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Samizdata quote of the day I would like to emphasise that we by no means strive to seize full power and to dominate the Afghan policy. Our aim is not to have the upper hand in Afghanistan. No at all! What we struggle for is something else: there should be Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself – irrespective of sex – happy. I am deeply convinced that this can only be ensured by democracy and a democratically elected government, based on consensus. It is only then that we can indeed solve a number of problems that have been besetting Afghan people. The true solution lies only in such a political and social situation and only with such a type of administration when all the tribes, all the ethnic groups and all people will see themselves fairly represented.
– Ahmed Shah Masoud, the ‘Lion of the Panjshir’, one of the greatest guerilla leaders and in my view the most admirable one since the American Revolution, from an interview shortly before his assassination by Islamofascists.
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Unfortunately however democracy isn’t compatible with tribal cultures because people are simply told how to vote by their tribal elders or local equivalent.
The end result is generally that they vote for a fundamentalist order who then proceed to take advantage of the mechanisms that brought them into power (by removing them, so that it can’t happen to them – and if there’s a written constitution preventing that, changing it first.)
A very nice speech indeed; only one question: what if the “democracy and a democratically elected government” chooses by “consensus” an Islamic law that abolishes said democracy? Does he really mean a democracy, or a constitutional republic? There is a difference, even if the Democrats in the States would like people to forget it.
Masoud was pandering to western sensibilities. He was like any other Afghan warlord. He sought his own power. Tis Afghanistan’s thousand year old curse.
Love the quote. I’ve been to Afghanistan–Massoud is very well loved there still. Posters of his face adorn buildings all over the country.
Small correction: Massoud was very probably murdered by Al Qaeda agents. Several reports indicate Bin Laden himself ordered the assassination, and firsthand accounts relate, according to one reporter(Link), “two men [who] were apparently from North Africa–Alegeria, Morocco, or Tunisia . . . and said they worked for an Arab news agency.”
Finally, anyone who comes upon pictures of Kabul in the 1970’s sees the Middle East’s Paris wanna-be. (Many of us might not be so impressed at the aspiration nowadays, but back then, it was something.) Western architecture, modern influences aplenty, and graced with trees and vegetation. Wars and drought decimated the country–and with it, the hopes of a second modernist Islamic country next to Turkey. Democracy wasn’t so far fetched, one day long ago in Kabul.
Lime
No, he was not. His views were a million miles from the likes of Dostam and his ilk. He was very progressive (in all the right meanings of the word) but obviously his views for Afghanistan were not to turn into into a western democracy. In fact his vision was for an ‘Muslim Switzerland’ of different peoples. Put aside your simple bigotries just because the man was a Muslim and an Afghan.
Yes, he was like any other warlord. Note his comment:
when all the tribes, all the ethnic groups and all people will see themselves fairly represented.
What do the tribes an ethnic groups have to do with anything? His quote would have more weight if he’d left that stuff off. But, he did not. And that in itself is telling.
And it would also be irrelevant to Afghanistan. Loose the pointless libertarian utopianism and realise that the tribes and ethnic groups are not going to go away if you just wish hard enough, they will only go away though evolutionary processes. He wanted to ensure there were individual rights for people, without which nothing matters, but the realities of the multi-ethnic nation had to be dealt with. Much as they did in Switzerland for example.
Re: ” What do the tribes and ethnic groups have to do with anything? His quote would have more weight if he’d left that stuff off. But, he did not. And that in itself is telling.”
Answer: A very great deal. That is how Afghan ‘society’ is made up. Those are really the largest and most complex social groupings there. If you don’t factor them in then it’s like not factoring in the traffic on a motorway when you try to cross it on foot.
And what is it telling of? That he new what he was talking about.
He was probably the county’s best chance that’s why he was taken out by Islamist assassins.
H Lime:
The murder of Masoud occurred on September 10, 2001.
bin laden evidently wanted to make another symbolic attack that week. I can understand the people of Afghanistan still honoring Masoud. The remnants of the taliban still can’t prevent that.
Symbolic? How about substantive? ASM would have been an unbelievable ally in the Afghan War. Fortunately we managed to get some cooperation from the Northern Alliance but among other things, I don’t think an ASM-led army would have let OBL get by them.
One thing these evil people have done well is to kill the best of those who would aid us. I still remember the murder of al-Khoei in Iraq. Set back coalition plans considerably.
nichevo, et al,
In the “Senator Webb” post, I quoted and linked to something he said after 9-11. His article is very relevant to this conversation. Here is another excerpt.
The whole article is actually fairly good. Not the Jim Webb who is currently spinning for the Dems. He should go back and read some of his old stuff. I think he is letting BDS skew his judgment.
What Jim Webb said about Vietnam, in the above quote, is totally true – which makes it sad that now he is working day and night (literally) to ensure defeat in Iraq. “We should not have gone in back in 2003” – may be so (that was my view also), but it is not 2003, now it is win or lose – and Jim Webb is on the side of lose. And it is not “domino theory” to hold that lose in Iraq means lose Afghanistan and elsewhere. For it will have been “proved” that God is on the side of those (both Sunni and Shia) who interpret Islam as meaning the extermination or enslavement of non Muslims and decent Muslims (decent as in people who see morality as having an independent existance from religious doctrine – that God gave us a moral reasoning and/or a moral sence, not just a book of arbitrary rules).
Of course what Jim Webb said about Vietnam (in the above quote) was said by others – both after and during the Vietnam war. It is even said in “The Green Berets” the only film that tried to tell the truth about the war (and is hated by the “liberal” left establishment because of this).
As for “the lion” he was as Perry and others describe him. The great I.T.N. news man Sandy Gall (spelling alert) knew him well.