Analysis | In Panjshir, the odds were against Massoud

In their second coming, the Taliban seemed to be aware of the challenges that could emanate from the north

At no point in Afghanistan’s multi-directional civil war that started in the 1970s, was Panjshir taken over by forces that were hostile towards the local guerrillas. It is from the Valley, ringed by the Panjshir mountains in the north and the Kuhestan mountains in the south, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the renowned Tajik commander who was assassinated by al-Qaeda two days prior to the 9/11 attacks, resisted the Soviets and later the Taliban. In the 1980s, the Soviets made several inroads to the Valley, but they couldn’t hold it in the face of repeated attacks by Massoud’s guerrillas. In the 1990s when the Taliban were in power, they were kept at the foothills of Panjshir by the Northern Alliance. But now, three weeks after the Taliban recaptured Kabul, the Islamists have , for the first time. When Kabul fell on August 15, the First Vice President, Amrullah Saleh, a Panjshiri himself, retreated to the Valley where he joined hands with Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old son of Ahmed Shah Massoud. Their National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan vowed to continue fighting against the Taliban, reliving the memories of the past. But this time, the odds were against the resistance from the very beginning.