In the Land of Defeat: In Afghanistan’s Ever-Shifting Politics, an Opposition Comeback Cannot Be Ruled Out
The country’s leaders in exile are already planning their return, making the route toward stability less certain for the US
Times have been hard for Afghan politicians since August 2021, and there may be more hard times ahead. Ata Noor is a quiet man with an ash-gray beard and hard, pensive eyes. He wears a dark suit with a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, in an unassuming manner. His three sons, all grown men, trail him. One of them, Tariq, refers to him as “his excellency” whenever he translates for him, instead of using the more familiar term, “my father says.” No spare movement, private conversation or banter passes between them when their father speaks. They seem not only to respect him, but to revere him. For the last 40 years their father has been a man of consequence, someone who commands and is listened to. He is a proud former mujahedeen commander who fought the Soviet Union in the ’80s, an Islamist politician, the governor of Mazar-e-Sharif and purportedly the richest man in the country. It is said that nothing passed through his province, Balkh, that he did not have a say in.
When the Taliban advanced on Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan, in August 2021, Noor’s defense of the ancient city failed and he fled to Dubai; the Afghan national army melted away and his militias retreated. When the Americans left, most of the opposition figures, warlords and government officials fled abroad to wallow in exile. Yet defeat is not a country that an Afghan politician such as Noor can abide in for long, and even now they plot a comeback. The question is whether they can convince the U.S. to work with them rather than the current victors, the Taliban. And the U.S. must ask whether it imperils the long-term stability of Afghanistan by ignoring them, reducing its own influence in the region and possibly precipitating another civil war. These are hard questions for hard times.
The Taliban made much of their victory over Noor; they had defeated a famous mujahedeen commander who had had his own battalion from the tender age of 19. But somewhere along the line, the Taliban implied, Noor had lost his way; he was an Islamist who no longer fought for Islam. Their victory, then, was divine judgment. There are online videos of the Taliban doing their own version of MTV Cribs. They open up Noor’s mansion for viewers to gawp at; they stroll through his extensive gym, billiard room and large bedrooms, which are beyond the imagination of most Afghans. The underlying message is clear: While poor Afghans groaned under the war, Noor enriched himself, allegedly skimming off the smuggling routes that ran through his province. To Taliban propagandists, the symbolism was unmistakable.
And yet Noor, as one source told me, seemed unconcerned about the corruption allegations; this was just part and parcel of Afghan politics. I myself have visited the homes of Afghan politicians where fantastic beasts such as ostriches and exotic songbirds that I had never before encountered wandered among us, so Noor did not appear unique in this regard. After all, in 2016 the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan found that of the 83 senior officials of the previous two governments, none except for former President Ashraf Ghani had complied with financial disclosure requirements. The implication being that none of those officials was particularly clean.
When I met Noor for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant on Palm Island, Dubai, in August, he appeared unfamiliar with his surroundings. But it wasn’t the plush trappings of Dubai he was adapting to; he already owns property there and is used to jet-setting in and out of the Gulf country. Rather, he has never lived in the country of defeat; that is a country wholly alien to him. With a grave expression, as if he was pained by just talking about it, “there’s nothing,” he said referring to his political career, “written [about him] of surrender or someone who has surrendered to his enemies.” It was as if this new state was hard to get used to. For all the luxury of Dubai, the commander wanted to be in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Noor does not believe that people voted with their feet and abandoned him for the Taliban. Rather, he echoed the complaints of many generals and governors, and blamed the loss of the city squarely on Ghani, his “Pashtun nationalists” and the vice president, Amrullah Saleh. He told me that Kabul had not supplied him with enough weapons and materiel to stem the Taliban advance. This, he seemed to suggest, was deliberate. Had Kabul done so, the story would have been different.
“I told [Ghani],” said Noor, picking at his kebab, “if Mazar-e-Sharif falls, Kabul will fall, but he didn’t listen.”
