Written by
Cesare Dagliana 

 

The kamikaze attack that on September 9th 2001 killed Ahmad Shah Massud, is the beginning for a new succession of events: firstly the attack to Twin Towers on September 11th, that brought Afghanistan (since then a little-know country) to the international interest. A little turbulent, exotic and arcaic country in the common imaginary, it soon becames West’s nightmare. 

 

 Massud, the Panshir lion of Tagik origins, was famous in Europe as the mujaheddin’s mythical commander, Islamic anti-soviet guerrillas. He is known because, for ten times, he drove the Red army out from his village. He was considered one of the most progressist and pro-West politic leaders in the country. He studied in Kabul in a french high-school, his father was an officer in Afghan Army, he knew European culture and Western pro-Soviet world. He matured a deep nationalistic sense in a moderate Islamic contest. In the West many people looked at Massud as a possible political figure that could pacify the country and stop the bloody war between the warlords, which ruled the country from the Soviet occupation (1989). He was in a national government with Rabbani and Hekmatyar, but he wasn’t able to stop radical and Koranic students’ progress and consolidation, the famous talebans, which starting from South-West quickly expanded until to conquer Kabul (1996) and finally control the entire country.

The Soviet occupation (1979-1992) in Afghanistan caused new armed resistance from different ethnic groups in the region: Pashtun component (majority) in South-East provinces, in the borders Tribal Pakistans, Tagiks and Uzbeks in the North. These groups are Islamic guerrillas with different religious inspiration but equal for the same jihad idea, the Holy War, against stranger invaders and against the westernizing process introduced by Sovietic government. Divided for army plan, for their tribal and geographic belonging, Mujahedinn groups have never supported national unification but only local power. Feudal warlords, only worried about extending or maintaining their own area of influence. Sudsidized by USA funds, directed to cause Soviet crisis in Central Asia and in the strategic adjacent areas and supported by Islamic countries Sunnite in the Gulf, Saudi Arabian, EAU, and Pakistan, Islamic guerrillas continued as a low intensity war until 1982, when Sovietics, who controlled only the capital, the strategic zone, as Kabul, Kandahar, Heart, Mazar and Sharif left this area. They left more for political internal reasons than for a military defeat and it was the beginning of the internal political struggle, of civil war, of tribal battle. The country has never lived a normal life, it never experienced life out of a war economy. The war itself, with opium’s market, for the ex mujaheddin and for the new jihadist, is one of the main ways to live.

The Taleban undisputed control and the prevalence of anti-Western extremism is showed by the murder of Massud and after that of Abdul Haq ( pasthun, Islamic moderate), in the Autumn ’01. Abdul Haq imprisoned and killed on October 26th .
This led to the action of  the Us forces and started the operation Enduring Freedom, the permanent global war against the enemies of the West. US support  for the North League, a volatile and ambiguous coalition of war master, who lost the last battle of power against Talebans. Shortly, Western government took power again, but with tragic battles, under control of Loya Jirga, a tribal national council and with Hamid Karzai as a guide, later elected as Afghanistan president.