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Once an obscure, forgotten country.
(shooting sounds)
A place most Americans didn't know or care about.
But now Afghanistan is a global flash point, a refuge for Osama Bin Laden
and a spring board for extremists.
Taliban: "We want to make Afghanistan our base and use it to spread our fundamentalism throughout the world."
For thousands of years this country has been a crossroads in the strategic design of others.
Over more than two decades one man, perhaps more than any other,
struggled to break the cycle and free Afghanistan to choose it's own way.
He found it a mission near impossible. The United States may soon join a long list of those who've shed blood here.
But what does the world really know about this troubled tumultuous land?
Afghanistan, a crossroads of central Asia.
Where powerful mountain ranges rise twenty thousand feet, frozen solid by frigid winds and ferocious winters.
Where summers burn the landscape dry and temperatures soar to blistering heights.
More than a rugged land,
it's home to a resilient people who have survived more than their share of hardships and deprivation.
Who have endured invasions and attempted conquests for more than two thousand many years.
But why Afghanistan? Why this place? What has driven so many to abuse this forsaken land and her people.
Alexander the Great marched his armies through here in his quest to dominate the ancient world.
He built cities in Afghanistan. But in the end even his control was fleeting.
In the thirteenth century Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes came to pillage and plunder,
destroying one of the finest Islamic civilizations of the time,
but not even that daunted the Afghans or destroyed their faith.
By the eighteen hundreds, the British empire and czarist Russia
were using Afghanistan as a pawn in their struggle for geo-political control, a struggle that came to be known...
...as the great game.
British armies fought three wars in Afghanistan. They were always defeated.
The worst defeat came in eighteen-forty two when sixteen thousand troops and camp followers
were ambushed and massacred in the mountains.
Only a handful survived.
Less than one hundred years later, the lessons of history were lost, at least on the Soviet Union
which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to save a threatened communist government.
(shooting guns)
Yet again the Afghans fought back.
Yet again they drove the invaders out.
Twelve years after the soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan is still embroiled in conflict.
More than three million of her people have fled the country thirty percent of all the world's refugees.
Those who remain face massive starvation.
Infant mortality is fifteen percent.
(gun sound) (machine gun sounds)
The current struggle has all the hallmarks of a civil war. Yet in some ways it is another chapter in a regional great game.
(gun sound)
Once again the struggle isn't just over Afghanistan but something far greater.
( people speaking a different language)
On one side is the Taliban, an extremist force sponsored by neighboring Pakistan and backed
by a man whose name is now known throughout the world. Osama Bin Laden.
(Osama Bin Laden speaking another language)
The Taliban has it's roots in religious schools
and Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Critics say the Taliban's ultra conservative version
of Islam contradicts the teaching of the Koran. In Afghanistan those who do not follow their
practices risk draconian punishments.
Most women are forbidden to hold jobs outside their homes, attend school or receive proper medical care.
The Taliban have destroyed Afghanistan's cultural treasures and banned virtually all forms of entertainment
from television and music, to chess and kite flying!
Up against all this, one man, who has been fighting the Taliban and Bin Laden.
A renowned leader of the resistance that drove out the soviets.
He may know the Taliban and it's supporters better than anyone outside their inner circle.
His name?
Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Massoud: "In order to end the misery and suffering of the people of Afghanistan, to bring an end to their pain and agony
there is no other option but resistance.
Resistance against the Taliban, Pakistani religious radicals and Osama Bin Laden.
Narrator: In the fall of two-thousand, two veteran correspondents
author Sebastian Junger and photographer Reza traveled to Afghanistan to profile Massoud for National Geographic.
(music)
Massoud was born in 1953 in Kabul, the Afghan capital, when a king ruled Afghanistan.
The third of six sons in an upper middle class family, his father was a senior army officer.
As a teenager Massoud also wanted to join the army.
Massoud: From early on I wanted to enter the military and become an officer, but my father, my parents were against it.
They wanted me to become doctor or an engineer.
Narrator: But by the time he was in college, Afghan communists were infiltrating the government.
The turning point in Massoud's life came with the soviet invasion. In December 1979, the
soviets invaded the country to sure up the puppet government in Kabul.
Massoud took to the mountains with the resistance, to a remote valley where his family had vacationed since he was a child.
A natural fortress stretching seventy miles along the Panjshir river.
(speaking afghan) Massoud: "Since it is situated in the heart of Hindu Kush, it's topography makes
it more suitable for battle. Especially, defensive wars against an invading force. It is better able to resist.
In the past year Massoud emerged as a leader among the Mujahideen resistance fighters.
Massoud: "The people of Panjshir and the Panjshir environment are rugged.
