An Afghan Lion Looks at a Possible Final Stand

His troops are outnumbered, his supply lines are thin, and the sweeping hair of the once-dashing warrior is finally going gray.

Ahmed Shah Masoud, legendary Afghan guerrilla leader, is making his final stand.

As a daring young man, Masoud beat back seven Soviet invasions of his home region, earning the nickname “The Lion of the Panjsher.” Twice since 1996, he has slipped away from the Taliban, the fanatical Islamic group that has conquered all but a corner of this rugged land.

Now, as the sole remaining rebel commander in Afghanistan’s 10-year-old civil war, Masoud is holed up in the barren crags of the country’s northeast. He is rallying his troops for one last, desperate fight--for the Taliban assault that is certain to come.

“In a very short time they will attack,” Masoud said, looking up from a map at his mountain hideaway here. “But always, with the help of God, we have been able to continue our struggle and destroy our enemies.”

A romantic warrior in the mold of Lawrence of Arabia or Che Guevara, Masoud, 46, is one of the most colorful--and complex--soldiers of his time. He inspired the Ken Follett novel “Lie Down With Lions” and was portrayed in the Sylvester Stallone movie “Rambo III.” Yet he is dogged by accusations that he cut deals with the Soviet army to save his skin.

Now in his 24th year at war, Masoud still wears the cocked Afghan beret that gives his weathered face the glint of an artist. He still speaks French and dabbles in architecture. The Americans who worked with him in the 1980s during the U.S.-backed campaign to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan still recall his brilliant battlefield savvy.

“Masoud is the greatest of the Afghan war heroes,” said former U.S. Ambassador Robert Oakley, who met Masoud during the Afghan war of the ‘80s. “He was a magnificent fighter and not a butcher. He was a devout Muslim and not a fanatic. He not only survived the Soviets, he beat them.”

For all of Masoud’s escapes, the days ahead seem to be his darkest yet. His 15,000-member army relies on boy soldiers and foreign cash. Taliban troops are massing just miles away. Worst of all, the world has forgotten his country--once the Cold War’s central battleground and now just an obscure Central Asian speck.

“Masoud has survived before, but his margin for error is very thin,” a Western diplomat said. “One serious mistake, and he may not survive.”

The Afghans of the northeast, most of them ethnic Tajiks, shudder at the prospect of a Masoud defeat. They fear that the Taliban clerics will impose the same medieval brand of Islam they have in all the areas they have conquered--and that they will carry out the same sort of massacres of ethnic minorities they did last summer.

When Taliban troops briefly entered the town of Taloqan last winter, terrified villagers buried their TV sets--which are banned by the Taliban--and slaughtered a lamb to celebrate when Masoud’s men drove them out.

“Wild people,” said Ahmad Jawad, a 12-year-old student in Taloqan. “The Taliban broke all the chairs in my school. Wild men.”

Fighting to Force Elections

Masoud says he harbors no illusions about destroying the Taliban. Its forces are too strong, Masoud says, and as a minority Tajik in a country dominated by Pushtuns, he holds out little hope of heading a future government.

His bleak prospects on the battlefield present Masoud with perhaps his greatest challenge: whether he can envision a political settlement encompassing all of Afghanistan’s tribes and ethnic groups, or whether he sees in its future only more fighting.

Masoud says his plan is to take territory and force the Taliban into agreeing to hold elections. If he can do that, Afghanistan could find itself at peace for the first time in more than a quarter of a century. If he fails--if he merely hangs on--Masoud will preside over a military stalemate, and many more months of fighting and suffering.

For all his talents, he may be remembered as just another Afghan warlord, capable of great feats but unable to look beyond his own survival.

“No human being wants a war, and I would not suffer in peace,” Masoud said over a cup of tea. “I truly believe that peace will bring the best years of my life.”

Masoud, clad in a flowing cape, glanced into the bottom of his cup and tossed the dregs over his shoulder.

“If there never had been a war,” he said, “I would have been a very good architect.”

Like the country he grew up in, Masoud’s life has been dominated by fighting. Born in 1953 to a military family, Masoud joined a clique of young student activists in the 1970s who were disgusted with the country’s repressive dictatorship. They wanted a government more closely attuned to Islamic ideas.

In 1975, at the age of 22, Masoud led a revolt--later known as the Panjsher Valley Incident--aimed at toppling the regime. Most of his colleagues landed in jail, but Masoud made a narrow escape--his first of many.

After receiving military training in Pakistan, Masoud returned to Afghanistan in 1978. A Communist, pro-Soviet government had just taken power, and the arrival of Soviet troops was only months away.

Masoud went into battle and was nearly finished before he began. He was wounded in the leg, his already tiny force had dwindled to 10 men, and with winter 1979 on the way, all they had to eat were mulberries.

