Bernard-Henri Lévy

Victim of extremely sensitive geography, of a painful history and of its own chronic under-development, Afghanistan has lived for a very long time in a state of upheaval and political and social instability.  The Soviet invasion from the north and then the invasion of Al Qaeda and Taliban extremists from the south only aggravated the country’s tragedy.  Throughout its turbulent history, the Afghan people have had to confront their enemies, but they have also had the chance to discover friends.  A certain number of these friends, like the Italian explorer Marco Polo and the Moroccan historian and explorer Ibn Battuta in the distant past and, later on, in the 1960s, the French writer Joseph Kessel, earned global renown for their works that made the rest of the world aware of Afghanistan.

In the 1960s, archeologists, the famous photographer couple Roland and Sabrina Michaud, the film maker Pierre Schoendoerffer, Father Serge de Beaurecueil, and a few diplomats, like Jean-Christophe Victor, shared their knowledge of Afghanistan, each in his own manner.

From the time of the Soviet invasion until the present, among those, little known or unknown, I have met and had the honor and pleasure of working with are French friends–doctors, nurses, journalists, photographers, humanitarians, and a few historical researchers, for whom I acted as guide and interpreter in the field.

During the 1980s, when I was working with a team in charge of providing information for an Afghan Resistance information bureau in Paris, and then, on a mission for the Afghan Embassy in France (during that touch-and-go period from September 1998 to May 2002), I had the good fortune to get to know and to work with some extraordinary friends who gave me immense and incalculable moral and material support.  It is no exaggeration to say that it is also thanks to these numerous friends that the Afghans finally won out, first of all against the Red Army, and then against the terrorist extremists of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  I would need a veritable encyclopedia to describe these friends of Afghanistan and their works, but that is not the purpose of this article.  Here, I am simply attempting to put down on the page what I learned and what I know of the commitment to action of one of our friends, Bernard-Henri Lévy, a famous figure in other domains, but a man who remains too little known in Afghanistan.

1. Bernard-Henri Lévy’s first contact with Afghanistan dates from the summer of 1981, two years after the Soviet invasion.  Through Action Contre la Faim (which he  had created in 1979), Bernard-Henri Lévy, with Philippe Roger, Gilles Hertzog, and Olivier Roy, had already put together the operation “Des Mulets  pour l’Afghanistan” [Mules for Afghanistan].  But then he took on an even more active role by proposing the idea of radio transmitters, financed by a national drive in France and in Italy, destined to provide better communications between commanders of the Resistance inside Afghanistan and, especially, improved communications between the Resistance commanders and the Afghani population in general.

To get back to the transmitters, they were conceived of in Italy by the founder of the independent Italian Radio Citta Futura, Renzo Rossellini.  And the test transmitters were delivered to Afghanistan by Bernard-Henri Lévy himself, accompanied into the field by Renzo Rossellini and Marek Halter.

So it was that in July 1981, Lévy, Jean-José Puig and Olivier Roy arrived at Peshawar, in Pakistan, the home of the seven main parties of the Afghan Resistance and where he was, in principle, persona non grata since his stay and his stated engagement in Bangladesh de 1971.  Fearing dirty tricks on the part of Pakistani intelligence, in Peshawar, he placed himself under the protection of Rabbani and his Mujahidin.

There, in a house on the outskirts of the city transformed into an armed camp, he first met Ahmad Zia Massoud, brother of the famed Commander and his representative in Peshawar, to whom he spoke of his project for Radio Kaboul Libre.  Ahmad Zia Massoud thought the idea was extraordinary and indispensable and immediately transmitted a message to Commander Massoud, in the Panjshir Valley.

The message arrive just in time.  Commander Massoud was preparing to send a delegation for a summit at Peshawar, in Pakistan.  He added the idea of this radio station to the list of priorities of his representatives and named the engineer Es’Haq, his political advisor, to direct the operations of the station in the Panjshir.

