The main campaign was against the Khusts, but why did the Andarabs suffer the most casualties?
Author: Farid Ahmad, editor-in-chief of "Sangar"
Today, the Shahnameh myths are repeated in the Hindu Kush. Esfandiar performs his "seven feats", Siyavash goes through the fire for honor and dignity, and Rustam mourns the dead body of Suhrab.
The least armed Hindu Kush resistance fighters are engaged in dozens of tough battles with the army of ignorance and fanaticism of the Taliban, armed to the teeth by their West-Pakistani patrons, and keep the fire of honor and dignity, defending the freedom and independence of Afghanistan at the cost of their blood and life.
The person you see in the photo is Commander Haji Abdul Rahman, known as Haji Rahman, from the village of Ghadali, Kasan Valley, Dehsalah District, Andrabs Region, Baghlan Province, who sits by the body of his son Mohammad Zaman.
On his face is a sadness that neither heaven nor earth can contain. But this grieving father, in comparison with the legend of Rustam, does not scream to shake the earth and sky and does not cry to make the birds of the air cry.
Compared to Ibrahim Khalilullah, God accepted his Ismail into the altar of freedom from the ignorance of the era of the new Nimruds. This mountain of pride and love of liberty sacrificed her child for the sake of her mother - the Motherland.
The rain of tears has dried up in the eyes of this sad old man, and he, sitting next to the lifeless body of his son, silently moans in his soul. Is there worse pain than this?
Commander Haji Rahman from the former Mujahideen and the First Resistance after the fall of the republic, along with family members, joined the ranks of the Second Resistance. Prior to that, he lost a nephew named Arbab Nurullah in the wars with the Taliban. This Rustam of our time is still in the forefront of the front with his two children and other relatives and fellow villagers.
Mohammad Zaman was about 23 years old. He was wounded during the last week's fighting in the Kasan Valley and then martyred. In recent battles, another son of Haji Rahman named Abdulhabib was also wounded.
This photo is circulating on the internet and there are many texts below it, some of which cannot be ignored.
Jakub Jasna, a writer, writes: “Death to protect life and home is an achievement of honor and dignity, for which not everyone has the courage to achieve them.”
Asad Buddha, a Hazara writer in Afghanistan, called this photo a historical depiction of the Andarabs resistance and wrote: "If one day you have to put up a statue of the Andarab resistance, this image could be it."
This photo and this story are actually a repetition of the myths of "Shahnameh" in the Karbala of the Andarabs, which, in my opinion, will represent not only the resistance of the Andarabs, but the entire resistance. It deserves to be a statue of the Second Resistance.
Why Andarabs?
Now let's talk about why we remember Andarabs as Karbala, the historical war in which the grandson of the Prophet of Islam with hundreds of his supporters was killed by Yazid?
The recent large-scale attacks by the Taliban on resistance positions in the Hindu Kush, which began on June 15 this year, have resulted in numerous casualties. The Taliban itself suffered many casualties, the number of which is not known. Only it was accurately calculated that the bodies of the group militants were transported from the battlefield to Kabul by 10 helicopters, and Taliban sources published photographs of dozens of killed commanders and militants of this group.
But the topic of our conversation is the unprecedented loss of resistance fighters in Andarabs. In these wars, about 20 commanders and soldiers of the National Resistance Front and the Freedom Front of Afghanistan were martyred, and all of them came from Andarabs.
Preliminary analysis, based on conversations with Andarabi commanders, shows that the target of the large-scale Taliban campaign was the Khosts region, where part of the territory had been liberated from the Taliban the day before. Since the Andrabs, especially the Qasan valley, are considered the backyard of the Khusts, this group wanted to encircle the region, so they sent large forces into this valley. According to reliable information received from the commander of the Resistance Front in Khusts, Baryalai Sangin, there were no losses in the ranks of his forces. And now the question arose, why were there more losses in Andrabs?
Mullah Nazukmir, commander of the National Resistance Front in Darai Jar of the Qasan Valley, lost his brother Abdul Shakur on the battlefield. Qasim Khan, his other brother, who was a simple civilian, was taken by the Taliban from his home in Dara Jar and killed. However, the forces of Mullah Nazukmir, another commander, Samir Shashani, and other commanders whose names are unknown to us, thwarted the Taliban's plan and did not allow them to surround the Khust resistance forces from the Qasan Valley.
Commander Baba Mohammadyarbek, who had just joined the forces of Mullah Nazukmir, was martyred along with two of his comrades in the battles of Darai Jar. He was the brother of Habib Andarabi, a former Baghlan provincial police chief and one of the prominent anti-Taliban figures who was killed in a May 2021 suicide attack.
The Afghan Liberation Front, another anti-Taliban force led by Yassin Zia, former army chief of staff, and Massoud Andrabi, a former interior minister and head of the Afghan National Security Directorate, also suffered heavy losses. Zubair Shoja, the commander of the special forces of the former security forces, and Siddiqullah Andarabi, the former commander of the rapid reaction detachment of the national security forces in the province of Samangan, along with his brother were killed in the battles of the Qasan Valley.
Photos of two commanders and several other soldiers from this front who died in the Qasan battles were also published. Overall, the anti-Taliban resistance fighters have lost about 20 of their comrades in 9 Taliban ground and air campaigns, which is a high number of casualties, as well as evidence of a massive Taliban program.
But this tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of commanders and soldiers. A significant number of Andarab commanders - two commanders of the Resistance Front and four commanders of the Liberation Front or vice versa - surrendered to the Taliban.
Why did it happen?
The commanders say that the reason for all this is the lack of ammunition and food, which did not reach the resistance fighters. The Taliban cut off all supply lines. It got to the point that due to lack of food, some groups avoided clashes with the Taliban and took refuge in the mountains. According to the commanders, when they found them, the soldiers were unable to move due to starvation.
Haji Rahman says in an audio recording that his son Mohammad Zaman and another commander, Shah Wali Khan, died of heavy bleeding due to the lack of a doctor and medicine.
Here another question arises, why did the leadership of the fronts not solve the problem before the start of the war? Field commanders talk about treason and internal strife in Andarab, in which generals and famous people are involved. In this material, we will not talk about this and leave this story for another time.
Now imagine what the story of Rustam and Sukhrab in the Andarabian Karbala is like and at what cost the worthy people of this region create myths for their people, their homeland, and history in general. The secret of the Andrabs' invincibility is also hidden in this.
