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Michael Semple is a fellow of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1985 and has served in the United Nations and European Union.
Intimidating, Assassinating, and Leading: Two Early Mujahidin Commanders Reflect on Building Resistance Fronts
Originally posted December 2009
Saleh Mohammad and Ezzatullah Atif[1] were among the angry young Afghans who, in the first three years after the 1978 coup, drove their government out of the countryside. Mobilizing the youth of their areas into clandestine networks and then refashioning these into jabhas (resistance fronts) was their first experience of leadership. Their successful mobilization laid the foundations of the war of attrition, which eventually defeated the Soviet Union and toppled its client government.