A few days later, still in Peshawar, at the home of Rabbani, Bernard-Henri Levy met the delegation representing Commander Massoud.  Among them were the leader’s older brother, Yahya Massoud, today a diplomat posted in Brussels, Younus Qanouni, today President of the Afghan Parliament, and the engineer, Es’Haq, who would head Radio Libre in the valley of Panjshir.  At this summit meeting, the project for four stations of Radio Libre broadcasting news programs in the country’s two official languages, Farsi and Pashto, on the FM airwaves was officially presented.  During the meeting, it was decided that one of the transmitters would operate in the eastern province of Kunar, another in the province of Khost in the south of the country, a third in the province of Logar, south of the capital, and a fourth in the Panjshir Valley, to the northeast of Kabul.

Among the four Radio Libre stations, the one in the Panjshir enjoyed uncontested success, because the team running it was serious and meticulous.  The station’s broadcasts covered a relatively densely populated zone from the summits of the Hindu Kish to the center of Kabul.  It would last for nearly a year before it was hit by a bomb from a Soviet plane.  Personally, I still remember it, and the sound of those radio broadcasts still buzzes in my ears.  At the time I was only 15 or 16.  I lived in my village of Astana, in the Panjshir.  At 8 in the evening, like so many others, I rushed to the home of one of the villagers who had an FM radio to religiously listen to the 30-minute-long radio program.  These 30-minute broadcasts were divided into four segments:  a chanted reading of a few verses of the Koran, a daily news bulletin, a commentary concerning the political situation in the country, interspersed with one or two patriotic songs.

After the meeting, Bernard-Henri Lévy spent the night in discussion with the delegation about regional and international geopolitics and about the political and military situation inside Afghanistan.  In all of these talks at the time, particularly those he gave after returning from his first trip to Afghanistan in September, 1981, Lévy would emphasize the impossibility of political unification of the different currents of the Resistance but press the necessity of military coordination.  He felt this distinction to be primordial.  He developed it, in particular, in an interview with Jean Bothoral which was published in Le Matin, a Paris newspaper that no longer exists.  And it should be pointed out, in passing, that if he did not believe in political unity, it is because he saw very early on the ideological gap among the seven rival parties based in Peshawar, between the two groups that were the fundamentalists and the moderates.  While the chancelleries and the great intelligence services were confusing everything, as the CIA  was indiscriminately arming both Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud and the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) was transferring American aid eight times out of ten to Hekmatyar and two times out of ten to the rest of the Mujahidin parties and commanders (and this while, inside the country, Hekmatyar’s men spent their time terrorizing the population on various pretexts, combating the other Resistance movements more often than they did the Soviet invader), Lévy saw things clearly.  At that time, the Soviets had decided to go all out on the battlefield.  The Resistance fighters and, especially, the civilian population suffered heavy casualties under the blind bombings of Soviet aviation.

A few days later, in the tribal areas, a simulation of a program of Radio Kaboul Libre took place in the presence of Commander Massoud’s representatives, and in Pakistani territory.  Because he needed «mediatic material» in order to make the French and Italian media sit up and take notice of his action upon his return, Lévy took advantage of the presence of the two brothers of Commander Massoud and his representatives to create this “inauguration”.  At the time, Ahmad Shah Massoud did not have the aura and the importance he would gain a few years later.  He was considered a Commander among dozens of others throughout Afghanistan.

Lévy and his comrades left for Dara, about twenty kilometers from Peshawar, to set up one of the stations of the free radio.  He was joined by a small group of armed Mujahidin who would escort him during his six-day journey to Badjawar, where he was to link up with the men of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the area being one of his fiefs, for the rest of the journey to the frontier province of Kunar.  He crossed the river Kunar on a makeshift raft, left for the Pech valley, then on to the valley of Chigal, the ghost town, destroyed by Soviet bombardments.  From there he continued to Asmar and Barikot, where he barely escaped a bombing, and where the real inauguration of the radio would take place.  We still have images of the Lévy of those days, bearded and turbaned, wearing traditional Afghan dress.

