Glavin: Afghan resistance gears up for the long, predictable battle ahead

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So it’s back to the mountains, then.

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In Afghanistan’s remote Panjshir Valley this week, the remnant of the only legitimate government remaining in Afghanistan was counting the hours, weighing its options, and urging Afghans to gird themselves for what Afghan democrats have warned about for more than a decade: an American capitulation to the Taliban, and a lonely, defiant and bloody struggle to reclaim their country’s destiny.

“Join the resistance.” That unequivocal clarion call came from the valley on Tuesday in a declaration by Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s first vice-president and the country’s legendary spymaster, who has consistently vowed that he would never submit to Taliban rule. Saleh invoked an article in Afghanistan’s constitution stipulating that in the absence, resignation or death of the president, the first vice-president takes over until elections are called.

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Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country Sunday as the Taliban were encircling Kabul. “In order to avoid the bleeding flood, I thought it best to get out,” Ghani explained. “The Taliban have won the judgment of sword and guns and now they are responsible for protecting the countrymen’s honor, wealth and self esteem.”

Saleh was a young lieutenant to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of Panjshir” who held the Russians at bay from his mountain redoubts during the bloody Soviet occupation in the 1980s, then led a guerrilla war against the Taliban during the 1990s. Massoud was assassinated in an al-Qaida suicide bomb attack two days before the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001.

There are credible reports that Saleh has assembled a contingent of Afghan special forces troops in the Panjshir Valley, and perhaps some helicopter gunships. He has won the backing of the charismatic Ahmad Massoud, son of the martyred Ahmad Shah and the leading figure in Afghanistan’s powerful Massoud clan. Local sources in Parwan province, north of Kabul, tell me that the city of Charikar has already been retaken by Afghan forces loyal to Saleh, who already has about 10,000 soldiers at his command.

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As for Ghani’s whereabouts, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign affairs office has confirmed that the former president, who had grown increasing marginalized, isolated and morose following the Trump administration’s February 2020 “peace agreement” with the Taliban, has been admitted to the UAE, on humanitarian grounds.

Saleh’s determination to retain diplomatic recognition of the Afghan republic that arose from the ashes of Taliban rule 20 years ago complicates the standpoint of both the White House and the UN Security Council, both of which have pledged to work with any government in Afghanistan that will allow humanitarian aid into the country and maintain basic human right standards.

The Taliban leadership maintains that it intends to do so, although it’s not exactly a credible claim. The Taliban have been issuing reassuring statements for several weeks, pledging to uphold women’s rights within their conception of Islamic law. But the Taliban said they were doing just that in the 1990s, too, when Afghan women were reduced to the status of slaves.

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Saleh says he’s reaching out to “all leaders” for support and consensus, but to secure his claim he would also require support from other UN member states. Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran have already offered de facto recognition to the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government-in-waiting, but the confusion about where the rest of the international community will stand wasn’t exactly cleared up this week by the conflicting statements coming out of Ottawa.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said Canada was taking a “wait and see” approach to formal recognition of the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, but his remarks required Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to backtrack, saying Canada has no plans to do anything of the kind.

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The likelihood of a guerrilla war if the U.S. went ahead and cut a deal with the Taliban has been long and widely understood as a certainty in Afghanistan. Forcing the Afghan government to enter into a “reconciliation” with the Taliban was a core policy of Barack Obama’s administration. Back then, Fawzia Koofi, a courageous member of Parliament who had been the subject of several Taliban assassination attempts, told me: “If the Taliban are brought back, you will have people in the north and the central highlands going up into the mountains.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice-president at the time, was a vocal proponent of the idea that the Afghan government should be compelled to enter into a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban, in order to allow a complete American withdrawal.

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“It started with the Obama policy of reconciliation,” Sanjar Sohail, founding editor of Hasht-e-Sobh daily newspaper in Kabul, told me. “It was then continued and followed by the Trump administration by signing a deal and even preparing the country for the arrival of the Taliban leadership. And the final ink for the arrival of the Taliban was provided by the Biden administration.”

