Years Before Taliban Takeover, Afghan Diplomat Saw It Coming

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
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Afghan diplomat Masood Khalili had just enrolled for PhD after finishing his master’s degree from Delhi University when communists seized power in Kabul in April 1978. His father, the iconic poet and academic Khalilullah, called him from Baghdad, where he was the Afghan ambassador, to break the news. He warned Khalili that the communists had come and Russians will follow. 'Go get your PhD from the mountains of Afghanistan,' Khalilullah told his 28-year-old son. Khalili immediately left Delhi to join Afghan rebels as a political officer in Peshawar, before entering Afghanistan.

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Khalilullah’s fears came true the following year when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Khalili responded by crisscrossing the country, mostly on his donkey, for the next nine years to mobilise Afghans against the occupiers. In between dodging bullets, the red army, and KGB, Khalili made it a point to maintain diaries addressed to his wife, Sohaillah, who lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan with their son, Mahmood. By the end of the war, he had written 42 such diaries, which were published in the form of a book, Whispers of War (Sage Publications; Rs 375), in 2017. 'I was writing sometime every hour (about) the plight, suffering, fears, faith, lament, laughter and above all the hope of the people,’ he told me in an interview at a Delhi hotel.

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Three decades on, little has changed in Afghanistan, with the Taliban controlling the country again. Khalili, 70, saw it coming as he told me in 2017 that they were unable able to create honest leadership. He added Afghanistan had a president, ministers, ambassadors, but no leaders. Looking back, he said that the Afghans won against the Soviets but eventually lost because they lacked vision. 'Interference from Pakistan was quick. At that time, Iran was also helping them and Uzbekistan,' he said. 'We were in another kind of war; a war imposed on us and then the Taliban came after five years. Then the NATO forces… 9/11...' Khalili, who served in India as an ambassador and was in 2017 the Afghan envoy to Spain, remained hopeful and had his hopes pinned on the new generation. 'We have got...a really strong, new generation. I am expecting leadership from them.’ That was not to be as the Taliban took over the country again in August 2021.

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Khalili's life mirrors the tumultuous Afghan history since the Soviet take over of Afghanistan in 1979. He emerged unscathed in the anti-Soviet war but was almost killed when two suicide bombers assassinated Afghan Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001. He hovered between life and death for months in Tajikistan and Germany, with hundreds of shrapnel lodged in his body, and partial loss of vision. 'When the doctor saw my X-ray, he went, "Ah, it looks beautiful," All kinds of poetic things he said: "It looks like a night with thousands of stars, all these shrapnel".’

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Khalili survived but never really overcame the blow of losing Massoud, whom he looked up to as a visionary and fearless leader. He recalled chatting with Massoud until the midnight before his assassination. 'He was talking about Al Qaida and Taliban. He was besieged (in his stronghold of Panjsher Valley). Maybe, around him (there were) two to three thousand Taliban,' he recalled. But he told Khalili that he does not care because people were with him. Together, they recited the poetry of legendary Persian poet Hafez, someone Massoud loved. Khalili was sitting barely a metre from Massoud when the suicide bombers, posing as an interviewer and a cameraman, struck. The attackers had persisted for close to 14 days to get an appointment with Massoud. 'Commander (Massoud) said sorry (to them) for making them wait for 14 days. He was a humble man,' Khalili told me.

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Khalili recalled that the attackers had 15 questions, including eight about Osama bin Laden. They wanted to know why Massoud was against Laden etc. 'The Commander did not like the questions (but) said okay now you start.’ Khalili had just murmured something into Massoud’s ear when the attackers blew themselves up. 'I think I saw blue fire and the hand of the commander; then I was unconscious.’ Two months later, the Taliban were decimated following the American invasion after 9/11, with the help of Massoud’s loyalists.

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The news about Taliban’s fall was a bittersweet experience for Khalili, as he lay on his hospital bed. The victory was not the same without Massoud. 'We were not as close when we first met because I was older to him (and) more educated,' said Khalili. He recalled Massoud’s keenness to return to Afghanistan in 1978. He believed people needed local leaders. 'I did not know the meaning (of leadership) very well. So, he had a kind of vision. He was always a man with faith, vision, and honesty. We were making mistakes everyday, but he was the one who tried not to repeat them,' said Khalili. He added that Massoud always had a plan of action and emphasised on praying to God but also being with people. Sadly, the people were not fortunate enough to have the Lion of Panjsher with them at a time when they needed him the most.

This is a slightly edited version of a piece published in The Indian Express, the author's former employer, in 2017

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. 

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. 

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam’.