Lessons Lost
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| Afghanistan |
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| Ahmed Shah Massoud |
On September Ninth, 2001, an Al Jazeera reporter was granted an interview with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the man the Wall Street Journal credited with winning the cold war. The reporter and cameraman were taken to Massoud's headquarters, deep in the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan.
As the cameraman and reporter started setting up their equipment, a number of Massoud's Lieutenants in the Northern Alliance began to gather in the small tent. Massoud entered, greeted the crew, and was immediately blown fifteen feet outside of his tent. The camera crew were two Al Qaeda suicide bombers. Al Qaeda had just announced the coming of 9/11.
Ahmed Shah Massoud was born in 1952, the son of a police official in Herat. Highly educated, multilingual and an engineer, he was poised for success. In 1979, the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan collapsed, an Massoud fled to the Panjshir valley, where he assembled a well trained and well armed resistance. Of Tajik background, Massoud once said " For me, North, South, Persian, Pashto..in my house we speak all languages." He fought the Soviets for 10 years from his base in the Panjshir Valley, a natural fortress surrounded by the Hindu Kush Mountains. It was into these mountains the he pulled off one of the greatest feats of war ever recorded. Knowing that the Soviets were preparing to attack with a force of 30,000 troops, Massoud managed to evacuate all 130,000 inhabitants of the valley high into the almost uninhabitable Hindu Kush mountains. It would be these same mountains, six years later, when the Navy suffered the worst single day loss of life of Navy Seals. Marcus Luttrell's account of the battle, "Lone Survivor" gives a harrowing account of the Hindu Kush terrain.
After successfully repelling the Soviet forces, ending in the full retreat of all Soviet soldiers, Massoud was favored as the next leader of Afghanistan. Instead, he turned power over to an interim government which represented all the varied tribes of Afghanistan.
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| Mullah Omar, Taliban Leader |
In 1996, a small, fanatic group calling itself the Taliban, Pashto for Students, began recruiting fighters from around Arabia and Central Asia. Pakistanis, Chechens, Georgians, Uzbeks, Saudi Arabians, Yemenis, Iranians, Syrians all heeded the cal to fight for an Islamic Republic which would implement the strictest forms of Sharia Law, and basically bring Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
The Taliban had succeeded in seizing the Southern half of Afghanistan, while Massoud's Northern Alliance controlled the Northern half of the country. There were ups and downs in the U.S.'s relationship with Massoud, he at one time negotiated a separate ceasefire with Soviet troops, much to the chagrin of the Pashtun majority and other tribal groups fighting the Soviets as Mujahedin. Among the Pashtun forces were Arabs, who were known to fight harder and smarter than the Afghans they came to support. It was this core group of Arabs, including Osama Bin Laden, who later metastasized into Al Qaeda, and it was in the barren mountains of the Hindu Kush that the first shots in the War on Terror were planned and executed.
The CIA had been supporting and developing a close relationship with Massoud since his days as a Mujaheddin Commander in the 1970's. Massoud's success in holding back the Taliban and Al Qaeda, aided in large part by the USA both financially and logistically, made him the only possible ally the US had in country. Massoud's Tajik heritage frightened Pakistan's ISI, the Army's spy agency. The ISI shared both a tribal heritage with the Pashtun, as well as a desire to make sure that the post - Taliban landscape was one they would control. Pakistan's worst fear is to have a hostile Afghanistan between themselves and India, with whom they have fought numerous wars over the disputed Kashmir region. This is frighteningly compounded by the fact that both nations are nuclear powers.
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| Hindu Kush Mountains |
CIA teams linked up with the Northern Alliance commanders who had succeeded Massoud as early as September 20, 2001. There mission to assess the strength of the Northern Alliance in the wake of Massoud's death and to support them with money, arms and training was the singular factor that kept the Alliance together as a fighting force. United States Special Forces personnel also fought fiercely with the Northern Alliance and their expertise and sacrifice were crucial to the establishment of a free Afghanistan.
With the clear vision of hindsight, it is easy to see that Massoud's death precipitated the virtual Mexican Standoff we now face in Afghanistan. 1728 US troops have died in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, with 1153 of those deaths having occurred since President Obama's inauguration. Currently, the US is in talks with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders in attempts to work out a political solution that will allow the US to withdraw all troops on the President's 2014 timetable.
A more accurate view of what is is currently developing in Afghanistan. The current President, Hamid Karzai, a native Pashtun, has twice threatened to leave power and join the Taliban. He has ordered an end to nighttime Special Forces raids and Predator drone attacks, not coincidentally the two most effective efforts in the war. Attacks on US troops continue unabated, and will likely increase as troop strength is diminished. Pakistan continues to support the Taliban through its ISI, with an estimated 40 % of all Army Officers secretly in support of the Taliban, who will effectively seize power within days, if not hours, of the departure of the final US troops.
The Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hawaras, while nominally represented in the National Assembly, have been effectively dispossessed. The sad fact that the Afghans who fought the hardest and never succumbed to the Taliban were the same Afghans who have found themselves an unwanted annoyance to the Pakistan-Pashtun coalition who now rule Afghanistan, just as they did prior to the United States massive effort to root out the Taliban, who simply now have to lay in wait until the Infidel Crusaders leave, just as they did with Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan's Mongol Hordes, the British Empire, the USSR, and finally the Americans.
