GOVERNMENT

Ahmad Massoud

Afghanistan resistance leader

The last bastion of resistance to the Taliban following their reconquest of Afghanistan this year, the National Resistance Front led by Ahmad Massoud is fighting what many observers regard as an impossible battle from its base in the Panjshir Valley. “We Afghans find ourselves in the situation of Europe in 1940,” Massoud told the French writer Bernard Bernard-Henri Lévy in August. “Except in Panjshir, the debacle is near total, and the spirit of collaboration with the Taliban is spreading among the vanquished, who lost this war by their own failings. Only we remain standing. And we will never yield.” In a defiant statement at the end of September, amid widespread reports of a renewed Taliban offensive against Massoud’s forces, he reiterated his determination to confront the Taliban’s reign of terror. "If we give up on resistance, Afghanistan will turn into a safe haven for international terrorists,” he warned the outside world. (Photo: Reuters)