
A WIDER SKY Massoud was someone who had no local attachment whatsoever. It was like his sky. It could not be just the narrow sky of the Panjshir. His entire struggle, his fight, his desire could not be limited to one valley. He wanted to breathe; he wanted to go throughout the different regions, to go among all ethnic groups, to go here and there between every cultural and linguistic group. Strictures of language, ethnicity, region were stifling for him. His personality and character were beyond all that. That is why, in a society which had never really known definition as a nation, he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day. His way of approaching the spiritual dimension, traditionalism, modernism, enlargement—until him we had never really thought about all that. (Humayun Tandar) WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING? We talked on the phone almost every day. Massoud did not talk about Afghan issues, he talked about world issues. He wanted more information about exactly what had happened in every part of the world. I had expected that he would be so concentrated on Afghanistan that he would not have the time to hear what happened in other places, but he did.
I was amazed that somebody calling from the center of the Afghan Resistance, somebody with so many problems, was asking: What are the new discoveries? What is happening in the rest of the world? What are the political and social issues? (Ahmad Wali Massoud) BROTHERS Five or six times, Massoud invited me to prayers, so I prayed with them. Most of the times Massoud led and later we would go to dinner. Massoud asked me to do what we call les graces in French—to thank God for the meal. Many times he said, “Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language.” Michael Barry, who is Jewish, was also asked to lead prayers. Later on, with the propaganda and proselytizing of extreme groups, it changed, but in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets, no matter if we were Jewish, Christian, Muslim, we were all brothers. It’s hard for people to believe now, but it was like that. (Jean-José Puig) EAST AND WEST We had great discussions, often until two or three in the morning and always with a translator. Actually, I think Massoud understood more English than he let on. He also understood the connection between the East and the West. He was the first one to tell me that in Islam you were supposed to acknowledge and befriend the “people of the
Book,” the Christians and Jews. He understood, as many did not, that we worship and recognize the same God, that we have the same moral values. One night he asked me what I thought Jesus’s purpose on earth was. I said that as Catholics, as Christians, we were taught to believe that Jesus came to save us, but also to reinforce what was good in the understanding of God from the Old Testament, and to correct what was wrong. Massoud agreed enthusiastically with that. He said that absolutely it was his understanding also. (Richard Mackenzie) THE ONLY COMMANDER He was active in human rights and wanted women to have as much education as they could get, to have a place in the government, and the right to vote. Massoud acted on his beliefs. He was the only commander in Afghanistan who allowed a French woman doctor into the country to treat people. In 1980, when Dr. Laumonnier went to the Panjshir, there were three women who went, and they were there for three months. He was really happy with them because they helped the women. There are three women now in the interim government, and that was Massoud’s idea too. I have a cousin who was at the university in Kabul who was related to Massoud by marriage. She said Massoud sent her a message asking her to study medicine, and she did. She finished her degree, and now she is a pediatrician. She moved to the Panjshir the first thing when she finished her education. (Sher Dil Qaderi)
“Masoud is adamant that in Afghanistan women have suffered oppression for generations. He says that ‘the cultural environment of the country suffocates women. But the Taliban exacerbate this with oppression.’ His most ambitious project is to shatter this cultural prejudice and so give more space, freedom and equality to women— they would have the same rights as men. “This means giving Afghan women the chance to study. Masoud even wants to build a university in the Panjshir Valley besides developing more schools for women. ‘But these are things that I can do only step by step.’ For him, ‘women themselves also have to follow an evolution, and this could take one generation, maybe two. . . .’ His eagerness for more opening contrasts with a 95 percent illiteracy rate among women across the country. Many are still enveloped in the chadri because the culture is like that. Masoud recognizes the hurdles. . . .” (Escobar, “Masoud: From Warrior to Statesman”) FOR ALL OF US One day I said, “Ahmad Shah, I am really surprised you didn’t ask me about my background, my family. You tell me practically all your secrets without any security.” He laughed a little bit, because he really enjoyed humor, and said that it was not only his country, it was my country too. He said, “I am not doing this for myself; it’s for all of us. If I am not here someday, you will continue, other people will continue. We have to work together.” And he told me about Shura-eNezar.
At that time Massoud was very upset about the ethnic clashes in Afghanistan. I asked him a lot of questions because I had come from France and was not aware of the problems of ethnicity in Afghanistan. He said the reason he worked with Shura-e-Nezar was to make a council with all commanders, Pashtun, Uzbek, Hazara, and Tajik—all the ethnic groups. “We are in contact with practically everybody,” he told me. His goal was to have an organization that included every Afghan, not only Tajiks or Panjsheris. (Daoud Mir) THE LAY OF THE LAND Abdul Haq, a Pashtun leader, had quite a curious relationship with Massoud, a combination of admiration and jealousy. He knew that a lot of people admired Massoud, and though at times he was dismissive of Massoud, he also realized that they had to work together. Both were quite open-minded. I would not say they were intellectuals, but they were intelligent men. They knew very well what the lay of the land was, the dangers and the challenges of combining the roles of commander and politician. I think they had mutual admiration. (Edward Girardet) THE TASTE OF PIG At breakfast one time Massoud asked me, “What’s the taste of pig?” When I said, “Pork is no good,” they all laughed. Pig meat and whiskey are prohibited for Muslims. He didn’t say, like some Muslims, “Oh the Japanese are dirty because they eat pig and drink
whiskey. Japan is very bad.” He said, “Maybe he eats pig in Japan, and maybe he sometimes drinks alcohol. It’s okay.” He wasn’t blaming. He just wanted to know, and maybe to bring a little humor, because at the time the Taliban had them surrounded, and they had no ammunition, no money, no fuel. So he just laughed with the others. He was interested in everything, and he never compared his values with others. I could have stayed with Massoud for a long time. (Hiromi Nagakura) IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT We arrived very late at one of his bases in Taloqan. The house was full of mujahideen, and a couple of Arabs were there. I was pointed to a spot where I could lay down and rest, and one of the Arabs started ranting and saying that they were not going to sleep next to a Catholic. I just said to a mujahideen I was with, “It’s a beautiful night and I am going to sleep outside. Let’s not make a big fuss.” But he said, “No, no, no!” The next thing, I heard boots stamping down the hallway, and the door burst opened. It was a commander of Massoud, and he turned to the mujahideen and asked, “What’s going on?” They told him what had happened. This commander literally picked up the Arab, threw him against the wall, and told him, “You don’t ever speak to a guest of mine like that! Get over there,” and he pointed to another spot in the room that was open. Then he turned to me and said, “Sleep,” just one word, “sleep,” and went back to what he was doing. I told Massoud about it later. He broke up laughing and said, “That’s good, that’s good. That’s what I would expect from a
commander of mine.” (Richard Mackenzie) “Massoud’s patience was infinite and I never heard him raise his voice. Except once. A commander was just coming out of his office, and Ahmad, who was often present at the meetings, asked him, ‘Dad, is he an Uzbek? He has a funny accent.’ My husband, who never made an impatient gesture toward his children, took him by the ear and told him angrily, ‘He is an Afghan, as you and I are; I never want you to speak like that again!’ My son still remembers that moment.” (Sediqa Massoud, quoted in Hachemi and Colombani, Pour L’amour de Massoud, 191) A LITTLE VEIL UPON THEIR HEADS In ’92, when all of the Resistance forces came to Kabul, in the bosom of the Resistance the mentality was very hard. Certain chiefs made a sort of edict: This is an Islamic state; no more women on television. And for several weeks we did not see any women on television. At the end of three or four weeks, Commander Massoud took the responsibility of ordering that women be returned to the screen—with a little veil upon their heads, of course. This was almost a miracle. He said, “This has to be done, and if there is a problem, let them come talk to me.” From that moment television took its normal course. (Mehraboudin Masstan)
THE RELUCTANT BRIDE The parents of a very young woman and man arranged their wedding. The two were married, but without the consent of the woman. After two or three months, she sent her brother to Massoud with this message: My parents gave me to this man but I hate him; I don’t love him. Massoud called the man to his office and told him, “I received a message from your wife, saying that she doesn’t love you.” The man denied it, saying, “I love my wife, and everything is okay.” Massoud told him that he would investigate, sending a delegation of people he trusted to talk with the wife again. When they visited her, she sobbed and repeated: “I hate this man; he is a bad man. I don’t love him, and I don’t want to live with him. My mother and father received a lot of money for our marriage, but I hate him.” After that, Massoud called the husband. He said, “I sent a delegation to talk to your wife and she disagrees with what you told me.” He spoke softly and not sternly, in order not to scare the young man. He continued, “You are a young man and you have very little experience. You’ll live maybe until you are seventy years old. If she doesn’t like you, how can you live with her?” The man insisted that it was not true, so Massoud said, “I will seat you face to face and we will see.” And Massoud did exactly that. He called husband and wife together and in front of her husband, the wife repeated, “I hate you; I don’t love you.” Massoud told the man, “You need to give her a divorce.” The man objected, “I will never do that!” Massoud said, “Your wife hates you, and she had said this in front of you. You should understand that only you can exercise your rights, but you must do it in a humane way. I will send you to jail until you decide.”
(To Massoud, there was nothing worse than treating a person like an object.) He did send the man to jail. And after two or three days, the man went to the court and agreed to divorce his wife. (Salih Registani) A MESSAGE TO WOMEN In April of 1992, the communist regime was overthrown. Soon after capturing Kabul, Massoud appointed a woman doctor as chief of the medical academy to send a message that we supported women and that we wanted women to have a role in the reconstruction efforts of Afghanistan. (Commander Bismillah Khan) ON EQUAL FOOTING He believed in quite a few things other people did not. He did not think about specific people or just about Afghanistan; his vision was for all of humanity. He had a high vision for human beings as creations of God. He did not classify people on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, or religion or anything like that. Although he was a devoted Muslim, he put everybody on equal footing. I asked him, “You are devout; what do you think happens with the non-Muslims? What is the final place where they go after this world?” Many Muslims believe that Muslims will be saved and non-Muslims will not. I just wanted to know what he was thinking.
He said, “No, that’s not the case. Whoever is a good human being, that’s what is important, no matter which is their religion.” He said there are a lot of devils among the Muslims, and a lot of good people who are non-Muslims. “You cannot say that God will bless the Muslims and not the rest. What is more important is what kind of a human being he is.” He had a very strong view on the subject. (Ahmad Wali Massoud) ANY KIND OF PEOPLE Massoud was a leader, but with children he was a child and with the community he was a community member. As a fighter he was the best in the world. As a thinker he was the best. He knew a lot about religion, but, although he said our religion is Islam, he didn’t act like a fanatic. He was modern; he talked with people of all levels. A group of communists would come to see him and then a cleric. He would go to a farm and talk there about farming, or sheep. He fit into every category and could blend with any kind of people. (Sher Dil Qaderi) “It is our conviction and we believe that both men and women are created by the Almighty. Both are human beings; both have equal rights. Women can pursue an education, women can pursue a career, and women can play a role in society—just like men. This was our belief, and it continues to be our belief. In the future of Afghanistan, if it is the will of God that the Taliban will be struck down, and a moderate government comes into power, undoubtedly women will be respected and highly valued.”
(Massoud, interviewed in Into the Forbidden Zone) THE TRUE MUJAHIDEEN In a meeting of Afghans in Peshawar, everyone made speeches against the Western countries, against non-Muslims. The true mujahideen, the people who fought with their blood, were really open-minded people, but in Peshawar, most of the people were associated with big ideologies, were very political, and were always against some religion or some other people. I never heard that kind of division inside Afghanistan. On the contrary, Massoud was very interested to learn more about Western countries, European countries, all other countries. (Daoud Mir) THE FRUITS OF TOLERANCE Because of Massoud’s tolerance, Karim Arakam, who was an Ismaeli, became one of his best friends. Massoud had done everything to save the Ismaeli Shia in Kabul from extermination by the Taliban. And how do you think Massoud was able to come to Paris? In the private airplane of Arakam. (Professor Michael Barry) BEHIND THE LINES
Women were actively involved during the Resistance, not in the front lines but behind them. From the Shamali Plains to Taloqan and Badakhshan, all through Massoud’s territory, they were true helpers of those soldiers who were loyal to Massoud and to the people of Afghanistan. The women’s role was not only to feed the soldiers; there were times that women actually carried weapons to the front line for their men to fight. Aside from that, there were educated women within the Massoud-controlled areas who convened seminars and conventions to make known to the people of the world the plight of Afghan women and the Resistance against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. In Massoud’s territory, educated women were in the schools to teach children, and in the hospitals there were women doctors. Women were also active in social and political issues. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) ARE YOU READY TO SEND YOUR DAUGHTERS? Before the taking of Kabul, a BBC journalist interviewed Commander Massoud. During that time the subject of women’s rights was a burning topic, and the journalist posed the question: “What is your vision for Afghan women?” Massoud said, “My vision is that it be normal for Afghan women to retake their places, their natural lives, and that girls be able to go to school, to work, and to perform all of the things they are able to.” The journalist asked, “Would you accept this for your own daughters?” “Yes, of course. My daughters must go to school,” Massoud replied.
Then the journalist asked, “But when all is said and done, in Afghanistan they cannot enroll in higher education. Are you ready to send your daughters to study abroad?” Commander Massoud reflected for a few seconds, then said, “Yes, anywhere except the Soviet Union.” (Mehraboudin Masstan) NOW WE CAN EAT I got married before Massoud, and I did not see him for two years or more. In 1991, after the Russians were defeated, I was in Pakistan and Massoud was in Kabul. I came back to see him but I did not see his wife, and I was ready to meet my sister-in-law. We sat to eat, and everything was there, ready for the meal. The whole family was together, but Massoud did not start eating, and nobody else would start out of respect for him. I did not know why he was waiting, but Massoud was waiting for his wife. When she came, Massoud told everybody that now they could begin. I was very happy to see how much respect he had for her. He respected all women, though, not just his sisters and his wife. (Maryam Massoud) LOVERS AND FRIENDS Massoud and his wife loved each other very much. They lived like two lovers, yet very close friends, not like other leaders who are like dictators with their wives and children. Unfortunately, the situation did not allow Massoud’s wife to be in public and do interviews.
(Mohammad Yahya Massoud) YOU CAN PRAY LATER They started to pray at 4:30 or 5 in the morning. When it was time for prayer, other mujahideen had told me, “You must get up. We will pray now and you must also pray.” But Massoud said to me, “You can sleep, don’t get up.” I tried to get up. I don’t pray like they did, but I sat behind them facing towards Mecca. Many mujahideen said, “You should be Muslim. We like you. You come here alone, and you eat with us. Most reporters come here only to interview Massoud. They stay in the guesthouse, they never talk to us, and after the interview they go home. But you stay for a long time, so we like you and you should be Muslim. If we prayed together, it would be our happiness,” they said. I did not want to pray five times a day, especially in the morning, so I told them I could not wake up in the morning. A mujahid told Massoud later, “That Japanese does not want to be a Muslim because he cannot get up early in the morning.” So Massoud said to me later, “Muslims can pray later in the day, not always at 5 o’clock. If you get up late, it’s okay.” He never said, “You should. . . .” (Hiromi Nagakura) THE “NORTHERN ALLIANCE” The name “Northern Alliance” was given by Pakistan and adopted by the Western media. They called themselves the United Front, which
more accurately portrayed their policy of unifying all of the diverse ethnic groups of Afghanistan, the main groups being the Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara, in opposition to the Taliban. In fact, the nine leaders of the United Front who signed the agreement I negotiated (on the United Front policy for national reconciliation) came from each of these ethnic groups, two of whom were Pashtun. Commander Massoud, the de facto leader of the United Front, did not intend for the United Front to become the ruling government of Afghanistan. His vision was for the United Front to help establish a new government, where the various ethnic groups would share power and live in peace through a democratic form of government. He was even open to having some moderate members of the Taliban in a new government. He told me of his dream of an Afghanistan at peace with itself, and of the Pansjhir Valley, which had been stripped of many of its trees, being once again full of flowering almond trees and laughing children. In pursuing this vision, Massoud was constantly reaching out to the Pashtuns, who made up the bulk of the Taliban movement. During my stay with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, I met two of his “advisers” who were Pashtun. One adviser, who was a mullah, jokingly called himself a “Taliban,” not because he was a member of the Taliban, but because he had conservative beliefs. I also saw visiting Pashtun tribal leaders from Kandahar (where the Taliban were based). And I shared one of Massoud’s guesthouses with a young Pashtun military commander. He was tired of the fighting and told me of his dream to live overseas and date a young woman. After 9-11 and the overthrow of the Taliban, the United Front became instrumental in forming a jirga (assembly) to establish a new government representing all of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups. Massoud had been assassinated two days before 9-11, but his vision for the
United Front to establish a new government prevailed. Massoud’s dream of peace and flowering almond trees will take much longer. (Roger L. Plunk)
15 WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS Somebody asked Commander Gul Haidar, who had fought with Massoud since he was fifteen years old and now is thirty-nine, where had he studied. He answered, “I studied at the University of Massoud.” —Abdul Wadood Zafari Once an Afghan told me he did not know how to talk about life with Massoud because every moment, every second, was essential with him. He was what he taught, so he was constantly guiding his people. At times his actions could be quite unexpected and produced surprise, even shock, and their purpose could only be understood by later reflection.
I AM ONE THING When the Russians were defeated, I was working with a mujahid named Hayisedique in the Panjshir Valley. He came to me and said, “I have a family and I want to go to Saudi Arabia for work.” He wanted me to ask Massoud if he could go. It was about 6 p.m., the time of the fourth prayer, and Massoud made Wuzu before prayers (Muslims wash their hands and face before praying). He came from the river; his hair was wet and his hands were wet, and I went towards him and I said, “Ahmad, my friend Hayisedique wants to go to Saudi Arabia. I am being the mediator between you and Hayisedique to ask if you will let him go.” And he said, “But where is Hayisedique?” He was near a tree and approached us then. Before he had the chance to speak for himself, Massoud said to Hayisedique, “What do you think about me? Who am I?” I was surprised, and Hayisedique also felt strange that Massoud would ask him such a question. We did not understand what he wanted. He repeated the question, and then he said, “Look Hayisedique, I am nothing. People say Massoud is a poet. Who has seen my poetry? I am not a poet. I am not a writer. I am not a doctor. I am not an engineer. I am not a politician. I am not a very good speaker. So I am nothing. But I am one thing and I feel one thing: I love my country and I love my God.” Hayisedique did not go. He stayed, and he never asked again. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud)
HUMAN EVOLUTION I can mention many people who came with no knowledge, spent time with Massoud, and learned. Without going through any formal education, people who were close to Massoud evolved through everyday experiences. Bismillah Khan, for example, did not go to any military school or educational institution, but today he is one of the most important Afghan commanders and leads a division. Dr. Abdullah is trained as a medical doctor. It was his experience with Massoud that gave him the ability to deal with foreign policy. He was a personal secretary to Massoud and learned everything from him. During the last military operation, Anaconda, American troops were unable to capture Taliban positions because they were not familiar with fighting in our mountains. Gul Haidar, with only one leg, went with a couple of his troops and captured all the Taliban positions. He never had military schooling. He learned by his experience with Massoud. (Haroun Mir) SMALL THINGS Maybe this does not seem very important, but you learned small things as well as big ones from Massoud—to stay clean in all circumstances, to see if everybody had everything they needed during lunch or dinner. From the end of a room he would be aware of what was happening everywhere in the room. Such things were a constant teaching to others without his showing or telling them, “Do this and that.”
(Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) THE ADMIRER This happened in the 1990s when Massoud was in Kabul. A friend of mine, Zia, who is a Hazara, admired Massoud so much that he drew a picture of him. Then, he took a taxi and went to Massoud’s office. He arrived at noon and asked to see Massoud, but the secretary told him that Massoud was busy, so Zia went back home. The next day, again he took a taxi, and at noon he was at Massoud’s office. He waited until 8 p.m., and finally the secretary said to Massoud, “He won’t leave; go and see him.” So Massoud received Zia and immediately confronted him. “Why are you wasting your time painting me? I couldn’t finish my studies; you go and finish yours, and don’t waste any more of your time!” (Fawad Rahmani) INDIRECTLY This makes me a little uncomfortable: I did not have any knowledge of Islam, unlike other revolutionaries who had the chance to read the right books. Humbly, I told Ahmad Shah, “I come from a Kabul family of very open-minded people. A lot of women in my family, my cousins and others, don’t even wear headscarves. But I want to do something for Afghanistan if I can.” He didn’t say anything, but during the next weeks and months he taught me, indirectly and without extremism or fundamentalism, not only about Islam but also about the relationship between God and
people. He asked if I read the Bible or the Koran. I said that I never thought about it. Then he taught me some things about both of them. I thought, this man is different from the other commanders and leaders I have met in Afghanistan and Pakistan; he is open-minded. (Daoud Mir) THE VILLAGERS I was in the Panjshir Valley with Massoud before the Russians invaded Afghanistan. He was injured, and the road had collapsed. We wanted to come out of the village, but some of the villagers said, “No, you cannot leave.” And one of the young men, Yasim, came forward and took hold of Massoud’s shirt and said, “You are responsible for this road and you are not moving.” After a few minutes, some of Massoud’s soldiers, about two hundred men, came to the village and immediately when they saw the situation turned guns on the villagers and said, “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Then they looked to Massoud, but he said, “Don’t.” We said to him, “They are not allowing your family to get out of the village. They are holding you, humiliating you.” But Massoud said, “They are the people. Today they have a problem because the road broke, so they think that way today. But tomorrow they will be the people again and they will be our strength.” So Massoud did not allow our men to do anything. Later on, when he was strong again, somebody asked what should be done against that village. Massoud laughed and said, “Don’t think small, don’t think that way. They are all human beings; they are all Afghans.” (Ahmad Wali Massoud)
FOR HOURS AND HOURS People used to come and I would think, they are talking too much about things that have nothing to do with the situation, so why not tell them, I don’t want to hear that; tell me about this, which was important. But Massoud let people argue with him all the time— elderly people, young people. For hours and hours he talked to them, and at the end of every meeting I realized that they left feeling satisfied. I learned that you need to care for every single issue that matters to them, regardless of its political importance or significance in the military struggle. That’s the way to gain the confidence and trust of people. The first time I went to the Panjshir Valley, I would lose my temper when things did not seem logical. I would argue and argue and lose my temper. He told me after a while, “Look, be a little more patient. These people have suffered a lot. These are not normal circumstances, and there are too many problems. When they come to us they think we are capable of solving all their problems, and if we don’t, they lose their temper. We should be patient. They don’t have anywhere else to go.” Without him reminding me, later on I saw how much patience he showed towards people, even the ones who argued with him and sometimes spoke nonsense—how he would still listen. This I learned from him. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) I DID NOT KNOW RELIGION I was from Kabul and I did not know about religion. I learned it when I was with Massoud. I had never done my prayers before. Because I
was living with him, I saw that he and the bodyguards and close friends woke up at five in the morning and did the prayers. They knew that people like me were sleeping, but Massoud was not like the fundamentalists, saying that if you don’t do your prayers you are not a true Muslim. He was moderate and open-minded and never forced anyone to do anything. (Haroun Mir) START WITH WUZU Something happened one day at Massoud’s residence in Kabul in 1995 that struck me. He was ready to lead the prayers. We had just arrived and weren’t ready, because you have to be really pure and clean, so you have to wash your mouth, hands, legs, etc. This is called Wuzu and you can do it with water or dirt. Since I hadn’t done Wuzu, I just sat in the room, took my video camera, and tried to take pictures of Massoud. When he finished, he called me and a couple of other people who had not been prepared to do the prayers, and he said, “Listen to me. I know you are young and to pray five times a day is kind of difficult, but you have to teach yourselves and your bodies discipline. Do the Wuzu five times during the day, then you won’t have any trouble doing the prayers.” That was something I never heard from anyone else and it always stayed with me. (Farid Zikria) WHEN YOU TAKE A VOW
Massoud always told people, once you get married you get busy with your wife and children, and that takes away from the Resistance. But in the Muslim world, as you get older if you don’t get married you lose respect. So the time came that he had to get married, and he did. Then there was a rumor that now the story would be different, that he was going to be more engaged with his family life, and people were afraid of what would happen. One day they woke up and Massoud was not there. He had left before the sun rose and had gone to the doorstep of a base that the Russians had nearby. From there, the Russians saw him and attacked and shot at him. When he returned to his own base, people asked, “Where did you go? How could you go alone?” His commanders and soldiers, when they found out, were not only surprised but were actually yelling at him about it. But do you know what Massoud had done? He had shown them not only that going to the mountain of the dragon is not hard if you have the will, but also that he was a man of his word. He would stand and fight, and having a wife and kids would not stop him from doing what he had to do. (Farid Amin) IN THE CAVES Massoud helped us in academics throughout northern Afghanistan, in the caves and elsewhere, and he brought tapes and video cassettes and many other things that were sent to him. He wanted his people not to remain peasants, not to remain people who knew only about war, but to know that life is greater than war. (Haron Amin)
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Massoud was not the type to speak for hours trying to motivate people. He spoke calmly and used simple words ordinary people could understand. Mainly he affected people, not just with clear reasoning and conversation, but by his example. I think that is why his was a lasting leadership. Sometimes in Afghanistan leaders fall out of grace because of their weaknesses. A lot of the politicians lead double lives: When the doors are closed they have different beliefs. Massoud did not. He was what he was. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) COPY THIS! Whatever Massoud did, people copied him all the time. You have seen Massoud’s pictures. His hat was always cocked to one side. He did not place it like that on purpose; his talk was animated, he moved his head a lot, and the hat just moved to one side. That became a fashion. All people who are loyal to him wear the hat like that. One day he was swimming in the river, and when he got out he didn’t tuck his shirt into his pants. He just walked around like that, and the next day 90 percent of the mujahideen were wearing their clothes the same way. So one day he gathered all his commanders, and he said to them, “Whatever I do, you copy me. If I walk funny, you walk funny. If I talk differently, you talk that way, too. So I have one request for you people: if you want to copy me, copy this. I am not stealing from the
people; my heart is here to take care of the people. Don’t steal. Work for your people and your neighborhood.” (Sher Dil Qaderi) BEFORE YOU EXPRESS YOURSELF When we started to tell Massoud something, before we were finished he would say yes, and we knew that he had gotten the point. When somebody could not get what he was talking about, he would say, “May Allah secure your household, I like a friend who understands you before you express yourself.” He liked this saying a lot, and he had it always on his tongue. (Masood Khalili) WHICH WAY TO GOD? In Islam there are two schools of thought. Maktabi is a school of strict Islamic teachings. The fundamentalists follow the maktabi: for example, Hekmatyar and people who were in Alzahra University in Egypt. It means that you follow certain rules and limitations set by those particular schools of Islamic teaching, and all of the fundamentalists belong to those schools. Sufis are those who follow tasawuf, the second school of thought. The final goal of both is to get closer to God. Maktabis think that you have to follow certain rules, while the Sufi way of tasawuf is very broad and covers the whole of humanity. In France I asked Massoud, “Do you follow the maktabis or the Sufi way of getting closer to God?” His answer is something I never
heard before, even though I have talked with a lot of scholars, Sufis. He told me this: In order to be a good Muslim, in order to be a true Muslim, you have to follow both. Maktabis and what they do in their teachings show you the rules of Islam—for example, you have to pray five times a day—but that alone won’t get you close to God, so you need tasawuf to understand why the rules exist. Then you will get closer to God. Just praying five times a day will not do it, but if you understand the philosophy behind it. . . . The Taliban beat people so they would pray five times a day, but that’s not the way. You have to feel it inside, and if you pray, during your prayers you have to be with God. (Farid Zikria) NIGHT AFTER NIGHT There were times when Massoud’s companions would come to him in desperation, but he never gave in to that. He always had an answer, and if at any point he found reluctance, he would do something himself. A good leader is the first one to act. For me, if words do not reflect actions, they don’t mean anything. When people saw Massoud come in at night with an empty stomach, taking off his boots and putting his feet in cold water for the swelling, drinking hot tea to relax himself, and at the same time having the walkie talkie at his ear, giving orders . . . when that happened constantly, it said something. (Farid Amin) THE VIEW
Two or three years before he was killed, there was moment in Massoud’s house, in his garden. Everybody was sad; a lot had happened. Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz had fallen to the Taliban. In Salang, a commander had surrendered to the Taliban. The situation was bad, so Massoud asked some of his colleagues to have a discussion—Mr. Qanooni, Bismillah Khan, etc. Commander Massoud wanted to make the moment a little bit lighter, but it wasn’t possible. When everybody left, I went with him inside his house. He said, “Some of our colleagues have lost morale; it’s very difficult. I tried, but everybody was sort of preoccupied.” So we sat and had a cup of tea, and I went home. The situation got better. We went back into Salang, the Taliban was attacked in Mazar-i-Sharif and lost lots of their people, and the people from Mazar were liberated. Then Massoud and I went to the same room, a room that was sort of a library, and he said, “Look. There is such a nice view here.” I said, “Yes, no doubt about it.” Then he said, “Three days ago, the same view was there, but nobody noticed how nice it was. It depends on the moment, on somebody’s situation. Everything is relative, you see. It was the same view.” (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) “Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the Book when once the heart is opened and it has learnt to read.” —Saadi of Shiraz HOMEWORK
Once Masood Khalili went to the Panjshir Valley. When he came back, I asked him how Massoud was, and he told me, “Let’s talk later. First, I should complete my homework.” And you know what the homework was? Massoud had told him, “The next time that you come to the Panjshir Valley you should have read this Al-Ghazali book, and I will ask you about it.” (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) PRIORITIES In 1998, the Taliban took over most of the country. The only places that were free were Badakhshan and part of Taloqan in the Panjshir Valley, and the Taliban was advancing towards Badakhshan. I was with Massoud when we left the Panjshir to take a helicopter trip to the north. I asked him about his son, Ahmad. He said, “Well, I promised Ahmad that next time I went to the north I would take him with me, and Ahmad was ready and came to the helicopter to join me. I told him that, yes, I had promised and I didn’t want to break my promise. But I tried to explain to him that the Taliban was advancing to the north, and if I took him with me, the people in the Panjshir Valley would think that I was taking him to a safer place—that the situation was so bad that I was taking him outside the country. So I told him, ‘It is better for you to stay here so the people can feel safe.’” (Farid Zikria) FOOD UNDER FIRE
My father told me this story he got from my brother who was killed. He was on a mountain in a fight with the Russians, and he had gotten under a rock. He thought, I am going to die. Then, suddenly, Massoud was coming toward him alone, and he asked my brother, casually, “Do you have anything to eat?” He saw Massoud’s courage, and it made him feel courageous too. (Eisa Khan Ayoob Ayoobi) “‘I’ll tell you what I think: life goes by whether you’re happy or not,’ he [Massoud] said. ‘Any man who looks back on his past and feels he has been of some use need have no regrets.’” (Junger, “Massoud’s Last Conquest,” 139) “Look not at my exterior form but take what is in my hand.” — Jallaluddin Rumi
16 KABUL: SHADOW OF VICTORY When I am weary of the reign of reason God knows how grateful I am to my heart! —Khalillulah Khalili Between 1992 and 1996, Kabul was at the center of tragic conflicts and represented both the high and low points of Massoud’s life as a leader. When he and the mujahideen entered Kabul, hopes were high that a coalition of all the different Afghan factions would share power and build a new country. Massoud made every decision in light of this hope, but it was dashed again and again as some international players abandoned the scene and others vied for control of the country by repeatedly provoking violence using various Afghan militias.