The people are hearty. They are stalwart against difficulties.
Battle, hunger and hardships brought on by war. They are a people equipped with great resistance.
Spurred by cold war rivalries, the west gave money and military hardware to the resistance.
It began as a trickle under president Jimmy Carter and grew to an avalanche under president Reagan.
Over the next ten years the United States funneled more than three billion dollars to the Mujahideen.
But perhaps because of his fierce independence Massoud received very little of this aid.
(machine guns firing)
Yet with just three thousand men, he fought back nine major Soviet offenses and become known as the lion of Panjshir.
-- We heard the propaganda: "The red army, the red army, the red army!" but when we first came face to face,
When I saw the Russian's strategy
I was really surprised at the way they fought. I was astonished. And even until the end of
the time they were in Afghanistan, they never really learned how to fight against guerilla tactics.
Narrator: An exhausted and humiliated soviet union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.
-- Massoud: The fall of the Berlin wall and the independence
of eastern Europe and Central Asia were all made possible by the blood of the martyrs of Afghanistan.
Other nations like the United States also benefited.
Afghanistan was the reason that communism collapsed.
Narrator: The Wall Street Journal agreed calling Massoud the Afghan who won the Cold War.
This morning his armored units reinforced government strong point in the city.
Narrator: But Massoud's fight was not over. By the time Massoud and
his forces rode victorious into the Afghan capital, the west had all but lost interest.
By then the cold war was over.
Massoud: "These countries for which our sacrifice bore fruit should have held themselves morally responsible for Afghanistan.
They should not have abandoned the people of Afghanistan.
They should have helped in bringing peace and rebuilding Afghanistan.
But, with great regret, when they each achieved their own aims
and the soviet union was torn apart everyone went their own way.
Narrator: For several years Massoud was a dominant player in a new Afghan government.
Ahmad Shah Massoud has taken the job of defense minister.
In reality though he's the most powerful figure in the whole enterprise.
(machine guns firing)
Narrator: but long time political rivals backed by Pakistan put Kabul and Massoud's government
under siege, once again throwing the country into chaos.
(big blast)
By September 1996 Massoud's position was untenable.
He and his troops were driven out of the city.
A new force again backed by Pakistan had taken over... the Taliban.
Six years later the Taliban has made substantial advances into territory once held by Massoud and his allies.
By November two-thousand, Taliban forces have occupied the northern city of Talikan.
Massoud: Without exaggeration and without a doubt, the fight in Talikan cost the Taliban between three thousand and three thousand five hundred dead and wounded.
Of course we suffered losses too. We had more than six or seven hundred injured and three or four hundred martyrs.
Narrator: Now Massoud is preparing a major offensive to regain lost territory.
As part of their assignment for National Geographic Sebastian and Reza want to examine the nature of war in this desolate place.
-- I've never been with someone who had such tremendous responsibilities.
He's got ten, fifteen thousand men awaiting his orders to attack and it's going to happen very very soon about a mile from here.
Narrator: Many of Massoud's troops are volunteers; part time farmers and part time soldiers, all firm believers in Massoud's cause.
All painfully young.
Greatly outnumbered Massoud and his northern alliance control only a portion of Afghanistan.
But he is determined to fight back.
Massoud invites Reza and Sebastian to travel with him as he surveys his front lines.
He is designing an assault along a front that stretches hundreds of miles across northern Afghanistan.
But as far as the front may stretch, war here is measured from hilltop to hilltop. And combatants fight the terrain as much as each other.
-- Massoud works all night. He has his commanders with him, he eats dinner with them, he discusses tactics.
It's way past midnight when he finally relaxes.
He will read the Koran, he will read his books of poetry... He does not stop, he just does not stop working.
Watching him pour over an old soviet military map, trying to figure out how to attack the Taliban
and I feel like I'm watching a great chess player.
Narrator: As much care as Massoud takes with strategy and tactics he is driven most of all by his enduring faith.
(Massoud chanting)
Narrator: As Massoud continues his preparations Junger and Reza head out to get a closer look at the front.
"It's a sort of the teeth of the thing, the situation, the war we're reporting on is the very front positions.This is where it's happening .
And either they make it work up in these positions or they fail to.
Narrator: But before they reach a key outpost they meet daily reality on the front line.
Intense fire from Taliban troops across the valley.
(gun shots)
(ominous music)
(gun shots)
(more shooting)
(bombs exploding)
"Are you alright?'
Photographer: It went over us. It went past us I think.
(heavy breathing)
(more shots)
Photographer: It's very hard to describe how frightening it is. You just feel incredibly exposed you know and vulnerable.
Narrator: Massoud's men fear this could be the prelude to a major attack by the Taliban.
