As the Taliban set up and interim government and claimed to have conquered the holdout Panjshir region, contradictory reports had emerged over the location of top resistance leaders including Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh. While some suggested that the ongoing clashes had forced them to retreat into safer quarters, others claimed that they had fled the country. While there is still no official confirmation about their exact location, some details are now available.
For one thing, the reports claiming that they had fled to Tajikistan have now been countered by Zahir Aghbar, the Dushanbe envoy in the ousted Ashraf Ghani administration. Speaking at a news conference, he inisisted that he was in regular contact with the former First Vice President. The resistance leaders, he added, had been out of general communication channels for security reasons.
"Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh have not fled to Tajikistan. The news that Ahmad Massoud has left Panjshir is not true; he is inside Afghanistan," he was quoted as saying. Even as many countries remain indecisive about the new Taliban government, Tajikistan has thrown its weight behind the Resistance.
Despite the Taliban insisting that they had conquered Panjshir and defeated the Resistance forces, the group headed by Massoud and Saleh do not agree. They have denounced the newly announced interim government and stated that they are continuing their resistance. Panjshir, the National Resistance Movement said, had not submitted to the Taliban.
Both the NRF and the the embassy of Afghanistan have denounced the new government. On Wednesday, the embassy released a statement from the Foreign Ministry of the 'Islamic Republic of Afghanistan', condemning the Taliban government as "illegitimate and unjustifiable."
Soon after the Taliban takeover and President Ashraf Ghani's abrupt departure from the country, Saleh had declared himself the 'caretaker president’ of Afghanistan. Even as the Taliban set up their own administration, the NRF has announced its intention to set up a parallel government.