This was such a troubled and complex period for Massoud that an in-depth examination is needed to shed light on the elusive reality behind a situation the Afghans compared to hell. In making that examination, I have listened to the voices of those who were actually present or involved during those years, rather than the many who watched and reported from far away. I. HIGH HOPES: A HISTORIC DAY (1992) “[The] contest for Kabul ended on April [28], 1992, at least a phase of the struggle resolved in favor of Ahmad Shah Massoud. To bring order in the embattled city and establish a stable Afghan government, he moved into the capital late in the night with ten thousand troops. . .. “The Afghan moon cast a shadow of a lone figure on his knees. Before entering the embattled city of Kabul that fateful night . . . he bowed in prayer for his country and his faithful followers. . . .” (Prepublication extracts, Bowersox, The Gem Hunter, http://www.gems-afghan.com/gemhunter/Ch7BoxMassoudCW.htm, March 2007) THE KEYS TO THE CITY
Due to many factors—Massoud’s resistance and determination, world opinion, perestroika in Moscow, pressure from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the help of Americans in the field (giving the Stinger anti-aircraft weapons to us)—the Russians and communists left Kabul. Commander Massoud had been pushing from the north to reach the walls of Kabul, and he got a message from them that they would leave the city and give its keys to him. Instead of going on into Kabul with his forces and becoming the head of state, instead of accepting the keys of Kabul from the communists and declaring a victory, Commander Massoud called the country’s leaders in Pakistan. He informed the leaders in Peshawar and told us we should discuss what kind of government there would be and let him know, and we would start a new chapter for Afghanistan. I remember getting a message from Commander Massoud. He told me all their decisions in detail, and I made my opinion very clear to him: that we should not, for the time being, invite leaders from all different parts of Afghanistan to rule the country because (a) they were not experienced in ruling, (b) we didn’t have a constitution, (c) there would be lots of weapons around, (d) they would turn the war against the Soviets into war against each other and cause problems for all of Afghanistan. My main idea was that he should go to Kabul with the council of commanders that he had convened two years before. He had been the head of that council of Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara commanders [Shura-e-Nezar]. They had fought the Soviets, and they were the real liberators. I thought we should go to the old Afghan Parliament House in Kabul, which was the real parliament of the country before the communists took over in 1972. (Two hundred and six members we had, and indeed we had a democracy with its own
meaning and shape.) There they should talk and arrange that for the next three years we’d have martial law until there was a constitution, until the power was passed to a democratic body of the people of Afghanistan. Anyway, we entered Kabul. The other leaders of the mujahideen were still in Pakistan, and Rabbani was too. They met there in Peshawar and insisted that Commander Massoud be the defense minister, and he accepted. I remember that he was in Kabul already when I went to him, and he said that the media was waiting for him to give our first press conference in Kabul. How we had dreamed of this moment when we were fighting the Soviets in the mountains! When I sat with the Commander at that press conference, I said to myself, “Thank God we are in Kabul.” I was actually in tears. I had thought that the time would never come when I would be able to hold a press conference in Kabul with Commander Massoud, so it was a fascinating, beautiful day, a very historical day, for me personally and for Afghanistan. The press conference was held at the Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan in May of 1992. It was at that beautifully carved table in the old building. Also there were Dostum, Hadaqi, and others. Commander Massoud announced that he would take charge of Kabul and that Mujaddedi would be the president for two months. He said he would take care of any rockets launched in the city. Three rockets were fired just then from the south of Kabul, and Massoud looked at me and said, “I think it’s Hekmatyar.” Hekmatyar had not agreed to come to Kabul, although he had been appointed prime minister at the meeting in Pakistan. He wanted to come by force instead (because he had failed to reach Kabul during the fighting). (Masood Khalili)
THE CONVERSATION When the communist government was collapsing, I was with Commander Massoud in Jabul-Saraj before he entered Kabul and witnessed a phone conversation between him and Hekmatyar, who was in South Paktia. Massoud told him: “The Kabul regime is ready to surrender peacefully, so instead of the fighting we should gather to replace the regime. The leaders are meeting in Peshawar. There is a good situation for the mujahideen. The troops should not enter Kabul, they should enter later on as part of the government.” Massoud wanted to enter peacefully. His logic was that if the troops entered the city it would provoke acts of revenge and affect the civilians. Hekmatyar responded: “We will march into Kabul with our naked swords. No one can stop us. Kabul is under our threat. It must surrender, and we will enter as victors. Why should we meet the leaders?” Massoud responded: “Because you are one of the leaders.” Massoud’s intention was to form a coalition government. Hekmatyar did not accept that during the conversation and continued threatening to attack Kabul. Massoud was concerned with the possibility of revenge killings, the destruction of the city, violence, the killing of civilians, and the disunity of the Resistance groups. So he responded to Hekmatyar: “It seems to me that you don’t want to join the leaders in Peshawar, nor stop your threat, and you are planning to enter Kabul. In that case, I must defend the people, the women, the elders, and the children.” As this conversation was taking place, Massoud had good intelligence and knew that people from Hekmatyar had already entered Kabul dressed as civilians and had been armed by people from the minister of the interior. They broke open the prison doors, freeing even dangerous criminals, and more than ten thousand armed
criminals ran loose in Kabul. The released prisoners robbed the military depots, and there was no army, police, intelligence service, not even intact buildings and structures. Ministries and their archives were pillaged, and many important documents were destroyed. The phone conversation ended. Massoud sent three hundred men by helicopter to the Kabul airport area and surroundings. Hekmatyar began attacking military installations, and the next day Massoud stopped his troops in a battle. Three days later, on April 24, 1992, Massoud entered Kabul peacefully. Before he marched toward Kabul, he gave clear orders to his troops regarding their behavior once they were in the city. He reminded them of their duties as protectors of Kabul’s population. (Ayoub Omarzada) II. THE “CIVIL WAR” THAT WASN’T A CIVIL WAR (1992–1996) The communist retreat from Kabul marked the end of one war and the beginning of another. Hekmatyar was just beyond the capital, and that chapter would be very dark, bloody, and brutal. It would continue until the Taliban took power. Those were the worst years for all of us, and I think certainly the worst years for Commander Massoud. He worked day and night, from one mountain of Kabul to another, always planning, talking, mobilizing, coordinating, and organizing his forces. The south was a hundred percent controlled by the [Pakistani] ISI.
Whenever you go back to the years 1992 to 1996, you find this chapter of Afghanistan’s history full of blood. But, why do people call it a “civil” war? People did not know, even Afghans abroad. They thought that it was Afghans brutalizing Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Iran was helping one ethnic group, Uzbekistan was helping another group, and Pakistan was helping another—Hekmatyar. They made up something like a council of solidarity, so we had the south, west, and east of Kabul fighting against us. The Commander was almost alone with his own forces. The world abandoned Afghanistan totally at that time. They just said, “The war is over, the Soviets are defeated, and the country is in the hands of the Afghans, so let it be whatever it is.” There was a big vacuum after the Soviets were defeated and the Americans left, and Afghanistan fell into competition and rivalry. The various forces fighting the government were all supported by neighboring countries who had their own interests and wanted us to fight each other, yet the war was considered by the world to be a “civil” war. When the communists left, and after the leaders’ conference, I asked Massoud, “Please, just let me go and write in my diary.” I thought the war would continue, but not as much as before, and I thought Commander Massoud could take care of it. I was so naïve that I thought that I could retire for a year, write in my diary, and come back. So I went to the United States. After about three months, one day he called me and said, “What are you doing?” I think I said I was reading my diary and waiting for lunch. He asked me what I was having, and I told him my wife was making some meat and rice. And he said, “Well, enjoy your lunch.” I asked how he was doing, and he told me that the enemy had penetrated as far as the Presidential Palace in Kabul. “Last night they were inside the palace, but we pushed them out,” he said. I talked to
my wife immediately and said, “I cannot stay here!” We rushed back, and I started working around Massoud as a soldier without a gun. (Masood Khalili) REALITY IN KABUL I reported from Kabul for The Economist and the Associated Press from 1991 through 1994 during the new government in Kabul, with Massoud as defense minister, which basically upheld the liberal provisions of the National Constitution of 1964—including the right of women to health care, education, and professional work. It was tough to get an interview at times, simply because Massoud was always either negotiating, planning, or fighting. Even as proxy militias on hire to each of Afghanistan’s unfriendly neighbors joined hands to destroy the city, Massoud’s self-effacing approach to public relations continued, for very much the same reasons—but often to the discomfort of his followers. Massoud never stopped negotiating behind the scenes with his enemies, especially those with a jihadi background. His priorities were always clear: “We will not compromise on national sovereignty. If we work with Dostum, it’s because we don’t want to have to fight in the north while we are defending Kabul—and because his relationship with Ankara [Turkey] and Tashkent [Uzbekistan] is far less of a threat to Afghan sovereignty than Hekmatyar’s relationship with Pakistan.” For the next four and a half years, every step that Massoud took— or could have taken, but hesitated to—was dictated by one overriding concern: The well-being of the ordinary citizens of Kabul. He can hardly be blamed for the presence of irresponsible armed groups in the capital, having done everything within his power to prevent it. Until
November 1994, I witnessed firsthand the resulting dilemmas he faced, the amazing restraint with which he met them, and the almost willfully feckless manner in which absentee Western “observers” based in Pakistan distorted the situation in accord with ISI propaganda. For example, the Dostum militia created a big crime problem in Kabul, and Massoud’s enemies (along with jealous rivals among the mujahideen) accused him of “bringing the Gilam Jam [in reference to Dostum’s militia accused of thieving] to Kabul.” (In fact, it was common knowledge that communist regime generals had flown them into Kabul to shore up the city’s defenses a week and a half before the mujahideen took over.) Massoud’s followers, busy as they were, regularly shot it out with Dostum carjackers and burglars who were preying on the citizens. Eventually, Dostum joined the opposition— and Massoud drove his militia step by step out of Kabul. First he was blamed for their crimes; when he fought them, he was blamed for “fighting in the city.” The Iran-backed Shiite Hazara militia wasn’t supposed to be in town either: They were able to seize southern and western Kabul precisely because of the collapse of the army perimeter engineered by Pakistan’s proxy militias and their communist allies. Massoud did everything within his power to restrain the Hazara “ethnic cleansing” campaign in southwest Kabul, which began barely a month after the communist regime collapsed. When his efforts fell short, Western aid workers and diplomats— parroting their contacts in ISI and its Afghan proxies—derided him for “failing to control the situation.” When he finally crushed them, to stop their abuses, the Western parrots began chattering the tune of Radio Iran, blaming him for “massacres” and “human rights abuses” against Hazaras that are overwhelmingly fictional.
Massoud’s hands were tied, to some extent, because except for short periods he was unable to keep his enemies out of artillery range —just as better-equipped communist troops before them and NATO troops afterward have proven unable to stop terrorist attacks in Kabul. The enemy used munitions from Pakistani army depots to shell marketplaces and intersections at peak traffic hours. They deliberately killed tens of thousands of civilians. Despite the ongoing disinformation, there is no doubt and no question, in the minds of objective observers who were actually present, that it was Massoud and his followers who struggled to uphold human rights, and his enemies who abused them. That led to trade-offs—the stuff of every political and military decision, west or east. When Iran-backed Hazara militiamen began shelling Kabul’s northwestern neighborhoods, Massoud worried aloud to his aides that driving them from their positions would risk allowing some of his allies’ camp followers to commit atrocities against Hazara captives. On the other hand, he noted, the alternative was to allow Hazara militiamen to continue shelling much more heavily populated areas, and killing many more noncombatants, on the other side of town. Understandably, he chose the former. In the resulting Afshar operation, abuses were minimal, as I saw for myself—nothing to compare with the savagery I had witnessed the Hazara militia inflict on noncombatants. Of course, that has never stopped political opportunists (often masquerading as human rights activists) from inventing a “massacre” that never, in fact, occurred. During the battle, I watched Panjsheris rescue a wounded Hazara woman caught in a cross fire and carry her to safety. Next day, I stumbled across one of Wahdat’s impromptu jails in the basement of an abandoned house, complete with three non-Hazara corpses, tied up with baling wire and shot as the gunmen fled. My bureau chief wasn’t
interested. (Though she didn’t quit her job, she later dropped any pretense of journalism and became an anti-Massoud activist.) In Islamabad, they only cared about atrocities against Hazaras. The pundits who natter on about mujahideen “abuses” forget a very important point: Any popular movement, if it is truly popular, is going to harbor a criminal element, just because every large population harbors a criminal element. It is unrealistic to expect zero crimes. Yet Afghans, even Massoud’s enemies, know that abuses by his troops were rare, exceptional, and punished as often as they were caught. (Whether they are willing to admit it to Western hacks and diplomats is another matter.) His enemies, on the other hand—few of whom were mujahideen to begin with—undertook mass murder, looting, and ethnic cleansing as a matter of policy. It also bears noting that, from late 1992 through early 1995, Massoud’s enemies enjoyed direct military backing from all of Afghanistan’s militarily significant neighbors—Pakistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan. Yet he withstood them, and eventually all but Pakistan realized the foolishness of their policies. Had Massoud not fought to hold on to Kabul, the human rights situation in Afghanistan and throughout the region would have been vastly worse than it was. (John Jennings) KABUL WAS THE HARDEST When Massoud was in Kabul, between 1992 and 1996, the city was full of sad stories. It was being attacked by rockets, it was under blockade, the people were getting poorer day by day, and there was infighting between different armed groups. Sometimes he would set aside official business and come to my house without bodyguards—we
used to live in the same area of Kabul—and we listened to special music, some special music with good poetry. This would be only for a few hours, and, because he had a great sense of responsibility, even in those times he was always thinking. We used to go to the Panjshir together and swim in the river. People of all ages, young and old, would gather, and he used to play with them, running, wrestling, or swimming. You wouldn’t believe that he was the man who had the responsibility for the whole country. He would say, “We are happy now; I hope there is not bad news afterwards.” That might be the case, but other times he received information by radio that there had been an attack by Hekmatyar. Then he would say, “I knew this would not last,” and we would return to Kabul and get back to business again. He said that the time in Kabul was the hardest, because people were suffering, and there was almost nothing we could do. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) A SINGLE MAN’S EFFORT During the government’s fight to hold Kabul, for a while the front line was only five hundred meters from the Presidential Palace. There was no proper communication, we needed medicine for people who were wounded and sick, and there was a shortage of food. During all this, Massoud had to keep defending the city because rockets were constantly coming in, so the situation was very bad. While I was in exile, I saw a lot of publicity they made up against the government. The “massacres” they reported were exaggerations, but it is true that there was bad behavior on the part of certain forces.
Massoud was always talking to his people about not behaving badly; he told them they were accountable to their God. But because of the rocket attacks on the city the number of troops had to be increased, so there were ten or twelve thousand troops from other sources that came in to protect the city. I think people blamed Massoud because they expected him to test out the reliability of all of the troops and at the same time to maintain the mujahideen’s hold on Kabul and help all the people. Those who criticized him admit they don’t have any evidence that Massoud ordered any killings. He not only did not order any, but he was deeply distressed by them. I remember once at an evening meal during Ramadan, Massoud commented that some commanders were behaving badly, and said that he was trying to bring them to justice, even to put them in jail. But I think it was a single man’s effort, so it could not succeed. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) “During the next four years [1992–1996] I never saw my husband so sad. His disappointment was immense and every day I perceived that he became a little more withdrawn. And for me, I understood that the hope of tranquil happiness had once more fled my life. I no longer had any bearings.” (Excerpt from Colombani with Hachemi, “A Meeting with Mme. Massoud,” Elle) USING HIS NAME
When Massoud came into Kabul in 1992, the mujahideen came as an “alliance” from many different fronts and different groups. You had Dostum’s people who were totally out of control. There were other groups, other commanders, and quite a few had become communists as well. When Massoud operated in the north during the fight against the Soviets, and towards the end of the Taliban period, his Northern Front commanders he watched quite closely and controlled well, but in Kabul, no. Of the people working around him, many were not Panjshiris, and a lot became corrupt very quickly. They sought to play the same game as everyone else that went to Kabul—running favors, undermining him, something that I know Massoud wanted to rectify. People who were supposedly supporting Massoud were just using his name to benefit themselves. That was one of the main concerns. He could not control all of them. (Edward Girardet) LEADER OF THE THIEVES After Massoud entered Kabul, the government was established, he became defense minister, and there was looting. One day he was going from Kabul to Shamali, and he saw a trailer truck and somehow got suspicious. He stopped it, and when they opened the back there were goods in it, things that belonged to other people, probably taken from houses or government offices. He accused them: “You are thieves, you are trying to steal.” Then he saw his own picture in the back of their truck—you know that people tried to use Massoud’s name and picture to gain power or to take advantage of things—and he said, “First, remove that picture of
your leader, the leader of thieves.” In his way he was telling them, listen, if you say I am your leader and you do these things, that is what you make me—a leader of thieves. (Farid Amin) A THOUSAND ROCKETS When the mujahideen took over, Massoud became the minister of defense and actual leader of the government. Then Hekmatyar started rocketing Kabul, and the city went through a very bad time. The question is whether or not the situation was caused by Massoud. I was in Kabul during that period, and I don’t think so. Other parties, for example Hekmatyar with the help of the Pakistani ISI, tried to disturb the peace. That was the fact. The situation in Baghdad today is a lot worse; people don’t feel safe. That is what the Pakistanis wanted for Kabul all those years. If they made it an unsafe place, people would blame Massoud because he was supposed to be in charge. Hekmatyar had his own army, and he was within a few miles of the city. He had the backing of Pakistan, and he had a lot of rockets. He fired more than a thousand rockets at Kabul in a day. (Farid Zikria) EMPTY-HANDED When Mr. Yunnus Qanooni came to Pakistan, I asked him about Kabul, and he told me that one day during that time Massoud sent him and Mohammed Qasim Fahim to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and told
them, “Bring my heart, my intention, to Gulbuddin, and tell him that I want him as prime minister of Afghanistan, and please not to fire rockets all over Kabul. I will stay under his command, and I will accept him as prime minister.” Qanooni and Fahim went to Shariazar to meet Hekmatyar. When they arrived, Qanooni told Hekmatyar, “We are not coming officially. Nobody knows we are here. We are just bringing the intention of Massoud to you, to talk about you and Kabul and the future of Afghanistan.” And Qanooni explained Massoud’s message and that Massoud would remain under his command for the sake of Kabul and Afghanistan. Qanooni said, “Do you know what Gulbuddin’s reaction was? He said he would accept, but there was one condition: There was a mountain inside Kabul that was occupied by our forces, and if Massoud agreed to withdraw from this mountain, Hekmatyar would come.” Qanooni laughed and told him, “Massoud is ready to give you the whole country and you are talking about one mountain?” And of course they came back empty-handed. Massoud tried to negotiate several times, and Hekmatyar refused because he was not independent. He was a puppet of the Pakistanis. It was not a civil war but a plot designed by the Pakistan Intelligence Service (ISI). When Hekmatyar was defeated, they sent the Taliban. Even before Commander Massoud entered Kabul, he had a phone conversation with Hekmatyar, a historic conversation. If you listen to the tapes of it, you will understand how many times Massoud asked him to not attack Kabul. He told Hekmatyar, “I am really flexible toward including all the Afghan leaders who are in Pakistan in the government in Kabul. I don’t want the city or the power for myself.” He repeated this several times, but the guy just did not accept it. We have the cassettes in our office in Kabul.
(Mohammad Yahya Massoud) PROMISE OF PEACE The issue was how to achieve peace and security in Kabul. Hekmatyar said that as long as Massoud’s troops were in Kabul, there would be fighting. That was always his position. During that period there were many visits from the United Nations, and different Afghan delegations came. During all the mediations, what Massoud said is that if you can agree on any mechanism that will guarantee peace in Kabul and Afghanistan, I will not insist on the presence of armed forces in Kabul. If there is no guarantee of peace and the fighting continues, then of course we have to stay. That was his position. One of Hekmatyar’s conditions for his forces to stop their fighting [against the Rabbani government] was that Massoud leave the Ministry of Defense. In a meeting in Jalalabad at the end of 1993, President Rabbani and Professor Sayyaf were present and this issue was raised. They discussed it, then contacted Commander Massoud. He said without hesitation that in exchange for peace he would resign, but they would have to guarantee that peace was achieved, and the one doing the fighting was Hekmatyar. Massoud did not believe in taking power for its own sake, but only as an opportunity to be of service. One of his greatest wishes was peace in Afghanistan. They sent Commander Massoud a message from Jalalabad, and he resigned and went to the Panjshir, to JabulSaraj, where he dealt with the mujahideen as a commander, not as defense minister. Of course, when the political leaders made this decision, they did not make sure that peace was achieved. Hekmatyar continued fighting, so it did not stop the war.
(Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) THE HAZARA ISSUE Massoud has been accused of extreme measures against the Hazaras in 1993, ’94, and ’95, strong measures that killed a lot of people. But I just don’t think he went out of his way to kill civilians, only to deal with the Hazara resistance because they were siding with Hekmatyar. I was in Kabul many times during the ’90s, including the edges of Kabul. There, until Massoud’s forces were forced to withdraw, security was relatively good, and there were no signs of harrassment against the local Hazara population. When I was there, quite a lot of fighting was going on. Hekmatyar’s forces did most of the shelling, but the Hazaras were in the areas where a lot of shelling went in both directions and quite a few Hazara civilians were killed. What we saw was that Massoud’s positions were tanks embedded in the hills around Kabul, and they shelled the Hekmatyar and Hazara positions. Massoud was really careful only to shell the enemy. Hekmatyar’s men tended to be in the higher mountain areas, and they would shell indiscriminately into the city. (Edward Girardet) A HAZARA VIEW POINT I am a Hazara with the Harakat-e-Islami (Islamic Union) Party, which was allied with Massoud against the Taliban. Hazaras live mostly in the west part of Kabul, but the fight between them and Massoud’s people started as a misunderstanding between a small group of
Hazaras (the Esmaelias) and Massoud’s forces in east Kabul. That day Massoud was not even in the city, but in Tagab in the Panjshir. Soon, Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami Party with Dostum and the Hazaras from a big party called Hezb-Wahdet-Islami began attacking Massoud from the west side of Kabul. At that time, I went to the east side of the city with a few people to try to see somebody from Jamiat and stop the fighting. We met with the closest friends of Massoud, Dr. Abdul Rahman and Commander Fahim. After twenty minutes Massoud arrived from Tagab, and I remember the very first thing he said to Fahim and Rahman was, “Stop this fighting against the Hazaras as soon as possible. They are poor people, good people. Don’t fight them; how soon can it be stopped?” Then he had to go back to Tagab because Hekmatyar was attacking his group there too, but he was serious about stopping the fighting with the Hazaras. (Aref Shajahan) THEY WOULD SAY, I QUIT! There was a big meeting in Herat under the leadership of Ismael Khan before the Taliban emerged. More than one hundred prominent Afghans, all scholars and national figures, attended from different countries, from Europe and the United States. Also, different commanders from different regions attended, and Professor Rabbani. Massoud told Rabbani, “When you arrive at this meeting, in front of all the important figures of Afghanistan gathered there you should resign as a president of Afghanistan to let the people decide about Afghanistan’s president.” Rabbani did not follow Massoud’s advice,
and Massoud did not speak to him for six months. Rabbani just could not give up the power. Massoud made another attempt. One day he came and had a talk with Rabbani. First he asked him, “Why did the Communist Party collapse in Russia?” Rabbani did not know why Massoud asked this. Then Massoud told him, “Look, there are many reasons, but one of the most important is that one party controlled all of Russia. People resented that, and so people like Saharof and other intellectuals turned against communism. If a party that has more than seventy years in power and five million KGB members cannot control its country, cannot maintain its government, is it possible for one party with the name of Jamiat-i-Islami to control all of Afghanistan? No, it’s impossible.” So Rabbani asked what did Massoud want. Massoud said, “If you want to run a good government in Kabul, let in people who have other ideas. Call all these intellectuals who have followed the war to come to Kabul, and share the government with them.” These are the attempts that I remember. Massoud tried several times and many plans to save Kabul and to establish a strong government that included all groups. But his ideas were attacked by plots from outsiders like Hekmatyar or selfish persons like Rabbani. People say that Russia made two ambushes on Afghanistan: One was their invasion, and the second was their withdrawal. Why the second, when it meant that the Russians were defeated? How did Massoud get into that situation? He did not expect the Russians to withdraw from Afghanistan so quickly. He was a military commander, but he had no political party that was ready to run the country. In time he would have founded his own party, but when the Russians withdrew suddenly, he had to accept all these responsibilities himself. That is why he referred the issue to all the leaders of the
mujahideen parties in Peshawar and told them, “Come to Kabul and form the government, all of you. I don’t want power just for myself.” This is the reality. He was very popular in Afghanistan, he was a great fighter and was a charismatic leader, but people have no idea how many problems there were. How could he possibly deal with all these things? If anybody else had been in his position, they would have just said, “I quit!” (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) FOR THE SAKE OF KABUL Around 1996, Massoud talked to the Taliban in Parwan in the southern part of Kabul. He went with just a few bodyguards to tell them, “Don’t fight; don’t attack Kabul. We are all Afghans. We should form our government, and we should share it.” He tried several times. The Taliban leader was Mullah Rabani [no relation to President Rabbani], and Massoud went alone into the room and he talked with them for more than an hour to convince them that there was no difference between us. And they did not accept it. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) NOTHING TO SAY During the horror of 1994–95 in Kabul, I was with Christophe de Ponfilly, some French doctors, and Massoud in one of his safe houses. Everything was dark. There was no electricity, and the rockets were falling like rain. The city was under siege by the Taliban, and I had gone through their lines to bring food and medicine into the city.
Massoud was sitting there with a great map by the light of a lantern, trying to explain to all of us why he was ultimately going to win. He was pointing at the map: We are here, the enemy is there, we can move around this way and catch them that way and defeat them that way, but you can be assured, my friends, that we are going to win. We said to him, “You know Amer Saheb, whether you win or not has nothing to do with the reason we are here. We are here to help you even if you lose.” And he didn’t know what to say; he just couldn’t answer. (Professor Michael Barry) III. FANATICS AND FOREIGNERS (1996–2001) GIVE IT TO THEM I am going to tell you the story of the defeat of Kabul; how we had to leave Kabul for the Panjshir. When the fighting with the Taliban reached the Kabul gates, the first person who went to meet them was Massoud himself, because he did not want the fighting to continue; he did not want Kabul destroyed. There were Pakistanis, Arabs, and Chechnians fighting against us. That’s when Massoud told the commanders to withdraw our troops to the north. I was in a place called Sangebaushta, which was one of the defending posts, and Massoud came and told us not to fight the
Taliban anymore. There was a mosque, and the Taliban wanted to take it. Massoud said, “Give it to them; don’t fight.” He wanted to serve God, not to fight people, and he did not want more innocent people being killed, so he made the decision to leave Kabul to the Taliban. He explained then why we were withdrawing, and he yelled, “I told you to leave!” We were heartbroken, but we gathered our stuff and we went because we took his orders. He was our leader. (Commander Gul Haidar) HOPE WILL TAKE US BACK Poetry was a part of Massoud’s life, and not only his spiritual and love life. He also gained lots of strength, courage, and energy from it. When the Taliban captured Kabul, he had retreated from the city and gone to Jabul-Saraj. It was around twelve o’clock at night when I got his telephone call. I was very sad; Kabul was in the hands of fanatics. My friends were out of the city, and it was a bad time. He said, “Did you hear that we left Kabul?” “Yes. Are you okay? Are the others okay?” “Yes,” and he added, “We’ll go back.” Then he asked, “Do you have something in mind to tell me?” He was asking for some kind of food for the soul for that moment of his life—the commander who was retreating from the city and giving it to the most fanatical people. I told him a verse of my father’s that night: Oh the cruel, the despot, the oppressor! I will not indeed be giving that to the one who wants to destroy me. You will see me in another battle, in another time,
Because God has given hope to my heart, And this hope will bring me back to what I want to reach. He was so happy. “That is what I wanted. Hope will take us back! It’s good that you have told me this tonight. Thank you very much.” And then he hung up. (Masood Khalili) THEY HAD THE POWER When he left Kabul and went to the Panjshir, his men told me that they had the power to hold Kabul, but it would have cost one or two hundred casualties. Massoud would not accept that. (Farid Zikria) NO HELP During the 1990s, I was a commander in Ghazni with Harakat-eIslami, a Hazara party, and we were allied with Massoud in the fight against the Taliban. I had constant contact with him by phone, and when we were in Kabul I was with him in person almost every day. Once when the Taliban surrounded Kabul, Massoud had a meeting with the Iranian ambassador and asked him to try to convince the other Hazara parties to fight the Taliban because they were trying to enter and destroy Kabul, because the Taliban had killed one of their leaders, Massari, and because if there was a resistance from the whole country the Taliban would not be able to enter Kabul. The Iranians helped the party fighting against Massoud.
Everybody at that time knew what the Taliban was, but nobody helped Massoud. He could have fought from Kabul very well. He had good strategy and good equipment, but he did not want to destroy Kabul, so he left the city. He said, “If the fight is here it will affect the lives of all the people in Kabul. I will leave and continue the Resistance from the mountains.” (Aref Shajahan) THE RESISTANCE REBORN Everybody knew what the Taliban was, so the people of Kabul fled to the Panjshir Valley, and the Taliban, Arabs, Pakistanis, and terrorists followed us. When we arrived in Panjshir, Massoud met with all the commanders about how we could stop the Taliban from coming in. Then he met with the elders, and that was when the people told him, “We fought against the Russians and we will fight against the Taliban, until our last drop of blood.” After the people gave their assurance that they would support him, he tied up his waist and started to give orders. In a place called Rahitang, which is at the beginning of the Panjshir Valley, he blew out the road to stop the Taliban from coming in. The mujahideen went to the top of the mountains to defend, and all the people were digging positions underground to fight. In the meantime, the Taliban, the Arabs, and their allies attacked the Shamali Plains. The commanders from Shamali asked Massoud to be allowed to go to defend the area. At first he said, “No, we have to make our position in the Panjshir and then move out from here,” but the Shamali people kept saying, “Let us go fight; the Taliban are destroying our homes,” so he let them.
Then the Taliban began their offensive in the Panjshir Valley. I was positioned on the road at the entrance of the Panjshir under Bismillah Khan, and the enemy attacked there to enter the valley. Massoud would come to report the situation to us, and every time we saw his face, we were encouraged. What we got from him on the front lines was the courage, the power, to defeat the Taliban. When the enemy was defeated in the Panjshir, our troops went to the Shamali Plains. As soon as the commanders were in position, Massoud prayed to God with them through the radio, then ordered the fighting to start. Because of his knowledge, the mujahideen succeeded in capturing a lot of Taliban and liberating the Shamali Plains. When the Shamali was free, Massoud arrived, they all kissed the tasbi [string of prayer beads], and the people brought flowers to him. During the fighting, all the people with Massoud were scared. We thought we were going to die. But when I saw his face, it was strong and solid, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was happy to be able to spend my life with him. (Commander Gul Haidar) HIDDEN INTENTIONS The Pakistani-imposed Taliban regime in Kabul became the laughingstock of the world for its apparent intellectual idiocy. Yet this was another ploy. While I was in Kabul (from 1992 to 2001), the issue at stake seemed to be Pakistan’s destruction of the Afghan State. To lobotomize Afghanistan, to provoke the collapse of its entire health, educational, and administrative system, to turn its educated women into animals for reproduction, and to make its entire people
appear like mindless barbarians, served the purposes of reducing the whole country into a permanent Pakistani protectorate. Islamabad’s implication was that only Pakistan was a responsible, civilized state fit to administrate its small savage neighbor, filter all international aid to it, and turn Afghanistan into a corridor for oil pipelines and a haven for opium fields, guarded by Pakistan’s proxy tribal forces. (Professor Michael Barry) THREE THOUSAND PAKISTANIS Sometimes I got fed up with the war and I blamed him. I asked, “Why continue with the fight, always fight, fight, fight?” This was in 2000. He responded that there was one Taliban post that had three thousand Pakistanis in it. I couldn’t believe it! I thought he was exaggerating, but when I returned to Japan I talked with somebody in foreign affairs. He confirmed that number was correct. Massoud said to me, “We are fighting against terrorism. If we don’t fight here, the war will only expand.” After September 11, I finally understood what he was talking about. (Hiromi Nagakura) “When I was in Afghanistan in the Fall of 2000, I talked to a Pakistani prisoner of war who had been trained by bin Laden’s network. . . . His name was Khaled, and he described Massoud bitterly as the ‘last wall’ that was keeping al-Qaeda from spreading fundamentalist Islam throughout Afghanistan and the rest of Asia. If they lost in Afghanistan, he said, they would be forced to find another country to use as a base for their global war against the West.
“Khaled spoke readily, even proudly, about his plans, as did the twenty or so other prisoners who were with him. They said that they had come from all over the Islamic world to fight Massoud, and that if they were killed it didn’t matter, because others would replace them. It was a religious war, they said, and it was without end.” (Junger, “Massoud’s Last Conquest,” 140) [Massoud’s] main concern seemed to be the foreign elements . . . the Pakistanis that he said are now in Afghanistan fighting along with the Taliban and providing significant numbers of the Taliban troops. He put almost as much emphasis on the Arabs who are now running the various terrorist training camps in Afghanistan that news reports have also shown fighting with the Taliban. Commander Massoud actually said that many of the atrocities committed by the Taliban he felt were due to the very strong influence of those Wahabi elements that are with the Taliban. He mentioned specifically the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas. . . . He also stated that the Wahabis had urged the Taliban to go beyond the Buddhas and destroy traditional Afghan Muslim shrines . . . but [the Taliban] recognized that if they had attempted that, they might have had a major rebellion. . . . He also mentioned that the massacres in the Shamali Plains . . . were with the participation of, and urging of, those outside elements. (Azadi Afghan Radio interview with Dr. Elie D. Krakowski) Ahmed Shah Masood: “Pakistan is in search of a ‘strategic depth,’ an ‘Islamic depth.’ Pakistan wants to become a small superpower in the region. To this end, it has developed nuclear capabilities.
“If, God forbid, Pakistan succeeds in installing a servile government in Afghanistan, then by using these same radical Islamic groups, Pakistan will do likewise in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan—the Central Asian countries. “Pakistan wants to fill the regional void left by [the] Soviets. And to reach this goal, it must possess Afghanistan.” (Massoud, interviewed in Into the Forbidden Zone) GLOBAL TERRORISM: THE UNHEARD WARNINGS When I was Afghanistan’s envoy in Pakistan, I watched the Taliban moving into Afghanistan, and I tried to take the message to the world —talking in the United States, in Germany, in France. I wanted to tell them, though it’s very much forgotten, that the fighting in Afghanistan was a bad war that was going to catch everyone off guard and affect all of them. Maybe my voice was not strong enough, or I did not efficiently convey it. I was with Dr. Abdullah, and it was hard for us to go from one lobby to another in Europe passing Massoud’s message. He presented the warning in every way that he could. He even went to the European Parliament, and it cost him his life. Now it has been shown that he was right. Every time you have civil war there is blame, but Commander Massoud was not buying the blame. He was suffering and asking why the Americans abandoned Afghanistan, why the Europeans abandoned Afghanistan, why they left us in the hands of these rival countries. Why didn’t they understand that they had to be with us until the real end of the war? Massoud predicted that Afghanistan would be a location of bad wars that would lead to terrorism and
fanaticism. Right from the beginning he predicted this and gave interview after interview saying it, talking to so many different people. He spoke to the American ambassador in Islamabad for two or three hours, and to the journalists and the British. I wrote in my diary that here is a man called Massoud who is fighting on behalf of the world, while the world does not know it. Here is a man who is working day and night against the terrorism that will become global terrorism one day, and no one knows. We are trying to bring justice, fighting fanaticism and extremism, and no one knows. He and his friends are fighting a lonely battle. The journalists and organizations came, and Massoud told them, “Yes, I fight for my country, but it’s not just my war; it’s the war of the world! Be careful, because these are dangerous people.” Whenever you see Hekmatyar, you see the kind of threat, the kind of terrorism he was talking about. Hekmatyar and Dostum pretended to join him in Kabul, but in reality they joined the opposition. Because it was a proxy war of other countries in the region, they were paving the way for terrorism to grow, and Hekmatyar had direct links with international terrorism. It was Commander Massoud’s role to force people to see that this was the beginning of much bigger problems in Afghanistan, the region, and the world. They said that everybody should stop fighting. Well, Commander Massoud constantly called on the United Nations to interfere and stop it, because it would not accomplish anything but would lead to terrorism, but the attention paid to Afghanistan was zero. It was a 100 percent forgotten war. At that time, I remember Mahmoud Mesteri was appointed as a kind of liaison from the United Nations to work to bring peace in Afghanistan, but it was such a weak gesture and it was managed so weakly that sometimes it seemed there was no
envoy at all. He was a nice man, a gentleman, but an old man who did not have the power to do anything. We found that after the 11th of September the world paid attention to Afghanistan; then they focused. If they had focused vigorously in 1992 or ’93, I am sure the things that happened would not have happened, but they allowed terrorism to grow in Afghanistan. The abandonment of Afghanistan was a great mistake in the foreign policy of the world. When you, as an individual member of the United Nations Security Council, don’t bring pressure, the people who fight for the wrong get encouraged. They were financed, they were helped, armed, and trained, and they were encouraged. So we were watching and reporting the problem to the world, and Commander Massoud had to fight and keep fighting until he died on the 9th of September [2001]. All that fighting in Afghanistan was caused from outside. You might say, “Why are you all fighting? Commander Massoud and the others, they are all Afghans. Why don’t they make peace?” Massoud was definitely, willingly, trying to bring peace, but not by giving Afghanistan to the terrorists. So that was it; [in September of 2001] we were one step from losing Afghanistan to the terrorists. On the 9th of September Massoud was killed. If the terrorists hadn’t acted on the 11th of September but had delayed for a year, things would have happened totally differently. They would not have had the same opportunity. This is why we had to fight. Massoud was trying to hold on until a miracle happened. Otherwise, Afghanistan would have gone into the hands of the terrorists, and slowly and gradually they would have occupied the other areas in the region. I think Massoud should be rewarded now for how he kept up the war until he died, and it was done, directly or indirectly, for the benefit of all mankind. He was a master of patience and tolerance and vision for the future. His enemies
were trying to use everything about the war to make Commander Massoud look bad, but he knew that if he lost his country he would lose the region, would lose everything. Massoud said in France, “People of the world, please pay attention to me. Otherwise you will lose it.” Some people are saying now, well, global terrorism and September 11 happened because of the war in Afghanistan, but Massoud was telling everyone that when he was in France. What more could he say? Then the United Nations condemned both sides! (Masood Khalili)
17 A SIMPLE LIFE A raindrop, dripping from a cloud, Was ashamed when it saw the sea. ‘Who am I where there is a sea?’ it said. When it saw itself with the eye of humility, A shell nurtured it in its embrace. —Saadi of Shiraz
SIMPLE WORDS We never praised Massoud in his presence, and he never expected it. He just wanted us to use words of simple greeting. People said we should address him with a title, but he did not want that either. They called him Commander, and we called him Massoud. Some people were angry about that, but he was not there to promote himself. He didn’t need that. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) SHY The other aspect of Massoud was this timid persona. One would have a hard time believing it. He was under pressure from certain groups and religious people to get married, and he always responded that he was already married—to the war. Of course, there were many young women in Kapisa, not to mention in the villages, who wanted to be “the wife of Massoud.” One time in Takhar we went up on a roof to look at the moon and the stars. I didn’t understand what he was doing in that house at the bottom of that valley. He didn’t say anything, but in fact he had come to get married. Even when we left to spend the night elsewhere, either out of wisdom or shyness he never let anyone know that he was going to get married.
