369 THE PANJSHIR VALLEY 1980-86: The Lion Tames the Bear in Afghanistan

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An in-depth look at the struggle between the charismatic rebel commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, 'The Lion of Panjshir', and the Soviet forces who fought to control the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan.

When the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, they believed if they took the cities, the country would follow. They were wrong. The Red Army found itself in a bloody stalemate in the Afghan mountains, in the strategically vital Panjshir Valley, where they faced the most able and charismatic of the rebel commanders: Ahmad Shah Massoud, the 'Lion of Panjshir'.

Time and again the Soviets and their Afghan counterparts sought to take control of the Panjshir, and time and again the rebels either rebuffed their clumsy attempts or ambushed and evaded them, only to retake the valley as soon as Moscow's attention was elsewhere. Over time, the rebels acquired new weapons and developed their own tactics - as did the Soviets. The Panjshir was not just a pivotal battlefield, it also shaped the subsequent Afghan civil wars that followed Soviet withdrawal, and the military thinking that is still informing the new Russian military.