Admittedly, defeat is a pretty comfortable place for many Afghan politicians and warlords. The warlord Marshall Abdul Rashid Dostum, for example, fled to his summer home in Turkey still railing against the Taliban, while others, like the former president, live quiet lives under the protection of the United Arab Emirates. But Noor will not settle in the land of exile. When the Taliban was assaulting Mazar-e-Sharif, it was his former prisoner, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban deputy leader, who called him and told him that if he remained inside his home, he would be safe. Then the current Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi phoned, urging him to listen. Those politicians that heeded the advice, like Hamid Karzai, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdullah Abdullah, now live in quietude and internal exile, but Noor has never been that sort of man. To stay at home, he said, meant surrender, and he has never surrendered to anyone. So instead, he came to Dubai planning to return. The Taliban now control the whole country, and yet to my surprise he is still scheming to overthrow them, adding a poetic flourish: “with the last drop of my blood.” And this plan isn’t merely to regain his properties but for the sake of his country and his faith. In Afghanistan, there are many who seem to be at peace only when they are fighting for Islam.
In May 2022, in Ankara, he established the High Council of National Resistance for the Salvation of Afghanistan alongside 40 other opposition leaders. The High Council called on the Taliban to form a more inclusive government or risk an all-out civil war. As of yet, that has not happened. To outsiders, this appears to be mere saber rattling, given that the Taliban are in supreme control.
But there are those whose sabers are already swinging inside Afghanistan. It is not only the High Council that believes it can overthrow the Taliban; rebellions and insurgencies are already simmering inside the country. From the very start, there were rumors that a former U.S. ally, the irascible warlord Dostum’s son, Yar Mohammed, had entered Afghanistan with a battalion, calling itself the Wolf Unit. The Liberation Front of Afghanistan and the National Front for Free Afghanistan have also vowed to wage war against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. Yasin Zia, the former deputy defense minister, is reportedly running operations within the country. More recently, Sami Sadat, a former lieutenant general in the Afghan army and the subject of the recent documentary “Retrograde,” was in the U.S. trying to build up a coalition among U.S. veterans for a fightback.
And it’s not like Sadat doesn’t know that the U.S. is unwilling. The latter is after all still smarting from a humiliating withdrawal which doesn’t even have the feel of a Dunkirk defeat about it; the biggest airlift in recent history can’t be dressed up as a victory — this was an embarrassment. Craig Whitlock’s recent book, “The Afghanistan Papers,” based on internal government interviews and documents, shows how the U.S. poured trillions of dollars into Afghanistan, with little to show for it. From the American perspective, for a fraction of that price the Taliban are taking on the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) and preventing poppy cultivation, a thing the U.S. failed to do. And still Zia and Sadat persist. It seems delusional from afar, as if they are troublemakers or sore losers.
Perhaps the most persistent and successful lobbyist and politician touting for U.S. and Western support is an Afghan Tajik, Ahmad Massoud, 35. Massoud does not need to explain who he is to Western politicians, given that his father was the Lion of Panjshir, the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, a U.S. ally who fought off several Russian military campaigns during the Afghan-Soviet conflict. Ahmad Massoud was too young to play any part in the U.S.-Afghan entanglement and entered politics only in 2016. He grew up in Iran and has spent many of his formative years studying in London.
When news broke that Ghani had left, young Massoud was taken by surprise. He had expected the government to tumble but the speed and manner of it was unexpected. A friend advised him to resist the Taliban, and he flew to Panjshir, the mountain valley 93 miles north of Kabul. The clip of him stepping into the helicopter, donning the trademark pakol hat and safari jacket like his father, went viral. There was an expectation that he would step into his father’s muddy boots, especially as hashtags like #StopTajikGenocide ricocheted all over social media with unverified reports that Pakistani drones were flying over the valley. Further clips showed him being received like a state dignitary, his car being followed by a trail of flag-waving motorcycles. However, any expectations of resistance were abruptly cut short. After negotiations with the Taliban broke down, the Taliban took the valley and Massoud retreated to neighboring Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the capital where his father had found some respite whenever the Taliban had pressed him too much. It is from this former Soviet republic that he continues his anti-Taliban insurgency now.
