The dead man's face is everywhere, looking down from walls, staring through windshields, decorating storefronts. Ahmed Shah Massoud is Kabul's inescapable poster boy, his symbolic presence eclipsed only by his corporeal absence.
The placards -- thousands of them -- are displayed here with as much regret as respect, for Massoud, the Northern Alliance's legendary guerrilla commander, was assassinated on Sept. 9. In a nation as spare of heroes as it is of food, he is one of history's more ironic celebrities, a man who died just a few moments before his time had come.
Few feel the loss more than the eye surgeon who now occupies the main office in Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry. Abdullah Abdullah was one of Massoud's best friends. On Saturday, in a two-and-a-half-hour interview, the alliance's foreign minister repeatedly and tearfully lamented the loss of someone who might have saved the nation from its tumult.
"The fact that this one person is not among us changes everything," Abdullah said. "Afghanistan is a country without any institutions, without any systems, and what it needs in such a situation is a leader. We do not have one."
His pessimism is sobering.
On Tuesday, delegates from various factions of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition are scheduled to meet in Bonn. The purpose is to devise a transitional government. It is perhaps a start, Abdullah agreed. But sooner or later, a national leader must rise from the squabbling ranks, and the doctor said he saw no strong candidate on the horizon.
"It is very sad because we have a great opportunity now with the world focused on Afghanistan," he said. "We will try our best, but with Massoud alive things would have been totally different. We would have had a man sensitive to every issue, someone who understood how to bypass obstacles, a person whose yes was a yes and whose no was a no."
His praise for the dead implies criticism of the living. "Massoud would not have come to Kabul without a political agreement with the Pashtuns," Abdullah said.
This is an odd statement, coming as it does from the Northern Alliance's chief spokesman. Many nations, including the US, preferred that the alliance stay out of the capital until a political compromise to govern the nation could be reached among Afghanistan's various ethnic groups, especially the largest one, the Pashtuns. But the alliance, which is primarily made up of Tajiks and Uzbeks, pushed ahead anyhow.
Not every observer of recent Afghan history would agree that Massoud, who was 48, was the man to bring this woebegone nation together. As Rabbani's defense minister, Massoud was part of a failed government that led to the public's welcome of the Taliban.
But Abdullah recalled those days in Kabul, from 1992 to 1996, quite differently. He spoke of Massoud, the military genius, the caring soul, the connoisseur of poetry.
"For these past years, as everyone else failed, he kept the country from falling entirely into the hands of the Taliban," Abdullah said. "It has been a lonely struggle. He would always tell me that one day every country would be on our side. `Now, they may not know what the Taliban are really like. But they will learn and they will join us.'"
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS