Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Mike Waltz are calling on President Biden to recognize resistance leaders Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s vice president under Ashraf Ghani, and Ahmad Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s last major outpost of anti-Taliban resistance, as the ‘legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan.’
‘We ask the Biden administration to recognize that the Afghan Constitution is still intact, and the Afghan Taliban takeover is illegal,’ they wrote in a statement.
‘After speaking with Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh and representatives of Ahmad Massoud, we are calling on the Biden Administration to recognize these leaders as the legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan,’ said Graham, S.C., and Waltz, Fla., an Afghanistan veteran.
‘These leaders chose to stay and fight for the freedoms of the Afghan people and oppose extremism,’ the lawmakers wrote. ‘They have established a safe haven in the Panjshir valley for Americans left behind, our allies and those seeking freedom from Afghan Taliban rule. They will also be on the front lines.’
In the Panjshir valley less than an hour north of Kabul is the last region not under Taliban control after the Islamist groups lightning-fast takeover of Afghanistan. Fighters there held off the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban a decade later under Massoud’s father, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Today, the younger Massoud and Afghanistan’s former vice president hole up in the valley as they vow their forces are ready to fight, and call for Western aid.
Days after Afghanistan’s President Ghani fled the nation, Saleh declared himself ‘caretaker’ president.
Massoud says his resistance group in the Panjshir Valley has been joined by ‘Afghan special forces and other soldiers ‘disgusted by the surrender of their commanders,’ and a total of several thousand anti-Taliban fighters. About 150,000-200,000 of Afghanistan’s 38 million people live there.
Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Mike Waltz are calling on President Biden to recognize resistance leaders Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s vice president under Ashraf Ghani, and Ahmad Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s last major outpost of anti-Taliban resistance, as the ‘legitimate government representatives of Afghanistan
Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces stand guard on a hilltop in the Astana area of Bazarak in Panjshir province on August 27
Armored of a militia loyal to Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, line up, in Panjshir province, northeastern Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 26
Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces personnel prepares to take his position on an armoured humvee at an outpost in Kotal-e Anjuman of Paryan district in Panjshir province on August 23
‘I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,’ Massoud wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. ‘We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come.’
But even as Massoud has said he’s ready to fight, he called for the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. ‘We do not want a war to break out,’ he said earlier this week, according to Reuters.
‘We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation,’ he said.
Rep. Louie Gohmert on Thursday called on the Pentagon to leave its weapons with resistance fighters in the north.
‘On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, Biden will have disgracefully prevented our military from protecting Americans abroad, figuratively bowing to the very bloodthirsty organization that instigated 9-11,’ Gohmert, R-Texas, said in a statement. ‘Exit Afghanistan but leave US weapons with those militia who defeated the Taliban in the north in 2001-2002.’
Meanwhile, Republicans continued their calls for President Biden to resign over his handling of the Afghanistan evacuation.
‘Look, I’m extremely frustrated with this president,’ GOP Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy said in a press conference Friday.
He said a president needs to have ‘the faith, the trust, and the confidence’ of Americans – which he said Biden lost on Thursday after a devastating attack on Kabul airport slaughtered at least 170 people and 13 US troops.
A suicide attack by ISIS-K near the Abbey Gate checkpoint of Hamid Karzai International Airport killed and injured hundreds and took the lives of 10 US Marines.
‘There will be a day of reckoning, and we have a constitutional right,’ the Republican lawmaker threatened.
Republican Rep. Peter Meijer also heckled Biden’s handling of the chaos in Afghanistan late Thursday night, and urged Congress to reclaim its war powers authority to prevent future crises.
He said his ‘heart is absolutely broken’ for the families of the fallen troops and their fellow troops.
‘On Tuesday I saw Marines bravely managing chaos at Abbey Gate. Today, the grave risk they took to save countless lives was made terribly clear,’ Meijer wrote on Twitter, referencing a widely criticized trip he and Rep. Seth Moulton took to the airport amid the evacuation effort.
‘This was a position they should not have been in, but President Biden’s reckless withdrawal gave them no other choice.’
‘Congress needs to reclaim its authority over war powers to ensure such a catastrophe never happens again.’
The Constitutional duty to formally declare war belongs to Congress, but measures passed under the George W. Bush administration expanded the president’s authority to conduct military operations abroad.