Massoud leads the National Resistance Front (NRF), which describes itself as a broad-based movement. It calls for a federal system inside Afghanistan, often characterized as the Central Asian equivalent of Switzerland. Massoud is now trying to organize a broad-based anti-Taliban front among the Afghan diaspora and has been spotted in various European capitals such as Vienna, where he attended Afghan diaspora conferences for the last two years. He has been lobbying politicians like President Emmanuel Macron and addressed the Austrian Parliament. In the U.S., he has persuaded Republican lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida to advocate on his behalf. Massoud has not given up hope of Western support, though there is a hint of disappointment in his voice, as it remains unforthcoming. There are echoes of his father in this, too, as he too lobbied the West for support before he was assassinated by al Qaeda suicide bombers two days before 9/11. Young Massoud still believes that the U.S. is morally obliged to support the Afghan people, given that they were the foremost proponents of democracy, women’s rights and anti-extremism. Afghanistan before the arrival of the Taliban had made considerable progress in all these fields, and in Massoud’s view to abandon it now seems unconscionable and imperils everything that the U.S. stands for.
Recently I flew to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to meet Massoud. The country sits to the north of Afghanistan, perching on the Pamir mountains, and is relatively untouched by Western tourism apart from the odd hiker. Though a relative backwater, now relying on the remittances of its citizens working in Russia, in the past it was prosperous due to the famed Silk Road. It does have a pedigreed history of empires too. It belonged to the Samanid and Timurid Empires, the Bukharan Emirate and finally the Russian Empire. It was from its heights that Russian and British spies and adventurers jousted with each other for dominance of Central Asia in the 19th century. This was Great Game country. Tajikistan is familiar with Massoud, he is after all an ethnic Tajik and most of his followers are ethnic Tajik Afghans.
What I found odd, though, was how the country had come to an accommodation with Massoud. Tajikistan is a secular state that likes neither nontraditional Islam nor political Islam coming out of Afghanistan. In the ’90s the country experienced a local Islamist rebellion supported by Arabs who had fought in Afghanistan. According to Human Rights Watch, Salafi strains of Islam are banned, while nontraditional hijabs, long beards and prayers in congregation are restricted. Followers of Islamist political parties like the Islamic Renaissance Party are persecuted. And yet here is Massoud declaring his faith and his Islamist background openly; his father belonged to Jamiat-e-Islami, a group inspired by the Islamic movements started by the Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna. Massoud can discuss the fine details of Islamic jurisprudence or tilt with the Taliban over hadith terminology and passionately declare his love for Abu Hanifa, the eighth-century founder of a school of law in Sunni Islam. He can even talk about Islamic governance, telling me that the Bonn constitution of 2001 was a very “Islamic constitution.”
“The cat,” as the Afghan proverb goes, “does not chase the mouse for the sake of God,” and it seems clear that the Tajik state sees some advantage to be had by hosting this young politician.
I must admit, I did feel a twinge of consternation when I was asked to send a copy of my passport to the Tajik authorities ahead of my visit. Perhaps my experience with the Syrian police state or what I had read about the country made me expect to be followed and interrogated. And so I flew out memorizing a few couplets from Rumi in the hope that they would keep the interrogation short, deeming me to be from a sufi tradition and thereby not a threat. But Tajikistan turned out to be nothing like I expected. There were few pictures of President Emomali Rahmon, who has won five consecutive elections and seems likely to win more in the future. I didn’t feel the state’s presence, and the capital had a very provincial feel to it. Its streets were wide and clean with little hustle and bustle, the people kind and friendly, the taxi drivers honest and the food delicious. The only downside from my perspective was the Farsi being expressed in Cyrillic script.
Part of me wanted to see if Massoud was anything like his late father; I had spent nearly two years researching a book about his father’s escapades. From a narrow tract in the Hindu Kush mountains, he had been wily enough with his guerrilla tactics to bloody the nose of the Russians and charming enough to enthrall the Western press — so much so that the veteran British journalist Sandy Gall wrote a biography of Massoud titled “The Afghan Napoleon.” This, in a way, was an opportunity to satisfy that curiosity, to see that figure that I had spent so much time in the archives with, in the flesh.
