Taliban advance towards rebel region, opposition leader proposes unity government

The Taliban did not confirm the fighting, but they announced a mobilization of their forces towards the area: “Hundreds of mujahedin from the Islamic Emirate are heading towards the State of Panjshir to control it, after local officials state refused to hand him over peacefully. he wrote the movement on his Twitter account in Arabic.

In the midst of a very changing situation, the daily Asharq al Awsat published an interview with Masoud, quoted by the Sputnik news agency.

“We are ready to form an inclusive government with the Taliban through political negotiations, but it is unacceptable that a government characterized by extremism is formed“he said, just days after posting a column in the Washington Post calling for guns to United States to support the resistance.

“The United States can still be a great arsenal of democracy,” the son of Ahmed Shah Masoud, one of the leaders of one of the largest armed resistance groups against the invasion, wrote in the Post this week. Soviet in the 1980s. He continued. to fight in the civil war of the 1990s and against the Taliban, after coming to power in 1996.

Better known as the Lion of Panjshir, in honor of the province and valley of the same name which was his stronghold and where his son claimed to have tens of thousands of fighters now ready to fight the Taliban, he was assassinated in 2001.

Masoud Jr. confirmed in the interview that his group is in contact with the Taliban, at a time when several Afghan leaders, who in the past have openly criticized the Taliban, are discussing with them, in which the Islamist movement itself , who ruled the country in the second half of the 90s with blood and fire, as the construction of an “inclusive government”.

However, the Taliban have also assured the local and international press that they expect a “complete handover” of power, having succeeded in conquering almost all of the country’s territory, including the capital, Kabul.