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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Masood's star fading in Afghanistan |
| 2005-09-09 |
| Four years after he was assassinated, portraits of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Masood still hang on walls throughout the Afghan capital Kabul. But many Afghans have turned away from the so-called âLion of the Panjshirâ, the once-revered national hero who now reminds many in this battered country of a violent time they would rather forget. On September 9, 2001, two days before the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Masood was killed by two men posing as journalists in a suicide bomb attack blamed on Al Qaeda. Masood, a hero of the anti-Soviet resistance and the fight against the hardline Taliban militia, led the Northern Alliance once based in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul. He remains popular in northern Afghanistan among the ethnic Tajiks. Each month hundreds visit his tomb atop an arid hill near the village of Bozorak, overlooking the Panjshir valley which Masood bitterly defended â first against the Soviet army and then the Taliban. âWe will never forget himâ said Abdul Mahmood Daqiq, Afghanistanâs attorney general who was once part of Masoodâs close circle. On the anniversary of Masoodâs death Friday a ceremony is expected to be held at his small mausoleum â one of three to take place throughout the country. But Masoodâs iconic status â largely created by the foreign media and influential Panjshiris â is in dispute elsewhere in Afghanistan. âHe is not the figure here that he is in France. He is regarded as a great combatant by the Tajiks but as an enemy by others,â said a Western diplomat in Kabul. âHe was powerful and intelligent, with a vision of a democratic national union that was still very much Islamic, but others regarded him as dangerous.â The painful memories of violence at the hands of his mujahedin (holy warriors) during the 1992-96 civil war still haunt many in the capital. And many still link Masood to the power grab by his former comrades-in-arms from the Northern Alliance following the US-led ousting of the hardline Taliban in late 2001. âMasood was nothing more than a chief of one of the factions that plundered as much as it could. He symbolises a time which destroyed the country and which Afghans want to forget,â said Ahmed Joyenda, director of the Foundation for Civil Society, a non-governmental organisation promoting education in Kabul. Masoodâs skill as a military strategist has never been questioned. But as Afghanistan struggles against an increasingly deadly Islamic insurgency before the first post-Taliban polls later this month, many still see him as a key factor in the unrest that continues to trouble the country today. âHe took part in the civil war and the destruction of Kabul, and he is hated by the Pashtuns and Hazaras,â said a former classmate at the Esteqlal French College of Kabul. âMasood was a war hero for the Panjshir but not a hero for Afghanistan.â |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 Afghans have very long memories. Mahsood will not be forgotten. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-09 11:46 |
| #1 Sounds like the Pakistani authors want to take him down a peg. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-09-09 11:32 |