Word: massoud
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Because it takes months for a book to go to press, it is entirely coincidence that Junger’s last chapter, the most recent essay, narrates his time last year with Ahmed Shah Massoud, then the leader of Afghanistan’s rebel Northern Alliance. Last year, when Junger spent a month with Massoud in the mountains of the Afghanistan, Massoud was an unknown in the western world—despite orchestrating some of the most brilliant warfare waged in the 1980s and 1990s and holding off first the Soviet Army and then the Taliban regime for years. Many...
Black mourning banners still wave across the steep gorges, pockmarked villages and invisible redoubts that make up the thin sliver of Afghanistan not conquered by the Taliban. They honor the "Lion of Panjshir," Ahmed Shah Massoud, revered commander of the anti-Taliban forces, assassinated two days before the attacks on the U.S. Yet the loose collection of Northern Alliance fighters now calling themselves the United Front, who have doggedly held their narrowing ground for five years, are filled with high hope. American bombs are coming. America will help them win the victory they couldn't win themselves...
...from dozens of Middle Eastern countries aspiring to change secular regimes into Taliban-style states but are revolutionaries from Uzbekistan and Uighur separatists from China as well. U.S. officials believe that bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 9 assassination of the leading military commander of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Taliban's chief rival for national power. In return, bin Laden and the militants are guaranteed sanctuary, plus room to set up camps to train their supporters and help to recruit fresh talent...
...Whatever the purpose, the removal of Massoud from his stronghold has presented the already splintered Northern Alliance with a leadership crisis at a critical juncture. The embattled guerrillas hold only one remaining province?northeastern Badakhashan?and Massoud's native Panjshir Valley. Attempting to fill Massoud's place as overall commander is Mohammad Fahim, a 44-year-old Panjshiri regarded as a competent military commander who lacks his former boss's magnetism and political flair...
...impossible to replace Massoud, Afghanistan's strongest champion of moderate Islam and a passionate nationalist who led the resistance against Soviet occupation, earning the title "Lion of Panjshir" for doggedly defending the valley. For years he complained about Washington's reluctance to rein in Pakistan's covert military support for the Taliban. "We have told Western countries again and again of the dangers of Taliban extremism, of bin Laden and his terrorists," he recently told TIME at his headquarters. In recent years, however, he came to be seen in some Western circles as a leader who could challenge not only...