Reza: Village of Botkhak

Village of Botkhak

They were shadows, they were men, they were mountain warriors against an iron invader. Afghanistan was still reeling from the shock caused by the invasion of the Russian Army supported by the puppet Afghan Government. The entire country, burning and bleeding, seemed to remain prostrate, mourning its dead. However, a resistance movement was quietly building. Rising against the 100,000 Russian soldiers, a young Commander named Massoud walked from village to village and gathered a hundred men who, according to him, would defeat the invader. At the time I was working for Time in New York and Sipa Press in Paris. I wanted to measure the ability of that immature resistance. Despite the dangers of such an expedition, with Russians stalking any author of visual proof of their destruction, I followed a group of 53 mujahidin as they launched a large-scale attack on the city of Kabul on May 14, 1983. That masterstroke on the part of the Afghan resistance induced an impact wave. The countdown to the end of the occupation in Afghanistan was ticking. I captured this image in the morning of the attack.

Reference: Reza.

Shadow warriors, cast again the bright of day and absent of color and features, stand calmly, I suppose, as if waiting for a bus to take them to work.