Talk:Ahmad Shah Massoud

Another Semi-protected Edit Request 28/5/2020

If you need a source for "Massoud was assassinated at the instigation of al-Qaeda and Taliban in a suicide bombing on September 9, 2001" then Johnathon L. Lee's 2019 book "A History from 1260 to the Present" says so page 647. Paragraph from the book with relevant information is

"By the autumn of 2001 bin Laden felt he was in a strong enough position to interfere directly in Afghanistan’s internal afairs. On 9 September two Tunisian al-Qa‘ida operatives disguised as journalists were granted an interview with Ahmad Shah Mas‘ud. During their meeting they exploded a bomb concealed in a video camera, which killed themselves, Mas‘ud and several of his aides. It was the frst, but tragically not the last, instance of a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. Two days later, on 11 September 2001, nineteen Arabs, mostly citizens of Saudi Arabia, hijacked four American passenger planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center in New York and a third into the Pentagon. Te fourth plane, intended to attack the White House, crashed in a feld afer its passengers bravely fought the hijackers. In all more than 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, including six Pakistani citizens, and thousands more were injured." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.220.26.234 (talk) 17:11, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

What "defeats" did the Soviet army incur during the 1984 to 1988 period?

I think the article is comprised of hyperbole when it states that "The Soviet army and the Afghan communist army were mainly defeated by Massoud and his mujahideen in numerous small engagements between 1984 and 1988. Most sources acknowledge that the Soviet army only rarely experienced in defeats or reversals in combat during the war. The Soviets' real problem is that they did not have a strategy, or even the intention, of using their forces to achieve a military victory in Afghanistan. Generally, the Soviets engaged only in periodic, sweeping, large scale offensives designed to destroy guerrillas infrastructure and troop concentrations. Upon achieving these goals (to one degree of another), the Soviets always pulled their forces back to their starting positions. After these engagements, the guerrillas would reoccupy lost ground and begin rebuilding infrastructure and military strength. The Soviet goal was only to set back the guerrillas' capacity to wage war, if even temporarily. Therefore, it's incorrect to state that the Soviets were "defeated" tactically or strategically in any way.

As for the Afghan communist army, yes, it is quite true that it suffered regular - and sometimes colossal - defeats throughout the war. The Soviets invested considered finances, time, materiel, and other resources in a quixotic effort to build-up the battle efficiency of the Afghan communist army. Generally these Soviet efforts failed, and often the Soviet army was compelled to scatter guerrilla offensives that made ground as a result of the failures of the Afghan communist army. In this sense, the Soviets - much like the Americans afterward - incurred a massive defeat in the area of Afghan state building. But these reversals, it must be understood, rarely involved actual Soviet units being defeated on the ground by their adversaries.

As for Ahmad Shah Massoud, it must be acknowledged that he was a brilliant and successful guerrilla leader during the 1980s war. Massoud was rarely, if ever, seriously defeated by the Soviets. Massoud's success lay in his sage understanding that his forces, being just partisans, were no match in open battle for the Soviets, who possessed overwhelming firepower. Therefore, Massoud strove to achieve the next best result, which was to harass the Soviets endlessly, and retreat before their military might in slow, predetermined, organized manner. Massoud always knew the exact moment when continued resistance against Soviet offensives would be futile; at that point, he always led superbly organized and executed retreats to fallback points that had been previously established by the guerrillas. This means that Massoud's organization was flexible enough and sufficiently durable to remain in the field as a thorn in the side of the Soviets and the Afghan communists indefinitely.

One final comment. The article is in error in stating that Gorbachev's "bleeding wound" comment referred specifically to the losses of the Soviet forces in the war. That's simply not what Gorbachev meant. Rather, Gorbachev was saying that Afghanistan itself - the nation, the people, the society - were a "bleeding wound." Gorbachev was indicating that the USSR was morally and ethically at fault for turning Afghanistan into a ruin. In this sense, Gorbachev was articulating the anti-war attitude that had been typical of Soviet "liberals (to the extent that such people existed in Soviet politics) since the beginning of the conflict. Gorbachev was simply telling the world that the USSR's prosecution of the Afghan war was unconscionable, and that was one of his reasons for organizing the withdrawal in 1987-89. Kenmore (talk) 02:54, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Parent information is incorrect

Dost Mohammad Khan was a Pathan/Pakhtun speaker and Ahmed Shah Massoud was a TAJIK/Persian speaker, they are not related in any way. Please correct this mistake as it leads to disinformation for students/readers wanting to learn about history.