Afghanistan's anti-Taliban resistance not getting response in quest for international support

The fledgling anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan's unconquered Panjshir province is reportedly growing, but it's so far been unable to find any takers in its appeal for international support, The New York Times reports.

Led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban resistance fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud, the forces amassing in Panjshir have put out a call to other countries for some financial aid. But all of the governments they've talked to "are quiet," Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army who now serves as a commander for Massoud, told the Times. "America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet," he said.

Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security who the Times describes as a "vehement opponent of the Taliban," said the younger Massoud is in a "more difficult situation than his father." The elder Massoud received limited support from regional governments — Russia, India, Iran, and Tajikistan, for example — when he was fighting the Taliban in the late 1990s, but "they are not interested" now, Nabil said.

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Still, neither Nabil nor Saifi think Massoud is hopeless, the Times reports. "We're changing to a guerilla war," Saifi said. "We don't need thousands and thousands of troops to fight this war." Read more at The New York Times.