Taliban are moving towards Panjshir Valley to take control of it and Massoud is waiting from last 10 days
The Taliban have said that hundreds of their fighters are heading for the Panjshir Valley, one of the few parts of Afghanistan not yet controlled by the group, even as National Resistance Front’s Ahmad Massoud has said he wanted to hold negotiations with the hardline Islamist group but that his forces were ready to fight.
Panjshir Valley is one of the few parts of Afghanistan not yet controlled by the Taliban, who claimed the country’s capital, Kabul, on August 15. Ahmad Massoud, the son of former Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, helped assemble the resistance fighters in the valley.
“Hundreds of Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate are heading towards the state of Panjshir to control it after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully,” the group wrote on its Arabic Twitter account on Sunday.
The tweet came along with a 14-second video clip showing a column of captured trucks with the white Taliban flags moving along a highway.
Ali Maisam Nazary, head of foreign relations for the Afghan National Resistance Front, has said the group is prepared for conflict if the Taliban do not negotiate.
On Monday, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said fighters have surrounded the area on three sides, adding “The Islamic Emirate is trying to resolve this issue peacefully”.
Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, said his supporters were ready to fight if the Taliban tried to invade the Panjshir Valley. “We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation. We do not want a war to break out,” he told Reuters by telephone from his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley northwest of Kabul.
Massoud and Amrullah Saleh, the country’s vice president, have gathered forces made up of remnants of regular army units and special forces as well as local militia fighters. “They want to defend, they want to fight, they want to resist against any totalitarian regime,” he told Reuters.
However, there was some uncertainty about whether the operation by Taliban forces had begun. A Taliban official told Reuters that an offensive had been launched on Panjshir. But an aide to Massoud said there were no signs that the column had entered the narrow pass into the valley and there had been no reports of fighting.
