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THE ROVING EYE
The Panjshir Lion
lives
By Pepe Escobar
PANJSHIR VALLEY, Northern Afghanistan - It's a
simple round white chapel with a green dome. A sign
beside the rocky trail points to "The Chief of the
Martyr's Hill". The monument, located in one of the
definitive Shangri La-like corners of the Panjshir, in a
lush green valley bisected by the Panjshir River, is
dwarfed by imposing naked mountains.
 Earlier
this week, scores of men worked around the clock in
scorching sun and pitch darkness, wind and dust to add
the finishing touches to the chapel. Students took a
whole day to bicycle from the capital Kabul to pay their
respects, dodging bombed bridges and wrecks of tanks,
carrying bouquets of flowers and green banners with the
inscription, "We follow the way of Masoud". Afghan
President Hamid Karzai paid his visit on Saturday - but
not on the highly significant September 9, a date that
for a great deal of fractured Afghanistan carries
infinitely more meaning than September 11 does for many
people in the West.
For September 9 was the day
a year ago that Ahmad Shah Masoud, 48, mujahideen hero,
the Lion of the Panjshir, former vice-president of the
Islamic State of Afghanistan, resistance leader for the
Northern Alliance against the Taliban and the closest to
a nationalist leader and hero Afghanistan has had in a
long time, was assassinated, and he now lies buried in
"The Chief of the Martyr's Hill". It's an unpretentious
black marble grave, in the middle of the chapel, marked
with a green Islamic flag.
The circumstances surrounding news of Masoud's death are no
longer a mystery. Everybody - not only Panjshiris - know
that his death was kept secret for days: even his
faithful field commanders and his own family didn't know that
his body was lying in a morgue in southern Tajikistan
when they were being told only that he had had an
accident, but was well. According to the official
Northern Alliance version, he had "suffered an accident" with
only "minor injuries". Then, a few days later, he was "in a
coma" in a Tajik hospital. And when he "officially"
died, the world he had lived in had been turned upside
down by the events of September 11, and the demise of
the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had been sealed.
But disturbing questions remain. Al-Qaeda may
have hit Masoud to finish off the last and only hurdle
for the Taliban to control all of Afghanistan - the
Northern Alliance controlled between 5 percent and 10
percent of the country at the time. Masoud was a nemesis
for Osama bin Laden, whose regional masterplan included
the integration of Afghanistan's northern neighbors in a
radical Islamic axis.
Masoud's killing, too, may
have been bin Laden's personal gift to Taliban leader
Mullah Omar for the shelter that the Taliban provided
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The assassination, further, may
have been the key event that sent the signal for the
September 11 operation in the US. Ironically, some
people argue that the only power to have profited from
Masoud's killing was America itself: Washington would
never have been allowed to maintain its military
presence in Afghanistan if Masoud, a nationalist leader
par excellence, had been in charge of the Northern
Alliance's military.
The plot to kill Masoud was
carried out by a Brussels-based Tunisian terrorist cell.
Masoud was assassinated by two killers in their 30s
posing as journalists and carrying fake Moroccan
passports. The "reporter" called himself Karim Touzani -
affable and relaxed. The surly, burly "cameraman" - who
carried explosives in his battery pack - called himself
Kacem Bakkali. Their letters of introduction presented
them as television journalists from a certain Islamic
Observation Center, based in London and concerned with
"human rights issues for Muslims all over the world".
Already in 1999 European intelligence had begun
to notice increased al-Qaeda recruiting activity among
Tunisians living in Europe. A key recruit was Abdul
Sattar Dahmane, a Tunisian resident of Belgium. He had
been trained in one of al-Qaeda's Afghan military camps,
where he lived in a house nearby with his Moroccan wife,
Malika. In the spring of 2001 Dahmane was selected for a
crucial mission. As he had studied journalism in Tunisia
and Belgium, he would pose as a television interviewer,
alongside another Tunisian posing as a cameraman -
Rachid Bourawi, an illegal immigrant to Belgium.
According to European intelligence, Dahmane was an
operative in Brussels and London for the Tunisian
Fighting Group, an organization with ties to al-Qaeda.
The established European theory for the Masoud hit is
that the Tunisian Fighting Group agreed to kill Masoud
in exchange for its fighters training in al-Qaeda's
Afghan military camps.
