"Massoud was Tajik, and Hekmatyar Pushtun. Massoud was a shrewd and persevering guerrilla commander whose heroes were Charles de Gaulle, General Giap, Che Guevara, and John F. Kennedy, and who had proven himself in battle. Hekmatyar was a calculating, deceitful politician whose inspiration was Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, but who had started out as a communist."
Massoud also befriended Girardet, while Hekmatyar tried to kill him. Massoud appears in this book heroic, noble, and larger than life. He makes it a priority to avoid civilian deaths. He welcomes foreigners. His word is solid, his followers love him, and he risks his own life to try to achieve peace. The United States fails to seriously support him. Al Qaeda kills him two days before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Hekmatyar, who is still alive, was funded by but hated the West (the United States gave him at least a half a billion dollars), sacrificed the lives of others recklessly, attacked Afghan rivals as much as Soviet occupiers, and looked out primarily for his own selfish interests. Girardet suggests that the Pentagon may have preferred Hekmatyar largely because he spoke English. Massoud, who spoke Dari, Pushto, Urdu, Arabic, and French, was clearly a savage barbarian who could not communicate in a civilized language. Another theory Girardet cites is that the United States did not want the Afghan resistance to be too effective and end the war too quickly.
Girardet does not hold back about his feelings for these two men. He recounts admirable actions by Massoud, and the time when Hekmatyar ordered Girardet killed. The reporter immediately went to Hekmatyar's house to confront him. Massoud deployed several men to guard Girardet.
So, this story is very personal, but the author also employs Massoud and Hekmatyar, the lion and the hyena, as representations of all that was best and is worst about Afghan culture. The arrival of cable television in the 1990s and early 2000s, he writes, ended the function of travelers as bearers of news. But the arrival of foreign fighters most deeply damaged codes of hospitality and honor, introducing suicide killings and vicious religious hatred to Afghanistan, and eroding the idea of a unified Afghan nation. The drug trade and prostitution have taken their toll as well. The United States turned a blind eye to Saudi trafficking in human beings. Added to these influences, the brutality of the U.S. occupation, with its disappearances and torture, has fueled horrific violence, just as earlier missteps fueled the attacks of 9-11.
Girardet faults Afghans for where they have gone wrong, as well as faulting the Saudis and the Chinese, but be reserves the most blame for Americans and Pakistanis: "By 2000, Massoud was trying to persuade the West to understand that without Pakistani support, there was no way the Taliban could continue." But in April and May 2001, Pakistan was sending 30 trucks a day across the border. "On Vice President Cheney's orders, the U.S. government also provided the Taliban with a grant worth forty-three million dollars. While U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft later relentlessly pursued the 'American Talib' John Walker Lindh, a twenty-year-old Californian, as its scapegoat for consorting with the enemy, no action was ever taken against those within the Bush administration who supported the Taliban financially or with other means -- including American intelligence 'observers' operating with the ISI."
In 2001, Massoud made his first trip to Europe. He warned both publicly and in private meetings with U.S. officials that al Qaeda was preparing a significant strike against the West, and that Pakistan must be pressured to end its support for the Taliban. "The Taliban would not last a year without Pakistan's support," he said.
Also, four months prior to 9-11, Girardet recounts how ABC News was informed that al Qaeda was planning to hijack aircraft to attack the West. "ABC never used this information because of pressure brought by a 'certain intelligence agency,' presumably the CIA which wanted the runner [the informant] returned [to Afghanistan]."
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