The commander of the post orders Younger and Reza to leave.
In the days that follow, the battle gains in intensity. Much of the hardest fighting takes place at night.
(large blasts)
(radio chatter)
Reza and Sebastian here reports that one of Massoud's assault teams has run into a mine field.
The two journalists head straight to a makeshift field hospital to check on the wounded.
-- These people if you could just see them they were hit by land mines.
They were on their positions and some of them they didn't make it to here.
They say they do not have enough medicines and enough materials just to treat them.
For a moment he just want to stop the bleeding and then he will see what he can do.
Narrator: There's little the medics can do here. The United Nations and other agencies
estimate there are more than ten million land mines strewn across the Afghan country side.
International groups have been working for a decade to clear the mines but have barely made a dent.
This is the face of war in Afghanistan. This is Afghanistan's past, present and quite possibly it's future.
-- You will see all the humanity's stories in his face, all the hopes of his mother, his father.
You are hoping that you can wake him up and say, "Hey, hey wake up, wake up!"
Narrator: At the next day's debriefing Massoud is furious at the losses.
He says land mines killed five of his men, unecessarily.
-- Massoud: "This is the same mistake that happened last time... the same mistake.
Our boys lost their lives.
I told you what to do. I went there myself and picked the spot.
You were supposed to attack from the top and work your way down.
Narrator: Only a few miles from the front, a family mourns a son lost in battle.
Abdoul Allim was killed last night at one o'clock in the morning.
Where one bullet... hit... his chest and killed him on the spot.
(crying)
Narrator: 'My boy!' the mother cries. 'My boy is martyred.'
Family members and villagers gather for a traditional Islamic funeral. They wash the young man's body,
then smooth the holy water of Mecca on his skin and wrap it in fine cotton.
The men carry him to his grave.
(Afghan man singing)
Narrator: Massoud has been dealing with death for more than two decades.
He has lost almost all of his close friends in combat or by assassination.
Massoud: "He was killed in a mine, he was killed in a ___ fighting.
The martyrdom of those friends and brothers who spent a lifetime with us in the resistance
is difficult to tolerate. But there are some things that we are forced to endure.
(music/playing flute)
-"halt"
Narrator: Another face of war in Afghanistan today... refugees.
Afghans today make up the largest refugee population on earth, inside Afghanistan as well as in a Diaspora that stretches around the globe.
(Children calling) (babies crying)
The unluckiest have nowhere to go and are driven into camps like this where thousands
of men, women and children are crammed into flimsy tents.
Photographer: I just talked to a guy who uh an old guy and he was just is town when the
Taliban took over and told him to find weapons and he couldn't find any so they bayoneted him.
And he's got this huge scar running up his stomach, but he survived.
So this time when the Taliban came for them he split. This is why he is here.
-- Yeah, well I did burn more than five hundred houses in one village that he knows about it.
So that's the reason that he said we have to flee. We cannot stay there, they will kill all of us.
Narrator: Many Afghans have lost their livelihoods, their homes, their families.
It is often the women who are left to carry on.
Many feel an intense hatred of the Taliban, which some express in moments of futile anger directed at the dead.
Photographer: He is explaining that he has two baby that was born here in the refugee camps and a very bad condition and very cold
especially and he's afraid that they will die in the cold.
At the refugee camp, a father wants Reza to see his two babies, both near death.
The twins, two brothers names Hassan and Houssein.
(weak crying)
(More babies crying)
** sniffling quiet crying
loud wail
Narrator: One of Massoud's doctors arrives, but fears there is nothing he can do to save the children.
The United Nations estimates there are seven and a half million women and children at risk of hunger and starvation in Afghanistan.
Photographer: I can't imagine that a baby that's that sick they can't even cry is gonna survive.
You see these poor kids running around and they're playing they're doing everything you see kids do
but they've got terrible skin diseases and they're hungry and their eyes are sort of hollow and you just take one look
at a kid like that and you know that he has suffered and suffered and suffered.
It's an unmistakable look.
Reza: I'm just trying to bring a voice to bring the problem to the world to show to the world what's happening.
These are how most of the people in the world living.
This is what the journalist, the photo journalist should show to the world.
The misery in war, most of it is not a particularly dramatic kind of misery, it's the long...the long suffering of civilians who are completely
helpless and just have to wait and wait and wait until peace comes.
Narrator: As great as the number of refugees was in the fall of two thousand,
recent events have spurred a new crisis.
Massoud offers Reza and Sebastian a chance to travel with him to his stronghold in the Panjshir
and to interview Taliban prisoners being held there.
On the way in, they fly over mountains and valleys perfect for hiding from and launching ambushes against an invading army.