Visiting Masoud in the
Panjshir was an inescapable ritual for any journalist
covering Afghanistan. Asia Times Online was there in the
first two weeks of August 2001. Everybody had to go
through the same motions: kill time in Dushanbe while
waiting for a battered Russian MI-17 helicopter of the
rickety Northern Alliance air force to be transported to
the Panjshir. Like everybody else, the fake journalists
stayed in a guesthouse of the Northern Alliance, close
to the village of Bazarak. The guesthouse arrangement
was another graphic sign of the extreme politeness of
Panjshiris: journalists received a free room, three
meals a day, access to a translator at modest rates and
the requisite tour of the frontlines in the war against
the Taliban.
Masoud was always ready and willing
to meet journalists - especially from all corners of the
Muslim world. He was particularly frustrated by the
general perception in the Middle East that his beloved
mujahideen were a tool of the Russians or other foreign
powers, acting against the best interests of Muslims.
When he talked to Asia Times Online - his last interview
in the Panjshir before he moved to Khwaja Bahauddin, his
far-flung base near the Tajik border, Masoud repeatedly
accused the Taliban of destroying Afghanistan with the
assistance of Arabs and Pakistanis.
The Northern
Alliance was in deep trouble in the spring and summer of
2001. At least 16,000 Taliban, including a few thousand
hardcore al-Qaeda warriors, were ready to take all of
Takhar province, north of the Panjshir Valley. The
Taliban were planning a final offensive to wipe out any
resistance, take control of the whole of Afghanistan and
increase their support of hardcore Islamist movements in
Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU).
The key arrangement in the Masoud killing
was the way in which the fake Moroccan journalists
managed to get into the Panjshir. This happened through
an introduction by one Dr Hani, an Egyptian friend
dating back from the anti-USSR jihad of the 1980s of the
notorious "Professor" Abdul Rasul Sayyaf - renamed by
his Arab patrons Abd al-Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf. Dr Hani
apparently called Sayyaf from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
Sayyaf agreed to endorse the "journalists" and request
permission for them to follow the usual tour of the
frontlines.
Repeated attempts recently by Asia
Times Online to reach Sayyaf proved unfruitful. Some
people said that he was incognito in Kabul. Some people
said that he had been to a secret meeting in eastern
Kunar province, along with fierce Pashtun warlord
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now promoted by the Pentagon to the
status of America's number one "wanted dead or dead"
villain in Afghanistan. Some people said that Sayyaf
would never agree to talk to foreigners about his
controversial role in the Masoud killing. But a source
in Kabul confirmed that during the loya jirga
(grand council) last June, Sayyaf admitted that the two
fake journalists had spent two weeks with him and his
people - in Taliban-controlled territory - before
crossing to the Northern Alliance areas.
Sayyaf,
a Kharruti Pashtun from Paghman, in Kabul province, is
the leader of the Ittihad-e-Islami (The Islamic Union
for the Freedom of Afghanistan), a party that during the
1980s was basically a vehicle for Sayyaf to receive
loads of funds and weapons from wealthy Arab donors.
Sayyaf is still a big supporter of the strict Wahhabi
Islam and thanks to his solid Arab connections remains
the most well-known mujahideen leader in Saudi Arabia,
heartland of Wahhabism. Unlike Masoud, he is fiercely
opposed to nationalism, and supports a pan-Islamic
ideal, and he is now definitely plotting with Hekmatyar
to undermine the already fragile Hamid Karzai government
in Kabul and to see all foreign troops booted out of
Afghanistan.
Sayyaf's relationship with Masoud
was always extremely complex. Masoud had tremendous
problems dealing with fundamentalists like Sayyaf and
Osama bin Laden himself - who enjoyed unlimited Arab
support. Bin Laden and other future al-Qaeda notables
were among the thousands of Arabs who fought alongside
Sayyaf in the 1980s jihad. During the chaotic mujahideen
"governments" of 1992-1996, Masoud was defense minister
to President Barhanuddin Rabbani, and Sayyaf was a
presidential adviser. These "governments" were such in
name only: warlords at the time wreaked havoc in
Afghanistan and created the conditions for the emergence
of the Taliban.
Bismillah Khan, a stocky,
workaholic warlord who had fought alongside Masoud for
22 years and was one of his top generals, was the man
who led the fake Moroccan journalists on the required
frontline tour after Masoud himself approved their
visit. He insisted on demonstrating to the "Moroccans"
that only Afghans were members of the Northern Alliance.
Bismillah Khan remembers that these posers were
different. They didn't ask for interviews and they
filmed practically nothing. Before they finally managed
to kill him, there were a few near-misses between them
and Masoud. One day, the Lion of the Panjshir himself
showed up at the guesthouse, but they were away. Another
day they were supposed to travel in his helicopter back
to Khwaja Bahauddin. But the helicopter was overloaded -
as usual - and they had to stay behind.
