JOIN USMeet Ahmad Massoud, the anti-Taliban leader, son of Panjshir Valley's 'Lion'
“I am the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud; surrender is not part of my vocabulary,” said Ahmad Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's last major outpost of Taliban resistance, over a phone call to French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.
Even as most of Afghanistan surrendered to the Taliban after it took control of the capital, Ahmad Massoud has rejected the Taliban's imposition — the lone voice of resistance that has echoed from the war-torn country.
But who is Ahmad Massoud?
Ahmad Massoud is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Soviet resistance in the 1980s in Afghanistan. He is an Afghan politician and founder of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan.
His father, Ahmad Shah Massoud was known as the 'Lion of Panjshir Valley'. He was killed by by al-Qaeda militants just days before the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Born in 1989, Massoud is a Tajik, a persian-speaking ethnic group of Central Asia. Massoud spent a year in Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before completing two degrees in London. He also holds a Master's degree in International Relations from King's College, London.
Ahead of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Massoud announced a new coalition of mujahideen leaders to protect Afghanistan from the Taliban. The coalition was modelled on the Northern Alliance that resisted the Taliban in the 1990s.
Even though the terror of the Taliban has spread across the country, it has failed to reach the Panjshir Valley in north-central Afghanistan. Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV channel cited Massoud saying that he won’t allow Panjshir to fall to the Taliban.
"We want to make the Taliban realise that the only way forward is through negotiation," he told Reuters by telephone from his stronghold in the mountainous Panjshir valley northwest of Kabul, where he has gathered forces made up of remnants of regular army units and special forces as well as local militia fighters.
"We do not want a war to break out."
He also said that many groups and government forces that are opposing the Taliban rule have rallied to his province from different places. The Vice President of Afghanistan Amrullah Saleh has also reportedly joined hands with Massoud to oppose the Taliban.
His forces are 6,000 in number and Massoud has said they will need international support if it came to fighting.
Panjshir Valley has remained free of Taliban regime thus far. During the civil war in the 1990s, the valley did not fall under Taliban rule. Even the Soviets failed to capture it a decade before that.