The son of Afghanistan’s most celebrated anti-Taliban resistance leader has escaped into neighboring Tajikistan, less than a month after vowing to defend his homeland “no matter what happens.”
Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, fled to Tajikistan shortly after the Taliban seized control of the Panjshir Valley on September 6, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, a Pentagon consultant, and two former senior Afghan government officials. Massoud was joined a few days later by Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan vice president and longtime intelligence chief, who left Afghanistan by helicopter, the senior U.S. official and two former Afghan officials said.
The Afghan Republic has fallen. Of course Saleh and Massoud both live to fight another day, and they can return when they want. They can sponsor an insurgency against the Taliban. The Taliban are good insurgents, but they are not accustomed to being on the other end of an insurgency. This could be the end of the Afghan civil war, but it is most likely the beginning of the Afghan civil war’s newest phase.