The fact
that they didn't ask many questions, like other
journalists, according to Bismillah Khan, caused
widespread suspicion. But they could not be challenged
because they were Sayyaf's guests. And that's the key to
the mystery. The mysterious phone call from
Bosnia-Herzegovina which convinced Sayyaf to invite the
two journalists to the Panjshir actually came from
Kandahar - in the heart of Taliban land. But nobody
among the Panjshiris took pains to investigate it at the
time.
Helicopter rides were one more inevitable
fixture in every visit to the Panjshir. Anybody had to
wait sometimes days for the skies to clear: it's
suicidal to fly in the Hindu Kush under a cloudy sky.
And that's why the fake journalists had to wait a few
extra days before traveling to Khwaja Bahauddin - where
they arrived as "guests of Sayyaf". Their interview was
once again delayed because the summer Taliban-al-Qaeda
offensive had begun - and Masoud was extremely busy. The
"Moroccans" had to kill their time in a room next door
to General Mohammed Arif, Masoud's chief of internal
security.
Abdul Malik, commander of the military
tank base in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan - now
working closely with American Special Forces - today
tells a substantially different version of Bismillah
Khan's story. Malik says that "Arabs" forced Sayyaf to
introduce the fake journalists to Bismillah Khan, who in
turn got them to Masoud. Anyway one looks at it, though,
Sayyaf's role remains murky.
In the summer of
2001, Masoud was still trying to recover from a
devastating blow in 2000 when the Taliban captured his
former headquarters in Taloqan. When he spoke to Asia
Times Online he was not only preparing a defense plan
against the renewed Taliban attack, but also a Northern
Alliance plan to retake Taloqan - and that was as far as
his dreams were set. During the first months of 2001
Masoud was involved in a tireless effort to rally
commanders, major regional warlords and all kinds of
tribal factions to fight against the Taliban. Through
skilful diplomacy, he managed to get more money from
Iran and more weapons from Russia. By late spring, all
major warlords - Uzbek General Abdul Dostum, Hazara
Karim Khalili and the now-called "Emir of southwest
Afghanistan" Ismail Khan were back in the country from
exile in Turkey and Iran, and ready to fight the
Taliban.
During the 1990s, and especially during
the time of the Taliban rule, which began in 1996,
Washington never knew exactly how to deal with Masoud.
But after the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania in 1998, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
agents sought a meeting with Masoud in Dushanbe. The CIA
wanted information on how to get to bin Laden. Masoud
carefully considered all the angles, but ultimately he
could not but criticize American shortsightedness. For
the Bill Clinton administration, the ultimate aim was to
get bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda. For Masoud, the main
point was to destroy the Taliban. He repeatedly stressed
at the time that "without the Taliban, Osama can't do
anything".
Masoud, indeed, had agents and
intelligence in the heart of Taliban country. The best
example is how his Panjshiris planted a powerful truck
bomb just outside Mullah Omar's compound in central
Kandahar, in 1999. The explosion left a huge crater and
killed 10 people, including three of Mullah Omar's
bodyguards. Omar escaped, almost by a miracle, but if
the Northern Alliance could get close to the Taliban,
they could not penetrate al-Qaeda's ultra-hardcore
security to try to find and menace bin Laden. And as
much as the Northern Alliance could penetrate the
Taliban, security chief Arif - now head of intelligence
of Hamid Karzai's government - says that "Osama was
actively trying to recruit spies inside the Panjshir
Valley". But once again, no one investigated the
"Moroccans".
In his interview with Asia Times
Online, the second-to-last in his lifetime, Masoud
repeatedly portrayed al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan
as a sort of "triangle of evil". He criticized the US
for basically following a Pakistani plan: try to
"reform" the Taliban and concentrate on seducing Taliban
"moderates" (a contradiction in terms). There were never
any moderates within the Taliban. Mullah Omar was
totally under the spell of bin Laden. American diplomats
with knowledge of Central Asia were warning about the
"Arabization" of Afghanistan. But no one in Washington
was listening. The US only got the message after
September 11 - and after Masoud's death.
In the
first months of 2001, Masoud calculated that he had to
involve himself in a complex gamble: change his image
from warrior to statesman. He addressed the European
parliament in Strasbourg, France, in April 2001. This
was his first official trip to the West. He tried hard
to attract Western support for the resistance against
the Taliban. But still no one was listening. In
Strasbourg, Masoud delivered a stunning message that
nobody took seriously at the time: "If President Bush
doesn't help us, then these terrorists will damage the
United States and Europe very soon - and it will be too
late."
