The last holdouts against the Taliban.
Goal is to create decentralized federation
It is likely the last holdout against the Taliban, a fabled mountain redoubt where rebels drove back the Red Army in the 1980s and the Taliban itself a decade later.
Now the leaders of Afghanistan’s scenic Panjshir Valley are vowing never to give in to authoritarian rule by the latest edition of the Islamist militants.
And as they try to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban, one of their key demands is to turn Afghanistan into a decentralized federation. Modelled in part on Canada.
“It is a multicultural state, just like Canada,” said Ali Nazary, a spokesman for Ahmad Massoud, leader of the Panjshir’s National Resistance Front (NRF). “One of our examples has always been Canada. You have a peaceful co-existence between the Québécois and the rest of Canada.”
Meanwhile, Massoud recently called for Western support with an op-ed article in the Washington Post.
But whether his forces can actually defend against an all-out Taliban attack — as fighters mass around the valley — or negotiate for demands that also include free elections and guaranteed civil rights, is very much in question.
During the battles against the Soviet invaders and later against the Taliban, the forces in Panjshir were led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the late, legendary North Alliance commander and father of the current Front leader.
But Massoud senior had supply lines stretching up to neighbouring Tajikistan by the 1990s, broad support beyond the Panjshir and varied amounts of help from the West, all of which the current rebels lack, experts note.
Massoud himself was assassinated
by al-qaida suicide bombers masquerading as a TV crew two days before the 9/11 attacks.
As heartening as the latest resistance seems after much of the nation essentially gave in to the Taliban, their task looks daunting. The new rulers in Kabul may want to avoid more bloodshed in Panjshir as they try to present a kinder, gentler face to the world. But if they decide to use force they hold a clear military advantage, said Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher and Afghanistan expert.
“If the Taliban attacks Panjshir the way it attacked Helmand or Herat (provinces), the Panjshir cannot resist more than a couple of days,” he estimated. “After Kabul’s fall, the Taliban are much stronger than before, having sophisticated military equipment, air support and thousands of soldiers who are only trained for fighting and currently do not have any battlefront.”
Kamran Bokhari, director of analytical development at Newlines Institute in Washington, D.C., concurred.
“Let’s be honest, this is a sub-faction,” said the University of Ottawa-affiliated researcher about the NRF. “I don’t think they’re going to hold out.”
Global Affairs Canada did not respond to a request for comment on the resistance movement.
Located in the Hindu Kush mountains about 100 kilometres north of Kabul, with narrow entry points, the Panjshir does offer ideal natural defences against attack.
The charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik like most of the province’s residents, fought the Soviets and then the Taliban when they took over much of the nation after a
vicious civil war in the early 1990s. The valley became a key listening post for Western intelligence and then a springboard for the American assault that toppled the Taliban in 2001.
Its leaders now include Massoud’s son and Amrullah Saleh, who was first vice president in the old regime. He has joined forces with the Front and is modelling himself as Afghanistan’s “caretaker president.”
Nazary said the NRF would have no trouble repelling the Taliban, as Massoud’s father did when the group attacked with 30,000 men in the late 1990s.
“The truth and reality is the Panjshir is impregnable,” he said. “Panjshir is a death trap and they know this.”
That said, the priority for the group is not to fight but to negotiate some kind of settlement with the Taliban, a deal that could ensure long-term stability, said Nazary.
Among its conditions are a move to decentralized government, away from a model followed by a succession of rulers where governors and other regional leaders were appointed by Kabul.
Afghanistan is a nation of ethnic and religious minorities, noted Nazari. They include the Pashtuns concentrated in the south and Tajiks in the north, mostly Sunnis, and the Asiatic Hazara people, Shiites who have long been subject to persecution. There are also two major languages, Pashto and Dari.
“Canada has always been on our list and we’ve mentioned this,” the spokesman said about possible examples to follow. “Not only does Canada have a federal system but Canada has multiculturalism. We believe Afghanistan should be a multicultural state. We need cultural pluralism.”
But despite reports of talks between the NRF and the Taliban in recent days, he said not much has come of negotiation yet.
“We’ve done everything we could on the peace front. The ball is in their court and we’re just waiting for them.”
Experts say the NRF, despite its bravado about pushing back a Taliban assault, is likely hoping to reach some kind of settlement.
Much has changed since the heyday of the Northern Alliance before and just after 9/11, they argue.
It’s not just the fact that Western countries preparing to deal with a fledgling Taliban government appear little inclined to offer support, or that the Taliban have access to billions of dollars in captured military hardware.
The victorious insurgents have always been dominated by Pashtuns. But amid the corruption and mismanagement of Afghanistan’s Western-backed, post-2001 government, even some Tajiks have joined them, said Sayed. The Taliban commander leading the siege of Panjshir, Qari Fasihuddin, is himself Tajik from neighbouring Badakhshan province, said the researcher.
What’s more, the Northern Alliance before 9/11 drew much of its support by portraying the Taliban as stooges of Pakistan. That charge could ring hollow today, given that some of the Panjshir leaders — including Massoud’s brother — fled to Pakistan themselves after the Taliban took over, said Sayed.
Bokhari said he suspects the NRF is hoping to at least win some amount of autonomy to govern Panjshir. Convincing the Taliban to accept free elections is likely a non-starter, he said. Indeed, one of its leaders has already said “there will be no democratic system.”
“They are a pure insurgent movement that is not a political movement at all, much less a political party,” said Bokhari. “The Taliban is not wired to win elections. That’s not a turf they want to play on. There is a reason they won power by armed insurrection.”