Another thing, whenever someone made a mistake, he wouldn’t laugh even though he wanted to; he hid his face. Timidity hidden in the face of a warrior is characteristic of the Oriental mindset. (Humayun Tandar) LIKE A KID When he wasn’t fighting, Massoud was the funniest man in the world. He loved the water; if he could, he would have been swimming all the time. His favorite way of relaxing was playing with children in the water, pushing them around and throwing them. He played like a kid with the children, always with the children. He wasn’t a leader then; he played and joked, ran after them and played hide and seek. When he was around children, he was at his best. He was an engineer and knew math, and he would make contests for them—you do this, you read this, you count this, and let’s see who scores the most. He wanted them to learn. He made up math games especially for them, and he always checked the schools to see that they were running well—the books, the chairs, everything. (Sher Dil Qaderi) AS AN ORDINARY PERSON When Massoud returned from his trip to meet with the European Parliament, I and a lot of other Afghans went to the airport to receive him. Approximately five thousand people—ordinary men and women, Afghan journalists, and foreign journalists—were there. When he got off the plane, I went to him with Abdul Wodod, who is Massoud’s
nephew, while the rest waited in the terminal. After seeing all those people, Massoud said to us, “You should have come to pick me up as if I were an ordinary person. There was no need to trouble so many citizens of my country.” (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) IN THE BACK When Muslim people pray together, they call it jammaat. At jammaat Massoud would always be in the back. He did not want to bother anyone, and nobody would know he was there. He just wanted to pray, not to appear important. In my mind he was the most important person in the whole world, but he never acted like it. (Sher Dil Qaderi) IF YOU WANT TO EAT WITH ME At night, sometimes Massoud would ask us to stay with him for dinner, but he would always say, “If you want to eat simple food like soup, stay with me, but if you want to eat rice and more exotic foods, go to other people.” It is common to hear that in Afghanistan. It means I do not have much to offer but you are welcome to stay, because in Afghanistan the people who are not well off usually eat soup. I am not trying to say that Massoud didn’t eat rice or other food. Of course he did, and he tried to provide as much as he could, but my point is that he was a very simple person. (Farid Zikria)
“. . . I often saw him walk from the guest-house I was staying at to his office, with just a couple of companions, ignoring the pomp and display of other leaders. He was a national figure with a national vision, but he was also a ‘Panjshiri.’” (Roger Plunk, “Breakfast with Massoud,” The Source, December 1, 2001, http://www.peaceinitiatives.com/breakfast.htm) A VERY PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP When we were in Kabul, I was the last one to say goodnight. Around one in the morning, I would sit by his bed, talking quietly, nothing about the events of the day or problems or issues of concern, just a few peaceful words and he would go to sleep. Then I would pull my hand away gently, not to wake him, leave the room and tell everybody that he was going to sleep. He was staying in a guesthouse at that time, so I used to go to my own house for the night. He was sensitive. There were people who would come to wake him with loud voices saying that it was eight or nine o’clock. He didn’t like that. He wanted to be treated in a gentle manner, so I woke him in the way he wanted. He would want to know what was happening. I wouldn’t tell him then if there was bad news; I would give him time to wake up, wash his hands, and come back. Then I would tell him, just to give him a little bit of relief. When he heard certain kinds of news, he would be sort of shaken but always controlled his attitude and behavior, dealing with difficult
things calmly. Mainly, it was because of his faith. He believed in God very deeply, with a fine, very personal sort of relationship. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) SPEAKING WITH GENERALS In 1996, I was at the house where Massoud sometimes stayed in Kabul. He came in and asked who I was, and they told him that I was Haron [Amin]’s brother, so we shook hands and I told him, “Thank Allah that you were able to stop all the bloodshed which was going on for so long in Kabul.” Normally, if you say something like that to a general, he feels pride and tells you, oh yes, it was my party, it was my power, etc. Others would have acted pompous, if not with words, at least with their body language. He could have rightfully said, “Yes, I did it; I defeated them,” but I did not hear that from him. What he said was, “Oh, Brother, by the time we finished, there was nothing left for the people.” (Farid Amin) WHO SAT FIRST I think the first time I met Massoud was in 1991 in Peshawar, when he went to meet with other mujahideen leaders like Haqani and Abdul Haq. In Afghan tradition, the senior commander usually sits first, so this was offered to Massoud. Instead, Massoud asked Haqani, a commander and older religious leader from Paktia, to sit first and to start the meeting. Then he waited until all the others sat before he did.
(Sayed Hamed Mohammad Elmi) I CANNOT BEAR IT Massoud was getting dressed. Trying to help, somebody moved his shoes closer to him, but he said, “Don’t touch my shoes. I cannot bear the burden of somebody doing these things for me,” and he went and picked them up himself. (Haron Amin) NOT THE MAN THEY THOUGHT Massoud received delegations in his house. For example, Ismael Khan and Karim Khalili (Hazara) stayed with him, because there was no other place in the Panjshir. I feel that they and the other commanders had a kind of jealousy toward Massoud, but they changed their minds when they found that he was not the man they thought he was. Massoud never had a servant. Sometimes he brought the food to his guests and served it himself. All his life he prepared his own food and lived very simply. I think he was trying to be as close as possible to the Prophet of Islam. Even though the Prophet had a huge empire, he lived like an ordinary person. (Haroun Mir) ONE HUNDRED PERCENT
When I saw Massoud the first time, I was impressed that he immediately connected with people and was so attentive toward them. For example, he was capable of interrupting himself because a teaspoon was missing in the cup of a guest; it could have been a servant or the president. He was attentive to people’s wants, to their requests, to the questions they posed. He would give 100 percent of himself, even when his day had been extremely difficult. And he was exactly what people said he was, never trying to pass for anything else. (Pilar-Hélène Surgers) THE FAULTS OF OTHERS A friend of Massoud became corrupt. I asked why he didn’t say anything to the man. He said, “I am the kind of person that, when somebody comes and says someone else did bad things, I try to dismiss it. I don’t like backbiting or criticizing behind my friends’ backs. But in this case, it would have been better for us and for him if I had spoken to him earlier. Then perhaps he would not be corrupt now, so corrupt he does not have a way back.” He blamed himself for that, even for the faults of somebody else. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) GET TO THE POINT When Massoud met with his commanders, the people who worked with him and ordinary people, he asked them to make their requests as short as possible. Every opportunity that people got to meet
Massoud, they would begin with flowery words that decorated the whole situation. He wanted to avoid that, so each time they met, he asked his commanders and soldiers, after saying hello in the Afghan tradition, to get to the point and tell him what the problem was. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) WHAT PRESS CONFERENCE? To me, Massoud looked so innocent, like a boy. Sometimes when he was talking, he would blush with shyness. Can you believe that? A man who wasn’t scared of anything in the world, but was shy! In 1988 or ’89, I arranged for him to come to Pakistan. I wanted to call journalists and representatives from different ethnic groups for a big press conference where Massoud could sit with Pashtuns, Tajiks, and so forth. Massoud asked, “What press conference?” and he made excuses. I said, “I know what I am doing and I am going to do it.” Afterwards, he asked if I could bring only a few people, because he would feel shy in front of a hundred. When I said, “Oh, I can’t believe that,” he just smiled, pressing his teeth against his lower lip as he always did, and told me, “The smaller, the better.” Believe me, I held a press conference with only ninety people and I was beside him every minute. (Masood Khalili) OF COURSE WE WILL TALK Massoud, and to a lesser extent Abdul Haq, would never dream of trying to manipulate journalists; it just didn’t occur to them. I
wondered if this was political naivete but concluded that it was more Afghan hospitality. They were thinking, these people have come all this way to see us—they have gone through fatigue and endured hardship to come to see us—of course we are going to talk to them. (Edward Girardet) WHAT WILL YOU DO? I asked him one day, “Massoud, what are you planning for the future? What kind of a position in the government would you like to have when you finish with the Taliban?” He thought for a long time, then said, “Among all the jobs, the only one I would really want is teacher in a village; that’s the thing I would like to do.” (Reza Deghati) THE DIARIES For many years Massoud had a habit of writing every night in a diary about what he had done during the day, so he had a lot of diaries. Some are with me now, and when I open them for a few minutes and read, I can see how determined this man was in what he wanted to achieve. For example, he says, “I want to get myself disciplined, but it seems I cannot. Tonight I promise myself that I will be disciplined from this time forward.” So he talks to himself, he makes commitments to himself, and then he gets started. In other pages he writes about his family. When he got married he was not exactly sure what would happen, but after a while he realized
how much he loved his wife. He really appreciated her, and he appreciated her mother for the support she gave them. His character had so many dimensions. On one hand he was a strong fighter, on the other hand he was someone who talked about poetry, his social life, and his affections. Of course, he was also a politician. All of those different dimensions are in his diaries. (Ahmad Wali Massoud) Saturday, March 1986 Piow Training Center Most regretfully, this morning I went to bed half an hour earlier than usual, at 5 a.m., and woke up an hour later than I usually do. This irregularity delayed the reports from the fields, which were incomplete, and I was not able to attend the training and sport activities of the mujahideen on time. November 5, 1989 Piow Training Center It occurs to me that after this I have to live based on a complete program and shouldn’t deviate even slightly from it. Although the situation and my own inherent behavior are such that it makes a program difficult to follow, I will pressure myself to observe it. I hope and pray to God to give me strength and bless me with success. (Excerpts from the diaries of Ahmad Shah Massoud, translated by personnel of the Afghan Embassy in London, pages 25, 28–29)
THE COMPLIMENT Amer Saheb had put on some nice perfume, and I could not resist telling him how fine he was looking, mashallah (praise God)! He was kind of upset and said, “What are you talking about? Why are you saying that to me?” and he gave me a very sharp look. It was as if he were hearing such a thing for the very first time. Imagine, this great hero, this warrior, the winner of the Cold War and the war against the Soviets—such an excellent person, and he had never been praised like that before! (Masood Khalili) MAKING HIS ENTRANCE In Afghanistan, if a group of people are sitting in a room, when an important person comes in everyone stands up as a sign of respect. I saw many times when Massoud entered a room he was very quick and sat down right away by the door to keep everybody from standing up for him. Sometimes he even signaled with his hand for them not to stand. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) NO SAINT It’s part of our culture that when we respect an elder or somebody we consider spiritual, then we kiss their hands when we meet them. I met Massoud many times, and every time I tried to kiss his hand he would
say, “Don’t kiss my hand. I am not a Syed [a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad] and I am not a saint.” In Kabul I joked with him. I said, “Amer Saheb, you won’t allow me to kiss your hand, so I will do it when you are not looking.” But every time, he pulled his hand out of my grip. He was so strong and had such a force that I couldn’t hold it, although I am taller and stronger. (Sayed Hamed Mohammad Elmi) THE MERCEDES FROM DUBAI One of his drivers, Jul Mad Khan, told me that a guy who was associated with Massoud did some purchasing for him, and he brought a Mercedes from Dubai. When Massoud saw it he said, “Why did you bring this? We could build a school with this! What am I going to do with this car?” (Farid Amin) NOTHING MATERIAL When Massoud was among his mujahideen he always looked like them. Nothing in him differed from them. He dressed like them and shared food with them. Massoud did not behave like other leaders; he was humble and simple. After his death, the only thing he left was his family and his great reputation—nothing material. He did not accumulate any personal wealth, inside or outside of the country. (Yunnus Qanooni)
EMPTY POCKETS Massoud was a man with no interest in wealth. His pockets used to be empty of money. Although he accepted the small amounts of money his friends and fans sent him as gifts, he never kept it. He handed it over to one of his men and told them to keep it because, “we will have a future.” (Daoud Zulali) AFGHAN TAG At the beginning of the war, when he was going from one village to another, the kids from about four to ten years old would all be playing along the road. Whenever Massoud passed, they would hide behind the walls. They would say, “Saalam aleikum,” to Massoud, popping suddenly from behind the walls and trying to surprise him. And Massoud would play with them, always trying to be faster, to tell them Saalam aleikum first. He was very gentle with all kids. (Mohammad Shuaib) ONE TABLE AND A PICTURE When the Resistance started, we had to go to the mountains with the mujahideen. We worked together there, and we had two rooms—one was for the family and the other for Massoud’s library. My mom had already passed away, so we were only two sisters with him.
Massoud asked us, “You know, I have a friend from another city. Could you please allow him to stay tonight with you in our room, because I want to talk with him for two or three hours?” And we told him, “Yes, you can do it.” Neither of us sisters was married. We had only one table in this room. It was like our refuge. One of us had a picture of Massoud, and it was on the table. He was away for many days at a time, and we were happy to have his picture with us there. It was a bad time; we often didn’t have anything to eat. Massoud looked over our room to see if it was all right for the visitor, and he saw that there was only the table and the picture. He didn’t say anything but took the picture and put it away. He did not want to show off, so he did not want the visitor to enter the room and see the picture. I told him, “But that picture is mine. You can’t do that with my picture!” He didn’t speak at first but just looked at me. Then he very kindly said, “Honey, I know that is yours, but, please, while the visitor is here don’t show him the picture.” (Maryam Massoud) TRANSPARENT In 1991, when Massoud was in Pakistan, he gave a press conference. I wondered how he would respond to these journalists, who were from very important publications (Time, BBC, etc.). He was bombarded with questions, but Massoud chose his answers cleverly, answering very completely and with no gaps to incite further questions. After an hour, the reporters were quiet. So Massoud asked them, “Do you have any more questions?” Finally, a lady from the French press said, “Tell us a little bit about your family.” And he said, “Why
do you ask about that?” And she said, “Because we don’t have any more questions!” The difference is that other political leaders try to avoid questions, but Massoud didn’t. We are accustomed, as journalists, to hurry our questions because politicians so often try to escape, but Massoud answered them all. He laughed a lot, and at the end he said, “I hope to see you later, in a free Afghanistan.” (Sayed Hamed Mohammad Elmi) OFF THE WALLS Sometimes photographers came and took photos of Massoud. They asked stupid questions and we would be upset, but Amer Saheb never was, because they were foreigners and they came to know what the situation was. They were our guests. I know other leaders like people to take photos of them, but Amer Saheb wasn’t like that. I have never seen him get ready or pose for a photo. The little commanders in Afghanistan are like other leaders in the world; they like to show off. The extreme Islamic leaders want their pictures to be taken too, and to show off on TV. In the communist regime, they used to put posters big and small of their leaders on the walls, so when the mujahideen got to Kabul, somebody made Massoud’s picture very big and placed it on the walls, because he was the one who defeated the Russians. At first, when he came to Kabul, there were many of his pictures in the streets, but he gave orders to take them all off. When he saw little pictures on somebody’s car or some other place, he would stop his car and have his bodyguards take them off. In 1991–95, when he was the second-ranked person in the regime, if he went to ministers’ offices
and saw his picture there, he would immediately tell the officials, “Please take that photo off the wall.” Now again there are many photos of Massoud in Afghanistan, and I don’t like it because he did not like it. I asked Daoud, who is now in the government, if he could please take all the photos of Amer Saheb off the walls. If we have him in our hearts, we don’t need pictures on the walls. (Ahmad Jamshid)
18 THE PANJSHIR Massoud used to say, “If you want medicine, eat the grass of the Panjshir and all your illnesses will be cured.” —Dr. Mohammad Sidiq The mystery of the Panjshir . . . a valley that could never be conquered by the enemy in those twentythree years of war. There seemed to be a certain harmony, which was strange to me because the times were extremely difficult. So I asked and asked each one of the people I interviewed. Let’s listen. . . .
“The Red Army was vanquished in the Panjsher eight times between 1979–1988. The Soviet Union’s defeat was not only a defeat in Afghanistan, but led to the collapse of the Soviet system and was followed by the liberation of the Central Asian and Eastern European countries from Moscow’s control.” (Mehran, “Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography”) OLD MEN WITH STICKS Massoud told me with a lot of emotion that when he got back to the Panjshir in 1979, after the communist coup in Kabul and before the Russian invasion, the whole population in the Panjshir rose with him. They pushed the communists right out of the valley, because in 1979 the communist government was running Kabul and the people were against that. He told me that old men with sticks were marching down the road to get to the next enemy position. In two or three weeks, he found himself in control of the whole Panjshir Valley. (Anthony Davis) A FORMIDABLE BASTION Do not tell me that the Panjshir is not conquerable. It is one valley among hundreds of valleys that are very similar, and it has access to
six or seven provinces. It can be invaded. To defend the Panjshir, Massoud turned unity into strength by teaching people, by taking care of them. Beyond and above all was the Commander’s feeling for the ordinary man, feeling for the person who was at the front line—making sure that he was fed, making sure that he was clothed, making sure that he would persevere. That guarantees successful war. People trusted that Massoud would look after them, and he did, so he was able not only to keep the Panjshir Valley as a formidable bastion but he was able to expand it. When he accepted a truce with the Soviets, he used the time to establish bases similar to the Panjshir through northern Afghanistan. (Haron Amin) POKING THEM IN THE EYE The Panjshir developed a special situation in the early stages of the war, because the Russians kept having to come back. There were two offensives in 1980, one in 1981, and another big offensive in 1982. There was the cease-fire, and then they came back and there were seven offensives in 1984. They kept on coming back with hundreds of tanks, thousands of men, and helicopters that you wouldn’t believe. I remember in 1982 sitting on a mountain during a Russian offensive. I was higher than the helicopters, and it looked like a bus service, there were so many of them going back and forth from the valley. When they put an offensive against the Panjshir, it was a very big military event. There was a lot of hardware, and lots of people. So the population of the Panjshir came to realize that they were the ones
poking the Soviets in the eye. The ordinary people, the villagers of the Panjshir, were standing against an empire. (Anthony Davis) “The Panjshir Valley is a world apart from the rest of Afghanistan. There is plenty of food and clean water and unlike in many other regions in the country, people in the Panjshir have hope for the future. The feeling here is totally different. People are excited; they are alive; they are building houses and bridges. . . . “In the Panjshir Valley, Massoud was both an army general and head of the local school board. The fact is that he led every civilian effort in the Panjshir. One ambitious project was improving literacy. Massoud was trying to change that by building new schools that would be open to everyone, not just boys. He also helped women to work in the hospitals.” (Sebastian Junger, interviewed in Into the Forbidden Zone) LIKE THE SHIRE When I was in the Panjshir it was very peaceful. Massoud had this village, this kind of idyllic village. Of course, there was a lot of poverty there because of the war. Did you see The Lord of the Rings? There is a place called Shire, and the Shire is a peaceful place and people go about their lives. And the Panjshir is like the Shire: It is very quaint, the little houses are beautiful, and there is a river that flows through it, surrounded by mountains and valleys.
(Roger L. Plunk) “[T]he water [ran] fast and clear between tall blue daisies. . . . Fields of ripening wheat and maize, neatly terraced between high stone walls, fell away to the river on our right. Big, solid, mud and timber houses, some with a stone foundation, were dotted about the smiling valley, some like miniature castles, their flat roofs already laden with rounded stacks of hay and winter fodder. When we came to a group of heavily-laden apricot trees, the mujahideen climbed up and shook the boughs, bringing down a golden rain of apricots. They were sweet and juicy, and the old man and woman to whom they presumably belonged smiled and told us to help ourselves.” (Gall, Behind Russian Lines, 62) IN THE MARKET The Panjshir and Takhar were completely separate from the Russian sector. They had their own government, and taxes were collected. Sometimes shopkeepers tried to sell their goods for more money, and it was Massoud’s passion to make sure that the prices were fair. In those ten years of war against the Russians, I don’t remember anybody stealing from others. Basically, there was no crime. (Sher Dil Qaderi) HE IS AMER SAHEB
During Massoud’s time, nobody would be involved in corruption because they were afraid of his name. If they were about to do something wrong, the feeling would come to their mind, oh, he is Amer Saheb. Because they knew he was really serious and was really trying to help the people, they could not do it. Instead, people would try to do good to make Massoud happy. If he saw something wrong, he hated that, and he was like a member of everybody’s family. (Eisa Khan Ayoob Ayoobi) A FAMILY THING The sense of harmony in the Panjshir was developed over years and in the course of events. Massoud passed the test in many different ways, and he did not betray the people; he was honest in all cases. The people came and asked for solutions for their problems, and if he was able to help, he would tell them. He was very open about the problems. Later, not only in the Panjshir but in Farkhar also, the same thing developed. It became like a family thing. He was a young person but he was like the head of the family for everyone—for the elderly, the religious leaders, the commanders. In Farkhar, in Borzak even, in the same spirit you would have found that people trusted him, respected him, and believed in him. Right from the beginning there was a sort of genuine natural leadership, which his personality developed over the years. People had extreme respect for him. They were not afraid to talk with him, and they were not afraid of criticizing him. So he let people grow the sense of their togetherness and freedom with him, and in that way he came to know their problems. The children in the Panjshir would go up to him and say, “Amer Saheb, how are you?” Then he would ask them
something and let them play with him, let them compete and spend time with him. The other leaders and military commanders did not do those things. At that time, being a commander meant that somebody was harsh and had too many horses and bodyguards. The commanders and subordinates would be riding horses, and the bodyguards would be running behind the horses, etc. Without Commander Massoud telling people what to do, those commanders saw his attitude towards the people. For example, when he went to the villages in the north of Afghanistan, he would pay for his food. That was totally new for people. It had been the habit of the other commanders to simply come and everybody had to prepare their food. So the people learned that things could be different. It was a family in which everybody had chosen one person as the head. So there would be nothing you could not talk about to that person. You would share happiness, and you would share sadness. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) BEYOND ALL TOLERANCE In the early days of jihad, Massoud was wounded and was surrounded by Russians and communist government troops in the Panjshir. According to Kaka Tajuddin (the man who later became Massoud’s father-in-law), he was very close to being captured. He threw himself from his horse in a field and took refuge there, among the tall standing corn. Then a woman from the area found him and hid him, and he was saved. He always remembered that. On another occasion, there was heavy fighting and a woman was cooking bread for us. Her daughter came in and told her that her son
had been killed. The woman, with great strength, said, “Let us finish the cooking.” While she was busy cooking, her daughter was also hit and killed. According to Massoud, the women of the Panjshir suffered beyond all tolerance, and even so, they still helped the Resistance. That should never be forgotten. (Ahmad Shah Farzan) ALL MY SONS We went to a house in Kohshaba that belonged to Mozaffar. His son had been wounded by the Russians and had just died on the floor. Mozaffar’s wife and daughter kept the body in another room. At the same time, they took care of Massoud, bringing him food, and the wife said to him, “God protect you. I give all of my sons to you and to God.” (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) HER WAY Coming back from training in Pakistan, around sunset we reached a place called Khawja Siyaran, north of Shamali. It was Ramadan. There was a little village with a big house, and Saber, Aman, and I knocked at the door. An old lady answered and invited us in. She told us, “Everybody in my family has died. I have nobody, and I cannot wage war because I am old, but I baked these twenty-one loaves of bread as my way to help.”
Any resistance movement will succeed if it has the heart and sentiment of the people. (Haron Amin) Without experiencing the desperate circumstances they endured, it is hard for us as readers to understand how remarkable were the strange harmony and courage of Massoud and those who fought beside him. Perhaps these letters, translated by Engineer Mohammed Eshaq, from Massoud to the Jamiat leadership in Peshawar will paint a clearer picture of the grim realities that fostered this secret of the Panjshir. OCTOBER 31, 1982: “. . . We spent most of our ammunition during the second offensive and were not even left with enough for defense. Though the enemy has retreated from the upper valley, it decided to remain in Rukha and Anabe and has begun to strengthen its positions. . . . Despite our repeated requests, Peshawar did not send us ammunition in time to prevent them from consolidating their positions. . . . When we received some ammunition a few days ago, we began to attack them. . . . If the battle continues two weeks we will (again) face shortages of ammunition. . . .
“Our next major problem is lack of food for about one thousand families. . . . If they are not assisted very quickly, we will face a real crisis. “Your mujahideen do not have shoes and warm clothes. . . . Try to send us at least three thousand boots, uniforms, woolen sweaters, and gloves. The weather this winter is colder. . . . “We have borrowed two and a half million afghanis from traders in Khench and five hundred thousand more from shopkeepers. I do not know how to pay back the loans.” DECEMBER 23, 1982: “Lack of food, warm clothes and boots, closure of supply lines . . . and sustained aerial bombardment . . . in the lower parts of the valley have made life almost unbearable. When the situation was better, we weren’t able to buy food to store; now we have neither the cash nor is there anything to buy. . . . “We borrow the needed wheat from Paryan and Dara and transport it on the mujahideen’s backs. (Pack animals could not be used due to heavy snow and the rugged mountain routes.) For a week, the mujahideen of Chemalwarda had to live on three potatoes a day. . .. “The living conditions of displaced people in the mountains and those who have gone north is extremely critical. The economic situation of the mujahideen families is worrisome; hundreds of mujahideen are asking . . . to go to Pakistan or Iran to work so they can feed their families. . . . “Heavy snowfall and cold weather have exacerbated the problems. . . . The mujahideen lend each other coats and boots when they go to the front. To avoid aerial bombardments, the women and children
climb into the mountains at dawn and hide in caves until after sunset. ... “This is the situation. . . . We pray to God to solve our problems, because it is beyond the ability of man. . . .” JUNE 5, 1983: “. . . I had sent you a work plan with a list of the money and weapons to implement it. . . . Now that six months has passed, I have not received any of the items I asked for. . . . I had written that if you were not able to supply our needs you should tell us to limit the scope of our work. You wrote back that Jamiat had accepted the plan and would supply the requests. . . . “Don’t you realize under what difficult circumstances we are working? Don’t you realize that the plan we had drawn up . . . would have inflicted many losses on the Soviets? The plan fell apart due to lack of attention paid to it. Because of my desire for this work and my trust in your promises, I worked hard . . . to launch coordinated attacks from several centers [at the proper time]. Now I find that I do not have the resources to implement the plan, and I don’t know how to continue the work. . . .” JUNE 24, 1984: “. . . More than one hundred thousand people from [this area] are living as refugees. These people left their homes for the sake of God and they have no income. . . . They have lost their houses, cattle, and farms as a result of the enemy’s attacks and live difficult lives as refugees. If they are not immediately provided with assistance of cash and clothing, a disaster could happen. The enemy has not been able to
take these people away from us, despite promises of the good life and threats of imprisonment. They have made sacrifices beyond our expectations and our victory is, in large part, due to these sacrifices.” SEPTEMBER 1, 1984: “. . . Tell us what to do. Can ‘we have nothing to give you’ fill empty stomachs and cover bare feet? I write from the qarargah of Chemalwarda. The two hundred mujahideen here have no lunch. . . . We cannot even find dried mulberries and talkhan (mulberry powder) because all the houses are burned. . . .” SEPTEMBER 17, 1984: “According to new information, the Russians will soon launch their third offensive. God help us. All our material means are exhausted. We look to God’s help; we have no other means.” WITH EVERYTHING THEY HAD The secret of Massoud’s success was his friendships and his relationships with his people. The twenty thousand followers of Massoud were ready for any sacrifice to reach the goal. One cannot find that level of sacrifice among any other Afghan group. I saw it myself in 1999. I was with Massoud in Beharak, Badakhshan. He wholeheartedly mingled with people, listened to them, learned about their problems, and promised to help. I talked to the people of the Panjshir, and I found out that although they lost
their property, their houses were demolished, their agricultural production was destroyed, and their orchards and vineyards were burned during the prolonged wars, they loved Massoud and were ready to help and protect him with everything they had. (Ahmad Shah Farzan) SOMETHING IN THE HEART Massoud gave the order to nearly 150,000 old men, young men, women, and children to leave the Panjshir, and the valley was completely bombed. For a hundred kilometers you could not see one single home that had not collapsed—every single home, road, and shop. Even after all that, the people stood behind Massoud. Nobody left to join the Russians or the communist government. He didn’t give away money or jobs, so nobody could understand why, although they lost their homes, their things, their money, their shops, the people still stuck with Massoud. There was something in his leadership, in the heart. It is a spiritual secret that you could find only in the Panjshir. You see Sadam in Iraq. He used to rule a country with more than twenty million people, but when he faced attacks from the Americans, people left him. Even though he had money, banks, oil, everything, he was not in the hearts of the Iraqi people. What I am trying to say is, we have knowledge of many leaders in the history of humanity who ruled millions of people, but they ruled by fear. If you didn’t obey their orders you would be killed or put in jail. To say that without jail, without creating fear, without money, people would do something because it was Massoud’s opinion! He did not even say it in an angry way, just, “We are facing the dangers of
the Soviet Army. They are coming to destroy the Panjshir, and we need to leave. No one can be left in the Panjshir, and we will leave the Soviets to face the mountains.” Everybody accepted, and that was it. Somebody told me that Massoud cried when he saw, from the summit of the mountains, that people were walking out of the valley, some with their sheep, even ladies over eighty years old. I thought, oh God, what kind of people are these? But he did not say, “Look how they love me.” He said, “Look how they love their God!” He did not count on his leadership. He counted on the people’s relationship with Allah, and he was just reminding them. (Abdullah Anas) THE SIZE OF MY HAT In 1996, after the collapse of Kabul into the hands of the Taliban, Massoud stood up in a mosque in the Panjshir Valley in front of all the people, took off his hat, pointed it at them, and said, “I have decided to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and even if I had only a piece of a land the size of my hat, I would stand and fight. I want you to choose your way; I am not going to force anyone. This is a fight between right and wrong. I chose my way. I decided to fight these people. If anybody wants to join me in this fight, come with me. If you don’t want to, that’s okay too.” The young ones began to sign their names to join Massoud’s forces. Even the older people wanted to fight. And that’s when the Resistance began again, from the Panjshir Valley. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori)
19 THE LIGHTER SIDE One day, a neighbor went to see Mulla Nasreddin and complained that in his house there was no sunshine. The Mulla asked him, “Is there sunshine in your garden?” “Yes, of course,” answered the man. “Then, why don’t you move the house into it?” —Stories from the Sufi Master Nasreddin, Ediciones Dervish International, 1993, 112, translated by Marcela Grad
DESPERATE PROPAGANDA Some of his enemies put out propaganda about one of Massoud’s ears. They said he did not have one of his ears, that because he always wore his pakul tilted over to one side he must be missing one ear. They could not find any other faults, so they had to focus on that. (Ahmad Jamshid) MEETING AT NIGHT Once Massoud had called a meeting with all the mullahs in the valley. Two of them did not come. It was evening, and the Commander sent Bismillah Khan to bring them so they could start. He had also said something to Bismillah Khan about the French women doctors who were working in the valley—that they needed something—and Bismillah Khan must have understood that he had to bring the women too. At ten in the evening in a small village in Afghanistan it is late, and there at the meeting of the mullahs were these two lady doctors. We laughed with Massoud and made jokes about that. If you put it in the context of the time and the situation—the middle of the war with the Soviets, just to allow them to be there, just that, was a kind of courageous step. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
“Massoud asked Dr. Abdullah for a pen, and Dr. Abdullah drew one out of his tailored cashmere jacket. ‘I recognize that pen, it’s mine,’ Massoud said. He was joking. ‘Well, in a sense everything we have is yours,’ Dr. Abdullah replied. ‘Don’t change the topic. Right now I’m talking about this pen.’ Massoud wagged his finger at Dr. Abdullah, then turned to the serious business of preparing the offensive.” (Junger, Fire, 210) YOUR HALF We were climbing a mountain to get to the next village. Massoud was sort of competing—he would go a little bit faster, then slower, then when I got close to him he would go fast again so I couldn’t catch him. I continued on. Then I found half an apple on top of a rock, placed so that when you passed it you could not miss seeing it. In the middle of the trek, I was thirsty and exhausted, and he left it for me. This was an example of his caring for friends: making jokes in the middle of a serious situation, but in a way that everybody felt comfortable and sort of lighter. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) SECRET SON When Massoud got married, he was in hiding and only five or six people knew about it. Later, we were in a place called Pew in the province of Takhar. We all stayed at Tajuddin’s place because
Massoud was always there. We didn’t know that Tajuddin had become his father-in-law. Every afternoon, when Massoud finished working, he would go to the house and bring back a child, and people asked whose it was. They said it must be Tajuddin’s son, because he had a baby son about that age. Massoud carried the boy everywhere. Ahmad [Massoud’s son] was just two months old at the time. (Sher Dil Qaderi) TELLING ON ME Engineer Eshaq had a computer and printer he used to print Afghan News, a newsletter, and he didn’t allow anybody to touch them. That was his habit. I was in the Panjshir and Commander Massoud said to me jokingly, “I heard that you play with Engineer Eshaq’s computer all the time, and I’m going to tell him.” He was always trying to pull something on you. (Mohammad Shuaib) “Then there was the incredible but just possible tale of Massoud and one of his commanders, who had recently been to inspect the southern front lines by jeep. Somehow they had taken a wrong turn, lost the route, and driven unarmed into the heart of a Taliban stronghold. “Massoud, instantly recognized and facing almost certain death, demanded confidently to see their leader. So baffled were his hosts at the sudden appearance of their arch-enemy, they obliged, and a cordial exchange was reported between the rival leaders. Their meeting was just long enough not to offend custom, but short enough
to prevent the Taliban from realizing that Massoud’s appearance in their midst was nothing more than a one-in-a-million mistake.” (Jason Elliot, An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan, London: Picador, 1999, 76) A RUMOR REFUTED At one time in the early ’80s, there was information, let’s call it that, that Massoud was “a fundamentalist,” but the truth was that he loved to listen—perhaps a little on the sly, but that’s okay—to the songs of Ahmad Zaher, who was thought of as the Elvis Presley of Kabul. (Humayun Tandar) POETRY AMONG FRIENDS It wasn’t that Massoud read poetry to all the soldiers, but sometimes, on special occasions, he used poetry to boost morale and to give another sense of what the mission was. Usually, it was only around the commanders or a few friends. He would read or recite it, and then he would make a joke with Bismillah Khan, who was a friend. Massoud would ask him, “What’s the meaning of this passage?” Bismillah Khan would not know, but he would try to say something. Then Massoud would respond, “Well, of course, it is not for the mullah to explain.” (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
THE RIGHT MEDICINE When we were in grade school, my father bought a bicycle for me. After a few days Massoud got sick, and I told my father, “You bought a bicycle for me but not one for Massoud. Maybe if you buy something for him it will help him to recover.” And my father bought him a new Russian bicycle. Massoud was lying on his bed, and I went to him and showed him the new bicycle. “Look, this is new and it is for you!” Believe me, he stood up right then and rode that bicycle. He was not sick anymore; it was the right medicine for him. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) SERIOUS BUSINESS One night, we welcomed a new team of doctors in the Panjshir and they were drinking tea. Massoud and some friends came in, sat down, and began a discussion with very serious faces. The doctors were quite impressed, but they remained silent, just drinking their tea. I listened to the conversation for maybe an hour, then the men left. The doctors asked if they were talking about the Soviet offensive, about organizing the defense of the valley. They were quite anxious to know. Actually, Massoud and his men were talking about their wives in sexual terms, how to seduce and make love to them, what to do and what not to do. It was respectful, and they pretended to be very solemn, but it was a game in which they were trying to leave an impression on the doctors while, in fact, they were ready to laugh. (Jean-José Puig)
BATTERIES At a press conference, Engineer Eshaq wanted to put a tape recorder in front of Massoud, and Massoud asked, “Is the tape recorder working?” Eshaq said yes. “Do you have batteries in your recorder?” Eshaq said yes. “Are your batteries strong, are they working?” I said, “Amer Saheb, Engineer Eshaq’s batteries never work!” Massoud laughed heartily, because in our culture, if you tell a man that his batteries don’t work it means he is sexually weak. So he laughed a lot, and when he laughed, a reporter took his picture and it appeared in Time magazine. (Sayed Hamed Mohammad Elmi) FRIENDLY PERSUASION Some mujahideen did not have shoes and had asked Amer Saheb to get them some. One day he came to Baad Qool, and my brother asked him about the shoes. He joked with my brother: “No, I am not going to give you any shoes.” Later, they had to cross the river, and my brother, Mir Ata Khan, was carrying Amer Saheb on his shoulders because he was all dressed up. When they got to the middle of the river, my brother stopped and said to him, “Do you want to give us shoes, or would you like to get wet?” Massoud laughed and said, “Don’t get me wet; I’ll get you the shoes!” (Eisa Khan Ayoob Ayoobi)
JOKING IN JANGALAK In 1999, I was with Massoud in Jangalak. It was night and we were sitting without a lamp. My political beliefs were different from most educated people in the town, even my family, so Massoud jokingly said to somebody, referring to me, “And now I am not even sure if he is one of my supporters. He says he is, but I am not so sure . . . ” and he laughed. I responded by telling him that Mullah Omar [the Taliban leader] had once told his colleagues, “I hope I die before Massoud.” The colleagues were surprised and asked, “Why do you say that?” Mullah Omar answered, “If Massoud dies before me, he will destroy the Polsalat Bridge, and I will never get to the other side!” You see, in Islam, we believe that the day after you die you have to cross the bridge of Polsalat; everybody has to walk across to leave the earthly realm. Of course, my Mullah Omar story was really about all the bridges that Massoud destroyed to stop the Taliban, and he had a good laugh at it. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) ALWAYS TEASING ME Massoud had a strong sense of humor. He was always teasing me. I remember that I had come from Kabul to see him, intending to go straight back, but he said, “No, we are going to Takhar, and you’re coming with us, so let’s go!” We spent the evening together in Takhar, and the next day we went to climb a high mountain. We could not go by car, and it was too dangerous to go by helicopter because the enemy was very close, so we started the long
climb on foot, carrying heavy field glasses and other gear. After about twenty minutes, Massoud said to me, “Come here, Pedram!” I approached him, panting, and said, “I can’t carry these glasses any further, so I’ll just put them down here.” He laughed and said, “Yes, these field glasses were brought to Kabul by the mujahideen during the war against the Soviets. They were not meant to be carried by intellectuals.” (Abdul Latif Pedram) THE WINNER In the Panjshir one day at the beginning of the Resistance, Massoud was playing chess with a companion. Massoud won, and he was pleased and said, “Did you see that? I won.” His opponent responded, “Well, Amer Saheb, everyone wins against me.” (Farid Amin) DIPLOMATIC MOTIVATION Massoud repeatedly asked the intellectuals, “What are you going to do if the Taliban come? They can beat you, you know.” He was just teasing them, but after a while they were all ready to leave the country to work as diplomats. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) TEASING THE TRANSLATOR
Humayun Tandar has a French wife and was living in Paris. When he went to the Panjshir to meet Commander Massoud, there was a French journalist who had come to interview Massoud, and Tandar helped translate from French to Farsi. Massoud said to him, “You speak very good French,” and somebody else commented that it was because he had a “living dictionary.” He meant Tandar’s wife. Massoud had a good laugh. After that, every time he saw Tandar he asked him, “How is your living dictionary?” (Mohammad Shuaib) NO SMOKE There was a lot of fighting in Kabul in 1993 and ’94, and we were at a key position. Hekmatyar and Dostum, who were allied at the time, and the Shia groups were shooting missiles, and there was smoke everywhere—except one nice little area which was completely clear. Massoud saw it, and he laughed and said, “How come they aren’t shelling there?” (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) EXACT TRANSLATION At the press conference I arranged for Massoud, there was a female reporter at our table taking photos. She was from the BBC and asked the first question: “What role do you give to women?” In Persian, Massoud answered that women could become lawyers, teachers, ministers, doctors, politicians—he mentioned around twenty professions. Afterwards, I translated for her, “The Commander says
that except for journalists, they can become whatever they want.” Everybody chuckled at that, and the Commander asked me why. I translated into Persian what I had told her, and he began to laugh like a child. (Masood Khalili) THE INVITATION I wanted to invite him to Japan. I am not rich, so I said to Massoud, “Just you and your wife, I invite. I can pay for that.” And Massoud said, “No, I have many mujahideen, so if I go to Japan it will be maybe sixty, and we will stay one month.” I said, “Sixty!!” and I forgot about that conversation. Maybe one or two years later, I offered again for him to come to Japan. He said, “Last time you were surprised with sixty people. Now I say twenty people, but we must stay for two months.” So I thought of a very big house for them, but he could never come. (Hiromi Nagakura) “[In Paris] Massoud wore his customary safari jacket and pakul cap and was addressed as ‘commandant’ by the awestruck hotel staff. . . . “Word quickly rippled through the Afghan delegation not to turn the television on, because there were ‘dangerous’—i.e. pornographic— channels they might stumble onto. In some interpretations of Islam, even thinking about a woman other than your wife qualifies as a sin, and one bearded commander was observed gripping his armchair and praying, eyes closed, as a young French woman walked by. “While his commanders struggled and prayed, Massoud worked.”