Another part of me wanted to get a measure of the man who was running this insurgency against the Taliban. Was he delusional or maybe oppressed by his father’s legacy, so that he felt he needed to follow in his footsteps as many sons do? From afar I could never get an answer to my curiosity because it was difficult to sift through what was true and what was malicious rumor. This predicament was exacerbated after Kabul fell, when Afghans became immensely divided among themselves over Massoud. This was not merely because pro-Taliban or pro-Massoud fanboys were duking it out on Twitter or X but also because of his father’s legacy, which is intrinsically linked to the last Afghan republic. Arguably, he would probably divide opinion even if he had chosen the quiet life playing tennis in London, as a profile of him once put it. Now, depending on your perspective, he is either a heroic leader whose followers call him “his excellency,” a foreign agent groomed by the Western powers to do their bidding, or a princeling (“shahzadeh”) — a pejorative term for the pampered sons and daughters of the Kabul elite.
Massoud’s people told me to come to a cafe in a quiet suburb in Dushanbe. The cafe was filled with American expats at various stages of their Persian-learning journey. I waited until one of Massoud’s men came to pick me up. They had told me that the location could not be disclosed and so I expected to be blindfolded or at least driven around a few times to a new location in line with the security protocol that I had experienced in the past. Then I would be led into a room where I expected an audience with a grim or weary-looking Massoud talking about the fightback against the Taliban. Instead, an Afghan Tajik, Ajmal, turned up, took me along a quiet street and knocked on a steel door. A friendly Tajik security man checked my bag, and I was led across a yard into a spacious two-story house belonging to the authorities. The top floor appeared to be a state reception room complete with a red, white and green Tajik flag, and beside it the black, white and green NRF flag, each with accompanying French chairs. There was a coffee table, carpet and a settee on one side. I sat on the Tajik flag side waiting for Massoud to come, not quite knowing how to be with him. Should I refer to him as Ahmad, Mr. Massoud or “your excellency” as Afghans seemed to refer to all their prominent men? Would I be too obsequious if I did? But Massoud decided that for me.
Massoud was the spitting image of his father. He entered with several men, smiled and shook my hands, apologizing for being late — he had just flown into the country. Dressed in a casual blazer, he was upbeat, friendly and talked to me as if he knew me. There was a simple charm about him as he mentioned the book, “My wife loved it very much.” He knew how to disarm a man’s skepticism. I was not sure precisely who the other men were, whether they were there to watch me, or protect him or merely take minutes. Massoud didn’t introduce them to me and they sat on the settee. One brought out his notepad, the others spoke little. Sitting opposite Massoud, I got a good look at him. He wasn’t as young as the newspaper pictures anymore. Dark circles lined his eyes and there were some white strands coming through his brown hair. Perhaps it was the overbearing weight of his father’s legacy, the nonstop traveling or running the NRF and the constant politicking that came with it that had taken its toll. It was only last year that his organization looked like it was floundering. The media made much of the very public resignation of its spokesman, Sibghatullah Ahmadi, and suggested that it was beset with internal rifts and bickering. Young Massoud, they said, was controlled financially by his maternal uncles and politically by his father-in-law and paternal uncle, Ahmad Wali.
Massoud answered the question that I came for.
“It never came to me,” he said, leaning forward, “even for a second, that I’m Ahmad Shah Massoud. … I never wanted to do something, or to stand against the Taliban, because of the legacy of Ahmad Shah Massoud.” He was an accidental politician who had taken on the mantle of Afghanistan, “out of duty to my people and God.” He was in Kabul when the Taliban were at the gates of the city on Aug. 15, 2021. He had escaped a suicide bomber only a week before. “If I did not leave the house 30 seconds earlier, I would have died because later when I saw the videos and the pictures, [it was] exactly where I was sitting, it was completely destroyed.” When news broke that Ghani had left the country, a friend persuaded him to fly to Panjshir to rally the troops who were mustering there for the upcoming Taliban onslaught. About 3,000 soldiers had gathered in Panjshir when he arrived. Sources told me that former Vice President Saleh had also sought refuge in the valley and brought money with him that Massoud used to train more men to resist the Taliban.
Massoud said that he did not want to fight the Taliban, because it had “taken everything: my father, my childhood, my normal life — everything.” So he sent negotiators to Charikar, in northern Afghanistan, for peace talks with a Taliban delegation.
