The killing of Hasib Panjshiri; National resistance front says its activities will continue.
Abdullah Khanjani, head of the political office of Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF), has announced that Hasib Panjshiri, one of the front’s senior commanders, was killed along with a number of his fighters during clashes in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
Khanjani described Hasib Panjshiri as one of the NRF’s prominent commanders, saying that through his activities he had become a symbol of determination, struggle, courage, and resistance.
According to Khanjani, the killing of Hasib Panjshiri inside Afghanistan demonstrates that NRF forces remain active in the country. He stressed that the commander’s death does not mean the end of the resistance movement, describing it instead as “another beginning.”
The head of the NRF’s political office also said that dozens of senior and lesser-known commanders of the group have been killed in clashes over the past several years. Nevertheless, he said, the movement’s activities and its course of resistance will continue.
Khanjani also addressed the situation of Jumma Khan Fateh, a disgruntled Taliban commander in Badakhshan. Fateh, following several weeks of tensions with the Taliban leadership and the deployment of Taliban forces in Nusay, traveled to Faizabad for talks after receiving assurances from Fasihuddin Fitrat, the Taliban’s army chief of staff.
Khanjani alleged that the Taliban had used several members of Jumma Khan Fateh’s family as “human shields” in an effort to increase pressure on him and raise the cost of his resistance. This allegation has not been independently verified.
He also accused the Taliban of pushing Afghanistan toward “civil war,” saying that, in his view, poverty, violence, extremism, oppression, and injustice have increased across the country and that the Taliban are responsible for the situation.
In response to recent remarks by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who called on opponents of the Taliban to abandon the war, Khanjani said Haqqani should first put an end to what he described as violence, arrogance, Afghanistan’s isolation, and the inhumane treatment of Afghan women before making such an appeal.
Hasib Panjshiri, widely known as “Hasib Quwa-ye Markaz,” was a prominent commander of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan. Before the fall of the republic, he joined the special units of the National Directorate of Security after completing military training and took part in various operations.
Following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021, Hasib Panjshiri went to Panjshir and continued his armed activities against the Taliban. In recent years, images and videos of him alongside NRF fighters in mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush were also circulated.
On Thursday, August 20, the Taliban announced that Hasib Panjshiri had been killed during what it described as a “complex operation by special forces.” The National Resistance Front also confirmed his death and said that its activities would continue.
Writer:Salima Aryaei