(Junger, “Massoud’s Last Conquest,” 107–9) “When I discussed the possibility of a truce with [the Russians] in 1983, one officer said to me, ‘We want to withdraw, but how do we do it?’ I said, ‘Go out the same way you came in.’” (Ahmad Shah Massoud, quoted in Gall, Afghanistan, 142) THE TOOTHACHE On my first journey to the Panjshir I had a terrible toothache. Massoud told me he would bring somebody to help, so they brought a French doctor from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). I told him I had a lot of pain in my tooth, and he said he would take it out, no problem. I said, “How many teeth have you extracted?” and he said none. “Well, this is difficult,” I told him, “I am your first victim; are you going to kill me?” Then he called someone with a long beard like a pharaoh of Egypt. He was slim with deep eyes and small Mongolian nose. I asked him, “What is your profession?” and he said he was a barber. Well, my grandmother told me once that she was treated by a barber and that the barber was the one who took care of teeth, a semi-doctor. I asked him how many times he had taken out teeth, and he said, “More than ten times, a thousand times!” I said, “God bless you, come on.” So I was sitting there like a kind of victim looking at him, and I said, “Do you have anything to inject?” He said no, he didn’t believe in that. He got a piece of equipment like pinchers, very old, black, and greasy. When I saw this I said, “Oh,” but he said, “Don’t worry,” and
took out the handkerchief he used for his nose and cleaned them off. I said, “Oh,” again and started praying: “Oh God, help me! Oh, God and the holy warriors.” He put those things in my mouth and said, “In the Name of God . . . ” but I said, “Hold on, hold on . . . ” Then I asked the brother of Hasham to come and sit on my shoulders, but he was so big that he was like a tank and I was like a bicycle. I said, “You can’t sit on a bicycle; let your son do it.” So the son sat on my shoulders. Commander Massoud was sitting there, talking with some people and looking over at me with a little smile. Then the barber put those pinchers or whatever they were, on my jaw and instructed me to say, “In the name of God.” I said, “I have already recited the whole Koran!” So he pulled out my tooth, and I felt the weight of the whole world on my shoulders and in my head, but after two minutes there was no pain. They brought water. It was very cold, and I washed my mouth. Then I saw the young French doctor. He was setting up the camera to shoot my photo, and his eyes were bigger than a deer’s. He managed to say, “How are you?” and I replied, “Don’t ask how I am. How are you?” (Masood Khalili)
20 AFGHAN SPIRIT This is a nation which is the poorest in the world, but the people are rich in their hearts. —Masood Khalili Many people before me have expressed the feeling that there is something unique in the Afghans. To me, they are a “garden of roses,” which illuminates every day of my life.
THE CRAZY MAN’S BOOK Once, after a large Soviet offensive, we came upon a group of men in the Panjshir Valley. We were all sitting under a tree—Massoud, his bodyguards, and a few peasants. There was a young man they called “the crazy man,” and he seemed to have something in his pocket. I asked him, “What do you have in your pocket?” He said, “Nothing.” “What do you mean? There’s something in there!” He told me, “It’s a book.” “You don’t want to show it to me?” “No.” Finally he showed it to me. This crazy man, in a ruined valley, in the presence of constant death, had a book of Hafiz in his pocket. (Humayun Tandar) HIDDEN IN THE HEART For a thousand years people in Afghanistan had three sources of spiritualism and religion. One was fanaticism, which was limited to very religious-minded people who were a tiny minority studying theology. Number two was a moderate faith, those who were neither very fanatic nor very liberal. And number three was a foundation on which moderate religion and faith was built: the spiritualism which is called Sufism. This is the tradition of a kind of saintly people, a
limited number, who were the best poets, philosophers, and writers, the most pious people. They lived in non-material conditions, and they were great people. In this philosophy of Sufism, you worship God, not just through the books, but through your heart. When you worship God through your heart, then you always find Him. God is nowhere else, according to them. When you are in search of yourself, you find God, and when you are in search of God, you find yourself. Massoud was a man who was in search of himself and in search of God. Every human being should be like that; our heart is something we should always look at and go into, because we can find the soul. When you are in search of that, I believe you find Him, whatever you call Him—God, Allah, Bhagavan, Ram. There is an important story about this that took place at the beginning of creation: There was a situation between God and Satan, and God told Satan, “You cannot convince my followers not to worship me; they will always find me.” And Satan said, “God, I will hide you somewhere that your worshippers will not find you. Where? In the heart of man, because they never go to their hearts to worship. They go to the books and they get deceived. As long as few people go into themselves and search their hearts and souls, that is the best place to hide you.” And that is the third branch of Afghan spirituality, based on this foundation of worship in the heart. When the communists invaded Afghanistan, we thought we would lose all these traditions: fanatic, moderate, and Sufi. So we were told. (Masood Khalili) I DON’T WANT TO MENTION NAMES
In the war with Russia, lots of women in Kabul and other cities had contact with the mujahideen, worked for them. I used to be the contact between Massoud and a woman in Kabul. Massoud gave me instructions, and I would pass them to the woman, who would pass them on to her group. These women did a lot of operations when the Russians were there. They sacrificed and died, and sometimes they would be arrested by the Russians. Aref’s wife from Logar, my wife, and Qanooni’s wife were some of the women who were in the Resistance, but I do not want to mention their full names. There was a woman from Bazarak—I don’t remember her real name, but people called her Shamnisah—who had five or six children, and she lost all of them in the war. She never left her house, and she would always cook for Massoud and the mujahideen. Massoud always helped that woman through me, because she lost everything and he never forgot that. (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) THE WOMEN ALWAYS RESIST During the course of history, Afghan women have always resisted foreign forces, even taking arms to fight them, including the Soviets and the Taliban. During the years of the jihad against the former Soviet Union, in the territory that Massoud controlled, women supported the men in every way they could—cooking, gathering important logistical information, etc. The ones who were educated worked in the schools and provided medicine. (Commander Bismillah Khan)
THE PENCIL One day I was in the Salang Pass with Commander Massoud and his forces in an operation to stop a convoy of Russians. He told me to go into the mountain, far from the ambush, and that he would follow. I went, and there was a school in something like a cave in the mountains where boys and girls went for their studies. Massoud believed in always keeping the schools open, even with the war going on, in the mountains or wherever, because he thought the schools were so important that without them we could not go on. I saw fifteen girls and boys with beautiful eyes. I think it was the first or second grade, a class of tiny cute girls and boys. It was around the end of August, and they had thin clothes and some were barefoot, and they were cold. I entered the cave and I asked the teacher to let me teach them. Then I asked them, “Who can write the word freedom?” It’s a very easy word to write in Persian. One of them began to write, and I said to the class, “Why don’t you all write it?” A girl looked at me and said, “We can all write, but we have only one pencil in the class and we share it.” (Masood Khalili) “We were sitting on the grass . . . when Masud came over to join us. He started talking to the boys, teasing one of them about the white cloth with garishly embroidered flowers he was holding. “‘Do you want to give that to me as a present?’ “After some hesitation, the little boy said, ‘Yes,’ and held it out to Masud. “‘No, no, it was only a joke. Your mother might have something to say about that.’
“But the little boy, who could not have been more than seven, insisted and Masud had to accept it. “‘It’s beautiful, thank you very much. Here, come and sit beside me, I want to talk to you.’ The boy did as he was told without the slightest sign of shyness or embarrassment and, after asking him a lot of questions about himself, Masud persuaded him to recite several verses from the Koran and then something in Farsi. He did it beautifully, as far as I could tell, without a pause or hesitation, and when he had finished Masud applauded. I asked Khalili, ‘Who was that poem by, Khushal Khan Khattak?’ Khattak was a seventeenthcentury Pushtun poet. “‘No, much older. It was by Hafez, a Persian poet of the fourteen century’.” (Gall, Afghanistan, 164) THE PAPAYAN I remember an old man who walked for twenty miles to get to Massoud. He asked Massoud to give him a gun to fight with. Now, there are guns called papayans which shoot forty or fifty meters, but the Kalashnikov shoots four hundred meters. In Afghanistan, the people like to fight from a close range because it shows they are not afraid of the enemy, so Massoud’s men played a little game with him: “Do you want to fight from a distance or up close?” Of course, the man said proudly, “I’d like to fight at close range.” So this old man came twenty miles on foot, exchanged a few words, turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and went back, but he was happy because it let him show he was not afraid. He is still
alive but lost his eyes in a land mine explosion. Not everyone would think to turn a small event into something clever and positive in the middle of a war. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) I KNOW MY PEOPLE If a leader is honest with the Afghans, behaves honestly, the Afghans are very good people. The rumors that Afghans fight against each other, that they are against the rules? I know my culture, I know my people. They are really good people, if someone is honest with them. Massoud did not give things to the people, he was just honest with them, and he proved to the people that he was serving them. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) LAND OF THE PEASANT KINGS Some of the best human beings I met have been Afghan peasants in the little villages in the Hindu Kush, people who have nothing and give you everything they have. They invite you into their home where there is only one room. These are people who have nothing in material terms but have a huge amount of self-respect, pride, and confidence in their own dignity as human beings. Even if you don’t speak Dari, the Afghan dignity and openness still come across. It goes beyond boundaries of culture and language which I think any human being can sense. They were beggars when it comes to material things, but kings in pride, self-respect, and dignity. (Anthony Davis)
THE FUNNY UNCLE Once when the Soviet troops entered Jangalak, they destroyed the whole village, including the house of Massoud’s uncle, Amir Mohammed, who was a teacher and was a very funny guy. Massoud saw the house and asked, “Uncle, what about your house?” Amir answered, “My son, everything is alright. I am just trying to paint it!” (Colonel Ahmad Muslem Hayat) THE MUSLIM Once a boy named Fahrid came to the house and told me that my father owed him some money for a book. I had him come upstairs, and my father paid him and gave him extra money for making him wait. Then we went upstairs to my uncle who is a doctor, and they asked him, “Son, are you a Muslim?” and he said yes. “How are you a Muslim? Prove yourself.” And he said, “I have a prayer,” and he said, “Laa ilaha illallah, Mohammader-rasolallah” (There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet). “Son, I have a thousand dollars in my pocket, and I will give it to you if you say that you are not a Muslim. Just say it, and I will give you this money.” He was quiet. He was a beggar in the street, and who wouldn’t want a thousand dollars? Then he said, “Sir, if you give me a million dollars, if you give me the entire city, I will not say that. What would be left for me? A Muslim has God above him; he has faith in God.” From a ten-year-old kid! Even my uncle had teary eyes. (Madina Zikria)
A FARMER OR A PEASANT I used to watch Massoud closely, wondering if the man was genuine. I would be talking with him, and he would say, “Excuse me, I have to go and pray.” And he would pray with whoever was around, whether a farmer or a peasant boy didn’t matter, they were all equal. It may go back to the fact that Afghanistan has never been colonized. When I am in Pakistan, it’s totally different. Power is the rapport, respect is the rapport. The fact that you are Western automatically associates you with colonization. When you are in Afghanistan, you are there as an equal. (Edward Girardet) A TOTALLY DIFFERENT CULTURE Massoud really loved his culture. You know that Afghanistan is rich in culture, and I hope that one day you and I will sit together and talk about culture and the poets—a totally different world from this one; a totally different culture from Western culture. And Massoud wanted to preserve it. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) ANOTHER VISION OF THE WORLD A famous Kabuli who recently died was a former merchant who had been engaged in international commerce between Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Kashmir. This trade had been passed down to him
from his father, but one day he had enough and decided to follow another life. He asked himself, “What can I do to lead the life I wish for?” and he took some boards, put up a little shop at an intersection in Kabul, and became a bookbinder. In actuality, he did this to be able to offer tea, bread, and conversation to those who came to see him. It was a very small place, probably four square meters, with an overhang in front of the shop, but the young poets who hoped to follow his vision of the world came to see him. (Humayun Tandar) TIMELESS Afghanistan became sort of a spiritual thing for me, although I say this very guardedly. It became necessary for me to go to Afghanistan at least once a year if not more, and one of my greatest disappointments was when we could no longer walk in. We had to drive or fly, and it was never the same again. When you walked you had the time to do a lot of thinking because there was no other distraction. The food was basic—you just ate in order to get energy—and you would see the most spectacular views. I think that in this terrain you could find yourself. Your existence would be down to very basic things. Afghanistan is a timeless place, and in it you could somehow see the world more clearly. (Edward Girardet) WE ATE THE WHOLE THING
We went to Nahrin, and the people there have a custom that when there is a guest in a house, it means that all the village is invited too. For example, if you come to my house because I invite you, and I am preparing a dinner for ten or eleven at night, from six o’clock on people bring food and share it with you. We did not know the customs there. You are supposed to take only one bite and pass the food. There were fifty of us, and when the people brought food, we ate the whole thing. We thought, if you don’t eat their food you are insulting them, so we did not pass it around. At twelve o’clock, the host brought the dinner, rice and meat, and said, “This is the dinner I was inviting you to,” and then he told us that we should have only eaten one bite because people in the village had come to share with us. Those people cooked their food with mustard seed oil, and it is so strong that if you are not accustomed to it, it gives you diarrhea. We all got sick, all fifty people. So the next day when people brought food Massoud said, “No mustard oil.” The twenty-five days we were there we were sick. “Would you like to come to my house?” “Yes, but no mustard oil, no teher!” (Sher Dil Qaderi) SURNAMES In Afghanistan it is traditional that there are no surnames. We say “so-and-so, son of so-and-so.” Perhaps this is how it was in France during the Middle Ages, yet when you come to Kabul, in an educated milieu or where there are universities and people who have traveled, you find surnames.
Afghan surnames do not change; they are from either one’s tribe or one’s region. For example, someone from Kabul becomes “Kabuli.” Sometimes a name is a personal choice, as when people choose a word from literature that they find pretty. During the war, during the government of President Daoud [1973– 75], the militant nationalists all did clandestine work. To avoid identification and arrest they adopted surnames. Massoud’s name comes from this period. One meaning of Massoud is “lucky.” (Mehraboudin Masstan) THE AMERICANS FOUND OUT In the time of the Taliban, slowly and gradually, people, especially the United States, entered the game and found that the Afghans were determined. By the time they gave us the Stingers—it was 1986—they found that we had lost more than half a million people. And then they said, “Whether we give them weapons or not, they fight!” (Masood Khalili) FOREGONE CONCLUSION It was very difficult in the ’80s, impossible to think that this little tiny place, Afghanistan, and this small group of people, the Resistance within Afghanistan, would have any chance of defeating the Soviet Union. Yet people under Massoud’s leadership used to talk about “when the northerners leave,” and “when the Russians leave,” as if it were a foregone conclusion that they would leave. (Richard Mackenzie)
“Jean-Philippe [Tabard, a French doctor] . . . declared that many Afghans suffered from nervous headaches, brought on by the bombing. The children in particular were prone to symptoms of trauma and he described treating one child, wounded in the arm by bomb splinters, who had not been able to utter a sound. But, he said, the surprising thing was that, despite these psychological effects, the morale of the people, even the refugees, remained extremely high. ‘They are poor people, but they are for the mujahideen,’ he insisted.” (Gall, Behind Russian Lines, 121) WAR OF THE WORDS Let me tell you about a special kind of gathering Massoud’s people had, not once but many times. Whenever we were all very sad or very happy, whenever we were successful or defeated, late at night there would be three or four people, and we would get involved in poetry, a thing we call mushaaera. This is a tradition in Persian-speaking countries like Iran, but mostly in Afghanistan, in which we kind of compete to see who knows more poetry. How did we do it? Two get on one side and two on another, in rival teams. One team reads a verse of poetry, and the other team takes the last letter of the verse and tries to find a new poetry verse that begins with the same letter. Suppose you have a verse in English, “Oh God, I love you, come and help me.” Here the last letter of the verse is “e,” so the other team takes the “e” and starts a verse with
that. So it would run until one of the teams says it doesn’t have a verse that starts with the right letter. Then it is defeated. This has been done in Afghanistan for centuries, by boys in school, girls in school. In my house, we were very traditional, and my father tried to test his sons and daughters by this. During the war, we sometimes took refuge in this verse fighting. You can fight not just with guns but also with verses, and a country that fights with verses should be given an award by the military people. This is why Afghan people are all warriors; we fight even with verses. So we used to do this, and the Commander did not know any verses by heart. He knew the meaning and loved to hear them. He relaxed himself with this verse fighting, so in those circumstances he would ask us to please do it. And it was totally a different fight—not with bullets, not with ballots, not with bad words, but with the most beautiful, the most sensitive element in mankind’s world: verses. I was always the winner, but, I don’t know. Maybe they were more winners than me because they so enjoyed themselves. You never enjoy war by any means, but you enjoyed this one, this war of the beautiful, lovely, romantic words, the nicest in the world. Maybe in those times, we were indeed taking refuge in something good. One night I remember we all went to a big meeting in the Panjshir. It was freezing, and the Taliban was in Kabul. Haji Qadir was there— he was alive then—and Dr. Rahman, Dr. Abdullah, and Dr. Mahdi were there. Dr. Mujaddedi, who was the head of the Panjshir Valley, and Bismillah Khan were there. All these people, and the Commander came, and about 9 p.m. we started to talk about difficult stuff, like world politics, the Taliban, Osama, how to organize, how to reach the North, how to do a united front, how to get money. All of a sudden we all agreed that we should stop talking about politics and start the word fighting. The Commander could not learn
poetry by heart, so he became the referee, checking that people did not repeat verses. And he was a good judge because he was strong, and in any country if the judge is strong, justice is done. He was very keen that no friend should cheat another while they were fighting with these beautiful verses. Then Dr. Abdullah, who was a good reader and understood the great poet Hafiz, opened the Hafiz book and started to read. Then Dr. Mehta, who was also very good, and two or three others. So we enjoyed our-selves, and that night passed. Many nights and days passed, but I remember vividly and clearly that night, because we passed it with poetry. (Masood Khalili) “Years ago . . . I was in Afghanistan with a mujahedin unit, the mujahedin being the fighters against the Soviet occupation. During long treks across the desert, the small group of mujahedin fighters I was with would stop and pray five times a day. They would get on their knees and they would pray, and they would thank God for everything that they had. I might add that they had little. We did not even have a good clean glass of water, much less the provisions of food that could keep people healthy. Yet these people were grateful for everything. “It caused me reason to pause and think that here in the United States we have so much and how rarely people think about how grateful they should be. . . . But here were these people, under attack by the Soviets, on their knees praying. . . . “What impressed me is that those who were praying felt perfectly comfortable. They were fulfilling their obligations to God but did not feel threatened by the others who were not praying and who were not
compelled to participate. That was the essence of the Afghans— grateful to God, devoted to God, but not fanatics who were trying to suppress other people into some sort of religious dictatorship.” (Excerpt from a speech by Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, “Challenge Facing America,” delivered before the U.S. Congress, September 17, 2001, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/rohrabacher091701.html) “‘Even the poorest of Afghans had a sense of pride, great hospitality, so to me they were never poor.’ That generosity of spirit, combined with Afghans’ love of music, dancing, poetry and song, he added, is the reason ‘why so many foreign workers remember Afghanistan with an extraordinary sense of romanticism.’” (Edward Girardet quoted in D. L. Parsell, “Afghanistan Reporter Looks Back on Two Decades of Change,” National Geographic News, November 19, 2001, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1119_afghanreporter_2. html) WHY SHOULD WE HELP? Part of my job was to bring the word to the media, to conferences, and the State Department. I am talking now about twenty-six years ago, and they were thinking, “What is the use of giving the Afghans weapons?” Many good reasons they had, scientific reasons. Our message was: Despite your pessimism, give us weapons and money to fight. Don’t isolate us; don’t abandon us. They said, “This
country is not going to see freedom again, so why should we help?” And I said, “Don’t let Afghans die empty-handed, because they are fighting—not because of you, not for NATO, for the United States, for Europe, or for the Islamic world—they are fighting whether you like it or not. Love of freedom, love of land, love of their religion combined make these people fight and give their lives, and it’s not easy to give your life.” I had to get the message to the world that we would fight, whether or not it gave us food, weapons, money, because we were determined to see freedom and our faith or die! (Masood Khalili) “The very first Afghans I met said they would rather fight to the last man than allow the Russians to control their country. This kind of claim had a ring of ancient bravado about it, and one took it with a pinch of twentieth-century salt. But after I had met the people inside the country who were really doing the fighting I would need an entirely new vocabulary to describe them: it was not bravado at all, and no price was too high for its fulfilment. A wizened old villager once put it to me simply: to lose one’s home, he said, was nothing; to lose one’s health was something; but to lose one’s freedom—ah, that was quite a different matter: the Russians would never get away with that.” (Elliot, An Unexpected Light, 163) WHY WE WON
A long time ago, I saw a battlefield, and that night about thirty people were killed and the village was burned. I wrote in my diary that the next day I saw people from other villages coming to help the wounded, and they said, “Go, boys, and fight for freedom.” I thought: Oh, freedom is not free; you have to fight for it; it has a cost, and it is valuable. I have tasted both, losing freedom and regaining it, and I experienced the civil freedom that people in Afghanistan lost with the Taliban. Then you don’t have freedom; you have barbaric things. But it was the war of the people indeed, and that is why we won. (Masood Khalili) OLD RIFLES AND NO BACKING The Soviet Union had invaded other countries before—Hungary, Czechoslovakia. They may have had a little resistance at the beginning, then almost immediately the country would be defeated. But not the Afghans. The Afghans started with old rifles and with no backing. Anybody that has met them knows that they didn’t need the Americans to get them going. The Afghans started their own Resistance and fought against the Soviets. Under the leadership of Massoud they set an example that you didn’t have to lie down and die, that you could fight back. (Richard Mackenzie) TRANSFORMED
Somebody asked Massoud if he had changed after so many years of struggle. I remember he answered: “Have twenty years of war changed me? It is my people that they have transformed, but it has been positive change. Those years have raised people above themselves. They have allowed them, through suffering and resistance, to transcend themselves. I loved my people before. Now I admire them, and my dearest dream is to contribute to the reconstruction of a free Afghanistan for them and with them.” (Masood Khalili) “Despite the years-long fighting in Afghanistan, ethnic differences, and all the difficulties that plague Afghanistan, I do not think that there is even a single Afghan who would favour the disintegration or fragmentation of the country along ethnic lines. We are all unanimous that there should be one, unified Afghanistan.” (Ahmad Shah Masood quoted in Piotr Balcerowicz, “Taliban Lacks Support from the Afghan People,” Omaid Weekly, no. 496, October 22, 2001)
21 PERFUME OF THE ROSE It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. —Antoine Saint-Exupéry
During the resistance against the Taliban, I used to spend half of the time with Massoud in Afghanistan and half traveling to Europe and the United States to warn the world of what the Taliban was. On one of those trips I called him from a satellite phone, and he asked me where I had been, because it was quite a few days since I had talked to him. I told him that I had been to Paris, New York, and Geneva, now I was in London, and then I would come to Afghanistan. He said, “I’ve also been traveling.” He mentioned places that I knew in Afghanistan, places in the most mountainous areas of the country where it was hard to get and very difficult to live. He had gone to mobilize the people and organize the Resistance. He was aware that I knew how difficult it is to travel to those areas, and he recited a couplet from a famous Persian poet, Hafiz, “Someone has the wine, and someone has the blood from the heart, and that is how things were distributed on the First Day.” As Muslims we believe that our destiny was decided in the days before the creation of mankind. The poem means that when distribution was made in the beginning, somebody was given wine, the circle of happiness, and somebody else was given the blood of the heart, the other extreme of sadness and sorrow. Massoud was saying that I travel in these areas and he travels in those, because that is the way things are distributed today as well. And then he laughed. I told him the next part of the poem, which I happened to know: There is the rose and also the perfume of the rose. The rose stays where it is, but the perfume walks around The bazaar, the market, the shop, everywhere. It was a surprise to him because he didn’t know that part, and we laughed together.
