Posted on 09/09/2006 10:20:39 PM PDT by John Carey
The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood.
Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance.
Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and Africa department, also showed The Associated Press a copy of what he said was a signed letter dated Sept. 13, 2001, from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, urging him to launch an offensive against the alliance.
In the letter, written in Arabic, bin Laden said that if America failed to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, it would decline as a superpower. But if the U.S. started fighting, he added, its economy would suffer a major blow and it would face the same destiny as the Soviet Union — whose ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan heralded its disintegration.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Cavemen shouldn’t play at economics.
Hell, even todays' journalists are only posing as journalists.
Kinda hard to tell either apart.
Free markets are *far* more flexible than the Soviet economy could ever even dream of being.
The financial drain of Afghanistan injured their economy; Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program spent them under the table and crushed their empire. It would have been cheap at twice the price.
"mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood"
I often wonder how different things would be had he lived.
I would love to hear opinions from people that have a view to, if he was just someone that could help us at that stage, or would he still be an asset at this stage of things if he had lived, ( and would this stage of things be different)?
Not much makes the press about Massood, but he was a hero to both the U.S. as well as Afghanistan.
His 2,000 tribesmen defeated 6 different Soviet Offensives headon on the battlefield, and per CCCP sources Massood's tiny band of tribesmen shot down 350 Soviet jet fighters and bombers.
You hear the endless claptrap of how Afghanistan is another Vietnam or how the U.S. will fall into the same trap in Afghanistan as did the CCCP, but that's all worthless, uneducated agitprop.
The remnants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, along with whatever is left of the Taliban, are less capable today of shooting down U.S. fighter jets than back when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and actually had air defenses, for instance. And as a sidenote: the same thing holds true in Iraq. Unlike the resistance in Vietnam and in Afghanistan against the Soviets, the insurgents left in Iraq and Afghanistan are wholly incapable of shooting down U.S. jet fighters and bombers.
This simple fact (and there are thousands of other such facts) should make it clear that the U.S. is better than the forces who tried such things in those places in the past.
I.E. something is different.
Which means that Iraq and Afghanistan today aren't like Vietnam and Afghanistan of the past.
Massood himself was entirely capable of defeating the Taliban. He was bleeding the Taliban, convincing them to go on offensives into his mountain stronghold.
Just as he defeated the Soviets, so too was he eventually going to defeat the Taliban. U.S. airpower and specops, of course, sped up that process by years, perhaps even decades, but the Northern Alliance was going to win again regardless.
And Massood never forgot who armed him against the Soviets: the U.S.
Likewise, Afghans have never forgotten that Massood liberated Afghanistan from the Soviets.
Nor will the Northern Alliance forget who aided them in defeating the Taliban and Arab Al Qaeda.
His efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan went a LONG way to helping us win the Cold War.
He had some capability to fight the Taliban - but not enough to resources to defeat them. I posted several articles about Massood in the months and years prior to 9/11, and frankly, he was on his last leg.
Prior to his death, Massood went on a speaking tour across Europe, warning about the dangers of the Taliban and seeking military and financial assistance. He was warmly received in the European capitals - but he received no help. He was deeply disappointed at the lack of response. Only when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan did the international community begin to sense the evils of Talibanism.
A few weeks before his assassination, the Taliban launched a major offensive against the Northern Alliance. Massood was losing ground daily, and it was just a matter of time until his positions were lost.
If al-Qaeda had not attacked the U.S., the Taliban would have achieved total hegemony over Afghanistan by the Winter of 2001. But since bin Laden made the tactical error of assassinating Massood just a couple of days before 9/11, the Northern Alliance still had a small pocket of territory and enough fighters to effectively help the U.S. when our troops arrived in the following weeks. They were good allies.
I think his old groups are well represented in Afghan government. There is no way Talibans/Al-Qaeda can overrun the country again, unless U.S. totally abandons it.
His faction, made up of ethnic Tajiks, is the dread enemy of Talibans, who are mostly Pashtuns.
With all of the phony 'men' in the world today, this guy truly was a LION.
Got a point there.
That said, I have to wonder if he thinks (or thought) that all "free" economies are as fragile as the Saudi one that he's familiar with. If something took out the Saudi financial center, they would be dead in the water - but he effectively took out the US's fianancial center (albeit temporarily), and all he got for his trouble was a lot of angry Americans chasing him from cave to cave and a decimated organization.
Made Especially for the Fifth Anniversary of 9-11.
5 Minute Video
Warning: Graphic Content
Masood was one of the few figures that was admired in all parts of the country. While Karzai is respected I don't think he is particularly admired.
I think the post-Taliban era would have been a greater success had he lived. He could have swayed the populace simply by voicing his opinion, like Washington or DeGaulle were able to do.
Good post. Let me extend your point further, to action on the ground. In the first two instances the opposition forces were able to engage in stand-up fights against the superpower forces. The Vietnamese and the Muj were able to actually beat the opposing armies from time to time.
Today on the otherhand the insurgents can merely lay boobytraps. They have zero capibilty to successfully engage in an actual battle and only a slight ability to even lay an effective ambush.
Neither opponent today approaches anything like an army or even an irregular army. The Mahdi Militia probably came closest. They quickly discovered that that level of "organization" will not cut it against US forces.
So his death didn't have an effect on the part of history I am interested in.
That is good news, although as an individual he sounds like like an interesting leader that we would have liked to see fulfill his promise.
"I think the post-Taliban era would have been a greater success had he lived. He could have swayed the populace simply by voicing his opinion, like Washington or DeGaulle were able to do."
As far as I know the most focused, effective, assassination of an individual by the slams since their successes in the 70s or 80s is Masood.
This is why there are no moderate muslims. All moderate muslims have been murdered.
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