Afghan Americans Mourn Lost Rebel

Hundreds of Afghans filed solemnly into a mosque in this industrial Bay Area suburb Sunday to mourn the loss of a fallen hero 7,000 miles away in the rocky defiles of their homeland.

Like services elsewhere in California and in Washington, this gathering paid tribute to Ahmed Shah Masoud, the charismatic rebel known as “the Lion of Panjshir,” after the remote valley that was his anti-Taliban stronghold in the northeast corner of Afghanistan.

He was assassinated Sept. 9 by two people suspected of being agents of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, an act that U.S. intelligence officials believe set the stage for the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon two days later.

Most mourners in Hayward were Tajiks, members of a Dari-speaking minority tribe concentrated in northern Afghanistan. The Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, whose 15,000- to 30,000-strong army Masoud commanded, is the main remaining opposition to the fundamentalist Taliban government in Kabul.

Several people here said they fought with Masoud in Afghanistan. Farid Noori, 29, an electrician from Oakland, rolled up his pants legs to show scars from bullet wounds he suffered as a teenage soldier.

“This man sacrificed his life for us,” Noori said, adding that he would be willing to go back to Afghanistan alongside American forces. As a speaker of Afghan dialects as well as Russian and English, he said, “I could be very useful.”

Rasul Ghulam, 32, another veteran of Afghanistan’s conflicts, said, “It is everyone’s duty to step up and kick these terrorists from the face of the Earth.”

Praised as Human Rights Champion

Throughout the afternoon, at least 600 people visited the blue and white mosque, where large portraits of Masoud hung at either side of the entrance. Over the door was a banner: “Our Sympathy and Support Goes Out To The Victims And Their Families.”

Several hundred women, their heads covered by traditional scarves, filed in through a side entrance and prayed separately from the men, in accordance with Muslim tradition.

The women praised Masoud’s championing of women’s rights. “Throughout his life he fought for a good cause,” said Zoya Fedaiy, 27, of Union City. “He respected women’s rights and all human rights.”

In northern Virginia, at an Afghan community center just a few miles from the charred Pentagon, more than 3,000 people came together in memory of Masoud.

The pale stucco building with distinctive blue turrets, shielded from the street by a row of trees, was marked by a white banner at the entrance that read: “We condemn all evil acts, mourn the loss of life and pray for America.”

Attendees, mostly natives of Afghanistan, expressed hope that the terror attacks and America’s pledge to seek justice might bring a change of leadership in their homeland. And they expressed sorrow.

“What happened--that was [a] terrible shock to all Afghan Americans,” said Abdul Roakay, 51. “Our kids were born here. This is home.”

At the Sequoia Conference Center in Orange County’s Buena Park, more than 400 people stood before two large photos of Masoud and heard readings from the Koran.

Najia Jalah, 17, of Pasadena, came in blue jeans and a black chador. Jalah said she was smuggled out of Afghanistan by her parents when she was 6 months old, and has always dreamed of returning. Her hopes, she said, had rested on Masoud’s triumph over the Taliban.

In the Bay Area, the communities of Hayward, Union City and Fremont are home to about 40,000 Afghans--the largest Afghan immigrant and refugee community in the United States. Among people here, there is no doubt that the assassination of Masoud was a precursor to the attacks on the United States.

“First there was the assassination in Afghanistan. Then there were thousands of people dying in the streets of New York,” said computer programmer Kamran Faizi, who helped organize the Sunday memorial. “Every Afghan put two and two together.”

In the area of Fremont known as Little Kabul, nearly all the Afghan stores and restaurants displayed white fliers in their windows announcing the service at the Abu Bakir Sidiq Mosque.

Nearby are several small jewelry stories selling lapis lazuli and turquoise mined in the Panjshir Valley--stones whose sales have been a major source of income for the Masoud army.

In the De Afghanan restaurant on a recent afternoon, a Dari-speaking truck driver said Masoud’s death was “like losing a brother.”

As commander of Afghanistan’s main opposition, Masoud would have been a useful ally to the United States in any retaliatory action against the nation said to harbor Bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush administration officials said late last week that they were considering a tactical partnership with the Northern Alliance as part of the anticipated U.S. military action. Despite its relatively weak position inside Afghanistan, where it controls less than 10% of the territory, the National Alliance is recognized by most countries as the legitimate government.

Its political leader is former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, and it holds the Afghan seat in the United Nations. Though the Northern Alliance has many supporters among Bay Area Tajiks, the majority of the 100,000 Afghan refugees in the United States are Pashtuns, who speak their own dialect and lean more toward the Taliban government.

They have come under scrutiny by FBI investigators looking for links with the Taliban. On Wednesday, agents interviewed an Afghan American who has been supportive of the Taliban.

David Yaar, an economics professor at Cal State Hayward who said he is a distant relative of the former king of Afghanistan, was contacted by the FBI after his name appeared in articles linking him with the Taliban.

Professor Questioned About Al Qaeda

Yaar said four FBI agents visited his home Wednesday, asking if he knew anyone connected with Bin Laden’s organization, Al Qaeda. “I said I did not know anyone and that I did not know anyone in the community who does,” Yaar said.

Yaar has a weekly economics and political commentary program broadcast by the Dari and Pushtu-language Radio Payame Afghan, which is based in Orange County but also broadcasts in Northern California. Yaar also hosted a Bay Area visit by the Taliban’s ambassador-at-large last year.

Though he generally supports the Taliban, Yaar said he opposes many of its policies, including the harboring of Bin Laden.

“I don’t know of anyone who supports Bin Laden except for a small number of fundamentalists,” Yaar said.

During the Clinton administration, Yaar said, he regularly wrote letters to senior officials urging them to build contacts with the Taliban, which began as a more moderate Islamic regime but veered sharply into fundamentalism when it took power in 1996.

“I hoped to create a bridge,” Yaar said. “I urged the Clinton administration not to push the Taliban too far because I was afraid they would become too dependent on fundamentalist forces, which is exactly what happened.”

Since Sept. 11, Yaar said, he has been trying to contact the National Security Council to suggest that a delegation of Afghan American elders be sent to Kabul to “emphasize the gravity of the situation.”

“The United States has a very precious asset in its Afghan population and they should use it,” Yaar said.

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Times staff writers Annette Kondo and Megan Garvey contributed to this story.