(Dr. Abdullah Abdullah)
SO HARD TO EXPLAIN In so many ways Massoud was different. His eyes were different. If you looked deeply into his eyes you could find something there, something absolutely different. Even his nose, forehead, and chin were different. You know, after the day he died, people who had met him for the first time, they cried more than we did, after just one meeting. We cannot know how deep was his link with God, but he was not a normal person; everything was different. It is so hard to explain. The way he sat was different, his eyes were different, his body was different, his personality was different, his hospitality was different. Even his virtue was different from other people and other leaders. By Massoud loving God, everything was different. Please write a very good book. (Ahmad Jamshid) “I found it impossible not to listen to Massoud when he spoke, even though I didn’t understand a word. I watched everything he did, because I had the sense that somehow—in the way he poured his tea, in the way his hands carved the air as he talked—there was some secret to be learned.” (Sebastian Junger, “Requiem for a Warrior,” National Geographic Adventure 3, no. 6: 172)
THE CUP OF THE NEW MOON Massoud had conviction and perseverance in the struggle, but he had the deep desire to be above that, like the cup of the new moon that shone and that fascinated centuries of poets and mystics. This moon comes from the deepest Afghan history to the symbol of Islam—one of the historical sites of Afghanistan is called Oijonome, lady moon—a representation of the Buddha’s face in a moon shape. Massoud expressed this depth without trying. He was the embodiment of this heritage, the heir to a history, to a vision, to this beauty that according to us, right or wrong, only poetry has expressed. The night sky made him catch his breath. I think that he wanted to be able to breathe, to see the sky. (Humayun Tandar) THE PHILOSOPHER I remember a British lady who came to see Massoud; I saw her in the lobby of his hotel in Paris. After she talked to him, I found her again and she said to me, “It is so amazing to find a military man who has been at war for twenty-five years and is so calm and peaceful. I never thought that Massoud would have such a personality that if you met him he would have an influence on you. You would never think he is a military person; you would think he is more like a philosopher.” When I went to see Massoud that day, I told him what that British lady said and I asked him, “How can you be so peaceful?” He said, “Well, I have my goals. That is the most important thing in life. Once you know what your goals are, then the rest is easy. If you struggle to get to them, whether you get there or you don’t, it is still okay. My
goal is the liberation of my nation, and I will do my utmost to reach it. If I don’t, that’s my destiny, so why should I be afraid of it? Since I have a clear goal, I don’t have to change my way of thinking or my path every day. That’s why I am so peaceful. I don’t have any worries at all.” (Farid Zikria) IN VICTORY OR DEFEAT The Russians invaded, killed people, children, women, dropped bombs, and a lot of mujahideen commanders were killed. Massoud had to be upset about what was happening, but when you were talking to him you could see the victory on his forehead; he was always smiling, always open. Spiritually, you would think he was winning. Without him saying anything, you would feel when you saw him smile while all those things were happening that we were winning. On the other hand, when he was successful he did not get excited or chant that yes we did it. He was calm and always looked strong—in a battle in which he lost everything or on a day when he was successful. (Mohammad Shuaib) GOOD MORNING, PEDRAM I was cultural attaché in Tajikistan, and I had joined Massoud in Takhar during the war against the Taliban. It was a very sad day. The Taliban had launched an attack in the center of the province, very
close to Massoud’s main headquarters. All the radio networks said Massoud was finished, and I sometimes thought it was true! As I walked up to him that day, he said, “Good morning, Pedram. How are you?” with a bright smile. I said, “What’s happened?” “Nothing.” “But the Taliban has reached Takhar!” And he replied, “Nothing to worry about. The Red Army came here over a hundred times, and yet they were beaten. They reached Takhar, they attacked, we pushed them out, and the Resistance is still alive.” (Abdul Latif Pedram) A LIGHT MARYAM MASSOUD: Our father was engaged to our mother, but they were not married yet. My father dreamt that he was with his fiancée, and there was a light. The light came directly from the sky and onto her forehead. When Massoud became a young man, when he started the Resistance and was a leader, our father told us, “Now I see. This light, the light that came from the sky in my dream and fell on your mother’s forehead, that was Massoud.” DIANA MOMAND: I remember a similar story about the Prophet Mohammad. A Christian called Nastora or Bahira loved Mohammad’s father, Abdullah. She went to talk with him and said, “Please, marry me.” He said, “I can’t marry you because I am already engaged to be married to another woman.” That woman was Amina [the mother of Mohammad], and he married her. Sometime later,
Abdullah went to talk with the Christian and said, “I can marry you now.” But she said, “It’s too late. I saw a light in you, but now you don’t have it anymore.” BODY AND SOUL Massoud was a believer, very clear in his thoughts. When he used to read the Koran, I noticed that he was totally absorbed in it, even though he was in the same room with many other people. Others were reciting the Koran, but he was really down into it. Also he did the prayers five times a day. I used to watch him. He had his whole body and soul into it; you would have thought that this man prayed all the time, and that there was nothing more important. That’s how I learned that he was a true believer. And the same applied to his work. When he was working, he was so deeply involved and engaged it would seem that it was his whole world. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) HE HAD THIS FEELING When Massoud was graduating from Herat high school in 1972, he was nominated for a course in Paris for further education in agriculture. He refused to go. He told our father, “I don’t want to go to Paris. I am going to go to the military university.” I was surprised, and Father was surprised and said, “I don’t want you to go to a military academy.” Massoud was insistent. At that time it was very difficult to enter the military university. My father knew the general
who was responsible for this university, and Massoud wanted him to ask this gentleman to do something so he could be admitted. I asked him, “Why do you want to become an officer?” Do you know what he said? He said, “I know that the Russians will come to Afghanistan. I have this feeling that Afghanistan will not stay like this.” And then he told me, “You know I don’t want to become a military officer. You know I am interested in art and architecture. But I just have the feeling that Afghanistan will come under the occupation of Russia.” I tell you that in his life twice he predicted things, and the two things happened: that one, and the second one when he came to Paris. A journalist asked him what was his message to Mr. Bush. He said, “My message is that one day something will happen to the world if you don’t help Afghanistan.” Since then, I felt that this man—I knew he was not exaggerating and he was not a man to play the big hero— he had something special. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) WHAT HAPPENED THAT DAY In 1981, the Russians surrounded the whole Panjshir Valley, and there was no way we could go anywhere; they had us completely closed down. Two hundred and fifty prisoners of war were in there, and Massoud was there, too. It was morning, and there was no hope. I saw no way we were going to get out alive, and my friends and I were thinking that we would all shoot each other because we didn’t want to be captured by the Russians. That morning Massoud prayed, and then he told us he would be back. The local commander, Golzar, said, “I am going with
Massoud,” but Massoud said he would go by himself. Golzar told him, “No, this is my responsibility. You are in my village, and wherever you go, I go with you. If you don’t want me to go, you have to kill me.” Massoud didn’t say anything, so they went together up the mountain to talk with the Russians. I saw this with my own eyes. Fifteen minutes later we heard shooting. Then Massoud came back and said, “They are breaking. Let’s see if we can get out of here,” and we began to leave. We took the two hundred and fifty prisoners with us, and when we got to the Russian lines we saw bodies, many bodies, of Russians. When we passed the area we asked Massoud about it, but he wouldn’t tell us what had happened. Later, I must have asked Golzar a hundred times. Every time I saw him I asked him what happened that day, but he couldn’t answer; he would just cry. I asked him, “Did you shoot anybody?” And he said no. I asked what happened and how Massoud fought, but he could not answer. The next year, Commander Golzar was killed. It is still a mystery to me. Massoud went to fight, but how? And how did he kill the hundred or two hundred Russians that I saw? He and that commander were alone, yet I saw the Russian bodies. He saved basically four or five hundred people’s lives. I believe with all my heart that it was a miracle. (Sher Dil Qaderi) PIR SEYALKOT AND THE HINDU MOTHER Massoud asked me, “What is going on in India?” I thought he wanted to talk about politics, but he said, “No, I just want you to tell me where you go in India when you have time to roam around there.”
I said, “Well, I am a person of faith, so I go to churches, mosques, shrines, temples.” He said, “You go to temples?” “Yes, I go to temples and I watch how people pray—men, women, youth, kids, some poor, some rich. I see that they come with flowers and they put them at the feet of their gods and they are in tears. And I see the mothers bringing their children, and some bring food and sweets, and it looks so beautiful. I see faithful people who sit there and meditate, pray to their gods and murmur in their hearts and their souls. It touches my heart and gives me comfort and peace.” Then, I told Massoud about the story that my friend Guldip Nayar had told me. Guldip and his wife visited us in our home in New Delhi. During a conversation, I commented that Islam does not have only one dimension, but has many, in the spiritual sense, and that it’s important that you go through them to find peace and tranquility. In response, Guldip told me a story about his childhood in Lahore [Pakistan]. When he was little, his mother used to take him to a shrine near their home called Pir Seyalkot. Pir means spiritual man. The shrine belonged to such a man, and his mother took him there for everything. When Guldip had a fever that shrine was his doctor; when his mother had an economic problem she rushed to the shrine for help; when she had some problem with her husband she would go there and pray, and when she was happy she would take sweets there for the poor. So his mother, who was Hindu, went to this shrine, and she told Guldip that it gave her comfort. Guldip grew up and became a journalist in India in the time of Indira Gandhi. When he was around twenty-two years old, he was imprisoned for certain reasons with ten or fifteen other writers and journalists. He told us that one night in jail he dreamt that a man came down from the clouds and sat on a chair. He had a beautiful
green gown, a long beard, and a radiant, happy face. He said, “I am Pir Seyalkot. On Friday you will be released from prison. Don’t worry, and your mother will be happy.” Guldip woke up and thought, God, today is Wednesday. Friday is just the day after tomorrow; how can I be released so soon? On Friday morning, there was a knock at the door of the prison and some people came in and asked, “Which one is Guldip Nayar?” He said, “I am,” and they told him, “Get out of here right now!” They asked him to sign something, and the head of the prison said, “You are released.” Guldip went to his home, and when he opened the door his mother was sitting there. The minute she saw him she said, “Oh Guldip, you are a little bit late. I thought that you would get out early in the morning, so I’ve been waiting here for three hours.” He started to tell her, “Mother, I had this dream . . . ,” but she said, “Yes, I know that. I asked him to help you.” Then she told him, “Guldip, take my chador [a long veil that is worn by women in India and also in Afghanistan] and if you can, go to Pakistan to that area of Lahore they call Seyalkot. When you get there, hurry to the shrine of Pir Seyalkot, lay down my chador, and tell Pir Seyalkot that a Hindu who loves him thanks him a lot.” Massoud was in tears, like a baby. His beard and his eyes were full of tears and his cheeks were all wet. He said, “Oh Khalili, please write it down. This is so beautiful. If anyone else had told me this story I would not have believed it. Look at this spiritual world. No signs can prove such things, but they are proved because they happen.” (Masood Khalili) WHAT A PASHTUN IS TELLING YOU
I didn’t see Massoud as a regular person. He had another dimension within, which differentiated him from other people. Spiritually speaking, he was very pure. I haven’t seen anyone else like him. People kept saying that he was from a minority in Afghanistan and that only those minority people think this way about him, but I am not from the Panjshir Valley and I am not from his tribal or his ethnic group. I am a Pashtun, and this is what I am telling you. (Farid Zikria) THE CONNECTION When a person becomes “whole,” that person knows all the inner senses, the inner self. And that person goes beyond the personal self and is able to look at humanity and to capitalize on the positive elements of individuals and care about them; that is the second level. First is within, the second is without. The third is to bring those things together, which becomes a transcendental thing. Massoud was very developed. He could look in the eyes of a person and know exactly what was inside that person’s heart. I mean, he could look at you and know that you were going to open your mouth and say, “If you don’t give me something in return, I won’t do it.” He grasped it immediately, and could then tell you, “This is why you are here. Here is what you want; take care and go.” People began to pay him respect because they said, “This man— before you open your mouth he knows exactly what you want and gives you advice about it!” Individuals with remarkable ability like that are able to connect with people by osmosis. (Haron Amin)
THE COBBLER There was an old man who in his youth and vigor was a fighter in Central Asia during the period which the Soviets called the Basmachis. Under pressure from the Soviet military he became a refugee in Afghanistan, where he undertook the trade of moochi: cobbler. We can well imagine what kind of cobbler he was: He had a little wooden shop with probably three or four hammers, a few nails, and a little bowl filled with water where he tempered the leather pieces that he had found to sew into shoes. He could have been something else, this gentleman; this is something you find among certain mystical personalities, Sufis. When the war erupted, he once again went into warrior mode against those who had uprooted him and made him flee his country. His age did not permit him to lead the fighting in this war, so instead he chose to transmit a spiritual force to others. This is what he came to Massoud to do, and I think that touched Massoud. (Humayun Tandar) MERCIFUL WARRIORS Massoud deepened his faith over time, so that he became a Muslim mystic who meditated on Islamic mysticism in the evenings while he fought his wars by day. This leads me to compare him to the only other character like that in modern Islamic history: the Algerian leader Abdul Qadir, who in the 1830s, ’40s, and early ’50s fought against the French and forced them to respect his high spiritual and humanitarian dignity. Abdul Qadir too would retire in the evenings to
meditate and to comment upon the classics of Sufism, even though by day he fought. What makes these two so comparable is that the spiritual course both brought to their actions was total renunciation of hatred. That is, they perceived their participation in war as something absolutely but unfortunately necessary to defend the independence of their nations, of their communities, but they drilled themselves to renounce hatred, revenge, and bitterness as motives for fighting. This showed in their extraordinary clemency for prisoners. It meant that they always showed mercy whenever they could, and this was something both their Russian and French enemies detected and came to respect so much. (Professor Michael Barry) IN MY SOUL Massoud often seemed to go almost into a trance. He would close his eyes and start praying, and it was like he would go to sleep for two minutes, into a trance or meditation. He would close his eyes and his lips would move very gently, as if he were whispering to a baby. This was not somebody just saying prayers, it was a deep communication with God. I know that in my soul. (Richard Mackenzie) SARTRE SHOULD RECONSIDER A sense of knowing: Massoud once told somebody, “If you go into this battle you will get killed.” The following day, the man went, and
he died in the battle. When people are aware of themselves, aware of their surroundings, and connected on a transcendental level, they just “know.” Like when birds fly before earthquakes; they are much better at that than human beings. Take the power of a human being and add the capabilities of birds and animals and an element of spirituality, and you have someone who connects on the sixth and seventh level. When Massoud sat in the room he totally filled it. The air was very heavy. He was able to look at things, to look at you, and you would melt like ice cream. Enemies came to kill him, then came to him and said, “I’ve been sent to kill you. Here is my gun.” A sense of energy that he had—what can I say? These are values that we have lost in the West. Sartre said that Che Guevara was the perfect man, but I once wrote if Sartre were alive he would reconsider. I read about Che and Mao Tse Tung. They were about winning over the enemy and implementing strategy. Massoud was more than that; he was the perfect man. Perfection should be attributed only to God, but in a human sense, he was such a person that he was able to connect to the deeper psychic level of individuals. (Haron Amin) “He discovered a spiritual guide in the writings of the 12th-century philosopher and mystic al-Ghazâlî. Later Massoud would carry one of al-Ghazâlî’s books with him wherever he went, into battle, up into the mountains, under the rain of enemy rocket-fire, down into the thickets of Kabul politics. Al-Ghazâlî’s Alchemy of Joy—Kîmiyâ-yi Sa’âdat— taught Massoud what Massoud was really spiritually looking for. . . . One sentence in al-Ghazâlî’s book seems to have struck him as particularly apt, for it actually dictated his whole line of moral
conduct: ‘This is the whole science of self-discipline and holy war: to purify one’s heart of all hatred towards one’s fellow creatures, of all lust for the world, and of all preoccupation with sensual things; such is the path of the Sûfis. . . .’ “Massoud’s personal mysticism led him to fight without hatred, bitterness, or spirit of revenge, regarding armed conflict only as an imposed and necessary evil in order to defend his people’s freedom, certainly not as an end in itself to be enjoyed as bloodlust or intoxication with power. He always provided protection for humanitarian relief in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, looked for reconciliation with defeated enemies, and invariably treated his war prisoners with humanity and dignity. To this I was witness, and this is why I joined Massoud during those terrible days in the 1990s when two-thirds of Kabul were bombed out of existence. Massoud sought peace for his land, and Massoud’s tragedy is that he died before he saw it.” (Barry, “Thoughts on Commander Massoud”) MIRROR OF THE HEART Whenever the Commander was with us, because the cave was small and I was older, he asked me to sleep in the same cave as he did. Cavemen. I remember he would wake up in the middle of the night, go quietly out in the cold for ablution, and come back under his thin blanket. Then I would hear him murmuring, not to curse the enemy, but to reach his own heart. The more you reach your heart, the more you polish your heart, and when the mirror of the heart is clean, you
can see the soul and the heart of others. So he saw the heart of others through the mirror of his own. (Masood Khalili) “He appeared to have come from some fierce burnished other world. There seemed an aura about him, as if somehow he remained untouched by the frailties of politics and men. Placing his multicolored three-by-five-foot prayer rug facing Mecca, he began to pray.” (Plunk, The Wandering Peacemaker) THE REAL FIGHT People should have two dimensions. That is why I say, Commander Massoud was a person of faith but in his other dimension he was struggling for the liberation of his country. If he had just been thinking about the struggle, he would not have been able to fight the long fight for liberation. What’s the use of liberating a piece of land and other people when your soul is not liberated? That liberation movement is also called jihad, which just means making positive efforts. It is the easiest effort to go and fight, but the real fight is within your self—how you kill greed, how you kill arrogance and anger. These things are important; you are always in a kind of fight against the negative things in yourself and others. (Masood Khalili)
SOMETHING COMING Massoud had enormous admiration for Hafiz, and he made Masood Khalili read and reread this one poem of Hafiz. When we learned of his assassination, it was our impression that in his spirit he already felt something was coming, that he was rising toward the spiritual world through this poem, so clearly written and symbolic. We had trouble getting him to come to Europe, and when he came, I sensed that he felt something coming. You could see that he was not in his normal state. (Mehraboudin Masstan) FOR THE LAST TIME Massoud knew one or two weeks before that he was going to die. Several days before, he was in the Panjshir sitting with his wife and his children in his garden. They were eating grapes from Astana, a village in the Panjshir with the best grapes in Afghanistan. He said to his wife, “Maybe this is the last time we will eat grapes together.” Immediately his wife asked him, “Pardon? Pardon? What did you say?” Then he spoke about something else because he knew that his wife would be very upset if she knew he was going to die. But his wife knew that he was not a normal person, and she started to cry. After a moment he said, “I just wanted to make a joke.” His wife is such a clear woman. She knew that he had a link with God, so she knew then that her husband was going to die. I know because my wife talked to her family. (Ahmad Jamshid)
ONE SOUL AND ONE HEART In a lot of religions, the books are full of stories about leaders who were wealthy conquerors. About Massoud, we say he was a good man because when he lived, when he died, he had only one soul and one heart, nothing else. He was a poor man. He did not exploit people and he did not accumulate wealth. Everything he did was because of his belief and his commitment. If people go to his grave, it is with that sort of feeling, not like they would go to the grave of a king. They go to Massoud’s grave because they believe he is influential spiritually. Although he did not make that claim, people think of him that way. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq) By “heart” I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. —Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness
22 THE SECOND DREAM My heart, sad hermit, stains the cloister floor with drops of blood, the sweat of anguish dire; Ah, wash me clean, and o’er my body pour Love’s generous wine! The worshippers of fire Have bowed them down and magnified my name, For in my heart there burns a living flame, Transpiercing Death’s impenetrable door. —Khwaja Shamsu-d-Din Muhammad-i-Hafiz
TWO DREAMS Massoud had two dreams. One was in 1979, when he became the head of the Resistance in the Panjshir. He dreamt that an old man came and tied his waist with some type of green cloth. Twenty-three years later, two months before he was killed, he had the same dream, but the man came back, opened that green cloth, and took it back. The Muslim color is green, and when somebody ties something like that on your waist it means you are strong and everybody is behind you. And when they open the cloth and take it, it means your time is up. Massoud told his wife about his death. He told her what to do when he died—what she should do, what she should not do—and he told his son, Ahmad, what he should do after he died. He told him, “When I die, don’t cry over my grave, over my body, because people may think you are weak.” When they buried him, his son did not cry, and he even spoke over the grave. I heard this from a very close friend of Massoud, a family member. The family would not make up this kind of story. (Sher Dil Qaderi) “‘I can die at any moment . . . ’ [my husband told me,] . . . ‘and I want to be sure that you will be the master of your emotions and be as strong as a man. . . . I would not like you to lose your beautiful courage. You must continue to live. You owe it to our children.’”
(Sediqa Massoud, quoted in Hachemi and Colombani, Pour L’amour de Massoud, 239) THE WEEPING WILLOW A little while before he died, I and a few people were with Massoud in his garden in the Panjshir, when suddenly he said, “If I die I want my grave there. I like that place so much.” He pointed at Saricha, and he said, “Over there, can you see? That place is very good to plant a young tree, to have a green land.” He told his son Ahmad, “You know that weeping willow tree in our garden? When you see that tree you can remember me, because I planted it myself. If I die, you should not cry; you have to be a brave man. Take care of your mother and your sisters. And my grave will be over there on the hill. You can see me from our window, or you can come every day by walking. Don’t tell anybody what I have said.” (Ahmad Jamshid) A FRAGMENT OF TOMORROW A few days before September 9, 2001, Amer Saheb called me and asked me urgently to come to him because we had business to do. I had some apprehension, so I asked him what was the urgent business. He said: “There is no important matter. I just want you to be here.” On September 8, just before sunset, we went to a place where he has a bedroom with air-conditioning. Air-conditioning is a big luxury,
but this one was old and made a lot of noise. A hero, the minister of defense and vice president of a country, had a room with an old noisy air conditioner! Anyway, there was a small cupboard, his bed, and a bookshelf. On a small table beside his bed was a volume of the Holy Koran and a poetry volume of the Dewan of Hafiz. On the other side, there was a wooden chair on which supposedly he sometimes sat and stretched his back, because he suffered from back pain. Amer Saheb changed his clothes and wore white. Among his blessed hairs there were silver ones. He had no hat, and I said to myself, “How nice and bright he is looking.” He told me, “Before we start talking, recite something that you can remember.” I recited this poem: Get up, so that the lovers, during the night, have secret talks. They fly around the door and the roof of the beloved One. Everywhere there is a door, they close it during the night. Except the door of the Friend; they let it open, in the night. Amer Saheb, who had a lot of literary taste, enjoyed it, asked me to read it again and wanted me to express the meaning of it. Then he gave his own interpretation of the poem, and that was a good beginning for our conversation about history, Sufism, and mysticism. It became a very special night. Before I read the poem, he had asked someone to close the door and bring green tea for our talk. I had perceived that when he was in a very special mood he liked to make arrangements such as that. Later, he picked up the Dewan of Hafiz and said: “They sent me this book recently.” I don’t remember who had published the book, but I hope they kept it. This was a book which included the explanation of every word and the interpretation of the poems. We expressed our surprise
at what a wonderful book it was, and that the footnotes were more than the text itself. He said, “Let’s read lyric poems for an hour.” I noticed that the poems were long, and that made me happy because I was always transported to a special state when I had conversations with him. I recited a couple of ghazals of Hafiz. Our discussion turned to Sufis and their way of life. He was very familiar with Imam Al-Ghazali and his book, The Alchemy of Happiness, one of only two books of Al-Ghazali in his native Dari/Persian language. He recalled a chapter of the book and asked me if I had read it. I said I had been reading that book since my childhood. He replied: “Read it again. That is a very important book.” I made an excuse in the hope that he wouldn’t start that subject, because that is a very long discussion. He said: “Let’s consult the book of Hafiz to tell our fortune,” and then he opened the book. It’s a tradition that we open the book, whether it is someone who’s got a friend, a lover, or a mother who has a child far from her—they just open it and see what happens, like a fortune-teller. It’s a tradition; it’s not scientific. And in Afghanistan, I open the book, and you read it for me, and whatever is written, we will see what will happen to us. So, he opened the book, and he gave it to me, and this is the poetry I read: Many nights go, many days disappear, Many months come, many years also go. You and I will not be able to see each other again. Oh, you two who are sitting, Oh, you two, value tonight, value it. When I read that, he just sat and said, “I opened it; did you see?” He said, “Read it again. Read it and tell me what you see.” I read it
again, and I thought that Hafiz saying a night like this will not come again meant we would not see each other on a night like this with the window open, no one except him and me awake, in this poor remote village on the bank of the Amu Darya [the Oxus River]. Not again the beginning of autumn, and just one light lit, him and me, as we see through the window. The stars are hanging, and the sky is like a hanging ocean. Amu Darya is flowing like an arrow into the heart of the history of mankind, and tomorrow or another day, this all will not come again. He smiled and said, “Well, beautiful interpretation. I hope we will see each other again on such a night.” And then he asked me, “Do you have anything else from Hafiz?” I opened the book again, and another poem came. I read it to him: Oh tonight, a fragment of tomorrow. The world is nothing but a story of deception, A story of passing away. Tonight is a fragment of tomorrow. You do not know what will be the child of tomorrow. The child will be good for you or not. And he said, “It is so beautiful,” and then—it was around four o’clock—the poetry session ended. We were both silent. We could hear the breeze of the early morning and smell the fragrance of that village, so beautiful, so sweet. These things, they were going through our hearts and souls. Who knows what will happen in the future? If we had known, we would not have gone to the place of the bomb. With these kinds of subjects and the lives of the saints, Hafiz, Sanai, Attar, and so on, most of the night was passed. Certainly he also spent an hour talking about politics. This was mainly focused on the period when we were in Kabul. I was sometimes rude and turned
the discussion back to the question of why the period in Kabul resulted in what was not supposed to be. He had given detailed explanations and lengthy talks about it. Truly there are very few like him, who have been so honest and sincere. At the end I read this couplet to him: Tonight you are listening to the story of my heart, Tomorrow you forget me, as well as the story itself. Now I realize how negligent I was. He said, “It’s still early,” but I insisted it was too late and I should leave him so that he could sleep a little bit. I did not pay attention to his words. He was kind to honor me by escorting me downstairs and said that it would be good to eat lunch on the bank of Amu Darya, and God willing we would continue our talks there. And he repeated three times, “Inshallah” (God willing). In the morning when I got up, I saw a red teapot and a box of coffee in my room. While he might have been preoccupied with questions regarding the political and military poles, the deeds of Pakistan, Central Asia, the Taliban, and others, when he got up for the daybreak prayer, he sent me coffee, because he knew I, his guest, liked coffee. Around eleven-thirty that morning, he came, and those were the best moments when I saw him so nice that morning. He wore a gray shirt, a gray long jacket, very clean military pants, a pair of shiny shoes, and no hat. He was so impressive that upon his entrance I jumped up from my bed, without thinking of my back problem. Now I remember the double couplet of camel driver Sarban of Mawlana Jami which I also recited that night, and now I know why it was joyful to him:
Of the camel-driver I asked where my kindless moon is; He answered, the one on the camel-litter is in another caravan. I said, may I see him from a distance? He said, don’t ask me, because the rein of that caravan is not in my hands. Who knew that I would recall with regret, because the rein of that caravan is really in the hands of another camel driver. After that tormenting event, often I see that whole night in my dreams, and I read this double couplet again. At that time I didn’t know. On that morning, Massoud said that we had an appointment, we had to go and we had to hurry up. He made some quick calls, accepted some short visits, and gave some instructions. The contents of those conversations were merely political issues; it took all of ten minutes, and when he was done he asked me, “What is on your desk?” I said, “Tazkeratul-Awliya [Memorials of the Saints] of Attar.” He said, “It’s good that we will work on this book today.” Then he said, “There are journalists waiting for me. They are Arabs too. They have been waiting for thirteen or fourteen days; it’s not appropriate to let them wait any longer. We can finish the interview in five minutes and then we will go to Amu Darya.” I showed my aversion, not because they were Arabs, but because why should they cause a delay in our excursion? He noticed this from my facial expression and repeated, “We will finish the interview in five minutes!” Beside my room, there was a living room. A couch had been placed there for the interview. He entered that room, and I followed him. (This account is a combination of two interviews: the author’s personal interview with Masood Khalili, and an earlier interview of Mr. Khalili, which was published in Omaid Weekly, an Afghan magazine (vol. 10, no. 499, November 12, 2001; no. 500, November
19, 2001; no. 501, November 26, 2001; and no. 502, December 3, 2001). Thanks to Mr. Mohammad Q. Koshan, editor-in-chief, for his gracious permission to use Omaid’s material in this way.) “MASSOUD: AN AFGHAN LIFE” “I have just returned from a five-week stay in Afghanistan. I was in Khoja Bahauddin when Commander Massoud was assassinated on September 9, the signal for terrorist operations in the U.S. two days later. In fact, I lived two doors down from the two terrorists, in the guesthouse-cum-office next to the newly inaugurated guesthouse where Commander Massoud was staying. That Sunday, around . . . noon, as my American friend and I were getting ready to go to the village square to buy Afghan clothes, from the common patio that ran the length of the guesthouse rooms I watched the two terrorists go for the ‘interview,’ their camera in a brown-mustard color briefcase carried by Abdul, the waiter. They were accompanied by Fahim Dashti, the Afghan photographer, and Assim Suhail, the official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of both buildings. . . . Within thirty minutes, Commander Massoud was dead. . . . “When we returned around one-thirty p.m., all was silent. The square and all the shops, the women in the fields, the village water carriers, the girls picking up dung for fuel, the men going to the public bath, the workers erecting the new hospital, the mullahs’ call to prayer, all had fallen silent. I think even the babies had stopped crying. The silence was palpable, like the sun pounding on the Sahara at noon, as if life had deserted the village. Like a face turning blank . . . all felt desolate and abandoned.
