Ahmad Massoud is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who famously fought the Taliban in the 1990s, and was killed by the Al-Qaeda.
Massoud went to school in Iran, attended university in the U.K., and returned to Kabul to join Afghan politics in 2019. In 2021, after the fall of Kabul, he set up the National Resistance Front (NRF) that battles Taliban fighters from its small foothold in the Panjshir Valley.
Some 16 months after the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan seems to have gone back full circle to 1996, with new religious restrictions by the militant group, girls kept out of secondary school, and daily atrocities against men and women, including public floggings.
In this interview with Suhasini Haidar, on the sidelines of a conference in Dushanbe, Tajikistan — the first of its kind between Afghan leaders in exile, former Afghan officials, and high-level U.S. and E.U. diplomats — Massoud speaks about how the world needs to recognise unity-building among anti-Taliban forces. He called on India — that had historically helped these groups — to revive its support to them.
“India and many other countries hoped the Taliban has changed, that they are Taliban 2.0. But it is clear now, they have not changed, and they’re pushing their dogmatic ideology on the people,” he says.
Read the full interview here: Taliban’s ideologies are alien to Afghanistan: Ahmad Massoud
Interview: Suhasini Haider
Production: Richard Kujur
Published - December 10, 2022 12:00 pm IST
