Tadjiks under Gen. Ahmad Shah Masood (Afghanistan)

Last modified: 2013-11-30 by ian macdonald
Keywords: tadjik | masood (ahmad shah) | northern alliance |
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image by Santiago Dotor

• Description

See also:

• Afghanistan December 1992 - September 1996
• Mujahideen and anti-Taliban groups 1980's-2001 (Afghanistan)
• Afghanistan

Many people in northern Afghanistan (ethnic Uzbeks, Tadjiks) do not support the Taliban. In 1991 general-colonel Abdul Rashid Dostum created an anti-Talib division. In 1992 he and Ahmad-shah Massood created the government of North Afghanistan and the People's Muslim Movement of Afghanistan. In fact North Afghanistan became an independent state. (...)
Victor Lomantsov, 5 April 2001

Yesterday Commander Massood was received in the European Union Parliament in Strasbourg, I saw him on television in front of the officially recognised Afghanistan national flag, horizontal triband green-white-black with golden coat-of-arms in the middle.
Armand du Payrat, 5 April 2001

All the television footage I have seen recently, including a detailed French report about Cdr. Massood showing images from 1984 through 2001 (Massood l'Afghan by Christophe de Pontilly), only showed the green-white-black flag.
Santiago Dotor, 9-10 October 2001

The other main faction of the Northern Alliance (the Tadjiks) was headed by Ahmed Shah Massood. We have seen the use of the green-white-black national flag of 1992 as their flag (with variations, though). As the internationally recognized government (until 22 December 2001 at least) was headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani, another Tadjik, it is not surprising that the Tadjik faction used this flag.
Marcus Schmöger, 19 December 2001

I support Marcus Schmöger's thesis. In the 1980s I took notes from TV programmes in ZDF-heute, heute-Journal, ARD-tagesthema, ARD-tagesschau and SFB-Nachrichtensendungen. The following flags could be seen in reports about the war in Afghanistan between the Mujahideen and the Soviet Union, used by the Pashtuns under Generals Masood and Abdul-Haq: horizontal stripes black-white-green (1:1:1), no emblem, some with shahada or inscriptions in Dari or Farsi.
Jens Pattke, 19 December 2001

In the 25th February issue of the news magazine Der Spiegel there is an article about the power struggle in Mazar-i-Sharif between General Dostum (Uzbek) and General Ustad Atta Mohammed (Tajik). The latter is shown in front of a row of T-55 tanks flowing the green-white-black horizontal triband (without coat-of-arms, proportion about 3:4). The photo seems to be a recent one.
Marcus Schmöger, 5 March 2002

Journalist Christophe de Pontilly, who is authoritative on Afghan matters and was a close friend of the late Commandant Massood, explained on France-Inter, 14 October 2002, that the name Northern Alliance was absolutely erroneous and was never coined by Massood. The real name of Massood's movement was United National Front for the Salute of Afghanistan. Northern Alliance is particularly unsuitable since Massood's movement was not restricted to the north of the country. Moreover, the often claimed opposition between Massood in the north and the Talibans in the south is an oversimplification of the situation.
Ivan Sache, 14 October 2002