Acting President Amrullah Saleh
By Jon Egie with agency report
KABUL: The former Afghan government first Vice President and self-proclaimed acting President Amrullah Saleh on Saturday said that the Taliban rule won’t last long in Afghanistan.
In an interview with Euronews, speaking from the Panjshir Valley he said, “The law of the Taliban is Islamic Emirate, unacceptable to the people of Afghanistan and the election of a leader by a group is unacceptable. It is impossible for Taliban rule to last long in Afghanistan.”
According to Saleh, the Taliban have “neither external nor internal legitimacy”, and they will soon face a “deep military crisis”, with other areas besides Panjshir mounting resistance against them.
He added that the European Union “must assume its moral responsibility and support for the Afghan National Resistance, politically and morally,” reported Euronews.
For a long time, fighters in Panjshir have prevented the capture of the region from Taliban terrorists by firing a heavy machine gun into a deep valley from the top of the rocky mountain.
These fighters are from the National Resistance Front (NRF), the remaining strongest force after the siege of Kabul by the Taliban.
Ahmad Massoud (the son of famous Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and Saleh are trying to mount a challenge to the Taliban.
When asked by Euronews why he did not leave Afghanistan even after the Taliban takeover, he said, “I am a soldier of Ahmad Shah Massoud and, in his dictionary, there was no such thing as fleeing, exile and leaving the nation in bad moments. If I had escaped, I might have been physically alive, but as soon as I reached any corner of the globe, I would have died instantly.”
Ahmad Shah Massoud who was considered as Sher-e-Panjshir garnered a fearsome reputation in its fight against the Taliban in the 1990s. He also led the Northern Alliance group that helped Americans in its “war against terror”.
Saleh considers him as his Guru, who was posthumously named a national hero by former president Hamid Karzai.
When asked about the decision to release thousands of prisoners by the Afghan government that bolstered the Taliban forces, he said, “I am not a perfect human being,” he told Euronews. “But in my position as vice-president, I could not veto that decision.
Unfortunately, the Americans asked us in a very wrong and undiplomatic way to release these prisoners and threatened to cut off economic, weapons and military aid to Afghanistan. We made it clear that if we let go of these prisoners, they would go back to fight us.”
He also accused Pakistan of giving orders to the Taliban, which he called a “proxy group” for the country.
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