Word: massoud
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Ahmad Shah Massoud, 35, a onetime engineering student at the Soviet Polytechnic Institute in Kabul, has spent the past nine years molding the mujahedin in Afghanistan's northeast into what is widely considered the country's most effective guerrilla formation. Last May Massoud's men, who owe allegiance to Jamiat-i-Islami, one of the seven mujahedin parties based across the border in Pakistan, watched in triumph as the last Soviet and Afghan government troops retreated from the Panjshir...
After nine years of fighting, mujahedin can drive their few vehicles through the valley in daylight with little worry of attack. The government withdrawal from the Panjshir has prompted hopes in Kabul that Massoud might be coaxed into a cease-fire or even a coalition. According to Massoud, President Najibullah has even offered him a choice of top government posts in exchange for peace...
...walled farmhouse three days' ride from the Panjshir Valley, Massoud is asked if he would consider dealing with Najibullah. Amid interruptions from aides bringing intelligence reports scribbled on scraps of paper, the guerrilla chief declares, "There is no possibility of coexistence with the Communists...
Formed just one year ago by Massoud Rajavi, 40, a longtime foe of Khomeini, and his wife Maryam, the N.L.A. consists of 15,000-to-25,000 fighters, and is backed by the Iraqi regime. Although the Iranians acknowledged their defeat at Mehran, they insisted it had been inflicted by Iraqi troops using chemical weapons. Baghdad denied any involvement in the battle. At week's end, however, Iraq did claim that its forces had recaptured the oil-rich Majnoun islands east of the Tigris River, where Iranian defenders had been entrenched since...
...hostages by another Lebanese group, the freeing of Cornea was an acknowledgment by pro-Iranian terrorists of the political benefits of kidnaping. Cornea's captors noted that France had begun to take "serious steps" toward meeting their demands. In June, for example, the French compelled an Iranian opposition leader, Massoud Rajavi, and 300 of his mujahedin followers to leave France for Baghdad. In November France agreed to make an initial payment on a $1 billion loan extended in 1975 by the late Shah to the French nuclear power program...