For years the Soviet Union tried to hunt down and kill Ahmed Shah Massoud, a highly effective Afghani commander who had helped thwart the former superpower’s occupation of its downtrodden neighbor to the south. Soviet intelligence knew the rugged, barren mountain range where he roamed, and they had a fleet of jets and bombers employed to blow him to pieces. Yet the heralded Red Army could not find the legendary soldier, much less execute him.

“He was always able to outfox them,” says David Edwards, a leading American scholar on Afghanistan. “And if the Soviets were not able to capture him, and they bordered Afghanistan, imagine how difficult it will be for America to extricate bin Laden. The complexity of this is mind-boggling and quite frightening.”

A professor of anthropology and sociology at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and an author of two books on Afghanistan, Edwards has lived off and on for three decades in the desolate and strangely beautiful country. There he has taught English in the capital city of Kabul, interviewed the nation’s vast refugee population across the Pakistani border, and traveled with the Mujahadin, the famed fighting force that repelled the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. In an interview with the Scene, he talked about the steep challenges ahead for the United States as it targets accused terrorist Osama bin Laden and possibly Afghanistan, where the fanatical leader is believed to be hiding.

“Most of the time he is in a mountain chain along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Edwards says. “He has SUVs, pickup trucks, and may have access to helicopters. There is little government presence there, mostly independent tribes. And bin Laden has made deals with the tribes to allow him to stay there.”

Already, bin Laden has proven his ability to elude the United States and this country’s well-financed intelligence. In 1998, the U.S. military tried to kill bin Laden by launching missile attacks at his training bases, where he was believed to be hiding. That strategy not only met with failure, but it seemed to embolden him and burnish his larger-than-life reputation across the war-torn region.

And unfortunately, if long-distance missile strikes are probably futile, nearly all other possible strategies to target bin Laden are fraught with complications, Edwards says. Even in a best case scenario—if the ruling Taliban government agreed to turn him over—the tribes that protect bin Laden are unlikely to give him up. And if the United States were to attack Afghanistan with ground troops to root him out of the mountains, it might mobilize the Afghan people, who otherwise have no fondness for their oppressive government or the accused terrorist mastermind.

“A lot of Americans assume Afghans support bin Laden, and they don’t. They don’t even support their own government,” Edwards says of the autocratic Taliban regime known for its brutal treatment of women and violent interpretations of Islamic tenets. “But if the people of Afghanistan feel like they are under attack, they will protect bin Laden.”

When Edwards visited Afghanistan in 1995, a group of villagers killed a sheep for him. Knowing the value of a sheep, Edwards tried to stop them, but they insisted. The Afghans always have been friendly to him, he says. They provided him shelter and helped him with his research. But like any people, their kindness has bounds.

“The Afghans are tremendously generous people, but the invasion of a foreign power is guaranteed to incite them,” Edwards says. “They fought three wars against the British and won all three, they pushed the Soviets out, and were instrumental in the ultimate dismantling of the Soviet Union.”

Today, Afghanistan is a devastated, impoverished nation, having been the host country to two decades of warfare. According to Edwards, 60 percent to 70 percent of the country has been displaced, while nearly a quarter of the population has been killed. A recent Washington Post story noted that the nation has no sizable power grids, no vast military bases, no major bridges, or highway networks. In other words, it has nothing left to bomb.

In 1975, Afghanistan was a different country. That year, Edwards went to Kabul to teach English and soon “fell in love with the place.” The country, which seemed on the verge of prosperity at the time, reminded him of parts of Southern Colorado or the rural outskirts of Santa Fe, N.M.

“The terrain is very rugged, very rocky. For the most part it is bare of trees, except at the higher altitudes and along the many river valleys,” he says. “It’s like what you would imagine in a cowboy movie, only more rugged.”

In 1979, one year after a Marxist regime came to power in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union invaded to prop up the new government. Millions of Afghans fled to the Pakistani border. Between 1982 and 1984, Edwards spent time with many of the refugees. He also was able to study the Mujahadin, the resistance to the Soviets.

“We tend to think of soldiers between the ages of 17 and 20 years old. One of the things that was so striking about the Afghan resistance was that you’d see 70-year-old men, and they could walk me into the ground,” he says. “The spirit of that resistance was something to behold. The people I met would drop everything when they heard there was an attack. There was a real spirit of bravery and patriotism that I have never seen before.”

The Mujahadin were composed of different rebel factions that warred with each other, even before the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989. The Pakistani government helped arm the resistance, often with weapons supplied by the United States, including AK-47s and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The CIA also lent its assistance to the Pakistani government while tutoring future members of the Taliban. It’s ironic that the United States now faces the prospect of fighting against guerilla soldiers they have helped arm, finance, and train, including bin Laden.

“We have to bear some responsibility here,” Edwards says. “In our eagerness to see the Soviets defeated, we have created political parties that have come back to haunt us.”

After the defeat of the Soviets, the rebel factions engaged in a five-year civil war. In 1994, the Taliban regime, a militant Islamic movement propped up by the Pakistani government, ascended to power in part because of the Afghans’ widespread exhaustion with war. But the unrest continued as the Taliban undertook a protracted campaign of human rights abuses in an effort to impose its own harsh brand of Islam.

Pockets of resistance to the Taliban are scattered throughout the region. But it wasn’t enough to protect Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary commander who had eluded Soviet forces for so long and who remained the most significant opposition leader to the Taliban. Suicide bombers believed to be linked to the Taliban killed him last week.

Now, with many in the United States looking for an enemy with borders, Afghanistan has become a likely target. While the Taliban regime is almost certainly harboring bin Laden, if not providing him with outright support, people should not extend their anger to the Afghans as well, Edwards says. They, if anything, are victims two times over. First, from the Taliban government; then, potentially, from the world’s only remaining superpower.

“I don’t think there is a country on earth that has suffered like Afghanistan, and now the Afghans are staring down the barrel of another gun,” he says. “And the people who will suffer will be the people who don’t support their government and don’t support bin Laden.”

When Edwards was studying the Mujahadin, he came across a commander who spent time in the United States. The commander said he was struck by, of all things, the civility of local police officers and how they didn’t indiscriminately bully people. The commander also spoke about some of the democratic reforms he’d like to implement if he came to power in Afghanistan. Only six months after that conversation, the Taliban killed his brother and son. The commander is now a refugee living in France.