Resistance to the Taliban has spread widely in Afghanistan and hardline Islamists will not be able to destroy it after their takeover, Ahmad Shah Massoud’s famous brother said on Wednesday.
Comments by Ahmad Wali Massoud told AFP in Paris came as his nephew Ahmad Massoud, son of the commander was killed in 2001, trying to lead – with former Vice President Amrullah Saleh – armed resistance based in Panjshir Valley Kabul.
“If the Taliban wants to attack, people have the right to fight, stand against the Taliban. Geography resistance has grown so much in Afghanistan,” said Massoud, who was based in Pakistan who protected the NGO in his brother’s legacy.
He argues that “the trust of Afghans has changed in the last 20 years. There has been a big leap.”
“Afghan women are resistance, because the value is very different from the Taliban. Afghan’s young generation, which forms 70 percent of the population, they are part of the resistance.
“No matter what happens, the resistance will continue. Is the freedom of fighting for universal beliefs, for universal rights. It will never die.”
– ‘moral obligation’ –
Ahmad Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, vowed never to give up but said he was open to negotiations with the new Afghan ruler, in an interview published by Paris Match on Wednesday.
Ahmad Massoud claimed the “thousands” of men joining the National Resistance Front at Panjshir Valley, who had never been arrested by attacking Soviet forces in 1979 or the Taliban during their first period from 1996-2001.
He also renewed his attractiveness for the support of foreign leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, and expressed bitterness when he was rejected by the weapon shortly before the fall of Kabul earlier this month.
Ahmad Wali Massoud added: “The international community has received moral obligations to help us.”
But he said the resistance forces were prepared for a guerrilla struggle with the Taliban, just as hard lines had carried out armed struggles against NATO forces for two decades.
“Our people have a lot of experience … if it arrives at resistance, we are pretty sure that in Afghanistan, there will be war everywhere to spend the Taliban. It will be a guerrilla resistance, military resistance, but at the same time there will be political resistance. “
Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Francophile with a close relationship with Paris and the West, was nicknamed “Lion Panjshir” because of his role in fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the Taliban regime in the 1990s.
He was killed by Al-Qaeda two days before the attack on September 11, 2001.