Remembering Ahmed Shah Massoud
Oh look, a “remembrance” of Ahmed Shah Massoud, getting links everywhere for what his death six years ago may have meant. Naturally, all he mentions is what everyone already knew—Massoud was some mythic hero, tragically slain in the days leading up to the September 11 attacks. And… well, that’s it. Who needs context, when simply remembering a man you can barely define (in the service of OMG ANTI-TERRORISM, natch) will suffice?
(And, “no one noticed” when he was killed? Really? I didn’t know anything about Afghanistan at that point beyond TALIBAN=BAD, and I remember reading at length accounts of his murder by al-Qaeda-linked suicide bombers, as well as the endless mentions on TV news, and news later on of the Northern Alliance’s helicopter attack on Kabul in response. Who hadn’t noticed that he was murdered?)
In reality, Massoud’s history is far more complicated than his leadership of the Northern Alliance, his antipathy toward the U.S. in the 1980s, or the massacres he oversaw in Kabul in the early 1990s, or the large opium smuggling operation he ran out of Feyzabad. He has been elevated to something of a saint-like individual mostly out of a deep need for national heroes, even if they are slain, rather than anything substantive he did for the country. Nevertheless, Massoud deserves our respect, if nothing else for his superior fighting skills and strategery.
Previous Registan.net writing on Ahmed Shah Massoud:
Massoud’s frustration at Clinton’s incoherent Osama policy in the late 90s
Using Massoud to justify Khan
Massoud’s sanctification in the streets of Kabul.
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Tags: Afghanistan.
Posted by Joshua Foust on September 9th, 2007
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Comments
Time: 9/10/2007, 2:58 pm
That’s actually what I meant. When I wrote a review of Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars,” I talked about how Massoud was totally justified in being resistant to the CIA’s efforts. When I call it “antipathy,” I don’t mean to say it in a pejorative sense, merely that he was wary (to say the least) of the American committment to his country… a wariness that history has born out.
Time: 9/15/2007, 8:11 pm
I could not agree more with joshua, he is forgetting the iranian link, not to mention the chinese link as well. him+7 others were all common criminals who were involved in anti-Afghan activities long before soviets invaded Afghanistan.
thanks to soviet invasion that made leaders out of them there comes the cia link which i hope they will put right this time and realy practice what they preach. True democracy in Afghanistan will not flourish with a parlament full of war criminals.
Time: 9/19/2007, 2:04 pm
i think you dont know massoud, there were no massacare in kabul, it is a make up by RAWA and the criminals who were srunding kabul, alies of golbuddin hekmatiar, bombarding kabul daily by thousends rockets… . he was defending the city.
Time: 9/23/2007, 10:45 am
I agree with Farhad. The Kabul bombing was done by psychopats Hekmatyar and by PDPA-turncoat Dostum.
As for RAWA, a club of Marxist feminist fossils, it is not a reliable source.
Time: 1/1/2008, 10:56 am
yes it was hekmatyar who destoried everything along side with with the taliban and Dustom too. massoud stayed and fought for the people of kabul for the women and childeren, In persian we say if one dog lick the river it won’t make the river dirty! people can say what ever they like massoud is true hero for the world. now we are suffering from the terrorism which he was fighting for the world but not only afghanistan, we should have listen to him .
Time: 9/10/2007, 2:40 pm
Joshua, not sure what you refer to regarding Massoud’s antipathy toward the U.S., unless you mean the irritation you, too, would feel about a CIA that reserved almost all its weapons pie for the Peshawar-based Big 7 mujahedin leadership, with crumbs going to the most successful Afghan-based commander.
That aside, Massoud’s legacy is not simply that of a commander who tried and died, which is basically what you suggest. Nor was he simply a battlefield commander — Olivier Roy’s 1982 classic “Islam and Resistance,” as you recall, criticized Massoud as a wonderful political leader but a lousy general.
Massoud was a towering figure within the mujahedin and post-mujahedin leadership. There were many differences among the journalists and others who met the various commanders and political leaders at the time. Did Massoud connive with the Soviets during the 1980s? And why did he allow the massacre of the Hazaras in Kabul during the 1990s (the opium question was less important, since the north provides only about 2 percent of Afghanistan’s opium crop)?
Yet following the 1989 Jalalabad fiasco, precisely one commander remained on the ground fighting until Najibullah’s 1992 collapse. And following the 1996 Taliban capture of Kabul, again only Massoud still stood — until his assassination.
For most foreigners who met him, you simply could not help but be impressed. A cut far above the rest. So I understand why the northern-dominated Kabul leadership still festoons his photo around the capital. It’s not a case of mere sentimentality.