“When you are in a state of war for as long as these people have lived you develop a sixth sense. Nobody told these people what had happened; they had heard an explosion and seen a plume of smoke coming from the two-building compound at the edge of the village. Their ears differentiate the types of explosions and smokes. They had known instantaneously what had occurred. My American friend and I could not tell. In the compound, only Nasser was softly crying and told me that Assim was killed but that Commander Massoud was not hurt (he would not change his story for the next six days). . . . “There was no time to mourn, digest, even pray, everyone was busy doing the work that was needed to be done in the compound. What a life that you cannot spare a moment to shed a tear over your dead! These officials, very few in number, were doing all the work cheerfully; that was their duty not to show that Commander Massoud was also dead. Even after they returned with Assim’s coffin and I could see that their shirts were bloodstained, they told me it was from washing Assim’s body. . . . On this day in Virgo, the month of Commander Massoud’s birth, how their hearts must have felt, those who knew the truth! . . . “Zubair, who had finished the arrangements for his boss’s coffin, came to me and asked me to convey to the two non-Afghan guests that we would be spending the night elsewhere. His gracious explanation was that Assim’s friends were planning to hold an allnight vigil of reciting the Koran and he did not want our sleep to be disrupted. I knew that it was really an even more gracious concern that was pushing them to send us away: They did not know if they were going to be attacked that night and wanted to spare the lives of the three Westerners (Barbara Bick, my Jewish American friend; Roland, a Frenchman; and me, an Afghan-American)! We took our
night stuff and were driven in a jeep to a far away dark serai of totally dark rooms. . . . “On the following Thursday . . . still not knowing Commander Massoud had been assassinated, [I was flown] to Panjsher to join the rest of our delegation. In Panjsher, Sara Felix, another member of our American fact-finding team, on seeing me held me in her arms for five full minutes. She was shaken by the news of the terrorists and by the Taliban bombing the day before that had fallen on top of the mountain beside her, now our, guesthouse. . . . On Saturday Commander Massoud’s assassination was announced and the funeral set for Sunday. “As is the Afghan custom, Dr. Nilab Mobarez, an Afghan woman . . . visiting Panjsher to inspect her clinic, and I went to his house to extend our condolences to his wife. On our return I asked that we, the women at the guesthouse, be allowed to attend the funeral, normally a men-only ceremony. My reasoning was that Commander Massoud was the first Afghan leader to have signed the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women, a document my association, NEGAR-Support of Women of Afghanistan, helped three hundred Afghan women draft and sign in June of 2000, and a document which we are trying to make part of . . . the next constitution of Afghanistan.* I said I wanted to personally pay my respect to this fallen friend of Afghan women. They accepted, and so we were four women who attended the funeral, two journalists, Nilab and myself. “Early Sunday morning, we were driven to Commander Massoud’s ancestral village. We walked down to the plain adjacent to the Panjsher River across from Commander Massoud’s house perched on the side of the mountain. On our way we drove by school girls on balconies, with their uniform on, with pictures of Commander Massoud or flags or flowers, waving and with tears flowing down
their cheeks. We heard and saw women on rooftops, their colorful dresses aflutter in the small breeze, and wailing, and groups of griefstricken men walking towards the plain from every direction, some in military garb, most dressed in everyday clothes . . . many wearing the pakol hat that Commander Massoud made famous, others wearing the regular turban of Afghanistan or bareheaded, many carrying large banners or holding pictures. Beautiful voices from slow moving cars were reciting glorious poetry of Afghanistan, uniformed security patrols gently guiding the multitude. And all along this sole Panjsher road, there were the bulky, upturned and rusted carcasses of Soviet artillery, tanks and armored personnel carriers, silently but unmistakably reminding us of Commander Massoud’s greatest victory. . . . “The plain [is] large, along the riverbank. . . . To the left it was cordoned off by plastic mesh, reserved for the dignitaries and for the helicopter that was to bring Commander Massoud’s body. We were taken to this area. We watched and photographed the famous and mighty of the free Afghanistan as they came in groups: President Rabbani, Mr. Sayyaf, Haji Qadir, Mr. Hamoon, Commander Bismillah Khan, Mr. Qanooni, Commander Khoshal Qol, Mr. Sabawoon, Mr. Imad. . . . “We scrambled to get pictures of Ahmad, Commander Massoud’s 12-year old son, who came a little later. He had arrived from a private viewing of his father’s body. Dressed in a khaki suit and walking with serious steps, Ahmad was quickly surrounded by the media. His mannerisms, style and gait are completely like his father’s. His words were the most effective. Composed and with gestures reminiscent of his dad’s, he said, ‘My father’s killing was unjust and despicable. Now the world knows that his struggle was just and his words true. His untimely death will not cut short our fight for an independent
Afghanistan. We will continue with more fervor. I will not rest, but work to realize his dream.’ His composure and his confident knowledge of the situation made me understand what this war of independence has done to every man, woman and child living this war inside Afghanistan. . . . “When the helicopter finally landed and the dust and wind subsided, the crowd could no longer keep back its emotion. By now there were thousands of men in the plain . . . (the official count later was twenty-four thousand) and every one to a man, moaning aloud like thunder, rushed in unison to hold the coffin. Dr. Abdullah who came with the copter, tears streaming down his cheeks too, kept begging them to hold back so the helicopter door could be opened. No way. “The weeping multitude was chanting endearments mixed with verses of the Koran and was pushing. Finally, the security in charge of the plain reached the copter; pushed the crowd aside and the pilot opened the door to bring out this hero of Afghanistan and this beloved of all of them for his final journey. The coffin, draped in the green, black and white flag and verses of the Koran, and people throwing flowers on it was carried to the widest part of the plain, tenderly like a most cherished son, thousands of hands reaching to touch it once as if that one touch would give them a piece of him forever. . . . I respectfully kept near the jeep . . . and approached the coffin and prayed only after the men’s prayer had finished. The solemnity of the prayer, broken only by the rush of the Panjsher, had a calming effect, but, again all wanted to carry the coffin to the road. . .. “Saricha [the designated gravesite] is a mountaintop where Commander Massoud kept his command post. It is several hundred feet higher than the surrounding villages. . . . Its beauty lies not only in
its command of the entire valley up to Sangana and down to Dashtak, with vistas of many lush green villages jutting out of the mountainsides, and the rushing Panjsher River winding past it. Saricha’s immediate horizon to the south east is the magnificent peaks of the Hindu Kush with stark majesty unparalleled, a fitting place. That which makes Afghanistan eternally unconquerable is now holding in its arms one of its own, an undefeated son of Afghanistan. . .. “I remained among my Afghan people, thousands of men of all ages who, upon noticing me, would tell those in front, ‘let our sister pass,’ ‘take her hand to cross the ditch,’ ‘watch for her that she doesn’t slip over the rocks,’ ‘help her go over the bridge’ and many other warm acknowledgements. With their backs hunched in sorrow and many still wiping their tears . . . I could tell by their words and their faces that I was shoulder to shoulder with Pashtuns and Hazaras and Uzbeks and Turkmens and Noorestanis and Tajiks and Baluchis. That day, along the road to Saricha, and . . . around the gravesite, the whole Afghan mosaic was a single human quilt unified in their grief. . .. “On the third day of the mourning which is the women’s day (also called the wake), Nilab and I went to Mrs. Massoud’s. The house is on a mountainside. The driveway is around a high hill hiding the house from the view. Then you enter the gate and go up several sets of flagstone steps, each reaching a terrace and each lined with fruit trees, their golden delicious apples still green and hanging onto their branches to ripen. Each terrace is a garden of many colored flowers planted in large sections, reminiscent of Paghman, the summer resort of my days. . . . The last terrace turns into a large patio that through an orange painted wooden fence opens into the inner courtyard. Then you finally see the house, a large structure, its three stories taller than
normal, and with its light blue paint and large white windows unlike the houses of Panjsher but again much like what I remember of Paghman’s homes. And yet, what you actually notice is the mountain, as if the house and its gardens are pasted on it, close, colossal and in its stony barrenness, beautiful. . . . “As we walked into the inner courtyard we were engulfed by the sound of explosions, airplanes flying overhead, and by the pandemonium of hundreds of women running to the basement. Ahmad was standing in the courtyard urging them to be calm and asked us to enter the shelter, as the Taliban were bombing the house and, although as yet none had fallen on the house specifically, the women were panicky and he wanted them to go to the shelter and we should too. When we found out that his mother was still upstairs in the formal mourning room, we said we would join her. After a halfhour the sounds stopped. I later learned that the bombs had fallen a kilometer away, in Padrukh. “Inside, Mrs. Parigul Massoud could not show her face. Her beautiful green eyes shot from crying and her cheeks swollen, she kept a large thick white scarf over her, mostly covering her face. She talked about the hardest and loneliest night of her life, when she was informed about his death but, due to security, no one could come to see her. She and her mom spent the whole night crying and comforting the scared and sobbing children. . . . She said she was wracking her brain but found not one angry word uttered by him at home in all the years they were married. He had told her she could wear whatever she wanted in whatever color she wanted and run the house however she preferred. I asked, and she gave me permission to take pictures of the wake and get signatures for our Declaration from the hundreds of women that had also come to share this moment of common grief and
tragedy. She told me, ‘Start right away because people leave early to get home before dark. . . .’ “She told us that her husband was very fond of the youngest [child] and, whenever home, would bathe her himself, kiss her tiny feet and tell her a story before putting her to sleep. She mentioned that he was interested in the children’s education and was happy when she renovated the destroyed mosque of Jangalak into a village school and sent the kids there. He often asked the children what they wanted to become when they grew up. One time, Ahmad had said he wanted to be a soldier like him, and he had said, ‘Don’t become one, because then you will be like me, away from home all the time. Become a medical doctor.’ Another time a daughter had said she wanted to become a pilot and he had said, ‘And you will be shot down and I will lose a daughter; become a teacher instead.’ How they all missed him! . .. “The official mourning room was the living room. . . . Right above the living room and almost as large, was Commander Massoud’s library, the only room of the house that had furniture instead of the mats used for sitting. He is known to have loved to read and was fond of writing. In fact, the night before his assassination he stayed up very late reading poetry with Massoud Khalili; and he kept a diary for over [twenty] years, writing every night. . . . The fourth wall is all windows overlooking the valley and the Panjsher. His desk, still with pens and note pads on it, in the corner of these two window walls, takes in the panorama, this Afghan symphony of mountain, river and countryside, forever enduring, pristine and unchanged. . . . “Except for the dictionaries shelf the other shelves were not full to the brim, rather more like a work in progress. He may not have had time to open all his book cartons as I later learned that Commander Massoud had lived in the house for only twenty days before he was
assassinated. His wife also lamented that for the first time in their life they had a house of their own and what she would do with it now that he was gone. He had apparently designed it himself, his first love being architecture. He had selected the paint colors and he had even installed the thin . . . carpeting so common in Panjsher. . . “I thought of all the books written about him, all the pictures taken of him, of his exploits, victories, trials, and mistakes, of him as a political leader, as a military genius, of him as a husband, a father, a friend, of the span of his life so important for Afghanistan and the world. And I thought how wonderful it would be to have a library built in his name. He had built his own dream house and library. It would be a marvelous affirmation of our Afghan life if there is also a national library for him, this freedom fighter of Afghanistan who built with his life the history of our times.” (Nasrine Gross, “Massoud: An Afghan Life,” October 28, 2001, www.kabultec.org/MASSOUD.html) SO MANY TIMES I heard that Massoud said before he passed away, “Karimalaila ilala mahama razulilah” (God is great. I believe in God; God is One. Everything is in God’s hands, and Mohammad is the Prophet.) Then he said, “How are the others?” It must be true, because his life was always in God’s hands. I am sure 100 percent, because he said it so many times. We were always in dangerous situations. Sometimes his bodyguards told him, “Don’t go so far into the Taliban territory.” But he would always say, “My life is in the hands of my God. When he decides that I die, I will die.” It’s
true. He had a link with God. I heard some days before that he didn’t care when he died, that he accepted God’s decision. (Ahmad Jamshid) “No organized opposition, in Bin Lâden’s view, could be allowed to subsist on Afghan soil when the hour came to blow up the Twin Towers in New York and so provoke inevitable US intervention. And in a deeper sense, Bin Lâden could not pretend to stand for the Afghan National Resistance, and for the honour of Islam, because one other man truly represented both. “So Bin Lâden had him murdered.” (Barry, “Thoughts on Commander Massoud”) ONE THING I PASS ON Whenever I now open Hafiz, I think about that night, and I say, “What a night it was! What a valuable night. You were with your friend for the last day and night of his life.” In twenty-three years we never argued or shouted at each other, and I always loved him. He was always my commander, my beloved, and my friend, so whenever I open that book, I remember and read it loudly and say, “Oh, you are not with me, but I know your soul is around. I read for you. And when I go to the other world, I will have only one complaint: My friend, you left without taking me.” That was the story of the last night. I will never be tired of telling this story—to myself, to my friends, to my beloved wife, to my children, and to those who write books. And I hope this story will last
a long time when people read your book, that they will go with me to the same village through your book and sit with both of us and feel the same night and remember me and remember my friend. The one thing I pass on is that he was a great man. (Masood Khalili)
23 BEACON OF LIGHT Seek not my monument on the face of the earth but look for it in the heart of the Friends. —Jami (From “What is life and death?” by Sayed Omar Ali-Shah, February 24, 1994, London) I. ONE FAMILY’S MEMORY OF MASSOUD UNCLE FARID In 2001, I was in Paris with my brother, his wife, and his two daughters. I took them to see Massoud because they really wanted to meet him. He took this time to talk to them when the Taliban was 90
percent in control of Afghanistan, and he was the main leader fighting against them. (Farid Zikria) MOTHER SURAYA When I left Afghanistan in 1980, I used to hear stories about Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was fighting with the mujahideen against the Soviet occupation and wanted freedom for Afghanistan. It was my dream to meet him, and when I went to Paris I had the opportunity to finally do it. We sat down with my husband and my two daughters, Madina and Arian. There isn’t a day that I don’t think about it. He talked about how to make your family strong, and about the roles of the mother and father. He asked us questions: Do you work? What do you do? Do your daughters go to school? Who takes care of them? As a woman, he made me feel I had such a big role in the life of the family—how important it is to raise a good family, how you can help your children. He appreciated that we carry most of the burden, and he praised women a lot. He emphasized the need to read strong poetry books like Rumi to your children, and said that in the mornings we should play tapes of the Koran for them, that it didn’t matter if they understood because they could hear. He said, “You know the Koran is complicated, but don’t worry if the kids are born in the United States; they will understand later on.” Sitting in a room with somebody like Massoud would have normally made me nervous. He was the only hero I met with whom I felt really comfortable. I felt I could ask him any question and he wouldn’t hesitate to answer. He was very inviting, and you could see
in his eyes how happy he was to see a family who wanted to meet him. He said, “Read to your kids, have faith in God and Islam, and have strong values. That’s what Afghanistan needs.” He wanted to get an idea of the life of an Afghan family in the United States, so he asked my children if they spoke Farsi or English at home, what was their primary language. Madina was thirteen, and Arian was ten, and it was unbelievable how well he connected with them. He believed because they were living in the United States, English was important, but he emphasized that they should never forget their true language, which was Farsi, Dari, or Pashtu. He emphasized that even though we had to leave Afghanistan as refugees, we should not forget our culture, heritage, and language. He wanted to know if other refugees would return to Afghanistan if the situation was better. He wanted to know, how is the school system, how is the daily living in the United States. We live very comfortably, but he made me feel like we are suffering as much as people in Afghanistan, because, “We are there; at least we know what’s going on. It’s more difficult to be away than it is to be present.” He talked about the elders. Children take care of the elders in Afghanistan, and they all live in one big house. What do they do abroad? He thought it was sad that in the United States you have to work and you don’t have the time or the financial capabilities to take care of your elders. He was surprised, and he kept saying, “Your parents who have raised you, put you through your education, and at the end of life you let them go?” For him it was very important to take care of your elders, to preserve the traditions. What is a house without elders, because they tell you stories, they communicate values. They are respected in the household, and that’s how the children learn.
He hoped people would return to Afghanistan in the future. We couldn’t give him a definite answer, but we told him that people financially can sometimes not go back. They settle here or they have illnesses, so we talked about all of those issues. It was getting late, but we had tea and cookies and kept talking. To me, it seemed like only ten minutes. I had always talked about him to my children, so it was the best thing for them to experience, and they still talk about him. I can’t tell you how difficult his death was for us. It was a loss for the whole world, because people like Massoud are so rare. (Suraya Zikria) DAUGHTER MADINA When we went to Paris I was thirteen years old. I had heard about Massoud from my father and my Uncle Farid, who loved him, but I didn’t know very much. When we were in Paris my mom said, “Ahmad Shah Massoud is here, and we are going to see him.” We went to a beautiful hotel and I was kind of shaky; I couldn’t believe it. We had to wait in another room because he was praying. Afterwards, we all shook hands, and he sat down on the other side of the room in a single chair. We talked for two or three hours, and he was such a—I don’t know how to say it. Just by his face and his features you could tell what kind of a man he was, what he had gone through. He had strong features, with lines on his forehead, and he was so clean, so pure. He had just prayed and—usually when you go to Afghanistan there is no water so people don’t take showers, but he was so clean. He was not wearing shoes. Even in Afghanistan with no water he still prayed five times a day.
So we sat down and talked, and he asked me if I spoke Farsi or English at home. I do speak English but I mostly speak Farsi, so I didn’t tell him that I spoke English because I wanted to make a good impression. But when I talked in Farsi he noticed that I had a little bit of an accent. He said to Dr. Abdullah, “Listen to her accent. Her tongue is rolling because she speaks English.” I started to laugh, and he said, “Good job!” He encouraged me to speak Farsi at home: “Stick to your culture, to your language, your values. Read books, learn about Islam, read the Koran, stick to your religion. Don’t let American society pull you away from it.” He asked my father, when Afghanistan becomes free, would you come back or are you very attached to the luxuries of the United States. And my father said, “Of course I will come.” Massoud said everybody should come; it is the new generation that should come and rebuild. He looked at his watch and said, “I am waiting for my plane to come so that I can go back to my country. I am sure my friends will ask me if I saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and I will tell them no, because every minute I was looking at my watch waiting to see when I could go back.” He said to read the Koran, be a good Muslim, help your country. And there is a book he told my mother that she should read to us. He told us always to remember where we are from, and that Afghanistan will be free and we can go back and help our people. He talked about older people. When he heard that in the United States they are placed in nursing homes, assisted living homes, and nobody cares, it was new to him because in Afghanistan it is not like that. Massoud had a big influence on me. Like I told you, I didn’t know very much about Afghanistan, but after meeting him and knowing what kind of person he was, how much passion he had, I felt, gosh, it would be great to someday go there to see what it is like. I couldn’t
believe that someone would sacrifice his entire life for the freedom of his country. He spent all his life in a war in Afghanistan, and he had such a great passion that all he wanted to do was go back. (Madina Zikria) A MOTHER’S DECISION I have sent my daughter to Afghanistan. She is sixteen years old, and I decided to let her go so she can see it. People said she is going to get sick, etc. I thought, I leave it in God’s hands. If something is going to happen to her it’s going to happen. I just said, “May God be with her. Let her find her way in life; let her see her roots.” She called me many times and said, “Mom, thank you for the best opportunity of my life.” Massoud made me feel that if you are a woman you can do this, that both men and women can do it. Right now, the world needs people who are more affectionate, more human. Of course, you become a doctor and you make millions of dollars. That’s it, and what is life? At sixty-five, you are retired and you are gone, if you even live that long! But I want my children to enjoy their lives, to be able to experience both worlds, to see and make a choice. She is old enough right now, and I told her that while she is there I don’t want her to sit around the house. “Go out, go to the hospitals, meet people, meet the ill, talk to the children in the streets.” And when she comes back she will study hard, she will try to be somebody, and whatever she decides to do hopefully will benefit people in the world. My daughter called and told me, “This is so fulfilling.” I asked her what she meant and she said, “I gave a pencil to a little boy, and he gave me a hug. He had tears in his eyes, and he thanked me so much.
He didn’t have shoes on his feet, and I felt that I have done the best thing. It was so fulfilling for me, just giving my pencil.” She will always remember in the back of her mind, wherever she is in her life, she will remember that. May God be with her. Human beings, they are all created by God. Why are they suffering and we are not, over here? But she has to realize that we are suffering in a different way. God gave us all this, and we should give back somehow. Some people say, why does God allow such cruelty. It’s a test for us, so we can give back to those in need, whether in money, love, comfort, hope. One of the strongest things that Massoud gave to the Afghans, there and here, was hope. And hope keeps a human being alive. (Suraya Zikria) MADINA’S JOURNEY My trip to Afghanistan was wonderful. I was born and raised in the United States, and it was all new for me, like a different world. I was able to do donations for the little kids, I made school clothes, I did a lot of things that I wanted to do for the poor. Since I came back, my whole focus is what can I study, what can I do so that some day I can go back over there and help. I had never seen poverty—so many poor people, so many ruins. When I went there I realized what it meant. I met so many people. Even the little kids selling books in the streets, they all became such good friends of mine. Every day I was with them, I would bring them inside. I would take them to the bakery and buy them bread and cook for them and buy them ice cream. We got their measurements for black shirts and white scarves and took fabric to a seamstress. We bought sixty pairs of sneakers, and
notebooks, pencils, pens, rulers, pencil sharpeners for about forty children—a bunch of stuff just to help out. Before, a lot of them were begging in the streets. We said, “Don’t beg. You are getting older, and it is going to become a habit. Go to school, and after school sell books, sell newspapers instead of begging in the streets.” Some of them told me if they didn’t go home with a certain amount of money for the family at the end of each day, they got in trouble and got punished. Such a poor country. Amazing. And they all love Ahmad Shah Massoud, and they sell his pictures and books. I told them that I met him, and they were shocked. One of the little boys said that when he passed away the entire town of Kabul wore black coats and was devastated. (Madina Zikria) II. TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN “He often took him [Ahmad] aside to chat with him. My son never told me what they spoke about . . . but the wind brought me some pieces of conversation: ‘Promise me that if something happens to me, you will not try to avenge me,’ and ‘When I die, will you be strong enough to carry me on your back to the top of the mountain?’ . . . but these kinds of reflections came in the conversation as philosophical considerations, as things that a father tells his children to show them that life is not only of a material nature.” (Sediqa Massoud, quoted in Hachemi and Colombani, Pour L’amour de Massoud, 246)
LIKE INTERVIEWING THE BUDDHA I interviewed Ahmad. He really is his father. He was only twelve years old then, but he had such wisdom and insight. He was well spoken, but he was also a child. While we interviewed him his friends were waiting for him to finish so he could go play, but he had all the dignity of his father. He was very aware that his father was dead, and that some day he might be called upon, too, to lead Afghanistan, so he had to study hard because if he were to lead Afghanistan he would need to be educated in all these things, and it was very important at age twelve that he really do his own work. We asked about Al-Qaeda having killed his father, and what would he do with Al-Qaeda. And he shook his fingers, and he said, “No, no, no. I don’t know for sure that it was Al-Qaeda. If it is, then I would have to think what to do. But I don’t know for sure if it was, and I would have to prove it before I blame them.” He is twelve, and he just lost his father, and in a country that has been so hurt by blood feud, rivalries, and revenge killings! Clearly he was above this, and clearly he got that from his father. After half an hour Ahmad said, “Well, can I go to play now?” We were not able to use much of that interview because it’s American television, so it was a couple of phrases and not much more, but it was one of the most amazing interviews I’ve ever done. It was in 2001. I was with Reza and two guys from ABC News and we were just silent, speechless. It was like interviewing the Buddha or the young Dalai Lama. (Sebastian Junger) BEFORE KARZAI COULD SPEAK
About three years ago, there was a ceremony for Massoud, and President Karzai went to the Panjshir Valley to participate. [This was one year after the assassination.] I went there two days beforehand and talked to Ahmad. I said, “Ahmad, the president of Afghanistan is coming. He will see you and talk with you, and you should speak carefully. He is going to ask you some questions.” And he said, “Uncle, don’t worry. I will answer his questions,” and then he ran away from me. I thought, well, he is fourteen years old; it doesn’t matter. Believe me, the next day when Mr. Karzai came to the Panjshir Valley and to our garden in Jangalak, I had Ahmad sitting right next to me. Mr. Karzai was sitting on the right side with his cabinet, Dr. Abdullah, Mr. Fahim. (More than half of his cabinet was attending the ceremony.) Before Karzai spoke, Ahmad said, “First, thank you for coming to this valley. Second [referring to an operation in Kandahar in which they tried to kill Karzai], thank God that incident passed safely. I am very happy, believe me. Third, thank you for serving as a leader of Afghanistan. I pray to God that you will be successful as a head of the government. And fourth, if you want to succeed, you can follow my father’s path.” Even for me it was very strange that this fourteen year old was brave enough to say such things. Then he turned to Dr. Abdullah and Mr. Fahim and asked them, “How is your job? Dr. Abdullah, how are the foreign affairs? What is going on there?” Just like his father. It looked as if he had given them their jobs and now he was asking about them. Most of the journalists wanted to interview Ahmad, so they did not go with Karzai back to Kabul. Ahmad was wonderful and never stopped, even with all the questions they asked.
The next day he came to Kabul, and in the Kabul stadium he gave a very nice speech in front of thousands of people. He talked about his father, the future of the government, and I remember he said, “This is not a day for us to cry. We should promise to continue Massoud’s way.” (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) OF COURSE I WILL COME Ahmad is very smart. I saw him a few months ago in Kabul. A Russian journalist came up to him and asked if he was studying, and he said he studied in Mashar, Iran. The journalist said that Russia would be glad to invite him there to go to school. I wondered what Ahmad would say, because people in Afghanistan still think negatively about Russia because of the war. I thought he might say, “Okay, I will think about it,” or “Why not?” or something like that. He is only fourteen. You know what he said? “Well, my father loved to travel, but unfortunately he had to fight the Soviets and then the Taliban to free the country. Right now, I am in Mashar. When I am done with my studies, then I will travel all around the world, and of course I will come to Russia as well.” (Farid Zikria) III. ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS
When you are buried in the hearts of the people, you are always alive. If you are in their minds, they may forget. That’s what I personally believe. —Masood Khalili “[At Massoud’s] grave, where hundreds of visitors flock each week, there are no pictures of the slain freedom fighter. Once there were photographs in abundance. And then came a one-legged Afghan soldier, a man who claimed to have once fought with Massoud. The soldier had a message. Massoud, he claimed, visited him in a dream. In the dream, he said, Massoud had one request: Take down the pictures, the coins, the gifts, all of it. “This being a land where dreams are taken seriously, the pictures, the flowers and the coins came down. The two soldiers standing guard at the tomb are its only decoration.” (Teresa Wiltz, “The Lion’s Tracks: Northern Alliance Commander’s Assassins Killed the Man, but His Memory Lives On,” The Washington Post, April 5, 2002) “Massoud’s tombstone in his beloved Panjshir valley: In this place the Lord of liberty sleeps. ‘My war was not to obtain the right to govern, but to safeguard the dignity and honor of Afghanistan and her people.’” (“Prelude to 9-11: The Assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud,” www.keshertalk.com/archives/2006/09/massoud.php, September 9, 2006)
FULFILLING A DREAM Massoud always wanted to have a hospital just for women, because the Panjshir is a very remote area, and for the last twenty-three years it has always been blocked off because of war. We lost a lot of children at birth, and there were no medical clinics for them. We will fulfill that dream. My mother donated the land, and we hope to get some aid from the U.S.A. to build the hospital. (Sher Dil Qaderi) TOO SOON We try to do what we can nowadays, but there is a void. Massoud left us too soon. He could have done so much for Afghanistan, for the region, and for the world—he had the ability. I see clearly that everyone on our side tries to do something, but it is not even a tenth of what he could have done. When we see what is happening today in Afghanistan, even though there is aid from the international community, from international troops and all, there is still a leader missing. It is like a plane which is super-equipped with everything but has no pilot. This is not meant as a slur against President Karzai or anyone else, but Massoud was a leader so competent that even a junked plane—one destroyed and lacking everything—he would have been able to take off with it. This is the reason things are going slowly, not only for Afghanistan, but for the region and for the whole world. (Mehraboudin Masstan)
THE IMPACT In the whole history of Afghanistan, not so many people have written or recited poems, or have talked, or have shed tears. People who never saw him at all, but immediately, when they talk about Massoud, it affects them and they just cry. You can go to Afghanistan and ask children as young as seven, and you can see the effects of Massoud’s death on them. Men, women, friends, enemies—you can see the impact. (Ahmad Wali Massoud) THE BIGGER PICTURE There are a lot of things that I used to take for granted, a lot of things that used to upset me, but since I spent time with Massoud I have tried to look at a bigger picture. I tried to say, okay this is part of life, we’ll just have to accept it, go on, and do better next time. My God, he hardly slept, but he had time to read, time to spend with the family, time to help the needy, time to fight for a good cause, and here we are complaining about small things. Every human being at some point has to realize what is the purpose of life. Massoud appreciated life, and he did something about it. (Suraya Zikria) WE ARE ALL MASSOUD
I am not a religious person. I can’t look to heaven, so I have to find my explanation in the world in front of me. When I met Massoud, it seemed clear to me that there are certain people who are very profoundly different than anyone else. I had the feeling that the great religious leaders in the world must have had some quality like that. In another situation Massoud would have taken that same quality and gone in a more spiritual direction, but he was needed in a different capacity, so he was a fighter, not a saint. But it gave me an insight into people who have provided great religious direction. When Reza Deghati and I heard that Massoud had been killed, we called one of his secretaries, a young man in his late twenties, and Reza said, “I am calling with Sebastian to find out that the terrible news is not true.” And the man said, basically, “Yes, the news is true, but it will be okay, because now we are all Massoud.” I thought that was such a wonderful way of dealing with the loss, that if you are with someone you love or with a great person, they don’t really die because you absorb some of who they are, and that is their legacy. The experience changed me in a way that will last my whole life. I had the luck and honor to meet somebody who believed absolutely in human dignity and who decided to fight for it, and ultimately he died for it. It was something that he was not going to concede. His life was not important in that larger battle. There are people who have sacrificed their lives in that fight for human dignity, and I read about them, but Massoud is the only one I met and shook hands with. You don’t need much contact with someone who has made that decision about themselves for it to have a very inspiring effect on you. Before he was killed, just by encountering him, I left thinking, that is a worthy life to lead, for a military commander or a journalist. What Massoud is doing, maybe you can do something about it as a journalist—and you could do something as a schoolteacher. Anyone in
the world could do that in their own way if they chose to. There was something essential about how to live properly and how to fight for human dignity that I saw in Massoud, and I thought that we can all do this. That was what the man meant when he said, “Now we are all Massoud.” (Sebastian Junger) A LOVELY FRIEND I was not saddened by Massoud’s assassination; that was what he knew and accepted when he took the first step. However, we lost a very dear and kind father, a real commander and chief, a dear brother, and a lovely friend. May God Almighty grant Massoud the highest place in Paradise. I conclude my words with a poem by Khalillullah Khalili, a great poet of my country, written to praise heroes like Massoud. This poem is about those who make history and remain in many hearts, and so never die. Man does not die by death; Death only steals his name. As death renders eternal, How can he simply die? (Daoud Zulali) A NEVER-ENDING STORY Massoud for me was a complete human being, a symbol of morality, of bravery, of love. When I remember, my feeling is not as his brother,
but more as a human being. His attitude towards his people, his country—in this regard he is very valuable to me. And I am not the only one who feels this way. Dr. Abdullah who was with Massoud all the time, we talk about Massoud all day. We don’t talk about, oh, he was so brave that he captured that town. We talk about his friendship, his humility, his love, his attitude towards his people. It’s a neverending story. (Mohammad Yahya Massoud) IN THE LAST THOUSAND YEARS I remember his smiling face all the time, a very kind face. When you say anything about him, about that time, his face comes to my mind like a picture, and then I miss him. Whenever there is a problem or too many challenges in the government, I miss him. We are in a situation that the whole world is helping to support Afghanistan, but there was a time that nobody was helping; only he was there. I miss him in the challenges, because I think he would have led us to solutions. Would Massoud have liked me to do that? Would he have liked me to do it this way or not? We are constantly asking ourselves these things. So his colleagues were affected, but even people who were not close friends or helpers were affected by just seeing him once or twice or having heard him. I feel pity for those who did not see what so many saw in him, who were not affected. Not to seem prejudiced, but there must be something wrong with them. How could anybody not be affected? There are people that, the more they realize, the more they regret not having seen what was special in Massoud. For example, in this
year of Massoud’s anniversary, people from different walks of life who just heard about him from the radio have become stronger activists than our own colleagues. That is something—that when he is not even here he has the people behind his vision. I know our history, and there are lots of heroes and good things that people said about them, but you cannot find anybody who developed all Massoud’s qualities in such a comprehensive manner and so that they did not get damaged at all, even though he was caught in a war. My perception and feeling was that he was the most peaceful person, peaceful with himself and with others. Massoud is not with us, but I can see his qualities better now. When he was among us, we didn’t have time to reflect. Now we have time to see, and I cannot see a comparable personality in our history in the last thousand years. (Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) FOR A MINUTE OR A LIFETIME Massoud was genuinely a hero, a man of heroic proportions, in a way that only a traditional society can produce. The modern world does not produce heroes of that stature. It may produce a hero or a heroine in the sense of an ordinary person who is caught in a crisis and does something heroic for a minute, but in terms of a hero over a lifetime, we want our leaders to be good managers, not heroes. I know that I will never meet anybody like Massoud again, and everything else is boring normality. (Anthony Davis)
WHAT IS A HERO? In the contemporary history of the world, and specifically Afghanistan, Massoud’s qualities and his leadership are something that has not been seen in a long time. Massoud has been given the title of National Hero of Afghanistan. He wasn’t attached to material things. After he was gone, what was left was not money, but his memory and a mud house in the Panjshir Valley. (Sayed Ahmad Hamed Noori) FROM MY HEART Everything I see about my country reminds me of him. I came to this country [England] to study English, economics, and everything for him, and I will finish it for him, honestly, from my heart. My learning English is very useful at the moment because I can tell you about him. Then I would like to work for the Massoud Foundation. (Ahmad Jamshid) I SAW MYSELF The way I saw Massoud was—I can ask myself, are you kind to older men? I saw him as a reflection for me. In Japan, if I publish a book people say, “Oh, you are very good,” so I was a little bit self-satisfied. But when I went to Afghanistan and saw Massoud, I said to myself, “You are nothing. In Japan people say you are great, and then you are satisfied; you are happy. But when you come here and see the Afghan
people, you realize you are nothing.” It gave me more of a perspective. The way I see Massoud, I see myself. It’s like a mirror. (Hiromi Nagakura) “Forty-two-year-old Rustem, his face chiseled bronze . . . abandoned his books to fight alongside Massoud. He misses Massoud, he says, but only to a point. . . . “‘Martyred people don’t die,’ he explains. ‘Massoud lives on,’ he says, in their minds, in their homes. In their dreams. “Just the other night, Massoud stepped into Rustem’s dream. Rustem followed him, and as he trailed his leader, thousands followed suit, a long line of mourners snaking through the Panjshir. Massoud walked, and walked, until he reached his grave. And there he stopped, turning to face the crowd. ‘Why are you following me?’ Massoud asked them. ‘We’ve reached our goal, success against the Taliban. You don’t need to follow me anymore.’” (Wiltz, “The Lion’s Tracks”) WIN OR LOSE We saw him in victories and we saw him in defeats, but we never changed our minds about him. Usually, when somebody wins he is praised, and when he loses, people discard him, but for us, Massoud was always a respected figure. We did not expect him to thank us for what we did. Really, we needed him more than he needed us. (Engineer Mohammed Eshaq)
STILL WITH US We, as his followers, are proud of having worked with such a leader. None of us questioned for a single instant our readiness to sacrifice ourselves for his noble cause. He never feared anything, even death. Knowing that he was such a great leader, we all have to follow his path and his cause. Even though he’s not among us any more, his ideal, his will, and his goal stay with us. (Yunnus Qanooni) “The terrible, violent 20th century finally came to an end: with its record of three totalitarian assaults on human dignity, three almost unprecedented perversions of the human mind. The Nazi: the perversion of right-wing politics. The Leninist or Soviet: the perversion of left-wing politics. And the Tâlibân and al-Qâ’ida: the perversion of religion injected into politics. . . . “Yet . . . the legacy of all three perversions, when all accounts are tallied, has been simply: mass murder, and a permanent besmirching of mankind’s perception of itself. Massoud was born just after the first of these perversions had at last disappeared from this earth, but he fought magnificently against the other two. Massoud contributed mightily to defeat the second perversion, the Soviets; he helped rid humanity of its lingering enigmatic nightmare, and lived to see its end. Massoud also contributed just as mightily to defeat the third perversion, al-Qâ’ida. Here he did not live to see its end. But Massoud’s sacrifice hastened al-Qâ’ida’s end in Kabul itself. And Massoud’s message of religious decency, of profound faith in a creed of mercy, as opposed to a creed of hate, has helped check this third great perversion all around the world today.
“For victoriously waging these two struggles, we, who are alive today, remain forever in Massoud’s debt. . . .” (Barry, “Thoughts on Commander Massoud”) “The death of Commander Massoud had a special significance to me. I had known Commander Massoud for many years, even before I went to Afghanistan in 1988. . . . He was a man I deeply respected. . . . Massoud was a hero. He was a giant of a man.” (Rohrabacher, “Challenge Facing America”) “Three Taliban were dragged out of a bunker, dirty and terrified, and pushed along through the crowd toward the side of the road. One was an old man, a Turk, wounded in the chest, who claimed he was a cook. A young Alliance soldier cocked his gun and started to haul him off the road but was stopped by Reza, the photographer I was working with. Reza told the soldier in Dari that he had known Massoud during the ’80s, when they were fighting the Russians and that Massoud had absolutely forbidden the mistreatment of prisoners. “‘I have all your photographs,’ Reza warned. ‘Respect the memory of Massoud, or I will report you all.’” (Junger, “Massoud’s Last Conquest”) THE FOOD IN QUESTION I think that if we continue to speak of Massoud, for a thousand years to come he will be there. This is a person who must not be hidden
away. When I think of him, I always think of one of the verses of the Koran, which was the subject of debate when I was young. It said, “God gives food to whomever wants it, as much as he wants.” We young militants, when we would argue about this verse, we would say, “Does this justify social injustice?” One day I came across a writing of Maulana [Rumi]—the leader of the whirling dervishes, who also originated in Afghanistan—and that verse was explained: “The point is not material food, for it is because of material food that Adam was forced to leave Paradise.” The food in question in the Koran is that which allows us to enter into Paradise, and it is this spiritual food which few people ever taste. According to this explanation, those who taste it are the prophets and walis [spiritual masters], and I believe Massoud will be found among them. This is why we will continue to speak of him. (Humayun Tandar) THOSE TWO BOYS I love to recall Massoud. As I remember him, it gets the grief out of my heart. A man of great dignity, he was also a simple man—an ordinary man with the soul of a baby and the innocence of a child. He had the power to stand against the enemy, and also the power of forgiveness. This is very important, forgiving. “We should forgive and forget—not just forgive, but forget,” he said to me. I could see that this man loved God in a different way—through his heart rather than through books. After the explosion, I was unconscious for seven days. I spoke, but I could not remember. When I opened my eyes, my wife and my son, Mahmud, were there, and I said to my wife, “Where am I?” Then I
remembered everything, except the seven days which were not recorded in my memory. My first question was, “Close the door. Come here. What happened to my friend?” My wife was brave enough to tell me a verse from the Koran. “We all have come from God and go back to Him. Your friend returned,” she said. It was difficult. Then I told them—I have forgotten to mention those two boys that died and made me blind [the assassins]—“Son, don’t take revenge on my behalf. I don’t have anything against them in my heart,” and then I became unconscious again. Did they have wives, did they have kids, those who killed my friend and wounded me? I said to my wife, “Be grateful that you can see me. They cannot see their wives.” When you have this power, which God gave me at that moment, when you have this power not to foster revenge in your heart, then the enemy is not your enemy, he becomes your friend. (Masood Khalili) THE SECRET FOUNTAIN To think of Ahmad Shah Massoud is to touch the mystery of how death can bring life: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of faith.” Such a dying is the work of a lifetime. There were countless moments of death during the twenty years that he struggled for his faith, his people, his land. Endless hours tramping through frozen ravines in the winter and over blistering boulders in the summer. Never to spend the night in the same cave or hut. Watching the jaws of war devour one friend after another.
