Tribune. As often with Afghanistan, it was Bernard-Henri Lévy who alerted me. He had just received a message from Ahmad Massoud, Commander Massoud’s son. The same clear and deep gaze, the same softness in the voice, the same flame of resistance. I received him at the beginning of April, twenty years to the day after his father made his one and only trip abroad.
He then came to Paris to conjure France and Europe to act, affirming in general indifference that we were primarily concerned by what was happening then: Mullah Omar walking hand in hand with Osama bin Laden , who was still just a name on a list of criminals the United States was looking for. Five months later, Commander Massoud died assassinated by terrorists in the pay of Al-Qaida and the attacks of September 11 hit the world irreversibly. The XXIe century had just begun.
At the end of March 2021, Ahmad Massoud returned to his father’s footsteps. At Bernard-Henri Lévy’s, then at the Town Hall, we discussed at length about Afghanistan and the tragedy he already suspected of a rapid return of the Taliban to power. We took advantage of his visit to baptize an alley on the Champs-Élysées in the name of his father. A few weeks later, an Afghan presidential decree elevated me to the Order of the National Hero of Afghanistan Commandant Massoud. I was both moved and honored. This meeting and this medal materialize the deep bond that binds me to Afghanistan. This is the reason why I am writing today.
The Taliban, like the wolves in the song, therefore entered Kabul. After Kunduz, after Herat, after Jalalabad, after Kandahar, where only a few years ago the French forces had set up their main base and from which Rafale and Mirage 2000 took off daily, they are now in Kabul.
Do not fall into cynicism
In the torpor of summer, between vacations and health breaks, the chronicle of this reconquest gives rhythm to our daily readings of the press; the names of the main Afghan cities come to mind. The last time we read them was almost twenty years ago, to follow the liberation of these same cities from the yoke of the Taliban.
One could be tempted by the cynicism which would consist in saying that after all we intervened in Afghanistan for twenty years, lost soldiers there, we accompanied the return of each of these children who died for France in the courtyard of the Invalides. , we have financed a number of projects to ensure the development of this country and to strengthen the democratic spirit, and that despite all these sacrifices, all these actions, all these policies, we have failed. We might say to ourselves that we now have to learn from our defeats and pay the price, with indifference to those there who risk their lives in the face of retaliatory Taliban.
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