“I signed a blank paper. I said, ‘I’m giving the full authority to the delegation of scholars to make any decision that they see fit. … For one week, they were going door to door and Kabul and all the way to the top. They went to whoever they could. And the Taliban, they rejected. The second week, we tried another. And we were hearing that the Taliban were gathering forces from all across Afghanistan.” With fruitless talks and surrounded by people he “couldn’t trust,” Massoud talked to the Iranians, Qataris, Pakistanis and the Taliban directly. He spoke to Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anas Haqqani of the Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terror organization considered to be the most radical wing of the Taliban. He listed by name the rest of the Taliban leadership he spoke to; the only one he did not speak to was the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Haibutallah Akhundzada.
The Taliban, in turn, understood Massoud’s propaganda value; having him on side would ensure a lasting peace, and he would bring a large number of his Tajik supporters with him. During these negotiations, Khalil Haqqani, the brother of the famous mujahedeen commander and founder of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, tried to make negotiations smoother and Massoud more pliable, by calling his father a national hero. The Taliban also offered him several ministries and a position in their government, in exchange for the “bayah” — an oath of allegiance which serves as a recognition of the Taliban government.
Accounts differ as to what happened, some sources suggest that Massoud was only negotiating on behalf of Panjshir, others disagree. Massoud told me that he would have given the Taliban allegiance, if they had gone “through a process which gets the internal recognition and engagement … and then I would be a teacher in a school, that would be my honor.” This “internal recognition” sounded like elections to me and that, though sensible, appeared naive. Few would give up total victory on the battlefield in exchange for elections where these gains could be lost. Moreover, why would the Taliban hold elections when Afghan elections were notorious for ballot stuffing and mass voter fraud? How could the results even be trusted? Who would monitor the elections? International observers, in a war-torn country? And so it was unsurprising that Massoud said that the Taliban rejected his suggestion and “to this day they have been ruling by decree.” So Massoud and the Taliban were at an impasse, peace was not possible, the Taliban pushed ahead with their Panjshir offensive and after a short period of fighting, conquered the valley. Most of Massoud’s soldiers melted away like snow in springtime.
Though he fought, Massoud was no match for Taliban firepower and he found, just like the Taliban did, a foreign refuge in Tajikistan. He is also rumored to be backed by India but Massoud seemed to prevaricate when I asked him. He avoided a straight yes or no answer, and instead gave a politician’s fudge, “One of the countries that I am the most disappointed at is India,” he said, “Of course, it’s their own interest, but unfortunately they have this wait-and-see policy … And they have clear engagement with the Taliban as we’re speaking because the Taliban are far more capable of damaging Pakistan than any other group.”
What is certain is that Tajikistan turns a blind eye to his activities. He now leads the NRF with his maternal uncles, Wali, his university friend Ali Nazary and former mujahedeen commanders. Massoud claims that it is an organization of 6,000, nipping at the Taliban’s heels. According to an International Crisis Group report, “Afghanistan’s Security Challenges Under the Taliban,” the NRF is “the largest of the northern insurgent factions” and has been “gaining momentum,” managing to carry out numerous attacks inside the country. The Taliban, however, seem to view the NRF as a minor irritant, as it has not succeeded thus far in holding territory. Yet Massoud genuinely believes that he can unseat the Taliban. How? “We have changed our tactics,” said Massoud, “from conventional warfare to guerrilla warfare, just like my father did. We were in Panjshir and Khost. Now we have spread to Kapisa, to Parawan, to Kunduz, to Takhar, to Badakhshan and Nuristan, to Kabul. Soon, this year, especially next year, we will be to the north and northwest and southwest. And inshallah we are hoping by the end of next year, our activity will be spread to the south as well.”
Massoud certainly talks a good game. His strategy relies on building momentum from within the country and depends on his charisma and ability to drive that momentum. Admittedly, Massoud has many things going for him, not least the leveraging of his father’s legend both domestically and internationally. Though he knows that he is not his father, this doesn’t prevent him from sporting the same headgear, in an unsubtle attempt to remind those around him of whose son he is. To many, the Islamist commander is seen to be the very antithesis of the Taliban and al Qaeda; he was, after all, assassinated by the al Qaeda chief a few days before 9/11, when Ahmad was a mere boy. His father’s warnings about al Qaeda planning a terror attack proved prescient and endeared him to the West too. Moreover, the son is also seen as someone untainted by corruption, unlike many of the Afghan politicians, and for that matter some of his own family members. He also speaks the language of the West, graduating with a war studies degree from King’s College, London, and attending Sandhurst, the U.K.’s military equivalent of West Point. In many ways, Massoud appears to be the perfect partner that the U.S. can work with should it wish.