The Obama initiative suffered a crippling blow when the eminent Berhanuddin Rabbani, the lead negotiator for the Afghan government, was assassinated by a Taliban suicide bomber who had come to a meeting at Rabbani’s compound in Kabul with a bomb concealed in his turban.

A year before his murder, Rabbani told me that he thought it highly unlikely that Afghans would tolerate any re-imposition of Taliban “values” in a power-sharing deal, and that a “return to the mountains” would be the likely result.

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The Trump administration’s February 2020 “peace agreement” with the Taliban freed them up to engage in a targeted assassination campaign that eliminated hundreds of Afghan journalists, lawyers, judges, civil-society leaders and politicians — so long as U.S. troops weren’t attacked.

Headquartered partly across the border in Pakistan, and partly from their plush hotel rooms in Doha, Qatar, Taliban leaders accelerated their campaign after Biden’s election, focusing on the massacre of Afghan soldiers and police in outlying districts. All the while, the U.S. was drawing down its already minimal troop strength — about 2,400 soldiers when Biden was elected — and removing its contractors, leaving the Afghan National Security and Defence Forces without the necessary reconnaissance, air power and technical support that it had come to reply on.

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The Taliban refused to engage in any good-faith negotiations with Ghani’s representatives, and the demoralized Afghan National Security and Defence Forces found themselves fighting for what was turning into an increasing likelihood of a Taliban-dominated “power-sharing” government in Kabul. And that’s why as many as one-third of the 360,000 uniformed Afghans put on civilian clothes and walked away.

Last weekend, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled to Uzbekistan, some on foot and some aboard 22 fixed-wing aircraft and 24 helicopters. In the confusion, one of the airplanes collided with an escorting Uzbek fighter jet. But at least the airborne materiel won’t be falling into the hands of the Taliban.

In Afghanistan, where 66,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed in fighting the Taliban, Biden’s remarks in recent days have been hard for people to stomach — especially his insinuation that Afghans aren’t prepared to fight for their own country. In his prepared remarks Tuesday, Biden said: “It’s up to Afghans to make the decision about the future of their country.” But the U.S., under Trump and now Biden, won’t let them make their own decisions.

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Three weeks ago, Ghani warned Afghan parliamentarians that all Biden had managed to do was legitimize the Taliban. “We paid a high price for peace and showed great willingness,” he said, “but instead, war was imposed on us.” While speaking sweetly to the Americans, the Taliban threatened to blow up all the dams in Afghanistan. “The Taliban are not the Taliban of the past,” Ghani said. “They have changed to become crueler.”

One senior Afghan journalist, who asked to remain anonymous owing to the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, told me Saleh’s caretaker government in the Panjshir Valley, if it survives, will have to plan for a long, drawn-out resistance. And owing to the Biden administration’s orchestration of the rapid chain of events in Afghanistan, obtaining diplomatic recognition won’t come easy.

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Opinion polls show that Afghans overwhelmingly oppose the Taliban, and on Tuesday, there was a series of coordinated anti-Taliban demonstrations in Kabul, Gazni, Jalalabad, Kunduz, Bamiyan and other centres. But it is extremely difficult to gauge support for Saleh’s initiative in the country because Taliban militants are roving the streets and the news media is closely monitored. People are extremely reluctant to express their views, fearing Taliban retribution. It is dangerous just to cover the story.

By the time of 9/11, only Pakistan — which created the Taliban in the first place — recognized the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. During the Taliban years between 1996 and 2001, Afghanistan’s place at the United Nations was occupied by the short-lived government established after the Russians were forced to withdraw. Berhanuddin Rabbani was that government’s internationally recognized president.

But the world has changed since then.

Afghans are demoralized and confused about the rapid chain of events, said Sohail, who saw what was coming back in May and emigrated to Canada.

“I feel like I have been dropped from a tall building and I am still in the middle of the fall, and I don’t know when I will touch the ground. That is how I am feeling right now.”

Terry Glavin is an author and journalist.