Afghanistan: the Panchir Valley, pocket of resistance around Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh

Published on : 08/18/2021 – 12:00

While the Taliban have taken almost total control of Afghanistan, one man still stands in their way: former vice president Amrullah Saleh. The latter promised that he would not submit to them under any circumstances, even going so far as to declare himself, Tuesday, legitimate president.

The country’s ex-chief spy, sworn enemy of the Islamists now in power in Kabul, has withdrawn to the last region not yet in their hands: the Panchir Valley, northeast of the capital , where he joined Commander Massoud’s son.

“My comrades in arms and I are going to donate blood”

In a photo disseminated in the Afghan media, Amrullah Saleh is alongside Ahmad Massoud, installed under the portrait of his father, Commander Massoud, a figure of the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban resistance, assassinated in 2001 by Al-Qaeda.

From this area that escapes the control of the Taliban, the two men try to organize resistance. Amrullah Saleh would even want to take over the post of Afghan president in place of Ashraf Ghani, who left the country on Sunday when the Taliban entered Kabul.

“According to the Afghan Constitution, in the event of the president’s defection or death, the vice president becomes interim president,” he recalls in a tweet. “I am in the country and I am legally and rightfully interim president. I am consulting with all the leaders of the country to strengthen this position.”

Monday in a column published by the French review “La Règle du Jeu”Ahmad Massoud was already calling for resistance against the Taliban. “My comrades in arms and I will give our blood, along with all the free Afghans who refuse servitude and whom I call on to join me in our stronghold of Panchir, which is the last free region of our dying country” , he said.

Impregnable mujahideen fortress

Around Ahmad Massoud, armed men have started to regroup in the Panchir, but will this rebellion take on a large scale? Some specialists do not believe it. “A few weeks ago, he estimated that hundreds of thousands of Afghans would join him in his resistance, this did not happen”, explains Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, author of the documentary “Afghanistan: voyage in Taliban country”. “And then he would like to build resistance from the Tajik ethnic group, we know that there are Tajiks who are now subservient to the Taliban,” she continues. “So Ahmmad Massoud is not a warrior, he is quite legitimate in his father’s shoes, but he is not a fighter.”

The Panchir Valley has so far been seen as an impregnable Mujahideen fortress. Neither the Soviets in the 1980s nor the Taliban in the 1990s had succeeded in seizing it.