A few days later, back in Peshawar, in a scene right out of Kessel’s Les Cavaliers, he met five of the chiefs of the seven parties of Mujahidin in exile, seeking to convince them to agree to sign a charter relative to what would become Radio Kaboul Libre (which, unfortunately, has been lost).

Back in France, Bernard-Henri Lévy spared no effort in telling of what he had seen and popularizing the cause of the Mujahidin fighting against the Soviet invaders.  This was the first episode.  The early days of his relationship with Afghanistan.

2. The second stage began in May 1992.  He returned to Kabul, with Action Contre la Faim as a cover.  In reality, he was on a diplomatic mission, commissioned by François Mitterrand to make contact with President Rabbani.  François Mitterrand had asked that he circumvent the official diplomatic circuits and attempt to discern the intentions of the new masters of Kabul, to see what they expected of France and to study the feasibility of establishing a Centre Joseph Kessel in Kabul.  Bernard-Henri Lévy met the famous Commander Massoud, who had become the Minister of Defense and a key figure in Kabul.  The two discussed at length the idea of the creation of a great cultural center that would be called the Centre Joseph Kessel.  It would be a center for lectures and conferences in three languages (Dari, Pashto, and French) and it would have a library offering works in the same three languages as well as a regular news bulletin.  Lévy was there during the bombings and fighting initiated by Gulbuddin’s men, operating from the mountains.  He was next to Massoud on the day he went, with a light escort, to visit the many wounded in military quarters in the neighbourhood of Hazara and himself barely escaped an assassination attempt.  Lévy left Kabul in extremis, on one of the last planes of the national airline to leave the capital.  This was the second stage.

Once back in Paris, Bernard-Henri Levy delivered his report to President François Mitterrand.  This official report still exists.  It will be published one day, even though, obviously, it remained a dead letter at the time due to the fall of Kabul at the hands of the Taliban and the institution of the “Islamic Emirat of Afghanistan”, the most archaic and retrograde regime humanity has ever known.

3. Six more years went by.  It was 1998.  The Taliban controlled Kabul, the capital, and over 80% of Afghan territory.  They were supported by hundreds of mercenaries, members of Al Qaeda, and they received financial support from Arab countries and considerable logistic assistance from the Pakistani military.  Massoud was once again in the Resistance, but he was increasingly isolated in his enclave in the Panjshir.  Nearly all the other political or military leaders of the Mujahidin had fled the country for Iran or Tajikistan.  The day the press announced the fall of Taloqan, the last village that allowed Massoud’s last helicopters to make a stopover between Dushanbe and the Panjshir valley, the day when, otherwise put, the world understood that Massoud was caught in a stranglehold and threatened with asphyxiation, Lévy decided to return once more to see “The Chief”.

He called me on the telephone and we arranged to meet at the Brasserai Balzar in the Saint Germain quarter of Paris.  Over a good hot coffee, we discussed plans for this trip that was both sensitive and complicated.  The most important thing about it was that all had to be discreet and confidential.  The Taliban and the Al Qaeda networks in Central Asia must not be informed of this type of trip.  The next day, during a phone conversation, I told the Cheif of our friend Bernard-Henri Lévy’s intentions.  He thought it was an impressive idea but he was worried about security for the trip.  Two days later, the trip began with a flight from Paris to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.  Hasham Khan, my colleague at the Tashkent embassy, met Bernard at the airport and drove him by car to Dushanbe, in Tajikistan, where he took a helicopter to the Panjshir valley.  He stayed for a full week in the valley and, of course, met with the Chief several times and also encountered many other members and Commanders of the «United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan”, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance.  He went to the front lines on the plain of Shamali and on the Saland Pass, and he visited a few camps where hundreds of displaced families, fleeing the Taliban and the combat zone, had found refuge.  He attended a few meetings of the leaders of the United Front and of military commanders.  After a week of travel in difficult conditions and intense activity on the ground, he returned to Paris.  During this adventure, I think he was one of the most effective among the friends of the Afghan cause, because he was able to do so many things in such a short time and in extremely serious and dangerous circumstances.  The result of this voyage would be a major story, entitled «With Massoud», which was published in Le Monde and in several other prominent journals of the international press.  It was one of the last «great» reports on Commander Massoud’s combat against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  A Massoud who was both charismatic and a friend of thought.  Before Lévy’s departure, the two men embraced, tears in their eyes.  Bernard-Henri Lévy told Massoud that it was no longer enough to lead the war on the ground, it must be pursued on the diplomatic front, and for that he would have to come to Paris one day.  He promised to organize everything.  He said he would come himself, in the private jet of a good friend, François Pinault, to collect Massoud when the time came.  OK, said Massoud.  OK, Inch Allah, but without naming a date.  But he put Lévy in contact with the engineer Es’Haq and Dr Abdullah, two of his close companions, who would tell him the Chief was ready when the time came.  Months passed.  And soon, years.  The fighting continued.  Massoud was increasingly surrounded, and more and more isolated, abandoned.

