The Panjshir Valley is the heartland of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, also known as the Second Resistance. The Panjshir Resistance is led by Ahmad Massoud, Amrullah Saleh, and Bismillah Khan Mohammadi.
The Afghan province of Panjshir lies around 100 kilometres to the north-east of Kabul. It is still free of the Taliban, despite the fact that the extremist group gained control of the nation after US forces left. Panjshir, which means Five Lions from Persia in English, has never been captured by outsiders or Afghans. It remains a liberated zone.
The Afghan ambassador to Tajikistan, Zahir Aghbar, has stated that this region will serve as a bastion for Amrullah Saleh, the erstwhile Afghan government’s first vice president who has claimed to be the country’s acting president, in this resistance against the Taliban.
Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, also known as Bismillah Khan, was Afghanistan’s Defense Minister. He was the Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army from 2002 to 2010, and the Interior Minister of Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012.
The picture of Amrullah Saleh, the caretaker head of state, was displayed in the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In Panjshir, a photograph of Saleh and Ahmed Massoud, the son of deceased anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, has appeared on social media.
Ahmad Massoud, has requested assistance from the West. He wrote about it in a Washington Post opinion article, “I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban. We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come…The Taliban is not a problem for the Afghan people alone. Under Taliban control, Afghanistan will without doubt become ground zero of radical Islamist terrorism; plots against democracies will be hatched here once again.”
The Northern Alliance
Even during the Soviet invasions of Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, Panjshir served as a fortress, and it is currently the epicentre of an anti-Taliban front. The northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban coalition, is hoping to make a comeback from here. In Panjshir, the northern alliance flag flew high, signalling resistance and a willingness to fight.
The Northern Alliance was a military front formed in 1996 to combat the Taliban, including Iran, India, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan as supporters.
Between 1996 and 2001, the Norther Alliance was instrumental in preventing the Taliban from seizing control of the entire nation.
However, with the Taliban gaining momentum, hanging on to the final stronghold may be difficult, since Afghan soldiers have been forced to surrender to the Taliban. In actuality, Taliban strongholds currently surround Panjshir.