From what secret fountain did his strength flow? The West can scarcely understand him, however awed we may feel before such sacrifice, before the incredible smile of a man who had a vision of freedom so different from our own. The secret way is closed to many because the mystery of a world beyond this one no longer lives in the Western heart. Massoud is no Che Guevara; he was not interested in a war that results in mere social restructuring. No, Massoud made his own the struggle of God, the struggle for true freedom in the heart of man. Too often man defines freedom in terms of freedom “from. . . .” Massoud knew it as freedom “for.” For? For what? Ultimately for God. Yet one never seeks God without finding in His eyes every other man and woman, without discovering a brother in the face of every child. To understand Massoud one must touch his world: the face of a small child orphaned by a Russian bomb, the beautiful rushing waters of the Panjshir, the well-worn pages of the Koran. The true struggle for freedom is won when we are free for one another. That is why this man could evoke such confidence from the hearts of his people: they knew he had given himself totally to them; not to a faceless amalgam of the proletariat, but to this man, this child, this woman. “I am fighting for your liberty.” Will we know how to use it? Will we again believe enough in the world around us to rise up and give ourselves to our brothers and sisters, and yes, ultimately to God? The death of martyrs is the seed of faith. (Contemplative nun living in a convent in Europe)
EPILOGUE And we have come to the end of this journey to Massoud. It is my hope that it has left in you, the reader, a lasting memory of the Afghanistan I love and the man who gave his life to save it. Wherever your next journey takes you, may you follow a good star, as an old wise man told me once. And may the sacrifice of Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Afghans continue to inspire people all over the world, especially those who are in real need. As I finish this book, I remember Massoud, and this excerpt from a story of Jorge Luis Borges comes to me: History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: ‘I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: ‘Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.’
—Jorge Luis Borges (“Everything and Nothing,” Labyrinths, New York: New Directions, 1999, 248) (We would like to thank Mrs. María Kodama, widow of Jorge Luis Borges and President of the International Foundation Jorge Luis Borges, for allowing the publication of these beautiful words from Borges)
APPENDIX A MASSOUD’S LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (1998) I send this message to you today on behalf of the freedom and peaceloving people of Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen freedom fighters who resisted and defeated Soviet communism, the men and women who are still resisting oppression and foreign hegemony and, in the name of more than one and a half million Afghan martyrs who sacrificed their lives to uphold some of the same values and ideals shared by most Americans and Afghans alike. This is a crucial and unique moment in the history of Afghanistan and the world, a time when Afghanistan has crossed yet another threshold and is entering a new stage of struggle and resistance for its survival as a free nation and independent state. I have spent the past 20 years, most of my youth and adult life, alongside my compatriots, at the service of the Afghan nation, fighting an uphill battle to preserve our freedom, independence, right to selfdetermination and dignity. Afghans fought for God and country, sometimes alone, at other times with the support of the international community. Against all odds, we, meaning the free world and Afghans, halted and checkmated Soviet expansionism a decade ago. But the embattled people of my country did not savor the fruits of
victory. Instead they were thrust in a whirlwind of foreign intrigue, deception, great-gamesmanship and internal strife. Our country and our noble people were brutalized, the victims of misplaced greed, hegemonic designs and ignorance. We Afghans erred too. Our shortcomings were a result of political innocence, inexperience, vulnerability, victimization, bickering and inflated egos. But by no means does this justify what some of our so-called Cold War allies did to undermine this just victory and unleash their diabolical plans to destroy and subjugate Afghanistan. Today, the world clearly sees and feels the results of such misguided and evil deeds. South-Central Asia is in turmoil, some countries on the brink of war. Illegal drug production, terrorist activities and planning are on the rise. Ethnic and religiouslymotivated mass murders and forced displacements are taking place, and the most basic human and women’s rights are shamelessly violated. The country has gradually been occupied by fanatics, extremists, terrorists, mercenaries, drug Mafias and professional murderers. One faction, the Taliban, which by no means rightly represents Islam, Afghanistan or our centuries-old cultural heritage, has with direct foreign assistance exacerbated this explosive situation. They are unyielding and unwilling to talk or reach a compromise with any other Afghan side. Unfortunately, this dark accomplishment could not have materialized without the direct support and involvement of influential governmental and non-governmental circles in Pakistan. Aside from receiving military logistics, fuel and arms from Pakistan, our intelligence reports indicate that more than 28,000 Pakistani citizens, including paramilitary personnel and military advisers are part of the Taliban occupation forces in various parts of Afghanistan. We currently hold more than 500 Pakistani citizens including military
personnel in our POW camps. Three major concerns—namely terrorism, drugs and human rights—originate from Taliban-held areas but are instigated from Pakistan, thus forming the interconnecting angles of an evil triangle. For many Afghans, regardless of ethnicity or religion, Afghanistan, for the second time in one decade, is once again an occupied country. Let me correct a few fallacies that are propagated by Taliban backers and their lobbies around the world. This situation over the short and long run, even in case of total control by the Taliban, will not be to anyone’s interest. It will not result in stability, peace and prosperity in the region. The people of Afghanistan will not accept such a repressive regime. Regional countries will never feel secure and safe. Resistance will not end in Afghanistan, but will take on a new national dimension, encompassing all Afghan ethnic and social strata. The goal is clear. Afghans want to regain their right to selfdetermination through a democratic or traditional mechanism acceptable to our people. No one group, faction or individual has the right to dictate or impose its will by force or proxy on others. But first, the obstacles have to be overcome, the war has to end, just peace established and a transitional administration set up to move us toward a representative government. We are willing to move toward this noble goal. We consider this as part of our duty to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence and fanaticism. But the international community and the democracies of the world should not waste any valuable time, and instead play their critical role to assist in any way possible the valiant people of Afghanistan overcome the obstacles that exist on the path to freedom, peace, stability and prosperity. Effective pressure should be exerted on those countries who stand against the aspirations of the people of Afghanistan. I urge you to
engage in constructive and substantive discussions with our representatives and all Afghans who can and want to be part of a broad consensus for peace and freedom for Afghanistan. With all due respect and my best wishes for the government and people of the United States, Ahmad Shah Massoud. (www.afghan-web.com/documents/let-masood.html [Afghanistan Online])
APPENDIX B DECLARATION OF THE ESSENTIAL RIGHTS OF AFGHAN WOMEN Dushanbe, Tajikistan, June 28, 2000 SECTION I Considering that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the international statements addressing the rights of women listed in Section II of this document, are systematically trampled in Afghanistan today. Considering that all the rules imposed by the Taliban concerning women are in total opposition to the international conventions cited in Section II of this document. Considering that torture and inhumane and degrading treatment imposed by the Taliban on women, as active members of society, have put Afghan society in danger. Considering that the daily violence directed against the women of Afghanistan causes, for each one of them, a state of profound distress. Considering that, under conditions devoid of their rights, women find themselves and their children in a situation of permanent danger. Considering that discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity and language is the source of insults, beatings,
stoning and other forms of violence. Considering that poverty and the lack of freedom of movement pushes women into prostitution, involuntary exile, forced marriages, and the selling and trafficking of their daughters. Considering the severe and tragic conditions of more than twenty years of war in Afghanistan. SECTION II The Declaration which follows is derived from the following documents: - United Nations Charter. - Universal Declaration of Human Rights. - International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. - International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. - Convention on the Rights of the Child. - Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. - Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. - The Human Rights of Women. - The Beijing Declaration. - The Afghan Constitution of 1964. - The Afghan Constitution of 1977. SECTION III The fundamental right of Afghan women, as for all human beings, is life with dignity, which includes the following rights: 1. The right to equality between men and women and the right to the elimination of all forms of discrimination and segregation, based on gender, race or religion.
2. The right to personal safety and to freedom from torture or inhumane or degrading treatment. 3. The right to physical and mental health for women and their children. 4. The right to equal protection under the law. 5. The right to institutional education in all the intellectual and physical disciplines. 6. The right to just and favorable conditions of work. 7. The right to move about freely and independently. 8. The right to freedom of thought, speech, assembly and political participation. 9. The right to wear or not to wear the chadari (burqa) or the scarf. 10. The right to participate in cultural activities including theatre, music and sports. SECTION IV This Declaration developed by Afghan women is a statement, affirmation and emphasis of those essential rights that we Afghan women own for ourselves and for all other Afghan women. It is a document that the State of Afghanistan must respect and implement. This document, at this moment in time, is a draft that, in the course of time, will be amended and completed by Afghan women. Info and send support statement to: American Friends of Negar—Support of Women of Afghanistan, attn.: Nasrine Gross, PO Box 2079, Falls Church, VA 22042 Tel. 703-536-6471, email: negarusa@hotmail.com website: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/negar/englishsite/ Headquarters: NEGAR—Soutien aux Femmes d’Afghanistan, attn.: Shoukria Haidar, BP 10, 25770 Franois, France, email:
negar@wanadoo.fr (website same as above)
APPENDIX C IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE ALMIGHTY AND THE JUST FRAMEWORK FOR PEACE FOR THE PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN (APRIL 19, 1998) The members of the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, in order to establish lasting peace and national reconciliation, heal the wounds inflicted by twenty years of devastating war, and provide for the social and economic welfare of the people, do hereby offer this framework for peace for the people of Afghanistan: 1. The United Front and the Taliban shall cease-fire and all heavy weapons shall be withdrawn from the front lines. The city of Kabul shall be de-militarized, and the exchange of all prisoners of war shall commence. 2. A transitional government shall be established in Kabul for a period of six months to one year, and shall be composed of either of the following: Impartial persons who are not members of the United Front or the Taliban; or
Impartial persons, and persons who are members of the United Front and the Taliban; or Only those persons who are members of the United Front and the Taliban. 3. During the transitional period between the cease-fire and the formation of a new government of Afghanistan, the transitional government shall exercise the following powers: Maintain the cease-fire, and oversee the process of peace and reconciliation throughout Afghanistan. Collect all the heavy weapons, and form the nucleus of a national army. Administer the provinces, major cities, and districts in consultation and cooperation with the influential and respected persons in those local areas. 4. The transitional government shall form an assembly (“shura”) representing all the people of Afghanistan. The sole purpose of this assembly is to draft the Constitution of Afghanistan (“Basic Law of Afghanistan”). The Constitution of Afghanistan shall define the type of government that the people of Afghanistan desire. 5. The transitional government shall form a Grand Assembly (“Loya Jirga”) to approve the Constitution of Afghanistan. Upon approval, a new government shall be formed in accordance with the constitution, and all national power shall be transferred from the transitional government to the new Government of Afghanistan. WE SEEK THE SUCCESS OF THIS PEACE PLAN FROM ALMIGHTY GOD Signed by the following leaders of the United Front: Said Mustafa Qasemi, Chief of Military Committee and Chief of Foreign Relations, Wahadat-I-Islami (Akbari branch).
General Abdul-Rashid Dostum, Leader of the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan; Deputy to the President, Islamic State of Afghanistan; High Commander of Northern Regions, Islamic State of Afghanistan. Mohammad Karim Khalili, Leader of Wahadat-I-Islami, Afghanistan. Said Mohammad Ali Javid, Deputy Prime Minister, Islamic State of Afghanistan; Chief of Central Committee, Harakat-I-Islami, Afghanistan. Aji Mohammad Mohaqaq, Minister of Home Affairs, Islamic State of Afghanistan; Chief of Executive Council for Northern Regions, Wahadat-IIslami, Afghanistan. Aji Abdul Kadir, Chief of Council for the East Provinces of Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah Masud, Deputy to the President, Islamic State of Afghanistan; Minister of Defense, Islamic State of Afghanistan. Juma Khan Hamdard, Director of Military and Political Affairs, Northern Regions, Isbi-Islami, Afghanistan. Professor Burhamudin Rabbani, President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. (Signed into force, 9:30 a.m., April 19, 1998, at the Office of the President, Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan.) [This is an authorized English text. Roger L. Plunk, mediator.]
CONTRIBUTORS Abdullah, Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul in 1960. He became a medical doctor in 1983 and practiced as an eye specialist before joining the mujahideen of Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1985 as the head of the Health Department in the Panjshir Valley. From 1986 to 1992, he was an aide and adviser to Massoud, his close confidante. From 1993 to 1996, he was general director of the Ministry of Defense. From 1996 to 2001, he was the spokesperson of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. In 1999, he was named deputy of Foreign Affairs. In 2001, he was named minister of Foreign Affairs. He is now working as the secretary general of the Massoud Foundation in Kabul. Amin, Farid is a realtor in Colorado who also writes, does research, and teaches students from seventh grade to college level. For many years, he acted in Southern California as unofficial representative of the Afghan Resistance against the Soviet Union. He worked under Massoud in 1995—before joining the Foreign Office—and was appointed Afghanistan’s chargé d’affaires to Austria, Hungary, Bosnia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In May of 1996, he became the permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna. Amin, H. E. Haron was born in 1969 in Kabul. He fled Kabul after the Soviet invasion of 1979 and eventually settled in California. He returned to Afghanistan in 1988 to fight for his country’s freedom under Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Later, he was assigned to represent Afghan interests before the U.S. government, and in 1995 joined the Foreign Service. Amin facilitated the 1997 campaign of Ghafoorzai as the prime minister, serving as his chief of staff until the latter’s tragic plane crash. Amin received his master’s in political science from St. John’s University in New York. He was instrumental in restoring bilateral relations between Afghanistan and
the U.S. in 2002. A former United Nations diplomat, Amin became known in world media as the principal spokesperson for the anti-Taliban Coalition after 9/11 and is currently Afghanistan’s ambassador to Japan. Anas, Adbullah was born in Algeria and is presently working with a company called P.A.TV as translator and consultant on a documentary called JIHAD: Men and Ideas Behind Al-Qaeda. He served with Ahmad Shah Massoud as a mediator and as representative of the Service Bureau. Anas was instrumental in presenting Massoud to the Islamic world, especially after 1988 with his father-in-law, Abdullah Azzam. Ayoobi, Eisa Khan Ayoob is a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University where he teaches Dari (Farsi). In 1999, when he was a young boy, Ayoobi joined a group of students educated by Massoud on possible solutions to maintain peace and human/women’s rights, and establish democracy in the country. He graduated from the University of Kabul in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in law and political science. Prior to coming to the United States, he served as chief attorney for Afghan Wireless Communication Company, executive general secretary for Ariana Television Network, business development manager for Constellation Business Group Inc., and was fortunate to work with the vice president of Afghanistan, Ahmad Zia Massoud, from 2004 to 2005. Barry, Professor Michael is chairman of the Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was in contact with Ahmad Shah Massoud as an observer for the International Federation for Human Rights, Paris (1980–85), as Afghanistan missions coordinator for Médecins du Monde (1985–89), and as consultant and team leader for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (1989–91). He coordinated international food and medical relief for Kabul under siege in 1992–95. His frequent professional contact with Massoud gradually became more personal, extending to spiritual and artistic matters. From 1996 until Massoud’s death in 2001, Dr. Barry helped to heighten awareness of Massoud’s cause in the European press and the European Parliament. Davis, Anthony is a photojournalist who has covered insurgencies and security issues across much of Southeast, South, and Central Asia. During the 1980s and
1990s, he focused largely on the conflict in Afghanistan, spending several months each year with mujahideen groups resisting Soviet and later Taliban forces. Reporting for Asiaweek Magazine, the Washington Post, the Sydney Morning Herald, and Time Magazine, he covered in particular the development of the Afghan resistance movement led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, whom he first met in the Panjshir Valley in 1981. Since 1988, he has been writing for various publications of the Jane’s Information Group and is currently the Asia correspondent for Jane’s Intelligence Review, working on issues of terrorism, insurgency, and transnational organized crime in Southeast and South Asia. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand. Deghati, Reza is an Iranian-born professional photographer who is now a French citizen. He is founder and president of Aina World (with offices in Paris, Kabul, and Washington, D.C.), a nonprofit organization for developing civil society and cultural expression by empowering media and communication in Afghanistan. He was awarded the title of chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite, France’s highest award for distinguished services in a public or private capacity, and recently received the prestigious Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism, University of Columbia. Deghati came into contact with Ahmad Shah Massoud numerous times and was his friend for fifteen years while working as a photographer for Time Magazine, National Geographic, and Paris-Match and as director of humanitarian operations for north Afghanistan for the United Nations (1984–2001). Elmi, Sayed Hamed Mohammad was born in 1962 in Kabul. He received his B.S. degree from Kabul University, worked in journalism for the mujahideen’s Afghan Information Center, and later entered Boston University’s journalism program for further training in the field. His reporting during the Afghan-Soviet War led to his being awarded the title the Best Journalist During the War by Afghanistan’s Journal Union. During the early 1990s, he reported for Afghanistan for Voice of America. In 2003, Elmi was appointed to the office of spokesperson to the president of Afghanistan and was later promoted to deputy spokesperson and head of Communications. He became the principal spokesperson for President Karzai’s campaign team for the country’s first free elections in 2004, and in 2005 was appointed cultural attaché to Afghanistan’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., where he presently resides.
Elmi has authored five books and numerous articles on Afghanistan’s political and military situations and cultural affairs. Escobar, Pepe was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1954. He began his journalism career in 1979 as a film critic. Escobar has been a foreign correspondent in London, Milan, Paris, Los Angeles, and Asia (based in Singapore, then Bangkok) and has worked for all major Brazilian newspapers and a few magazines. Since 2000, he has been with Asia Times as a traveling correspondent, covering especially the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, and sometimes Southeast Asia, China, and Europe. Escobar has published two books in Brazil, and one in the U.S. (Globalistan, 2007) and was contributing editor in two other books, published in England and Italy. Eshaq, Engineer Mohammad was born in 1952 in the Panjshir Valley. He attended the Afghan Institute of Technology (AIT) and the College of Engineering at Kabul University where he joined the Islamic movement and met Ahmad Shah Massoud. Eshaq joined Massoud in a failed uprising against President Daoud in 1975 and was forced to flee the country for six years. From 1983 to 1992, Engineer Eshaq represented Massoud in Peshawar where he traveled to advocate the mujahideen’s cause. He testified before the U.S. Congress, published many articles about the Afghan Resistance, and served as a political adviser to Massoud. In 1992, he returned to Afghanistan as deputy minister of Civil Aviation and published a fortnightly paper called Afghan News. When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, Eshaq returned to the Panjshir and helped publish Payam-e-Mujahid (Message of the Mujahid). From 2000 until the end of 2001, he represented Massoud in Washington. In 2002, he became head of Radio-Television of Afghanistan. He currently works for Payam-e-Mujahid Weekly in Kabul. Farzan, Ahmad Shah was born in Herat, Afghanistan, in 1953. He studied to become a teacher at Kabul University but in 1979 was imprisoned by the communist regime. After his release, he immigrated to Iran. In 1998, he became editor of the magazine Myhan. During the spring of 1999, he interviewed Ahmad Shah Massoud in Taloqan while on a journey in the province of Takhar. He has since authored a number of books about Massoud (i.e. Mardeh Astowar and Egls Pamir) and
Afghanistan’s struggles (Afghanistan from Resistance to Victory and Afghanistan from Davood to Ascen Sive Massoud). Gall, Sandy is a writer and journalist based in England, who for many years was foreign correspondent for ITN, co-presenting “News at Ten” for nearly twenty years. He traveled several times to Afghanistan and particularly to the Panjshir Valley during the 1980s to visit Massoud. He has written two books related to his journeys through Afghanistan: Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal and Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation. Girardet, Edward is a writer and journalist based in Cessy, France. He is also a director of Crosslines Essential Media, a U.K.–based company, and program director of the Media21 Global Journalism Network in Geneva. He was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour when he first met Massoud in the summer of 1981 and on various other occasions during the 1980s. As a reporter with French filmmaker Christophe de Ponfilly and for his own magazine, Crosslines Global Report, he also spent time with Massoud in Kabul during the turbulent 1990s. Hachemi, Chekeba was born in Afghanistan and lived in exile in France during the Soviet and Taliban wars. She founded the organization Afghanistan Libre in 1996. In 1999, she traveled to the northeastern region of Afghanistan and worked with Massoud until his death in 2001. In 2001, she was appointed one of the first Afghan female diplomats in Brussels. She is now the minister counselor of the Afghan Embassy in Paris and continues the projects in education and economic development for women through her organization all around the country. Haidar, Commander Gul joined the jihad in 1979 and fought beside Massoud until his death in 2001, despite losing a leg to a land mine. He now serves in the Afghani National Army. Hayat, Colonel Ahmad Muslem is Afghanistan’s defense attaché in the United Kingdom. He was born in 1963 in the Gardiz Paktia province of Afghanistan and received his military training in Kabul, Pakistan, and through short-term military courses in the French Army. Col. Hayat joined Massoud in the Resistance as a local group commander in Bazarak, Panjshir; a guerrilla warfare trainer; and Central Elite Group commander in the North Afghanistan Supervisory Council.
Later, when the mujahideen took Kabul, Hayat became commander of the 315th Battalion in the Ministry of Defense, then head of personal security for late Defense Minister Massoud. From 1997 to 2000, he acted as a Massoud’s military attaché assistant. Hooke, Chris has been making documentary films since 1981. He first travelled to the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan with Tony Davis in 1984 for research, then completed a fifty-minute documentary film in 1985 about the Afghan Resistance and made several films about Afghanistan for BBC Panorama, Channel 4 (U.K.) and Discovery over the next decade. Hooke was in Kabul interviewing Ahmad Shah Massoud a month before the Taliban attacked and occupied the city. He is currently photographing subjects in science, ethnography, and wildlife with the occasional foray into politics. Jamshid, Ahmad was a secretary of Massoud during the Resistance against the Taliban. He is now studying economics in London. Jennings, John wrote extensively on Afghanistan from 1987 to 1994 for the Associated Press, The Economist, and other publications. He returned to journalism in November 2001 to cover Afghanistan for the Washington Times and also worked as a Dari interpreter for BBC television. He published his article “1992–96: The Rabbani Government’s Twilight Struggle” in The Anatomy of Conflict: Afghanistan and 9/11 by Anand Giridharadas, published by Lotus Collection, New Delhi, 2002. He currently works as a medical assistant in the United States. Junger, Sebastian is an American author (The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, Fire) and freelance journalist, who is a contributing writer to Vanity Fair Magazine and an occasional contributor to ABC News. Junger met Ahmad Shah Massoud while on assignment for National Geographic Adventure Magazine (see March/April 2001 issue) and became one of the last Western journalists to interview him in-depth. The last two chapters of his book, Fire, deal extensively with Massoud. He learned that Massoud’s most powerful belief was a country’s right to self-determination, saw in Afghanistan that the meddling of outside powers in the country’s affairs was an extremely destructive force, and now tends to see current events through that prism. Kandahari, Abdul Hamid is an Afghan singer who toured in the United States.
Khalili, H. E. Masood was born in Kabul in 1947. He is the son of the renowned Afghan poet Khalilullah Khalili. He is currently Afghanistan’s ambassador to Turkey. In 1980, he joined the Resistance as a political adviser to Massoud in the Jamiat-i-Islami Party, traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan until 1989. He was a special envoy to Pakistan from 1993 until 1995, when he was declared persona non-grata. In 1996, he was named ambassador to India. Khalili was seriously injured in the attack that claimed Massoud’s life, undergoing multiple reconstructive surgeries. Khan, Commander Bismillah was one of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s top commanders during the Soviet and Taliban wars in the Shamali Plains north of Kabul. He is currently a lieutenant general and serves as the joint chief of staff in the Afghan National Army. Mackenzie, Richard is a veteran war correspondent, producer, author, and analyst. His work ranges from trekking with the Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviet Union to the Iran-Iraq war and Desert Storm. Mackenzie’s critically acclaimed film, Afghanistan Revealed, won a 2002 Emmy Award, a New York Film Festivals medal, a CINE Golden Eagle, and other recognitions. He is the executive producer of Mackenzie Productions. Massoud, Ahmad Wali is Ahmad Shah’s youngest brother. After he finished his schooling in Pakistan, he went to London in 1983 for further studies and got his master’s in political science. He was Afghanistan’s ambassador to England from 1994 to 2006. He travelled back and forth from England to Afghanistan during the Resistance. Currently, he is the president of the Massoud Foundation in Kabul. Massoud, Ahmad Zia is Ahmad Shah’s younger brother. He served as Massoud’s representative in Peshawar (Pakistan) from 1981 to 1992 during the Resistance. Ahmad Zia was Afghanistan’s ambassador to Russia in Moscow from 2002 to 2004. Since 2004, he has served as the first vice president of Afghanistan. Massoud, Maryam is one of Ahmad Shah’s sisters. She participated with other women in the Resistance against the Soviet occupation. She is married and now lives in the United States. Massoud, Mohammad Yahya, Ahmad Shah’s older brother, was born in 1951. He graduated from Naderia High School and studied veterinary sciences in Kabul
University. After the Communist Party seized power in 1978, he was arrested and jailed by the communist regime. When the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Yahya joined the Afghan Resistance in the Panjshir Valley, working as a political officer. In 1998, he was assigned the job of diplomat in Warsaw, Poland. He now serves as a counselor in the Afghanistan Embassy in Brussels. Masstan, Mehraboudin was born in the Panjshir Valley in 1964. In 1981, he began as an interpreter to western NGOs and journalists. From 1983 to 1990, he studied and worked in France while working hard to defend and support the Afghan cause. From 1998 to 2002, Masstan served as the Afghan chargé d’affaires in Paris, with non-resident postings to the European Union, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal and as the permanent delegate to UNESCO. He initiated and helped organize Massoud’s summer 2001 trip to the French, Belgian, and European Parliaments. In 2002–04, he served as interim director to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from 2005 until November 2006 was counselor to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Ottawa. Masstan is co-author of Massoud au Coeur (Editions du Rocher, September 2003), a portrait and biography of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Mir, Daoud served as the Jamiat-i-Islami representative in France from 1987 to 1992 while working closely with Commander Massoud. In 1992, he became the chargé d’affaires of the Afghan embassy in Paris until 1999. Then, he continued to serve Massoud as a special envoy including to the United States. He now lives in Canada. Mir, Haroun served for more than five years as an aide to the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. He has published analytical articles with international media such as International Herald Tribune, The Hindu, Asia Times Online, and the Central Asia Caucasus Institute, which is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. Formerly, he worked as a political analyst for SIG & Partners Afghanistan and the Middle East policy analyst for the International Affairs Forum. Presently, he is cofounder and deputy director for the Kabul-based Afghanistan’s Center for Research & Policy Studies. Momand, Diana left Afghanistan in 1980 and went to France, where she spent five years and studied law and French literature for one year. Then she moved to Germany, where she continued her studies and got married. She moved to the United States in 1994.
Nagakura, Hiromi was born in 1952 in Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan. In 1977, he graduated from Doshisha University, Department of Law, and in 1982 joined Jiji Press, photography section. As a freelance photojournalist, Nagakura reports on conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. He has had dozens of special photo exhibitions and won numerous awards for his images. Nagakura’s relationship with Afghanistan began in 1975, when he spent over a year living with its nomads. He first met Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1983 and thereafter visited him many times in the Panjshir Valley, staying months at a stretch. He has published three volumes of photographs and two books about Massoud. His photo album, Massoud, the Beloved Land of Afghanistan, was awarded the Domon Ken prize, the most prestigious award in Japan, and his photo exhibition on Massoud in Tokyo drew more than 20,000 viewers. In 2002, Nagakura organized an NGO, which assists a primary school in the Panjshir Valley in order to share the dream of Massoud, who always spoke of the importance of education. Noori, Sayed Ahmad Hamed was born in 1963 in Kabul. After earning his B.S. and master’s degrees, he taught political science and rights at the Kabul University and journalism at the National University of Tajikistan. In addition, for seven years he was employed by Hewad Daily Newspaper, moving from reporter to department manager to manager for international affairs. Later, he established and was editorin-chief of Cheragh, a monthly cultural and social journal. He has been an announcer for social, political, and literal news, and programs for Afghanistan radio and TV for over twenty years. Omarzada, Ayoub was born in 1961 and spent sixteen years with Ahmad Shah Massoud, from 1983 to 2000. He was a member of the mobile communications central core, which traveled with Massoud from 1984 to 1988. Massoud communicated with commanders from more than a dozen provinces on a daily basis. From 1989 to 1993, he was the main communications director. From 1994 to 1998, he was appointed as the main finance and procurement officer at Massoud’s main office. From 1998 to 1999, he continued his services as a member of Massoud’s main or core office. Between 2000 and 2001 and while still a member of Massoud’s main office, he was appointed as the main liaison in New Delhi to oversee the medical treatment of Resistance fighters fighting Taliban/Al-Qaeda forces. Between 2002 and 2005, he was the commercial counselor of the Afghan
Embassy in New Delhi. Since 2005, he has served as an official of the Afghan Foreign Ministry. Pedram, Abdul Latif was born in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, in 1963. He is a poet, writer, journalist, and politician. First a supporter of the communist regime, he later began to openly criticize and oppose the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He stayed in Afghanistan during most of the war years, moving around the country to be able to pursue his activities. He was finally forced into exile by the advance of the Taliban and their policies of ethnic and linguistic segregation. He is the co-founder and head of the Afghanistan National Congress Party and ran for president in the October 2004 elections. Plunk, Roger L. (LL.M., George Washington University) is currently working as an international facilitator/mediator, primarily among governments. For seven months in 1997 and 1998, Plunk was in Afghanistan mediating between the warring factions as an independent, nongovernment mediator by invitation of both the Taliban and the United Front. During this period, he negotiated an agreement among nine elements of the United Front on a policy for reconciliation with the Taliban. The agreement reflected Ahmad Shah Massoud’s policies and was used to clarify the position of the United Front to the Taliban and the international community. He is the author of The Wandering Peacemaker. On behalf of Massoud, Mr. Plunk communicated to the U.S. State Department that if the U.S. would back him, he would rid Afghanistan of terrorists (particularly Osama bin Laden) and drug production. The U.S. rejected the offer. Puig, Jean-José is a computer system consultant (database architecture, networking, etc.) in matters of organization management for private and public entities. He met Ahmad Shah Massoud on a mission for French Foreign Affairs, Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision (Forecasting and Analysis Center), befriended him, visited often, and saw him for the last time at a private meeting when he came to Paris in April of 2001. As a result of Massoud’s situation, Puig came to appreciate the distinction between Western countries’ offers of sympathy (which were common) and providing actual support, which the Afghans desperately needed. He is the author of La Pêche à la Truite en Afghanistan. Qaderi, Sher Dil was born in the Panjshir Valley. At age thirteen, he joined Ahmad Shah Massoud’s first training group and fought alongside Massoud until the mid-
1980s when asked by Massoud to work for him in Peshawar, Pakistan. Qaderi worked as transport director and head of the Chitral Medical Clinic for Freedom Medicine, an American NGO. After the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, Qaderi and his wife moved to America, where he studied English and became a restaurateur. He and his wife returned to Afghanistan in 2001 to help reconstruct the country. He is currently managing partner of the Cabul Coffeehouse and president of Five Lions, a logistics firm in Kabul. Qanooni, Yunnus joined Massoud in 1982. Since then, he has held several positions in the civil administration of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan. From 1992 to 1996, he served as defense minister and in other capacities. During the Resistance against the Taliban (1996–2001), he worked as the head of civil administration of Massoud’s organization and his political envoy to the United Nations. After the fall of the Taliban, he was named interior minister and later minister of Education. He was one of the presidential candidates against Karzai. Then, he was elected a member of the lower house of the Parliament in Kabul and the Speaker of the House. Registani, Salih was born in 1963 in the Panjshir Valley. In 1980, he joined Massoud as a mujahideen in the Resistance against the Soviet occupation. He was chief of the operation office from 1985 until 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was Massoud’s representative in Tajikistan and from 2000 to 2004, in Russia. He is currently a member of the Afghan Parliament. Rahmani, Fawad is an Afghan man who supported the Resistance and who now lives in the United States. Shajahan, Aref was a member of the Hazara party Harakat-e-Islami during the 1980s and was in Ghazni, where he was a commander and the only medical doctor in a small clinic in that area who treated Pashtuns, Hazaras, and Tajiks. During the 1990s, he was a member of the coalition government, as an assistant to Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. During the Taliban’s rule, he returned to Ghazni where he was again a commander and a medical doctor. He currently lives in the United States. Shuaib, Mohammad has been living in the United States with his family since 1989 and works independently as an air conditioning/refrigeration technician.
During the years of the Resistance to the Soviets, he worked in the political office of Jamiat-i-Islami Afghanistan, based in Peshawar, Pakistan. Shuaib was the press liaison (giving the news from Afghanistan to the media and sending foreign media crews inside Afghanistan to cover the war). His most valuable contribution was in giving Massoud’s news and messages to the world media, but he was also able to help introduce Massoud to the world as an effective commander and to send foreign journalists and aid workers to cover the war and thereby help Afghanistan. Sidiq, Dr. Mohammad has been for the last two years president of the High Council for Press and Culture in the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, as well as coordinator of an independent high commision for media and communication in Afghanistan sponsored by UNESCO. He last met Ahmad Shah Massoud while working as head of Radio Nawa-eAfghan and commentator on Afghan affairs, representing the mujahideen’s point of view and covering developments in Afghan strongholds. Dr. Sidiq joined Massoud’s struggle to establish a free Afghanistan and help guide people toward democracy and unity, and has written many essays reflecting Massoud’s ideas in a private daily called Arman e Mili. He remains hopeful that his nation will achieve freedom, dignity, and prosperity. Surgers, Pilar-Hélène is a French journalist, architect, and photographer. She helped the Afghan Resistance and met Massoud in 1999. She created an independent NGO, Liberte en Afghanistan, to help the Afghan people and to lobby for the Afghan cause in France. She co-wrote Massoud au Coeur with Mehraboudin Masstan, published by Editions du Rocher, in 2003. Tandar, Humayun was born in Kabul in 1956 and attended basic schooling there before obtaining a master’s in archaeology at La Sorbonne (Paris) in 1982. Later, he earned specialized degrees in international relations at the International Institute for Public Administration (Paris) and in political science at the University of Geneva. From 1980 to 1990, Tandar served as chief representative of the Afghan Resistance in France and as the personal representative of Ahmad Shah Massoud. He served the mujahideen government as minister, counselor, and chargé d’affaires for the Embassy of Afghanistan in Paris (1992–93) and subsequently was minister, counselor, and chargé d’affaires for the permanent mission of Afghanistan to the U.N. in Geneva (1995–2002).
In 2001, Mr. Tandar was a member of the delegation accompanying Massoud during his trip to Europe at the invitation of the president of the European Parliament. And in 2002, he was part of the United Front delegation to Rome to seek a political solution to the war in Afghanistan, and to the Bonn negotiations on Afghanistan, under the aegis of the U.N. Tandar was a signatory of the Bonn Agreement. Subsequently, he served as head of the Afghanistan Mission for the European Communities and ambassador of Afghanistan in Belgium. He currently serves as Afghan ambassador to the European Union. Zafari, Abdul Wadood has privately helped the Afghan Resistance by sending contributions and writing hundreds of reports regarding the Resistance movement. In 1996, Zafari joined a Northern California committee to raise money and find sponsors for hundreds of families who, forced from their homes in the north of Kabul by the Taliban, took refuge in the Panjshir Valley under Massoud’s protection. In two years, the group collected $200,000 and received Massoud’s personal thanks. At Massoud’s 2001 request, he translated a 350-page book, The Taliban, Islam, Oil and New Great Game in Central Asia. He now lives in the United States and writes and translates articles about Afghanistan for Omaid Weekly, a Persian-language newpaper. Zikria, H. E. Farid was an Afghan living in exile in the United States during the war against the Soviet Union and the Taliban. He visited and spent time with Massoud during the 1990s. During the first years of Karzai’s government, he worked as protocol chief in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is currently the Afghan Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Zikria, Madina is Farid Zikria’s niece and has lived in exile in the United States. Zikria, Suraya is Farid Zikria’s sister-in-law and has lived in exile in the United States. Zulali, Daoud served as a soldier and later as the commander of the First Central Unit in the Resistance against the Soviets under the leadership of Commander Massoud. He currently lives and works in Colorado with his family.