The place they are headed is also the site of Massoud's greatest triumph against the soviets.
The strategic Panjshir valley points down like an arrow at the capital city of Kabul.
The Panjshir is also the place Massoud calls home.
(music)
As they enter the Panjshir valley, all around are reminders of how hard it is even for a super power to breach such a natural fortress.
But beyond the rusting hulks of soviet tanks they discover a different Afghanistan.
Photographer: People are... they're excited.
They're alive.
Towns are bustling and they're building houses and they're building bridges across the river.
Narrator: At home here in the Panjshir, Massoud is a different kind of leader.
A leader who can change his focus from conducting a war to discussing the proper dimensions of a child's school room desk.
His vision for Afghanistan, though rooted in traditional Islam, is very different than that of the Taliban.
Massoud: We believe that both men and women are created by the Almighty.
Both are human beings, both have equal rights.
Women can pursue an education. Women can pursue a career.
And women can play a role in society just like men.
This was our belief and it continues to be our belief.
Charma and her family have been living in the Panjshir for over a year.
She used to work as a nurse in the capital city of Kabul before the Taliban invasion.
Charma: When I saw how the Taliban was acting against women.
How they were beating people and destroying houses, I decided to leave my home.
I knew they wouldn't let me work.
Narrator: With no place to go, Charma, her husband and her four children ended up destitute.
Charma: It was so bad. We put on old ___.
We went outside to beg; educated women. Begging in the streets.
And even when we were begging, the Taliban was beating us for being out of our home. But what could I do? I had to feed my children.
When Massoud heard about the situation he helped her family find a home and gave her a job at the local hospital.
Charma: "What the Taliban is doing isn't Islam.
Islam doesn't say women shouldn't work.
I am so happy to be working here."
Narrator: Finally Reza and Sebastian are offered a rare opportunity to look the enemy in the face.
It's a moment they've been waiting for.
High on a mountain side, a small stone building serves as a prison.
There, they are able to sit down with several Taliban prisoners of war.
Quite a number of Taliban and Osama Bin Laden's soldiers come from Islamic countries outside of Afghanistan.
This man says he comes from Pakistan.
(speaking Pakistani)
Taliban prisoner: "We want to make Afghanistan our base and use it to spread our fundamentalism throughout the world.
The people of Afghanistan are all Muslim and religious.
The fundamentalists in Afghanistan... have all started their activities.
If we help them, we know that in the future we will be successful.
I myself was trained at Osama Bin Laden's base in nineteen ninety-two and nineteen ninety-three in coast.
I knew him completely and, in my opinion, he is a champion of Islam.
I spent all day in military training; commando, guerilla, intelligence.
We spent three hours a day doing one on one combat practice.
It's okay if we lose Afghanistan, if we fail to take Afghanistan.
We'll keep on trying. Or we'll try for another country.
In any case, without a base... we will continue our activities clandestinely...
...throughout the world."
Massoud: "Not only will this area see continued conflict but also with the presence of Osama
and the opportunity provided to him. Terrorist operations will spread across the world.
He's in search of opportunity and a base of operations.
Afghanistan provides him that base and the longer this opportunity is given to him...
...the more he will fan the flames of terrorism the world over."
(Laughing)
Sebastian and Reza, subdued by Massoud's prophetic words, finally make their way back to one of the aging choppers still flying.
They're on their way home, leaving Massoud to carry on his battle.
For the next year Ahmad Shah Massoud and his allies continued the lonely war against the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden.
They received little aid from the west.
He also continued to send warnings about the terrorism eminating from his homeland.
In April two thousand one, at a news conference in Paris,
Massoud had a message for President George W Bush.
[speaking afghani]
Massoud: "My message to President Bush is the following.
If he isn't interested in peace in Afghanistan,
if he doesn't help the Afghan people to arrive at their objective of peace, then the Americans
and the rest of the world will have to face the problems.
Narrator: In August he told an Indian film crew that the United States may face a terrorism beyond comprehension.
It may have been his last warning.
Just a month later on September ninth two men posing as television journalists met with Ahmad Shah Massoud.
One of the men detonated a hidden bomb, killing himself and Massoud.
Some now think that the men were on a mission from Osama Bin Laden.
As Massoud's body was carried home to the Panjshir on his helicopter for the last time, his grieving troops cried out...
"Death to Pakistan. Death to the Arabs. Death to Osama Bin Laden. "
The great game was continuing, but with new players and new rules.
Just two days after Massoud's assassination, on September eleventh, America was struck by a terrorism beyond comprehension.
This time the evils that had been able to ferment in Afghanistan and the suffering have
spread far outside it's borders with horrible consequences for the American people.