It must be said that many friends of Afghanistan, including Bernard-Henri Lévy, Christophe de Ponfilly, Jean-José Puig, Olivier Roy, Bertrand Gallet, Mike Barry, and several others had always said that Commander Massoud must come in person to take the diplomatic initiative to meet the leaders of this world.  That no other Afghani  military and political leader had either the charisma nor the legitimacy nor the clarity of thought to bring the message of Afghanistan to the international scene.  Obviously, the military contingencies of the front line and the modesty and humble character of the Chief, who never sought the limelight, were always the insurmountable obstacles that prevented such desires from ever become anything more than wishful thinking.

Nonetheless, since June 2000, in close collaboration with General Philippe Morillon, supported and mandated by Madame Nicole Fontaine, we were on the brink of making this dream so dear to all of us, to invite the Chief to the Assembly of the Representatives of the European People at Strasbourg, a reality.  After long discussions among friends and a trip on the part of General Morillon, accompanied by Richard Cazenave, Jean-Michel Boucheron, the Belgian Senator Jusy Dubié, Bertrand Gallet and Christophe de Ponfilly, to the Panjshir valley, we managed to convince the Chief of the absolute necessity and the importance of his coming to Europe.  He had agreed in principle, but the date of the voyage wasn’t as yet set.  In December, 2000, in the capacity of permanent representative of Afghanistan to the European Parliament, I met Madame Nicole Fontaine.  During this meeting, Madame Fontaine entrusted me with the formal invitation to Ahmad Shah Massoud, who also held the title of Vice President of Afghanistan.  During the month of January, 2001, accompanied by his older brother, Yahya Massoud, we went to Khoja Bahaodine to meet the Chief.  Extremely touched by both the form and the timing, the Chief accepted the invitation with warmth and enthusiasm but asked to be able to choose the date of the trip depending on the military situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

In February of 2001, in their destructive insanity, the Taliban, supported and encouraged by the ideologues of Al Qaeda and the Pakistanis, officially decreed the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan.  The western chancelleries were completely taken by surprise and an uproar of international indignation and condemnation ensued.  General Morillon summoned me to his office in the rue St Dominique.  We called the Chief on the telephone.  The General told the Chief that the destruction of the statues of Buddha at Bamyan by the Taliban had caused a wave of shock and consternation, particularly in the capitals of the West.  And that he must seize this tragic moment to present an alternative to the Taliban, and that it was the moment to find a better tribune to carry the voice of Afghanistan.

The Chief thanked the General warmly and confirmed his forthcoming visit to Europe, all the while insisting on the confidentiality of any trip that necessitated his leaving the country.  After our limited meeting, we decided to inform the other members of the club of friends, among them Bernard-Henri Lévy, who had just returned from a trip to Africa.

The European Parliament organized all the necessary protocol for a Head of State, according to which the President of the European Parliament would greet Vice President of Afghanistan Ahmad Shah Massoud upon his arrival at the entry to the Parliament in Strasbourg.  He would be the guest at an official luncheon at the Afghan delegation and give a joint press conference with the President.  And finally, Ahmad Shah Massoud would meet all the parliamentary groups of all the various political tendencies.  In other words, they would pull out all the stops.