GLOSSARY Afghanistan: A 249,984-square-mile, landlocked country in southwestern Asia bordered by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, and Pakistan. Ahmad Shah Massoud: A member of the clandestine anti-Soviet militants opposed to President Daoud, who gained power as the result of a military coup with a covert role played by prominent communists (1973–1975). To avoid identification and arrest, members of the anti-Soviet group adopted surnames. Massoud took his name during this period. Some of the meanings of it are “successful, lucky, prosperous, and happy.” When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he led the Resistance in the northeastern area of the Panjshir until the Soviets left in 1988 and the pro-Soviet government collapsed in 1991. He served President Burhanuddin Rabbani as defense minister of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1993. After Rabbani’s government collapsed, the Taliban rose to power. Massoud fought against the Taliban as the military leader of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan. Massoud was assassinated by alleged Al-Qaeda agents on September 9, 2001. He was named “National Hero” by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, the following year. The day of his death is now known as Massoud Day and is observed as a national holiday in Afghanistan. Al-Ghazali, Mohammmad: See, Ghazali. Al-Qaeda (al-Qaeda): Means “the base.” Originally Osama bin Laden’s base of operations in southern Afghanistan. Now the name is used to refer to members of bin Laden’s groups, considered to be terrorist by the United States and other countries throughout the world, and to the organization as a whole. Also, Al-Qaida, Al-Qa’ida, Al-Qa’idah. Amer Saheb: Amer (a derivative of Amir in Islamic doctrine) means “leader” in Islam, and Amer Saheb means respected leader. A person devoted to God and at the
service of his people. His followers often referred to Massoud by this honorific title. Amu Darya: The third largest Afghan river, approximately 1,500 miles (2,400 km) in length; 800 miles are navigable. The main part of the river is called the Panj River. It separates Afghanistan from part of Turkmenistan and forms the border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The ancient Greeks called the river the “Oxus”; the name is often still in use in English. Also, Amu Daria. Andarab: A valley and river located in the southern part of the Baghlan Province in northeastern Afghanistan, adjacent to Panjshir Province. Ansari, Kwaja Abdullah (of Herat) (1006–1088): A Sufi Master known both as “Shekh-ul-Mashaekh” and “Shaikhul-Islam.” He was a poet and renowned interpreter of the Qur’an. His poems are in the form of a soul’s monologue with God. Ansari’s significant works include Kashf al-Asrar (the lengthiest Sufi interpretation of the Qur’an) and Tabaquat al-Sufiyya (a collection of biographies of Arab Sufis). He lived in seclusion for the last twelve years of his life. (El-)Arabi, Ibn: Mohiudin ibn el-Arabi was known as Sheikh el-Akbar, meaning the “Greatest Sheikh” amongst the Arabs. He was known as “Doctor Maximus” in the West. Born in Murcia, Spain, in 1164, he lived during the Middle Ages. He was renowned as a Sufi and philosopher, and for his poetry. Also, Al-Arabi. Arakam, Karim: An Ismaeli who was a good friend of Massoud. Aref, Engineer Mohammad: The head of Massoud’s intelligence unit. He was out of his office in Khoja Bahauddin when Massoud’s assassination took place. Assalam Alaikum: “Peace be upon you,” or “Peace be with you.” It is a standard greeting among Muslims. Attar, Farid Ud-Din (1150–1229/30): A Sufi Master and poet born near Nishapur, in present-day Iran. He wrote 114 books. Two of his best-known works are the Parliament of the Birds and Memorials of the Saints. His works use fables, maxims, and illustrative biographies and other literary forms to teach. His works are also thought to “help maintain the social fabric and ethical standards of Islam,” according to commentator Idries Shah. He was killed by barbarians accompanying Gengis Khan during their invasion of Persia. Badakhshan: One of the provinces in northeast Afghanistan where lapis lazuli is mined. Faizabad is its capital and a major town.
Bagram: An ancient Greek city north of Kabul in Parwan Province. In the 1950s, it became a military township. Also spelled Begram. Bhagavan: A Hindu term usually meaning the Supreme Being or Absolute Truth with the added dimension of a “personality” possessed by the Supreme Being. Bamyan Buddhas: Stone buddhas 180 meters high, carved in the second century into cliffs in the Bamyan Valley of Afghanistan. They were deliberately destroyed by Taliban shelling in 2001. Also, Bamiyan. Basmachis: A Russian expression for the Basmachi Revolt in Central Asia. During World War II, areas in Central Asia within Soviet Russia began a drawn-out civil war against Russia and Soviet rule. Bazarak: The village in eastern Afghanistan where Ahmad Shah Massoud was born in 1953. It is the capital of Panjshir Province. Also, Badharak. Bedil, Abdul Qadir: A Persian poet and Sufi born in 1642 in an area of Kabul Province called Khwaja Rawash. Bedil lived and died in Delhi in 1720. His ghazals (a poetic form made up of rhyming couplets and a refrain) are still recited in Afghanistan. His poetry is said to have several levels of meaning, and it figures into Afghan classical music. Beh’babani, Simin: An Iranian poet nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. She was Iran’s national poet. Bin Laden, Osama: A Saudi-born leader labeled a terrorist by the United States and other countries throughout the world. He came to Afghanistan in 1979 and established training camps in the country to fight the Soviets. He organized and is the presumed leader of the international terrorist group called Al-Qaeda. Central Asia: Generally comprises Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirguizistán, and Kazakhstan. Afghanistan and Mongolia may also be included in addition to Inner Mangolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Tibet. Chador or Chadar: A traditional long veil worn by Muslim women, supposedly to cover the head up to the chest. It could be any color, but mainly is black or drabcolored. A form of Chadar is also worn by some Hindu women. Che Guevara: Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a prominent figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956–59) that brought Fidel Castro to power. Guevara was known for his
command of guerrilla theory and tactics. Born in Argentina in 1928, he later led a guerrilla war and was killed in Bolivia in 1967. Churchill, Sir Winston (1874–1965): British statesman and author, he was England’s prime minister during much of World War II (1940–45) and again from 1951 to 1955. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. Daoud, Mohammad (Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan): First president of the Republic of Afghanistan after taking power as leader of a coup d’etat that ousted his cousin Zahir Shah, the king. He was believed to have set the stage for communist rule of Afghanistan because communists played a fundamental role in his coup d’etat less than four years earlier. He served as president from 1973 to 1978. He was killed in the coup that overthrew his government. Also Daud, Dawood, Daood, or Dawud. Dari: Old form of the Persian language, similar to Farsi, spoken in Afghanistan. Dasht-i-Riwat: A town near the northeast end of the Panjshir Valley near which most emerald mining is done. Also, Dasht-i-Rewat Dashti, Fahim: An Afghan journalist and photographer, his Ariana Films focused on the exploits of Massoud and his troops. He was seriously injured in the explosion that assassinated Massoud. Later Dashti became editor of the Kabul Weekly. Dostum, General Abdul Rashid: Ex-communist Uzbek militia commander and leader of the Afghan Uzbek militia with a reputation in Afghanistan for brutality. He changed alliances during the rule of the Rabbani government, with different militias including Hekmatyar’s. During the early day of the war against the Taliban, Dostum made Mazar-e-Sharif—a city of around two million people—his center of operations. He joined the United Front by mid-1996, but he was forced out of power in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 and was mostly out of the country, in Turkey and Uzbekistan, until the beginning of 2001. Durand Line: The dividing line by which Britain in 1893 defined the border separating Afghanistan from what was then British India. It split the Pashtun tribal area between the two countries; its existence and exact location disputed by many Afghans. Fahim, Mohammad Qasim: A well-known Afghani military commander and politician. He served as one of Massoud’s military deputies and worked as the head of intelligence. After Massoud’s assassination, Fahim became the defense minister of
the United Front. He served as Hamid Karzai’s defense minister in the Afghan Transitional Administration and went on to serve as Karzai’s vice president. Farsi: The Persian language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. (Al-) Ghazali, Mohammmad (1058–1111): A Muslim philosopher, theologian, jurist, and Sufi Master. Born in Khorasan, Persia, present-day Iran, and known in the West as Algazel. His most famous published work is The Alchemy of Happiness (Kimiya’e Saadat). Having pointed out the problems of conditioning on the human mind eight hundred years before Pavlov, he called the human habit of confusing opinion with knowledge, which was rampant even in his own day, an epidemic disease. Guevara, Che: See, Che Guevara. Hadith: The recorded sayings of the Prophet Mohammad; one of two chief legal sources of Islam. The other is the Qur’an. Hafiz (Shams ud-Din Muhammad-i-Hafiz): A fourteenth-century poet and Sufi Master, little is known of his life. He lived in Persia (present-day Iran) in the city of Shiraz for most of his life. He is thought to have written 5,000 poems, of which perhaps 600 have survived. In the 1800s, Hafiz’s work became known in the West through the translations of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Also, Hafez. Haq, Abdul: A Pashtun from a prominent family and commander in the Resistance against both Soviets and the Taliban. Hekmatyar and Dostum invited Arab extremists to join the Afghan fight against the Soviets, but Haq was opposed to this. When American coalition airstrikes started in 2001, he slipped back into Afghanistan with the help of the CIA to organize Pashtun resistance against the Taliban but was captured by the Taliban and hanged. Hasan of Basra: Born 642 at Medina. An Islamic scholar and theologian, Hasan became a teacher and founded a school in Basra (in present-day Iraq). Known for his asceticism. Hazara: A people of Mongolian-Persian mixture said to be the descendants of thirteenth-century Mongol invaders of Afghanistan; they live mainly in central Afghanistan and practice a sect of Shiia Islam. Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin (Born 1947): A Pashtun and vehement anti-Western Islamist, he broke with Rabbani to form and lead the Hezb-i-Islami Party. Although
he was commander of one of the seven mujahideen groups headquartered in Peshawar during resistance to the Soviets, he often attacked other mujahideen. He refused to join the Rabbani government in Kabul, besieging the city from outside and killing thousands of civilians with indiscriminate shelling instead. He was supported by Pakistan in this effort, but lost its backing to the Taliban in the early 1990s when he failed to gain control of Kabul. When the capital fell to the Taliban in 1996, Hekmatyar fled to Iran. In 2001, during the American coalition attacks, he urged Afghans to side with the Taliban against the West. Hekmatyar has actively opposed the government of President Hamid Karzai. Hezb-i-Islami: Literally, the “Islamic Party.” A mostly Pashtun Afghan party founded and led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hindu Kush: A mountain range of Northeastern Afghanistan, Northern Pakistan, and Tajikistan. The highest elevation is Tirich Mir at 25,229 ft. Imam: When written in lower case, it refers to the leader of congregational prayers. Imam is also used by many Sunni Muslims to mean the leader of the Islamic community. Among Shia Muslims the word has many complex meanings. Inshallah: “God willing,” or “May it please God.” Also written: “In sha’allah, Ensha’Allah.” Iqbal, Mohammad: India-born (1877–1938) Muslim. He was one of the first to propose a separate Muslim state for Indian Muslims. He was a politician, philosopher, and poet. His Persian and Urdu poetry is held in high regard. He also wrote works on political and religious philosophy in Islam. He is also known as Allama Iqbal. His work helped lead to the founding of Pakistan. Islam: The monotheistic religion founded by Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, while the Qur’an, The Book of God, was revealed to him during the last twentythree years of his life. Islam has nearly 2 billion adherents worldwide and is practiced in countries in North Africa and the Near and Middle East and in Central Asia. Islam requires the worship of God (Allah) alone. Islam is an Arabic word with many meanings, including peace, loyalty, and submission to the will of God (Allah). There are two main schools of Islam: the Shia or Shiites and the Sunnis, although some Muslims follow Islam in several other forms. Islamabad: The capital city of Pakistan.
ISI: The Interservice Intelligence, Pakistan’s agency for intelligence and covert action. It supported Hezb-i-Islami, and later the Taliban. Ismailiis: Sometimes called Maulais, a sect of Islam. The original Ismailii people are believed to have come from Persia. Jabul-Saraj: A village north of Kabul where Ahmad Shah Massoud maintained a command post until 1996. Previously the center of a textile industry. Also, Jabal us Siraj, Jabal-os-Saraj, Jabal Al-Siraj. Jamiat-i-Islami: “The Islamic Group.” A political party founded and led by Burhanuddin Rabbani with the support of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s forces after its first uprising in Panjshir Valley (1975). The majority of its membership is Tajik and other ethnic minorities. Sometimes referred to as Jamiat or Jami. Jami, Maulana: Born (1414–1492) in Herat, a province in present-day Afghanistan. A poet and Sufi Master, considered one of the last in the line of classical Persian poets. Two of his better-known works are the Baharistan, and a collection of biographies of Sufi saints called the Zephyrs of Intimacy. Jammat: The joining together of Muslims for prayer. Jangalak: A village near Astana in the Panjshir valley. It was a stronghold of Ahmad Shah Massoud. His home was there, and he chose it for his burial place. Today, a shrine marks the location. Also, Jungalak. Jihad: To strive, struggle, resist, fight against, and try to do your best as an article of faith. One of the main tenets of Islam; derived from the Arabic word Jahd, which means to endeavor and observe patience in the face of persecution. Also, Jehad, Jahad, Jihadi. In the West the word has come to mean “holy war,” but that is looked on as a mis-translation by many in the East. However, Islamic commentators also state that fighting or going to war for the sake of God can often be called a kind of Jihad. Jihadi: Literally, anyone engaged in jihad. This would include the young, usually Arab fighters who went to Afghanistan and joined the resistance fighting against the Soviet occupation and the Afghan communists. Many of the Afghan fighters referred to these men as “Arab fighters” or “Arab mujahideen” rather than Jihadis, although referring to the sense of the word above, all fighters joined the jihad against the Soviet Union. At present, the term is commonly used in the West to describe all
young men of Middle Eastern descent who join and fight for Islamic fundamentalist groups. Jirga: Council. Kabul: The capital of Afghanistan and the name of the province in which it is located. Its population in 2000 was estimated at 1.5 million. Kalashnikov: The AK-47 assault rifle. Designed and named after the Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov. Originally manufactured in Russia and used by Russian and the Russian-controlled European Eastern Bloc armies during the Cold War. Proliferation of this weapon is now worldwide. Kandahar: A city in the south of Afghanistan, in the Pashtun area. Karmal, Babrak: The head of the Parcham Party. Exiled to Russia in July 1978 but returned with Soviet troops in 1979. He became president of the Revolutionary Council from January 1980 to May 1986, when Dr. Najibullah took over control. Karte Parwan: a section in the south of the city of Kabul. Massoud’s family lived there during Massoud’s youth. Karzai, Hamid: The current (2008) president of Afghanistan. Karzai served as Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister in the Burhanuddin Rabbani government. He lived in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was elected in 2002 to serve as president during a two-year transitional period after the defeat of the Taliban and elected as president again in a national election in 2004. Kashmir: Formerly, a state located on Pakistan’s northern border whose sovereignty was disputed by India and Pakistan. KHAD: The Afghanistan State Intelligence Service during communist rule of the country. It was reputed to control a thousand operatives and informers, as well as the National Guard and other fighting units. Khalili, Karim: A mujahideen and head of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami (the Islamic Unity Party), a Shi’ite political party. Khalili halted the activities of the party and dissolved its anti-Taliban military branch when the Karzai interim government began. He served as vice president of the country under the Transitional Government, and became second vice president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004.
(Ustad) Khalilullah Khalili (1908–1987): Contemporary Sufi poet laureate of Afghanistan, known for his classical themes and traditional style. Khan: Title of respect and honor, used for tribal chiefs, land proprietors, heads of communities, and the like. Khan, General Bismillah: He is an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley and is currently chief of staff of the National Army of Afghanistan. He fought at the side of Ahmad Shah Massoud from the earliest years and became deputy minister of defense for the United Front under Massoud. After the 2002 fall of the Taliban, he became chief of military security for Kabul. Khan, Ismail: The current minister of water and energy in Afghanistan. He served as an officer in the Afghan army during the communist rule in Afghanistan. He defected after the Soviet invasion. He led a revolt against the Soviets in the western city of Herat. He commanded military forces in western Afghanistan until the Taliban drove him out of Herat in 1995. On his return, he was jailed by the Taliban. After the Taliban’s fall in 2002, he was appointed the governor of Herat. Khan, Sardar Mohammed Daoud: President of Afghanistan (1972–1978). See Daoud. Khoja Bahauddin: The Panjshir village in which Massoud’s assassination took place. Koran: See Qu’ran. Lapis lazuli: A deep blue mineral, mainly lazurite, used as a gem or pigment. Lapis lazuli is mined in Afghanistan. Laumonier-Ickx, Dr. Laurence: French woman physician who served as doctor to the mujahideen in the Panjshir Valley early in the Resistance effort against the Soviets. Loya jirga: A Pashtun term for “grand council.” Madrassa: Islamic religious school; a school or college associated with a mosque at which young men study Islamic theology. Mao Zedong: Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–59; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, 1943–76. Also Mao Tse Tung. Mashallah: An expression used by Muslims that reflects joy and the appreciation of receiving or hearing good news. Is translated as “Allah has willed it,” or “What
Allah wills.” It is usually said after a person announces the good news. Massoud, Ahmad: Son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. Mazar-i-Sharif: City in the northern part of Afghanistan. Mecca: City in Saudi Arabia, considered the holiest place in Islam because it was the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammad and is the site where the holy Kaaba is located. As part of their religious observances, all Muslims are enjoined to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaaba during their lives, if possible. Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World): A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) created in France by one of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders): A nonprofit organization founded in France that provides doctors and medical assistance in crisis and war zones. Mohammad: The Prophet of Islam was born in Mecca (Saudi Arabia) in 570 C.E. A merchant renowned for his honesty, Mohammad began receiving the verses of the Qu’ran at age forty and continued to receive them for the next twenty-three years. Mohammad began teaching in 610 C.E., proclaiming that “God is One” and complete surrender to the will of God. He acknowledged that he was a prophet and messenger of God, just as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were God’s prophets and messengers. Because his teachings directly challenged the idol worshipping beliefs of the Arabs, he and his followers were forced to flee Mecca for Medica on threat of death. Yet by Mohammad’s death in 632 C.E., the Arab tribes had accepted Islam as their religion and recognized Mohammad as Islam’s prophet. Also, Muhammad, Mohammed. Mujaddedi, Sibghatullah: Head of the Jabha-i-Najat-i-Milli Afghanistan (Afghanistan National Liberation Front). He is an ethnic Pashtun and was named as Afghanistan’s interim president in 1992 for three months preceding Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assumption of the office. In the Karzai government, he leads the independent reconciliation commission for peace in Afghanistan and also chairs the upper house of parliament. Mujahideen (singular, mujahed): Literally, “those engaged in jihad”; those who strive in the way of God, champions of liberty; and Muslim holy warriors. Those who take part in jihad against oppressors and aggression as an act of faith.
Specifically those who fought with the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation and the communist government it installed in 1979. Also mujahedin, mudschahedin, mudschaheddin, mudschahidin, mujahidin, “muj.” Mullah: A commonly used term for traditional Islamic leaders. A literalist teacher of religion in the maddrassas. Also, mulla. Mullah Omar: The ethnic Pashtun Afghan leader of the Taliban. He fought against both the communist government in Afghanistan and against the Soviets. He is a native of Kandahar. Mushaaera: A traditional recreational activity of Persian-speakers involving competition in the players’ knowledge of classic Persian poetry. Muslim: A follower of Islam, Mohammad’s faith. Also, Moslem. Najibullah, Mohammad: Originally Najib, he was a Pashtun born in Kabul and a student leader of PDPA who served as director general of KHAD (Afghan Intelligence) from 1980 to November 1985. Took power in Afghanistan in a bloodless coup against Babrak Karmal to become the last president of the Sovietbacked Afghan regime, 1987–1992. Najibullah was tortured and shot by the Taliban when they entered Kabul in 1996. Naqshband, Bahauddin: Lived in Central Asia; founded the Naqshbandi order of Sufism. Studied under the teacher Baba el-Samasi. The Naqshbandi Sufis are known as the “Designers” or “Masters of the Design.” Through his teachings, Bahaudin Naqshband is said to have “returned to Sufism’s original principles and practices,” according to Sufi commentator Idries Shah. Naqshbandi Sufis are said to work within the culture they find themselves in and do not draw attention to themselves. Naqshband died in 1389. Northern Alliance: See United Front. Nuristan: A northeastern province of Afghanistan lying along the Pakistani border. Was known as Kafiristan (meaning “land of the non-Islamic” or “unbelievers”) in ancient times. In 1896, the light (nur) was brought to the region. The word means “Haven of Light” or “Land of the Enlightened.” One of the most remote and poorest districts in Afghanistan, it was a place of heavy fighting during the Soviet invasion.
Omarzada, Ayoub: Secretary of telecommunications, spent sixteen years with Massoud. Oxus River: The ancient Greek name for Amu Darya, a river flowing on Afghanistan’s northern border. It separates Afghanistan from part of Tajikistan and forms the border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, formerly the Soviet Union. See Amu Darya. Pakul: A traditional hat or cap worn by Afghan men and favored by Massoud. Panjshir: Literally Five Lions, a region of valleys in northeastern Afghanistan populated by Persian speakers. The mouth of the main valley is located about seventy miles north of Kabul. It served as the base of operations for Ahmad Shah Massoud and the United Front (Northern Alliance). The name is said by various sources to refer to the five large rivers that join in the valley and/or to five spiritual brothers who acted as its “protectors.” Also Panjsher. Paryan: A village at the northeastern end of Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley. Pashto: The Indo-Iranian language spoken by Pashtuns. Pashtun: The largest tribal group in Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan, they have traditionally dominated the politics of Afghanistan. Also, Pathan, Pakhtuns, Pushtoon, Pashtoon, Paktoon. Pattu: A rectangle of woven cloth used as a shawl, carrying sling, or blanket by Afghans. PDPA: People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The principal Soviet-oriented communist organization founded in 1965. Babrak Karmal was one of its principal leaders. Persian: Used to refer to race, language, culture, and nationality. The Persian language is called Persis by Greeks and Fars by Arabs. Peshawar: A large city in northwestern Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan. Pir: A religious leader. Title given to heads of Sufi orders. Also an old man. Qadir, Abdul: An Algerian leader who fought the French invasion of his country in the name of Islam from 1832 to1847. (Not to be confused with the present-day Afghan of the same name who was former governor of Nangarhar.) Also, Abd-alQadir.
Qadir, Haji: A Pashtun member of the United Front organized by Massoud. Also, Qadeer. Qanooni, Yunnus: Close aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud who was chosen to deliver his funeral oration. Qanooni was the co-defense minister for the Rabbani government. In 2001, Qanooni led several official missions to Europe for discussions with important overseas Afghans about the future government of the country and was active in securing the Bonn Agreement. Qarargah: A military outpost or camp. Qu’ran: The Muslim holy book. The Prophet Mohammad began receiving the verses of the Qur’an at age forty and continued receiving them for the next twenty-three years. The verses were compiled after the Prophet’s death. Muslims consider the Qur’an to be the word of God as revealed to the Prophet. Also spelled Koran in the West. Rabbani, Burhanuddin: A Tajik born in 1940 in Badakhshan. He taught theology at Kabul University before entering politics. An early leader of the Islamist Movement, in 1972 he founded Jamiat-i-Islami. Rabbani was the second acting president of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA) from March 1993 until the U.S.–supported Hamid Karzai regime was established in 2001. He and his government were forced to leave Kabul by the Taliban in 1996. Rahman, Dr. Abdul: A physician who joined Massoud’s mujahideen with Dr. Abdullah and rose to become his second-in-command in the Panjshir. He later was named minister for aviation and tourism in the Karzai interim government but was killed in mysterious circumstances at Kabul Airport in 2002. Ram: Any of the three avatars of Vishnu in Hindu religion. Ramadan: The ninth month of the Islamic calendar during which Muslims abstain from food and water from dawn to sunset and focus on closeness to God. Rohrabacher, Dana: U.S. congressman from California who spent time with Massoud in Afghanistan. Rokha: One of the main Panjshir villages. Also, Rukha, Rukka. Rumi, Maulana Jalaluddin: An Afghan-born Sufi Master and poet of great stature who lived and taught in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey. His greatest and bestknown work is the Mathnavi-i-Maanavi (Couplets of Inner Meaning). His Persian
poetry has been translated into many languages and has had considerable influence in the West, both historically and in the present day. He died in 1273. Saadi of Shiraz (1184–1291): A Sufi Master and poet whose verses form the basis of much of traditional Afghan ethics. He wrote the Gulistan (Rose Garden) and Bustan (Orchard), two classics of Persian literature, and contributed to European literature through his writings which gave substance to the Gesta Romanorum from which many Western legends and allegories were derived. Also, Sa’adi, Sa’di. Salang: The name of a major tunnel north of Kabul linking northern and southern Afghanistan. Saricha: The location near Jangalak chosen by Massoud for his gravesite. Sayyaf, Abdul Rasul: A professor of Islamist studies at Kabul University, Sayyaf was a founder with Rabbani of the Islamist Movement. He fought Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s with financing by the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia. During the mujahideen coalition government, he was deputy to Rabbani. Sartre, Jean-Paul: French philosopher, playwright, and novelist. Sartre was a leading exponent of twentieth-century existentialism—a ninteenth-, twentieth-century philosophy that believed philosophy should begin with the human subject. Shah, King Zahir: King of Afghanistan until overthrown in a 1973 coup d’etat. See Zahir Shah, Muhammad. Shalwar-kamese: Knee-length shirt, worn tail out, and baggy trousers with a drawstring to keep them up. Traditional everyday dress for Afghan males. Also, shalwar-kameez, shalwar kamiz. Shamali Plains: An agricultural area northwest of Kabul that was controlled by the United Front. One of the regions most affected by the war between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban, and best known for the “massacre” perpetrated there in 1996 by Taliban troops and foreign fighters who accompanied them. Also, Shemali. Shia: Literally “partisan” or follower of the Prophet Mohammad’s cousin and sonin-law Ali, after the death of the Prophet. One fifth of Afghans (mostly Hazara) are Shia. Also, Shiite. Shura: Council. Also, shoraa.
Shura-e-Nezar: Literally, controlling council. The council made up of Resistance leaders from all parts of Afghanistan, formed by Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1984 to support the common goal of an Afghanistan free of Soviet domination. Also Shoraae-Nazar. Sufism: A mystical philosophy often associated with Islam but is available since the dawn of humanity. The teaching is present as much in the West as it is in the East. Sufism was often in conflict with Islamic orthodoxy because it seeks the personal experience of union with God. Suhrawardi, Shihabuddin Yahya: Born in 1154 in Suhravard (in present-day northwestern Iran). Suhrawardi was a philosopher, Sufi Master, and founder of the School of Illumination—considered an important school in Islamic philosophy. He is often referred to as the “Master of Illumination” (Shaykh al-Ishraq). Scholars are unclear why Suhrawardi was executed in 1191, but his killing may have been the result of perceived religious blasphemy. Tajik: People of Persian descent living in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. They are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and are mostly Sunni Muslims (except for the mountain Tajiks who are Ismailiis). Massoud was a Tajik. Also, Tadjik, Tadzhik. Tajikistan: A country that borders Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgistan, and China and was previously part of the Soviet bloc. Tajuddin: Ahmad Shah Massoud’s friend, father-in-law, and a top mujahideen officer. Called Kaka or Koko Tajuddin. Also, Tadjeddin. Takhar: A province in northeastern Afghanistan of which Taloqan is the capital. Taliban (singular talib): Originally, an Islamic religious student or a seeker of knowledge. The term is now applied, especially in the West, to the group of militant Islamic extremists who controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and were expelled by Afghan forces supported by an international coalition. They are trying to re-conquer Afghanistan by military and terrorist means. Also, Taleb. Talkhan: Edible powder made from dried mulberries. A staple food for the mujahideen in Panjshir. Taloqan: The capital of Takhar Province and the location of one of Massoud’s bases. Also, Taluqan, Taliqan.
Tasbi: A string of ninety-nine beads representing the ninety-nine most beautiful names of Allah; used by Muslims in prayer. Tashakor: “Thank you” in the Dari language. Also, Tashakur. Teher: Oil pressed from mustard seeds. United Front: The political and military alliance of all anti-Taliban groups, led by Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud before his death. Also called the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, National United Front; often called Northern Alliance by the Western media. Uzbek: Inhabitant of Uzbekistan or the area of northern Afghanistan near its border with Uzbekistan. A Mongol tribe and the largest Turkic-language group in Afghanistan, but an ethnic minority. Also, Uzbak. Uzbekistan: The Republic of Uzbekistan, formerly a part of the Soviet Union. This land-locked Central Asian country shares a short 150 km border with Afghanistan. Wahhabism: A contemporary reform movement started by Muhammad Ibn AbdulWahhab in Saudi Arabia that has found a home in that country, Qatar, Kuwait, and other places throughout the Islamic world. Mislabeled as an Islamic sect in the West. Abdul-Wahhab pointed out corruption in the practices and beliefs among some Muslims who put other persons or objects above God (Allah). Abdul-Wahhab resisted such corruption, preached against it and advocated that other Muslims resist too. A “Wahhabi” is one who points out similar “tainted” beliefs by other Muslims. The term is often used amongst Shia Muslims. Sometimes spelled Wahabism. Wuzu: The process of ablution by washing, which Muslims are required to undertake before prayer. Also Wurdhu. Zaher, Ahmad: An Afghan singer known during the 1980s as “the Elvis Presley of Kabul.” He died in an automobile accident in Afghanistan. When his body was recovered it was found that he had been shot in the head. The lyrics of many of his later songs had been critical of the government. Zahir Shah, Muhammad: Son of Muhammad Nadir Shah and king of Afghanistan (1933–2007). He reigned for four decades (1933–1973) until he was ousted in a coup. He lived in exile in Rome until returning to Kabul in 2002. He was given the title “Father of the Nation” in 2002, which he held until his death.
Some definitions in this glossary first appeared in Gary W. Bowersox, The Gem Hunter (Honolulu: GeoVision, Inc. 2004).
REFERENCES Balcerowicz, Piotr. “Taliban Lacks Support from the Afghan People.” Omaid Weekly, no. 496 (October 22, 2001). Barry, Michael. “Thoughts on Commander Massoud,” given at the Afghan Embassy in London on September 9, 2003. Reprinted in Omaid Weekly 12, nos. 595–96. Bowersox, Gary. The Gem Hunter. Honolulu: Geovision, Inc., 2004. Colombani, Marie-Françoise, with Chekeba Hachemi. “A Meeting with Mme. Massoud.” Elle no. 2906 (September 10, 2001), translated by M.E. Clarkson, November 2001. Elliot, Jason. An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan. London: Picador, 1999. Escobar, Pepe. “Masoud: From Warrior to Statesman.” Asia Times Online Ltd. www.atimes.com, September 12, 2001. Gall, Sandy. Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation. London: Bodley Head, 1988. ———. Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983. Girardet, Edward, quoted in D. L. Parsell. “Afghanistan Reporter Looks Back on Two Decades of Change.” National Geographic News (November 19, 2001), www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1119_afghanreporter_2.html. Gross, Nasrine. “Massoud: An Afghan Life.” October 28, 2001, http://www.kabultec.org/MASSOUD.html. Hachemi, Chekeba, and Marie-Françoise Colombani. Pour L’amour de Massoud. Paris: XO Editions, 2005. Interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud with journalists and “Women on the Road to Afghanistan” Conference, 2000. Azadi Afghan Radio, http://www.afghanweb.com/documents/int-masood.html. Junger, Sebastian. Fire. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. ———. “Massoud’s Last Conquest.” Vanity Fair no. 498 (2002).
———. “Requiem for a Warrior.” National Geographic Adventure 3, no. 6 (September/October 2001). Massoud, Ahmad Shah. “Excerpt from the Diary of Ahmad Shah Massoud.” Translated by personnel of the Afghan Embassy, London. Mehran, Farzana. Ahmad Shah Massoud: A Biography. http://www.afgha.com, 2006. National Geographic Society. Into the Forbidden Zone. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2001. Plunk, Roger. “Breakfast with Massoud.” The Source, December 1, 2001, http://www.peace-initiatives.com/breakfast.htm. Plunk, Roger. The Wandering Peacemaker. Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads Publisher, 2000. Rohrabacher, Dana. “Challenge Facing America.” Delivered before the U.S. Congress on September 17, 2001, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/rohrabacher091701.html. Terzieff, Juliette. “Pilgrimage Honors Slain Afghan Hero: Massood’s Shrine Thronged a Year After His Death,” www.SFGate.com, September 8, 2002. Wiltz, Teresa. “The Lion’s Tracks: Northern Alliance Commander’s Assassins Killed the Man, but His Memory Lives On.” The Washington Post, April 5, 2002.
*Pepe Escobar, “Masoud: From Warrior to Statesman,” Asia Times Online Ltd. (www.atimes.com), posted September 12, 2001.
*Although Ahmad Shah Massoud insisted on identifying all citizens of his country simply as Afghans, ethnic differences did exist, and foreign interests exaggerated and manipulated them to prevent Afghan unity. For the reader’s information, the largest group, the Pashtuns, generally live in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan and speak the Pashtu language. The second largest is the Tajiks, a non-tribal group. Most Tajiks live in the north and the west, and their language is Dari (Persian). Other ethnic groups include the Hazaras (in central Afghanistan), the Uzbeks (in the northwest), and the Baluchis, Turkmen, Aimaqs, Niristanis, and Arabs. Most Afghans speak either Pashtu or Dari, but as many as forty different languages and dialects are also spoken in the country. Massoud was born of Tajik heritage.
*“A copy of a letter Massoud wrote to the people of the U.S. is reprinted as Appendix A in the back of this book.
*A complete copy of the Declaration can be found in Appendix B.