Attacks of September 11, 2001 | Afghanistan: The dead warlord is a good warlord

Front left barefoot: Ahmed Massoud in October 1990 Photo: AFP Photo Recently on YouTube I got stuck on this documentary about Afghanistan, it's a country I know nothing about and shouldn't write anything about. At least not before I've seen all the documentaries, read all the texts about them, learned all the languages ​​there, traveled to all the places there and talked to all the people there.

So. So there was this documentary. So seductive. She promised an alternative history. Of a different, freer Afghanistan. Of a September 11th that could have been prevented. The hero of the documentary would have made both possible - and fell victim to the forces of evil at the crucial moment. This Ahmed Massoud comes across as so engaging in the documentary snippets that you briefly ask yourself: Is this already the Hollywood film adaptation? 

Ahmed Shah Massoud, if you follow the documentary, was a promise of a different, almost enlightened (as we Westerners like it) and democratic (as it somewhat corresponds to our ideas) Afghanistan. Handsome, quiet, thoughtful, Massoud was an important factor in Afghan politics, and Western newspaper articles rarely forget to mention that he spoke fluent French and enjoyed poetry in his private life. 

Massoud is sometimes an issue for us. Because his murder is part of the story of 9/11. On September 9, 2001, an al-Qaeda suicide squad visited him. Disguised as journalists. The camera was a bomb, it exploded, killing the assassins and Massoud. The attack was probably part of Bin Laden's grand plan. It seemed clear that the USA would invade Afghanistan after 9/11. The strongest Taliban opponent had to be liquidated in advance. On his European tour in spring 2001, the documentary says, Massoud tried to warn that a major blow against the West was being prepared. But no one really listened.

Massoud has everything needed for a heroic narrative. He fought cleverly and piously for his people since the 1970s, was a figure of integration, and was leader of the Mujahideen, back when Islamic warriors were still fighting against the Soviets and were also heroes here. Later he was leader of the Northern Alliance and (my personal perception) part of an inscrutable mess in which half of Afghanistan was constantly busy bombing its own capital. On his trip to Europe in 2001, Massoud was the friendly, thoughtful anti-Taliban, he asked for aid, you saw him and thought: Goodness, how his charisma outshines all our Euro parliamentarians!

Attention, bugger alert. Isn't the charismatic warrior a role model that one (man!) should have overcome by the age of about ten?

After such thoughts you become quiet yourself. Aren't hero stories something to (man!) beware of? Aren't charismatics a constitutive part of the patriarchy, whether in the West, East or elsewhere? Doesn't every hero worshiper turn himself into a soldier of a so-called idea, in a world that would be much better off without armies and without ideologies?

The French diplomats in the documentary definitely succumbed to the “Lion of Panjshir.” His charm. Certainly also of his power. His biographer, the British journalist Sandy Gall, is also unmistakably proud to have taken part in Massoud's adventurous life as a fighter; he speaks of "aura." He sells the biography under the title “Afghan Napoleon.” Okay, stop! Bloody fucking Napoleon? Who has spread war across several continents and sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths?

The bugger alarm is going off really loudly. Isn't the charismatic warlord a role model that you (man!) should have overcome by the time you're around ten years old? Don't such role models for young men cause most of the violence in this world? In 2002, Massoud was posthumously nominated for the Sakharov Prize in the EU Parliament, and French politicians are also said to have brought the deceased into consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole of Afghanistan would certainly have been proud of him! At least the (as we imagine it) enlightened, democracy-friendly part? Or? 

Let's ask RAWA. This is the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. Unlike Henry Kissinger or Mother Teresa, they never received a Nobel Peace Prize. What did they say back then? Hm.

»Ahmed Shah Massoud, a well-known Afghan warlord and criminal, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This was an extremely painful insult to the freedom-loving people of Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance is nothing more than a fragile alliance of bandits with a long list of crimes and atrocities. The so-called 'war on terrorism' has eliminated the Taliban, but not the religious fundamentalism that is the root cause of all our misery."

So I sit there again. I briefly forgot: Wherever heroic stories are told, faith in heroes always wins in the end. With it the will to submit, to fall in line behind a flag. Many people enjoy the hero narrative; it gives some hope in a confusing world, but unfortunately the hope for heroes is usually part of the problem.

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