The Afghan fundamentalist old guard -
people such as Rabbani and Sayyaf - obviously hated
Masoud's new international status. The wife of one of
Masoud's killers told European intelligence early this
year that Masoud's comments were interpreted as a direct
threat to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The plot to kill him
may have started immediately after his visit to Europe.
According to French intelligence sources, the amassed
evidence shows that the fake Moroccan passports were
prepared between April and May, as well as one of the
letters of introduction.
Panjshiris now in
Kabul, all in government jobs, still remember vividly
the final hours of the Lion. On Saturday evening,
September 8, the Taliban finally threw everything they
had against the Northern Alliance. General Bismillah
Khan was desperate. He called Masoud by satellite
telephone for urgent strategic advice. Masoud delivered
- in style - and then spent the rest of the night
talking Persian poetry with the Northern Alliance's
ambassador to India. At 4 am on September 9, while
Masoud and his friend were still talking against the
backdrop of the legendary Amu Darya river, his personal
secretary came with the news that Bismillah Khan's
mujahideen had stood their ground against the Taliban.
Masoud took his morning prayer, slept for a little more
than an hour and had his usual breakfast of tea, nan
bread, almonds and cream.
Masoud then called
Bismillah Khan by radio at the frontline in Jabal Saraj,
south of the Panjshir. He wanted bodies of dead Arabs
transported by helicopter as soon as possible so that he
could show them to the fake Moroccan journalists. The
long-awaited interview would be next door to his office,
in the bungalow of security chief Arif. Masoud was on
the phone when the journalists entered the room. They
were accompanied by another journalist, Fahim Dashty, a
Panjshiri who was shooting a documentary on Masoud. The
visitors showed their letters of introduction from the
Islamic Observation Center in London and from Arabic
News International. Masoud ordered green tea for all.
Masoud asked them about their trip in Taliban land. They
said that Mullah Omar had refused them an interview
because television is haram - forbidden under the
Taliban's interpretation of Sharia (Islamic Law). Ahmad
Jamshid, Masoud's personal secretary, says this was the
last time that he saw Masoud smiling.
The killer
cameraman then adjusted his tripod at a very low level,
with the camera lens pointing to Masoud's chest, about
two meters away. Masoud asked to see the list of
questions, which were then translated from English to
Persian. Jamshid, the personal secretary, went out of
the room. Dashty, the Panjshiri documentary maker, was
still adjusting his camera. Then suddenly, as the
Moroccan's camera was switched on, a "blue, thick fire"
engulfed the room, which was totally destroyed. There
was a strong smell of gunpowder. A bomb hidden in the
battery pack of the camera cut the body of the
"cameraman" in two. But the "reporter" was only slightly
injured and he tried to escape, saying that he didn't
know what happened. A bunch of Panjshiris threw him into
an empty room, and when he tried to escape through a
window he was instantly killed.
Haji Mohammad
Omar, Masoud's bodyguard for the past 12 years, ran into
the devastated room and found Masoud still seated in an
armchair, drenched in blood. With other Panjshiris they
climbed into a Toyota Hi-Lux, holding Masoud's body, and
rushed on a mad drive to Khwaja Bahauddin airstrip.
Masoud was still breathing when they boarded the
helicopter. But soon it was over. "Amir Sahib had
stopped breathing," said Haji Omar. Everybody fell
silent. When the helicopter arrived 10 minutes later at
a clinic in southern Tajikistan, doctors found that
Masoud's heart had been pierced by two pieces of
shrapnel.
A few days after September 11, a green
MI-17 Russian helicopter showed up in Panjshir Valley.
This time it was carrying CIA officials, with an
official proposal. Since 1996, Masoud had tried to
convince the US to smash the Taliban first, and then get
bin Laden. Now, the US government was finally proposing
the same thing: we need your help to smash the Taliban,
because we think that this is the way to get to bin
Laden. Since 1996, Masoud had fought the Taliban, asking
- in vain - for weapons, supplies and money from the US
and the European Union. Now, the US government was
promising weapons, supplies and a lot of money.
Masoud said a few days before his death that his
dream was to see peace in Afghanistan, and then work to
maintain peace until he died an old man. He died
relatively young, at 48, and Afghanistan is still not at
peace. Afghans still contemplate what they describe as
an ominous future. They wonder if the sacrifice of a
quintessential Afghan hero was still not enough to
placate the gods.
Meanwhile, the legend of the
Panjshir Lion lives - stronger than ever. French
intellectuals are proposing Masoud for a posthumous
Nobel Peace Prize. The Lion would have said not yet -
not until peace reigns in the land of the proud Afghans.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights
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