Asia Times: Revival for Afghanistan's Northern Alliance?


	September 17, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Revival for Afghanistan's Northern Alliance?

ISLAMABAD - At a time when he might have been waiting in the mountains north of Kabul for a triumphant re-entry into the city, the champion of Afghanistan's opposition to the ruling Taliban was buried on Sunday.

Thousands of people gathered in the small village of Basarak in the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains for the funeral of Ahmad Shah Masoud, who died from the wounds he suffered in a suicide attack by two Arabs on September 9.

Although he was not its titular head, Masoud was the acknowledged inspiration and driving force of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of diverse ethnic and religious minorities fighting to prevent the Taliban from gaining full control of Afghanistan - it currently controls about 95 percent.

But with the United States moving for an attack on the Taliban government in response to it harboring Osama bin Laden, wanted in connection with the terror attacks on the US last week, the political landscape in Afghanistan could change dramatically overnight.

A possible crippling US attack on the Taliban, and the withdrawal of support by Pakistan, under US pressure - Islamabad is one of only three countries that officially supports the Taliban - could lead the way to the Northern Alliance filling the vacuum for a second time. The alliance was plagued by internal dissent when it ruled Afghanistan as a coalition between 1992 and 1996, before being supplanted by the Taliban.

Masoud's close relatives reported him dying in a hospital in neighboring Tajikistan on Saturday morning, although other sources say he died long before this.

Last Thursday, the Afghan opposition forces named General Mohammed Fahim, an active leader of the opposition forces since 1973, to temporarily replace Masoud, who was at that time said to be critically injured. Masoud was vice president and military commander of the opposition. The president is Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Northern Alliance officials blame bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attack on Masoud and say they will do anything to assist the US in action against the Taliban or bin Laden. "The Taliban tried to scare us and break us, cruelly killing our military leader, but they didn't succeed," Rabbani was quoted as saying by the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency.

"It is impossible to replace Masoud, but the Afghan people will unite and win," he was quoted as saying. "The Taliban are under the control of Osama bin Laden and Pakistan. Such people will be eradicated at once if God is willing," he added. The Taliban has said that it had no hand in the suicide attack.

Masoud, 48, was know as the "Lion of Panjshir" for his military acumen in defending the Panjshir Valley against the former Soviet Union during its decade-long war in Afghanistan. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and Masoud rode into Kabul on a tank in 1992, the year the pro-Moscow government fell. Masoud was defense minister in the government of Rabbani.

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