‘Give us weapons to battle,’ Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban militias ask U.S

Anti-Taliban resistance fighters in Afghanistan have issued an urgent appeal to President Joe Biden on Friday, as they asked the American government to ‘Back our struggle or risk the country becoming a base for attacks on the U.S.’

Rebels holed up in a remote Afghan valley, with four helicopters, hundreds of fighters and a few armored vehicles, have dispatched an envoy to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness, money and political backing for their fight.

‘We need arms, munitions to continue the fight against terrorism,’ said Ali Nazary, adding: ‘This is not only a fight against the Taliban, this is a fight against international terrorism – just as it was in the late 1990s.”

He is the head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and is due to arrive in Washington next week.

The movement is led is Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old British educated son of Ahmad Shah Masood, the most venerated of all Afghanistan’s resistance fighters.

After leading the struggle against Soviet occupation through the 1980s and then battling the rise of the Taliban, he was assassinated by Al Qaeda days before the 9/11 attacks.

Now his son is building a new rebellion in the Panjshir Valley, about 100 miles north of the capital Kabul.

Nazary said several thousand government troops had arrived there bringing whatever weapons and ammunition they could carry.

Massoud himself arrived in an army helicopter as government troops gave up the fight and Kabul fell. With him is Amrullah Saleh, who was until Sunday the nation’s first vice president and is now claiming to be ‘caretaker president.

From there, they hope to link up with smaller groups throughout the country to push back against the Taliban.

Their model is Ahmad Shah Masood’s Northern Alliance, which used western backing and media attention to fuel its fight.

‘This is not only a fight against the Taliban, this is a fight against international terrorism – just as it was in the late 1990s,’ said Nazary, who said Al Qaeda and other splinter groups had celebrated the fall of Kabul.

‘We believe in order to prevent another 9/11, in order to prevent attacks on U.S. and western allies in the region, we have to lead a resistance.’

The valley they control remains littered with the rusting carcasses of Russian tanks, testament to their fighting prowess.

On Friday, they claimed to have taken several districts in Baghlan province to the north.

However, analysts wonder whether they could survive a sustained assault from the Taliban.

For now, their priority is humanitarian help for families arriving looking for safety in the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces that is not under Taliban control.

‘Panjshir is the only safe zone in the country,’ he said.

‘We have thousands of people take shelter here. People who feel threatened have no choice to but to come to Panjshir.

‘For us it is very difficult to sustain a safe zone without humanitarian support. We need the U.S., European Union, United Nations, anyone.’

They are pinning their hopes on support from Washington, even as Biden is under intense pressure to defend his handling of the U.S. withdrawal.

Even allies such as the United Kingdom have said the hasty departure of U.S. troops was in part to blame for the stunning collapse of Afghan government forces.

Nazary chose his words carefully. His anger is with former President Ashraf Ghani who could have resigned six months ago to pave the way for a powersharing deal – instead of giving up the country as the Taliban closed in Kabul.

Instead he voiced weary frustration with Biden’s timetable.

‘What we preferred was to start the withdrawal around August, September and finish at the end of the fighting season around winter,’ he said.

‘During winter the Taliban are not that mobile, this wouldn’t have given them the opportunity to launch a blitzkrieg.’

Dailymail