Later on, again thanks to the influence of General Morillon, an interview was arranged with Javier Solana, head of foreign policy and a member of the European Commission.  In Brussels, the Chief would be warmly received, with all the appropriate protocol, by the Vice Prime Minister, Louis Michel.

At the request of Dr Abdullah, our Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, I went to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s home to inform him of the voyage.  “The Chief is finally ready to leave the country,” I announced to him.  Mr. Lévy, who had just returned from South Sudan, called his friend François Pinault, who was spending the weekend with President Jacques Chirac.  Chirac was enthusiastic.  The decision was made to receive Massoud at the Elyséé, immediately and with great ceremony.  Except that—yes, except that this was the period of co-habitation, in other words the time of a muffled war between the two branches of the executive.  It seems that Matignon (Jospin) sabotaged the entire plan.  How?  With a diplomatic «cable» from the French chargé d’affaires in Kabul indicating that it was a bad idea to receive Massoud because it would endanger the security of French nationals there, in particular representatives of humanitarian organizations.  Jospin took pleasure in delivering the news to the Elysée.  And the Elysée began to fear the possibility.  «One never knows, what if it’s true?  We, the Elysée, cannot have the death of two or three humanitarians on our conscience.”  As a result, Chirac cancelled.  And so, Pinault cancelled.

The fact that Strasbourg is on French soil presented us with another dilemma.  How could it be possible that Massoud, extremely popular in France, could land on French soil and go to Strasbourg without meeting the heads of the French government?  At the last minute, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to prepare a semi-formal, semi-informal meeting, a Saturday morning breakfast, with a member of the government.  And the last thing Bernard-Henri Lévy would do would be to persuade Hubert Védrine, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had just returned from an official voyage to Brazil, to receive the Chief himself.  To this very day, Bernard-Henri Lévy regrets this disappointing flop.

5.  The last stage, finally, was the mission in 2002.  Was it Chirac’s regret?  Jospin’s?  Both?  Now that Massoud was dead, did they feel chagrined at having so shamelessly betrayed him?  In any case, together, after the fall of the Taliban, they charged Bernard-Henri Lévy with a mission:  to study France’s possible participation in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.  Bernard-Henri Lévy spent two months in Afghanistan.  In Kabul, in the absence of an official ambassador, he stayed at the embassy’s residence and acted as ambassador.  He met again with Fahim, Dr.  Abdullah, and Qanouni, the three heirs of Commander Massoud.  He became close to Karzaï, to whom he had quasi-daily access as the representative of France.  He went to Kandahar, Bamyan, Mazar e Sharif, and Jalalabad.  He saw the war lords, the intellectuals, and, simply, the people.  He travelled throughout the country.  The result of this trip was a “Report”, published by Documentation française and available on the internet.  This report contains several propositions that, had they been acted upon, might have brought an entirely different light to Franco-Afghan relations and to international aid to Afghanistan.  Among them there is one, however, that Lévy would personally take charge of:  the idea of a journal in three languages (Dari, Pashto, and French), that far-off prolongation of the Mitterrand mission of 1992, which would become Les Nouvelles de Kaboul. The journal would last for five years.  Lévy came twice a year to oversee the magazine’s “closing”s.  This magazine was completely funded by the “Fondation André Lévy”, itself completely financed by Bernard-Henri Lévy.  In 2003, I was personally fortunate to have two articles in French that I had written, about the situation in Afghanistan, published.  I still have a few issues of Les Nouvelles de Kaboul in my library.

Mehrabodin Masstan

Mehrabodin Masstan was aide de camp to Commander Massoud and the High Representative of the Republic of Afghanistan in France. He is the author of “Massoud in the heart, with and after Massoud” (with Helen Surgeres Pilar, Editions du Rocher, 2003). He now lives in Canada.

Translation by Janet Lizop