But, equally, the very strengths that endear him to the West could also make it difficult for him to gain broad popularity inside the country. Massoud’s father is not a universally venerated figure in Afghanistan. To this day, he is blamed for many of the ills that Afghan Pashtuns suffered at the hands of his men. Massoud said that the period needs to be “looked at in depth.” He questions why there have been no war crimes charges brought against his father in the past 20 years, but he also recognizes that at the time Afghanistan had reached such a level of violence that “no one cared about who was wrong and who was right. They’re like, we’re done with both of them.”
His organization, the NRF, is often accused of being an ethnonationalist movement, rather than a national one. The International Crisis Group points out that its propaganda appears Janus-faced: Its domestic propaganda, especially from its supporters, seemingly exploits Tajik grievances, while the messaging it presents to the international community appeals to Western sensibilities. Massoud emphatically rejected that charge and responded like an employee who worked for the human resources department of a Western nongovernmental organization: “We are living in a house like this, full of different colors. Our diversity is our strength. This is the difference between us and the Taliban. The Taliban want to make the whole room just white color. … This difference in color is our strength; diversity of a policy is our beauty.”
I don’t believe that Massoud does it purposefully or that his response was rehearsed, but his language seemed to be a combination of Western aphorisms and florid Persian expressions, and it jarred me. I wondered whether his speech also has that sort of dissonance for his countrymen, as if he was a hybrid unable to connect fully with either side, whether Western or Afghan. As one said contemptuously of him, referring to his Iranian upbringing, “He is an Afghan with an Iranian accent.” Others who met him during his days at King’s College recall that he spoke like he worked for an NGO and was surprised that he was now doing politics in Afghanistan. And perhaps this hybrid side to Massoud is what the Taliban’s propagandists use as proof of him being the West’s lap dog. They refer to his Western education as evidence that he was groomed to be a Western or foreign agent. In other words, they imply that he is not really an Afghan. After all, he has spent a lot of his time outside of the country in Iran and the U.K. And so the biggest challenge that Massoud faces is probably not his organization’s ability to run an insurgency. Nor is it the messaging, nor that he has a foreign backer. It is rather how he can unite Afghans under his leadership. How is he to overcome the impression that he is either a pawn or a prince who has grown up in indolence and luxury in Iran and the U.K.?
As he left me, I stuck out my hand. But breaking a politician’s protocol, Massoud gave me an impromptu hug, and I was touched by his sincerity. As I packed my stuff, I wasn’t quite sure what he was; I didn’t think that he was a pawn, nor did I think he was a prince. Clearly, from the poetry he recited and the people I had spoken to, he was genuinely devout. Like many Afghans he claimed to be fighting for Islam and labeled the Taliban “Khawarij,” an extreme sect from the early days of Islam and a label used by Islamic groups to denigrate their opponents as heretics and deviants. I wondered if he could play the game that the likes of Tamerlane, Emir Dost Mohammad Khan, Ata Noor or even his father played in Afghanistan. And this is where the message was not wholly clear. As Massoud admitted, “I started my political career in 2016. And since then, I’ve been active. So of course, compared with the person who has 30 years of experience, I’m much less experienced.” He says he is surrounded by experienced people and is learning fast, but do such honest answers move an Afghan enough to die for him? One can imagine how many mujahedeen commanders who fought alongside Massoud’s father for decades, and immersed themselves in Afghan politics, would find it difficult to respect Massoud solely because he is the son of a famous commander. As one insider told me, “Say what you like about Ata Noor, but he did what he had to do to become the governor of Mazar-e-Sharif. He has bloodied his mustache in war, peace and politics.” That is something that cannot be said of young Massoud yet. Why should the likes of Noor, who claims also to be a four-star general, follow the son of the man he views as his friend and equal? Noor told me that he had once made it very clear to Massoud that he works for no man, not even the Lion of Panjshir. He told him that he “never worked as a soldier or commander under your father. I was his companion, a good friend, a brother, but not someone who worked for him.” Massoud goes up against men like Noor who say with utmost confidence that “we have fought against the Taliban. … They know our capability and they know our power and they know what we can do in wartime. The Taliban know we have captured thousands of Taliban soldiers.” In order to gain the respect of these hard men and make them follow him, Massoud has to be extraordinary, even if they loved his father.
