Bernard-Henri Lévy has been visiting the Connaught Hotel in London for 50 years. When we met there for lunch one recent afternoon, the French philosopher and public intellectual was dressed in his signature unbuttoned shirt and black jacket. He ordered an egg-white omelette with tomatoes alongside a bottle of Coca-Cola Zero, with added ice. He had ordered the same the day before. Lévy, 72, was laconic at the start of lunch – perhaps because he was at the end of a media blitz for his new book, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope, which collects his 2020 reports from conflict zones such as the Donbass in Ukraine, Libya and Somalia.
The final chapter, entitled “Massoud Lives!”, prefigures recent events in Afghanistan. It recounts Lévy’s September 2020 meeting with Ahmad Massoud, who has since become the leader of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front based in the Panjshir valley. Lévy was a friend of Massoud’s father, Ahmad Shah Massoud – a legendary commander who fought the Soviets in the 1980s – and invited him to Paris a few months before al-Qaeda assassinated him in 2001. Information on the activities of the resistance has been scant, with conflicting reports about Massoud’s whereabouts. “He’s alive, he’s in and out of Panjshir, and he’s not decided to surrender,” Lévy said – having spoken to Massoud a few days before we met. “The resistance is in the process of building itself.”
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