How to kill the Terrorist King

DUSHANBE, Apr 9 (Reuters) - Ahmad Shah Masood, commander of the armed resistance to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, arrived in Tajikistan on Monday after what he described as a successful mission to the West.

On his arrival in the capital Dushanbe, Masood was given a hero's welcome by hundreds of compatriots, who applauded and held up pictures of him.

"I had a lot of useful contacts during my visit to France," Masood, kept behind a tight chain of bodyguards, told reporters in Dushanbe airport on his arrival from Paris.

Masood, whose forces of the Northern Alliance remain loyal to ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani but control only 10 percent of Afghan territory, made a rare trip to the West last week.

During his visits to Paris and the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the veteran commander urged the world community to put pressure on Pakistan to stop backing the Taliban and condemned the destruction of giant Buddha statues by the purist movement.

"In the European Parliament, I raised questions of the necessity of putting pressure on Pakistan and of delivering humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan," Masood said.

Masood, whose programme in the ex-Soviet state bordering Afghanistan and China was kept secret, is expected to give a news conference on Tuesday.

The 47-year-old charismatic commander became widely known in the 1980s as the "Lion of Panjsher" for successful resistance to Soviet efforts to seize his strategic stronghold north of the Afghan capital Kabul.

Give us support but not weapons, says Afghanistan's Massood Strasbourg (Deutsche Presse Agentur) - Afghanistan's Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massood Thursday appealed for diplomatic support for his struggle against the Taliban but ruled out the need for foreign military aid. "We do not need foreign troops or advisors," Massood said after talks with European Parliament president Nicole Fontaine in the French city of Strasbourg.

"Our people are ready to fight," he said. Massood, currently on a first visit to Europe following an invitation by Fontaine, pressed for a tougher E.U. policy on Pakistan, viewed as the Taliban's main backers.

"Without Pakistan's support, the Taliban's military campaign would not even last a year," Massood insisted, warning that the Kabul regime wanted to extend its influence in the entire region.

Adding her voice to Massood's appeal, Fontaine said she was sending a solemn message to Pakistan: "Stop providing assistance to the fanatic and obscurantist" regime in Kabul.

Europe must now grant "political recognition to Commander Massood and his moderate version of Islam," she said.

Massood is set to bring his anti-Taliban campaign to Brussels on Friday in talks scheduled with European Union security chief Javier Solana and Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel.

Discussions on aid issues in Afghanistan are also expected with the head of the European Union's humanitarian aid office, ECHO.

But the European Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, has said that political discussions will not take place with Massood.

The E.U. has no political relations with the Taliban government, currently recognised only by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

But the E.U.'s humanitarian aid agency, ECHO, is involved in several multi-million dollar emergency aid operations throughout the country, with the focus on helping vulnerable groups including women and children.

This has prompted concerns that open European Commission support for Massood's Northern Alliance could anger the Taliban and endanger E.U.- backed humanitarian aid projects in large parts of Afghanistan.

If the Russians considered Ahmad Shah Masood as their toughest opponent in Afghanistan during their invasion, even to the point of refering to him as the "Tiger of Pjahir," and this same man is able to resist the incursions of the Taleban fundamentalists in Jabul, then here is the man that we need to end ALL terrorist cells in Afghanistan.

All we would have to do is to start a relief mission in the former Russian republic of Tajikistan for those drought ridden people, who also seem to be this man's supporters, the necessary military, logistical, and humanitarian support can place a real dent in the radical Islamic led Kabal government in Afghanistan.

This is one way from not getting sucked into another fiasco such as has been the case for the last twenty years of out anti-terrorist campaigns.

Ols Patriot

Back, but not forgotten.

True. Massood was a "freedom fighter" in the truest sense of the word. He fought the Soviet invaders bitterly. But after the war, for some reason, the free world's support went to back up a bunch of Moslem crazies. But during the war, Massod helped escort clandestine CIA and western press observers through the Kaiber Pass, at great risk to himself and his people. He was a great friend of the west, and a great defender of Afghanistan against the evil forces of communism, and the current Islamic maniacs. Unfortunately, I heard reports today that the Taliban had him assasinated.

From what I understand, the man you are talking about actually survived. The attack on the fuel depot in Afghanistan this afternoon was in retaliation for that assassination attempt. The Taliban has now declared war on us, if Bin Laden is indeed the perpetrator who planned this.

They will now have this man disrupting from the inside, while we retaliate in overwhelming force from the outside.

This is going to get very interesting, very quickly!!

It is time for us to get serious, and take this little Taliban out for good, along with other terrorist states.

Sir:

The news of this man's death are overly exagerated as Samuel Clemens would have said. As Pakistan's government is being pressured from within its extremist and fundamentalist religious population to send military aid to assist the Taleman efforts to irradicate the operating bases of Masood, India has been giving some supplimental aid but no where near enough.

To undermine the current Taleman regime in Kabul from its seemingly safe and secure base of operations, the anti-Taleman forces that are gathering under the Masood's United Front (UF) have to be supported in more indirect ways than with troops, guns, and bombs.

The Taleman government in Kabul would sooner allow the peoples in and around the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan starve in their two year old drought conditions. The cause of this indifference to the Tajik's plight is based on the fact that the Talemans are religious zealots with no tolerence of any form of religious worship than their own. The Tajiks and Masood's supporters are more moderate in their beliefs and do not believe that the West in the "Great Satin."

Besides being a good thing to do as a humanitarian gestrure, every single Takij or Masood child that is fed with American food buys a pair of hands of a future freedom fighter. And, the parents of that future freedom fighter will take up the cause in their stead until they can fight for themselves.

If the Russian might cannot break the fighting spirit in Czechnia, much less than in Afghanistan, how can American might do anything of significance in Afghanistan? We need grunts on the ground there to carry the war to the real enemy, the terrorist base camps.

Put a bounty on the heads of those terrorists, and you show honest compassion for those people's current plight, these peoples are smart enough to figure out who their true friends and real enemies are.

Readers of Frank Herbert's "DUNE" can imagine what could be unleashed on the Tamel-led governemnt in Afghanistan. Old ben Laben would be delivered up to us on a stake, along with his camel bride too.

Old Patriot P.S. And I will bring the Salsa for that BBQ

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