After 9/11, the U.S. entered the rugged country, thinking that an international relations major and reading Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ on the plane would tell them everything they needed to know about the country. How wrong they were.
While Massoud faces questions in terms of proving himself as capable to lead, Noor doesn’t face those questions. He has the experience to lead. What he faces, however, is the question of whether he is a suitable partner to lead the fight against the Taliban, and the fact that the initial costs are immensely high. U.S. support is highly unlikely given its fraught relationships with Afghan politicians, warlords and the Afghan government in the past two decades. After 9/11, the U.S. entered the rugged country, thinking that an international relations major and reading Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” on the plane would tell them everything they needed to know about the country. How wrong they were. They wholeheartedly supported the warlords to chase al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan, often overlooking their brutality and corruption. They spent trillions on nation-building. Blood and lives were lost. There simply is no appetite to pursue a new adventure, even if they had an amenable partner such as Massoud or a capable man like Noor. As the U.S. State Department has said, “The United States does not support armed conflict in Afghanistan. The country was at war for 44 years, and we believe Afghans inside Afghanistan do not support a return to conflict.”
Barnett Rubin, an Afghan specialist who served in the Obama administration, explained that under Presidents Joe Biden or Donald Trump, “There is no possibility that the U.S. would provide assistance to the NRF or anyone else fighting in Afghanistan. Furthermore, even if the U.S. wanted to do so, it would be logistically impossible. Access to Tajikistan is controlled by Russia. … There is zero percent chance that Russia would cooperate with the U.S. like this today.” He continued, “The NRF has no chance of succeeding under current conditions, but those conditions can change, and Ahmed Massoud might be able to take advantage of such conditions, though the likelihood remains small.” While Rubin doesn’t deny that Afghans have the right to resist the Taliban, “That does not make it wise or an effective course of action. Many, probably most Afghans, do not want to go back to warfare to resolve problems.”
If Rubin’s assessment is correct, the White House’s political reasons for working with the Taliban to contain the ISKP make sense. From the American perspective, why would they want to embroil themselves in a risky new project when they have spent so much blood and treasure in decades past? The Taliban might be unsavory, but at least they can stave off the ISKP, which has undoubtedly gained a foothold in Afghanistan. Moreover, the International Crisis Group points out that the Taliban victory has brought about a level of peace not experienced in the country for decades. So backing Massoud’s NRF, or the High Council for that matter, appears to have little value.
And yet in spite of U.S. rejection, Massoud and Noor persist in trying to overthrow the Taliban. Are they, as their critics claim, simply deluded? Or are they seeing something that we are not? Both are clearly clever men, so why this dogged persistence in the belief that the Taliban can be overthrown? It was only when I visited former Afghan Vice President Younis Qanuni, over some green tea and Afghan sweets, that this became clear.
Qanuni, an Afghan Tajik, is a silver-haired, bespectacled man with an easygoing charm. Now in exile in the U.K., he received me at his son’s house in West London. Qanuni speaks fluent classical Arabic, with a degree in Islamic law from Kabul University. During the Afghan jihad he was a companion of Ahmad Shah Massoud and his representative in Peshawar, in Pakistan. After 9/11, he served as vice president in the Karzai government and now he regularly appears on opposition channels and is seen as an elder statesman, important enough for the Taliban to send delegations to woo him, to get him on side. Reminiscing about his days as a mujahid — a holy warrior — Qanuni inadvertently made me realize why so many Afghans believe that the Taliban can be overthrown even though they appear to reign supreme for the moment: Afghanistan is a shallow state.
