Anti-Taliban Resistance in Panjshir Valley, But Experts Disbelieve
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 21: It sounded too good to be true, “the Anti-Taliban fighters who are trying to form a resistance took back three districts from the insurgents in northern Baghlan province,” local media reported but the experts on Afghanistan refused to believe it.
“Today Taliban…went to villages and were questioning people. That (caused) people to uprise,” former interior minister Masoud Andarabi, who has fled the country, told the media.
A resistance movement was forming in the Panjshir Valley, led by deposed vice-president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of Afghanistan’s most famed anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Saleh declared himself as the caretaker President of Afghanistan and vowed not to bow before the Taliban, who he suggested were being backed by Pakistan.
“Nations must respect the rule of law, not violence. Afghanistan is too big for Pakistan to swallow and too big for Talibs to govern. Don’t let your histories have a chapter on humiliation and bowing to terror groups,” he said on Twitter.
Ahmad Massoud said he was “ready to follow in his father’s footsteps”. “But we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies,” he wrote in the Washington Post.
Surrounded by the high peaks of the Hindu Kush, the Panjshir has long had a reputation as a bastion of resistance — legendary military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud successfully defended it during the Soviet-Afghan War and the civil war.
But the claims of the Panjshir resistance reviving in the wake of the second Taliban take-over of Afghanistan was not easily digested by the experts. It was not clear how serious a threat they posed given that Taliban fighters overran nearly the entire country in a matter of days with little resistance from Afghan forces that faced a stunning collapse. The Sunni hardliners took Kabul on August 15, the final prize for their lightning offensive that seized all major Afghan provinces in less than two weeks.
Analysts said the fighters gathered in the Panjshir Valley will struggle if the Islamist hardliners launch a full-scale attack.
“Too much hype about Panjshir resistance. The problem of the West is many don’t know how to accept defeat gracefully. 2021 Taliban is not the same as the 2001 Taliban. Saleh is not a Massoud. The fall of Panjshir depends upon the Taliban – if and when it decides to use force,” experts sad.
Still, Twitter has been flooded with posts on the resistance in the Panjshir Valley north of capital Kabul — the final major centre of opposition against the Taliban. “The resistance for the moment is just verbal because the Taliban have not yet tried to enter the Panjshir,” an Afghan specialist said. “The Taliban only need to lock down the Panjshir, they don’t even have to go in there.”
Small, isolated protests have also been held in cities in Afghanistan this week, with Afghans waving the country’s black, red and green flags. Taliban fighters fired guns to disperse dozens of Afghans in Jalalabad who waved the flag on Wednesday, killing at least one person. Another person was seriously wounded at a protest a day later in Nangarhar province.
The demonstrations have come to the capital as well. On Thursday, a procession of cars and people near Kabul’s airport carried long black, red and green banners in honour of the Afghan flag — a banner that is becoming a symbol of defiance. But that’s it, a nation-wide resistance movement against a force laden with firearms from top to toe sounds a far cry unless helped by external forces, the experts believed.
