Hundreds of Taliban fighters are on their way to the Panjshir Valley, which is currently the epicentre of resistance in war-torn Afghanistan, while Ahmad Massoud of the National Resistance Front has said he wants to negotiate with the hardline Islamist group but that his forces are ready to fight.
Hundreds of fighters were heading towards Panjshir, according to the Taliban’s Alemarah Twitter feed, “after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully.” The tweet was accompanied by a 14-second video clip of a column of captured trucks moving along a highway with white Taliban flags.
Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, said his supporters were ready to fight if the Taliban tried to invade the Panjshir Valley. “We want to make the Taliban realise that the only way forward is through negotiation. We do not want a war to break out,” he told Reuters by telephone from his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley northwest of Kabul.
He and Amrullah Saleh, the country’s vice president, have gathered forces made up of remnants of regular army units and special forces as well as local militia fighters. “They want to defend, they want to fight, they want to resist against any totalitarian regime,” he told Reuters.
According to Reuters, there is some doubt about whether the Taliban have started their operation. It quoted a Taliban official as saying that an offensive on Panjshir had begun, but one of Massoud’s aides said there were no signs that the column had entered the valley’s narrow pass, and there had been no reports of fighting.
Experts have said that the resistance fighters gathered at Panjshir Valley will have to struggle if the Islamist hardliners launch a full-scale attack. “The resistance for the moment is just verbal because the Taliban have not yet tried to enter the Panjshir. The Taliban only need to lock down the Panjshir, they don’t even have to go in there,” Dorronsoro told news agency AFP. “The Taliban surround Panjshir from all sides and I don’t think Massoud’s son can resist much more than a couple of months. For the moment, he does not have any really strong support,” Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher, told AFP.
Last week, anti-Taliban forces reclaimed three districts in Baghlan’s northern province of Baghlan, which borders Panjshir. However, Massoud claimed that the operation was not organised by him and that it was carried out by local militia groups in response to “brutality” in the area.
Anti-Taliban fighters seized the Pul-e-Hisar, Deh Salah, and Banu districts in Baghlan province on Friday, but the Taliban recaptured Banu on Saturday, and fighting is underway to retake two more districts, according to Afghan television channel Tolo News on Sunday.