What Qanuni, Noor, Massoud and those other 40 opposition leaders know very well is how Afghanistan is configured; it is a mosaic of different ethnicities, tribes and sectarian affiliations: Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, Arab Afghans, descendants of the Muslim armies of yore. I had been viewing Afghanistan as a normal chessboard, with 64 squares and the game played in the conventional sense, whereas these men were playing the Central Asian variant invented by Tamerlane in the 14th century, with 110 squares and more moving components than the normal chessboard. This is why Noor claimed to have five of his men in Ghani’s cabinet, and it also explained why Ghani jealously guarded his power; he knew full well what the consequences for him might be if he lost it.
What they see clearly is that Afghanistan, despite becoming more urban and educated in the past two decades, with a growing middle class and many of the trappings of a modern state, remains an important geostrategic chessboard, which is inherently unstable and where Afghan leaders, along with their British, Russian, Indian, Pakistani, Iranian and U.S. backers, play their bloody games. Some neighbors are perhaps even compelled to play because of their need to control the spaces beyond their borders to make their own country more secure. This, of course, comes at the unfortunate expense of Afghans.
Noor and Massoud intuitively know that Afghanistan can be destabilized if the right conditions exist. The key ingredients to destabilize the country are always the same. First, a leader needs to be a hard, capable man, akin to a warlord, able to command men who will support and die for him (if the price is right). Second, he needs the backing of a foreign country. These two elements were present when Emir Dost Mohammed and Shah Shujah Durrani were fighting during the Anglo-Afghan war in the early 19th century and present when the Northern Alliance and their U.S. backers defeated the Taliban after 9/11 and present again when the Taliban found refuge in the bosom of their Pakistani backers. What these men know is that sooner or later the Taliban will mess up, and that is when they will make their move.
Last July, Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, led a delegation to meet with senior Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, and made U.S. priorities clear: that Afghanistan does not become a drug and terrorist haven that threatens the U.S. and its allies. The U.S., in other words, had chosen its color on the chessboard. However, the U.S. may pay a high price for not listening to the issues raised by the NRF or the High Council, and could repeat the mistakes of the past. The U.S. must remember that long after the ISKP has gone, the grievances of the opposition will remain, given the nature of the Afghan chessboard. And the grievances are not merely those of disgruntled losers but are based in reality. As a recent Amnesty report said, peaceful protesters face “arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearances,” while the Taliban’s opponents risk “extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and unlawful detention.” There is ample room for those grievances to grow and other states to replace Washington and play the game, and it will likely result in the loss of Washington’s influence in the region. Already, there are potential regional candidates that might step into the power vacuum. The decision by the Taliban to go ahead with the construction of the Qosh Tepa canal will affect the water security of its neighbors like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and could give these countries a reason to clandestinely fund insurgents who are more amenable to their interests. Even Massoud has recently been spotted lobbying politicians from the Russian Duma.
But, perhaps more important, ignoring the opposition could be a recipe for civil war in the future. In late 2001, the U.S. excluded the Taliban and their large Pashtun constituency from the Bonn Conference that set up a new government. It set the country up for two decades of war and instability. At that time, it was the Taliban who were the wolves waiting with an outside power backing them. Once the ascendant wolfpack in Kabul had weakened, the Taliban made their move. Now the roles have reversed. The opposition is currently out in the cold, expecting Taliban misrule to ratchet up, and then it will be the opposition’s turn to make its move, claiming, some of it heartfelt for sure, that it is emancipating women and fighting for Islam (etc., etc.). And so the cycle of violence continues.
But the idea that Afghans are, as the saying goes, only at peace when they are fighting for Islam is not true. Afghan society has institutions and traditions like jirgas (large councils) in place to discuss and resolve conflicts. Many are connected by marriage, traditions, experiences and shared history. Conflict resolution is not an alien concept, and not beyond Afghans’ abilities. However much the U.S. may blame the opposition for past failures, the way forward for the U.S. to avert a future civil war and loss of influence is not necessarily to back one chess piece over another but to work toward intra-Afghan reconciliation so the cycle of violence can end and more lives are not lost in future wars that will no doubt destabilize the region once more. The U.S. should remember that although it appears that these Afghan warlords will likely be living in the land of defeat for a long time, they have an uncanny ability to return just when you least expect them to.
For those reading this as a forward, my name is Tam Hussein an award winning investigative journalist with a particular focus on conflict. The Blood Rep is my newsletter that covers security, jihadism, militancy and criminal networks. Do read my latest book The Darkness Inside.