- National Resistance Front has set up machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags
- ‘If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us’
PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan: Atop a craggy mountain that has withstood foreign invaders for decades, anti-Taliban fighters fire a mounted heavy machine gun into a deep valley.
They are members of the National Resistance Front (NRF) — the most prominent Afghan opposition group to emerge since the Taliban captured Kabul nine days ago.
With militia fighters and former government soldiers in its ranks, the NRF has set up machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags in anticipation of a Taliban assault on their bastion, the Panjshir Valley.
Its fighters, many of them in military camouflage fatigues, patrol the area in US-made Humvees and technicals — pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.
Many carry assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and walkie-talkies. Some pose on their vehicles with a dramatic background of snow-covered peaks in the valley, which begins around 80 kilometers north of Kabul.
“We are going to rub their faces in the ground,” said one fighter at a position in the Panjshir heights, listing past victories against the Taliban.
His comrades then raise their fists and chanted “Allah-u Akbar” (God is great).
The strategic valley — populated primarily by ethnic Tajiks — offers natural defense points, with narrow entrances in the shadow of high mountains.
“If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us,” Ahmad Massoud, one of the NRF leaders, said in a Washington Post op-ed last week.
He is the son of the late guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, revered for turning the Panjshir Valley into an anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban bastion.
The defensive preparations are familiar for Panjshir residents who saw Massoud thwart multiple Soviet assaults in the 1980s and Taliban attempts to take the area in the late 1990s.
An NRF spokesman said on the weekend that it is ready to resist any Taliban aggression but wants to negotiate with the Islamists about an inclusive government.
The Taliban have also said they want to handle the situation peacefully, but they have bared their teeth by sending hundreds of fighters to the area.
Panjshir was surrounded from three sides, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Monday.
Former vice president Amrullah Saleh, who headed to the valley after the fall of Kabul, said a humanitarian disaster was brewing.
“Talibs aren’t allowing food & fuel to get into Andarab valley,” he tweeted, referring to an area under Taliban control that abuts Panjshir from the northwest.