Ahmad Shah Massoud was Russia's ally

The story of Ahmad Shah Massoud, "The Lion of Panjshir" as they call him, unfortunately is another one of those stories that butchers the historical record.

The story most of us know about Massoud is that he was an ethnic Tajik and intellectual scholar. He knew 8 languages and was a famed guerrilla leader. He led a resistance against the Soviets in the Panjsher Valley surviving six offenses targeted at killing him. In 1992 he took over the communist government in Kabul. Hekmatyer Gulbuddin of Hizb i Islaami wanted Kabul for himself and rained the capitol with rockets. The ISI trained the Taliban to sweep over Afghanistan and they took Kabul in 1996, Massoud barely escaped and Gulbuddin fled to Iran. Massoud allied with his former enemy, Dostum, and they held the northeast part of Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. Two days before 9/11 two Arab men posing as journalists killed Massoud in a suicide attack.

The reality is much more complex. Summed up, Massoud secretly bargained with the Russians for aid and in return he kept the Salang Highway which ran through the treacherous Hindu Kush mountains open for the Red Army. Massoud anticipated the Soviet withdrawal and planned on replacing the government they left in Kabul

In 1983, when Massoud stopped fighting, the Central Intelligence Agency came to the disturbing conclusion that he had cut a deal with the Soviets. What made this particularly worrisome was that it was not the first time.

In 1981 and again in 1982, Massoud had stopped fighting, in exchange for Soviet offers of food, money and guarantees that the Red Army would leave his villages alone. This is an argument routinely enlisted by Massoud supporters to justify his war record. To carry that argument to its logical conclusion, we see that such actions prolonged the war by allowing 40th Army troops to be relieved of duty in the Panjshir and free to kill Afghans elsewhere, not to mention to facilitate the free-flow of war materiel to Soviet military units. For the entire occupational decade, Massoud remained in the service of his Russian patrons.

Brigadier Muhammad Yousaf, who alone was in charge of weapons distribution to the Afghan resistance and renowned author of the "Bear Trap" challenges Massoud's position. He states that Hekmatyar and Massoud each received equal arms shipments of 19-20% from the U.S. funded, ISI pipeline in spite of the fact that ISI chief General Akhtar harbored the deepest suspicions about Massoud.

Gromov would later write in his memoir "Limited Contingent" that "Massoud sometimes used to stage sham skirmishes with the Russians to put off chances of suspicions about his activities among other Mujahideen groups." A fact corroborated by the head of First Department KGB, Leonid Shebarshin, in his account of the Soviet/Afghan War, "The Hand of Moscow." Shebarshin characterized the fabled Panjshir offensives as fiction.

The Soviets also realized the strategic importance of securing their vulnerable lines of supply and communication along the precipitous Salang Highway that threaded its way through the imposing Hindu Kush massive from Hairatan to Kabul. Indeed, of such importance was this safety net for the prosecution of war, 40th Army commander General Boris Gromov noted that, "Massoud could convert the area into a graveyard for the Russian troops by only throwing rocks had he chosen to do so. We simply could not survive without keeping this area open."

source: www.rawa.org...
www.rawa.org...

in 1990 the CIA's secret relationship with Massoud soured because of a dispute over a $500,000 payment. Gary Schroen, a CIA officer then working from Islamabad, Pakistan, had delivered the cash to Massoud's brother in exchange for assurances that Massoud would attack Afghan communist forces along a key artery, the Salang Highway. But Massoud's forces never moved, so far as the CIA could tell. Schroen and other officers believed they had been ripped off for half a million dollars.

At this point in history, there exists more than 25 books written by Russian, Afghan, British, Finnish, Ukrainian and American journalists and authors that attests to Massoud's collaboration, treason and butchery against his own Afghan people.

www.rawa.org...

"He was not that reliable," said Milton Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan during the war. "Toward the end, he spent most of his energies on consolidating his own position."
Masoud said he agreed to the 1983 cease-fire to buy time to build up his forces. Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, said Masoud spent the year setting up a vast political organization across northern Afghanistan.
"Masoud was a very effective leader and a very effective fighter," said a former CIA agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "One of the criteria of an effective fighter is, you don't pick fights you can't win.

No one accuses Masoud of ordering the atrocities, but many fault him for failing to rein in his men. In one terrible incident in 1993, documented by the State Department, Masoud's troops rampaged through a rival neighborhood, raping, looting and killing as many as a thousand peopl

www.afghanistannewscenter.com...

How did such disinformation come about to begin with? Massoud attended the French high school in Kabul and had many French connections. He was smart enough to receive French journalists in Afghanistan and bestowed upon them gifts of lapis lazuli. The British also could have had continued to hold a grudge against the Pathan tribes that ousted the British empire from Afghanistan a century before and a MI 6 agent posing as a journalist (Eddie Girardet) created this Tajik hero.

Massoud wanted to partition the northern resource rich part of Afghanistan and merge it with Tajikistan to create a Greater Tajikistan.

Beginning 1980, Masoud was on the payroll of the Soviet, Great Britain, US, France,
Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and to a lesser degree Israel.
Masoud’s supporters claim he did not leave the country, this is not true.Masoud, during
the late 1970 was involved in military operations with the PLO in Lebanon, he was also
schooled (Frunze military school) in the soviet union during1985 for a brief time with
General V.I.V arennikov, soviet army chief of staf.Details of these saying can be found
in Book of “Afghanistan, Ending the Right of Soviet Terror”by Bruce G Richardson,
Published by Moverick, Bend Oregan,1996,1998,2004.

Masoud, contrary to western perception was close, Ideologically to the Muslim
Brotherhood, also known as Ekhwani.Between 1992_1995, Masoud smuggled arms to
Somalia aboard Ariana jet aircraft from Bagram.For this he was paid ten_million
dollars by Osama bin Ladin.It was also Masoud/Rabani that provided resident papers
for Osama to come to Afghanistan in 1996

www.afgazad.com...

For this reason Russia supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
www.democracynow.org...

Now I ask, did Al Qaeda really kill Massoud?