“All the people had left us,” Masoud recalled. “We joined hands and promised ourselves that we would either liberate our country or die here, but we would never leave.”

As the U.S.-backed tide began to turn against the Soviets, and Masoud’s troops thwarted attack after attack, the commander’s reputation grew. A student of military leaders from Charles de Gaulle to Mao Tse-tung, Masoud wore down the Soviets with hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

“He was the single most effective resistance leader in the war,” one Western diplomat said.

In 1984, the Soviet army led an invasion into the Panjsher Valley, blasting villages and scattering thousands of refugees. Helicopter gunships hunted Masoud’s men, and he recalls that his distinctive cap had suddenly become a liability.

“Everywhere we went, villagers would see our round caps and say, ‘Let’s get out of here, there is going to be bombing,’ ” he said.

Intense Propaganda Brings Support

In 1985, an eye surgeon in Kabul decided to join Masoud’s group. “What attracted me the most was the propaganda,” said Dr. Abdullah, now the deputy foreign minister in Masoud’s opposition government, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It was worse against Masoud than any other commander. I figured he had to be inflicting the most damage on the Russians.”

For all his success, Masoud received relatively little U.S. aid. Intensely independent, he alienated the Pakistani officials doling out the U.S.-bought weapons. They favored commanders who were ethnic Pushtun.

In retrospect, Oakley, the former ambassador, said, “I wish we had given Masoud more.”

Still, some American and Pakistani officials active in the war against the Soviet Union say that they distrusted Masoud--and that his reputation as a fighter is overblown. In 1983, Masoud agreed to a temporary cease-fire with the Soviets, who were then free to attack other areas. To this day, some of Masoud’s old rivals express deep bitterness at his dealings--which may have kept him alive but made their lives much worse.

“Masoud deceived everyone,” said a former commander of the moujahedeen, or holy warriors.

The American spy who headed the CIA’s efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan credited Masoud with impressive military feats. But he added that, in the later years of the war, Masoud spent most of his time preparing for the coming civil war--not fighting the Communists.

“He was not that reliable,” said Milton Bearden, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan during the war. “Toward the end, he spent most of his energies on consolidating his own position.”

Masoud said he agreed to the 1983 cease-fire to buy time to build up his forces. Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, said Masoud spent the year setting up a vast political organization across northern Afghanistan.

“Masoud was a very effective leader and a very effective fighter,” said a former CIA agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “One of the criteria of an effective fighter is, you don’t pick fights you can’t win.”

Masoud led the final drive into Kabul in 1992 and became defense minister in the new government. Shooting broke out among the moujahedeen almost immediately. The fighting, which lasted four years, destroyed Kabul and killed tens of thousands of Afghans. Thousands more were maimed, raped and robbed.

Troops Ravage Rivals Unchecked

No one accuses Masoud of ordering the atrocities, but many fault him for failing to rein in his men. In one terrible incident in 1993, documented by the State Department, Masoud’s troops rampaged through a rival neighborhood, raping, looting and killing as many as a thousand people.

“He couldn’t control his troops,” said Rubin, the Afghan expert.

When the fundamentalist Taliban army swept toward Kabul, Masoud pulled off another miraculous escape. Surrounded on three sides, Masoud waited until the last moment--4 p.m on Sept. 26, 1996--until finally ordering his forces to retreat.

“If he had ordered the withdrawal at 5, he might have been caught,” a Western diplomat said.

Masoud had saved himself once again. To this day, the commander blames the Pakistani government, which backed the Taliban, for his defeat.

“A fire was burning in my heart,” Masoud said. “I fought for years against the Soviets, and to see my capital fall again to foreigners was very painful for me.”

Last summer, as Taliban troops rolled across northern Afghanistan, they cornered Masoud in the Panjsher Valley and stood on the edge of final victory. But Masoud counterattacked and took back a piece of the country’s northeast.

Today, Masoud plots his comeback. The commander’s stride looks sure, but his plans seem a darkening dream. He shuttles around northeastern Afghanistan to boost morale of his troops, but his old, captured Soviet helicopter keeps breaking down. His front lines are full of children. In one of the war’s great twists, Masoud now relies on the Russian government to keep his army afloat. The Russians, fearful of Islamic fundamentalists on their border, are helping Masoud contain the Taliban.

During a recent celebration of Eid--Islam’s highest holiday--Masoud knelt to pray with villagers in Farkhar. In order to bow toward Mecca, some of his men had to remove their artificial limbs.

Afterward, Masoud revealed a sense of fatalism about his country--and himself. Locked in the heart of Asia, he said, perhaps Afghanistan is doomed to be forever at war, always at the mercy of the scheming of its neighbors.

And his own fate?

“Let the people decide,” Masoud said. “I am fighting a war.”