Ahmed Shah Massoud
Encyclopedia
Ahmad Shah Massoud was a Kabul University
engineering student turned military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army
out of Afghanistan
, earning him the name Lion of Panjshir. His followers call him Āmir Sāhib-e Shahīd (Our Beloved Martyred Commander). A devout Sunni Muslim
reportedly also always carrying a book of Sufi mystic Ghazali with him, he strongly rejected the interpretations of Islam followed by the Taliban, Al Qaeda or the Saudi establishment. His followers not only saw him as a military commander but also as a spiritual leader.
Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan
the Wall Street Journal named Massoud "the Afghan who won the Cold War". After the collapse of the communist Soviet-backed government
of Mohammad Najibullah
in 1992, Massoud became the Minister of Defense under the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani
. Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud returned to the role of an armed opposition leader, serving as the military commander and political leader of the United Islamic Front
(also known in the West as Northern Alliance).
On September 9, 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States, Massoud was assassinated in Takhar Province
of Afghanistan by two suspected Arab al-Qaeda
suicide bombers posing as journalists. The following year, he was named "National Hero" by the order of Afghan President Hamid Karzai
. The date of his death, September 9, is observed as a national holiday known as "Massoud Day" in Afghanistan. The year following his assassination, in 2002, Massoud was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
.
, Panjshir
, Afghanistan. At the age of five, he started grammar school in Bazarak and stayed there until second grade. Since his father was promoted to be police chief of Herat
, he attended 3rd and 4th grade at the Mowaffaq School in Herat. He also received a religious education at the "Masjed-e Jame" mosque
in Herat. Later, his father was moved to Kabul
where he attended the Lycée Esteqlal
and obtained his Baccalaureate
. Since his childhood, he was considered exceedingly talented; from 10th grade on, his school acknowledged him as a particularly gifted student. He knew many languages including Persian
, Pashtu, Urdu, Hindi and French. He also had a good working knowledge of Arabic
and English
.
While studying in Kabul in 1972, Massoud became involved with the Sazman-i Jawanan-i Musulman
("organization of Muslim youth"), the student branch of the Jamiat-i Islami ("Islamic Society"), whose chairman was professor Burhanuddin Rabbani
. This Islamist organization opposed the rising communist and Soviet influence that became especially evident after the coup d'état
that brought Mohammed Daoud Khan
to power in 1973: the coup was orchestrated by the Parcham
faction of the PDPA
, the Afghan communist party.
In 1976, the movement split between supporters of Rabbani, who led the Jamiat, and the extremist elements surrounding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
, who then founded the Hezb-i Islami. Massoud who had regular and vehement disputes with Hekmatyar joined Rabbani's faction.
increasingly distanced itself from the Afghan communists and the Soviet Union. In 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA, حزب دیموکراتیک خلق افغانستان) orchestrated a bloody coup assassinating Mohammed Daoud Khan
, his family and bodyguards and consequently assuming power. The PDPA soon started reforms along Marxist-Leninist and Soviet lines. The reforms and the PDPA's affinity to the Soviet Union were met with heavy resistance among the population and also the Afghan Islamic fundamentalists
, especially as the government attempted to enforce its Marxist policies by arresting or simply executing those who resisted. Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 100,000 people may have been killed in the countryside alone by government troops. The repression plunged large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, into open revolt against the new Marxist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection.
Having ascertained that an uprising against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
would be backed by the people, Massoud made his way to the Panjshir and started an insurrection on July 6, 1979. The fight lasted 40 days, during which the whole Panjshir, Salang, and Bola Ghain were in open revolt against the Marxist government. After these 40 days, Massoud's leg was severely injured and the troops under his command had no more weapons and ammunition. In the end the government troops defeated them. Drawing lessons from this failure, Massoud decided to avoid conventional confrontation with larger and better armed government troops and to instead wage a guerrilla war
.
. The third phase, the "strategic offensive", would see Massoud's forces taking control of large parts of Northern Afghanistan. The fourth phase was the "general application" of Massoud's principles to the whole country, and the final demise of the Afghan communist government.
From the start of the war, Massoud's mujahideen proved to be a thorn in the side for the occupying Soviet forces by ambushing Soviet and Afghan communist convoys travelling through the Salang Pass, resulting in fuel shortages in Kabul.
The Soviets mounted a series of offensives
against the Panjshir. Between 1980 and 1985, these offensives were conducted twice a year. Yet, despite engaging more men and hardware on each occasion, the Soviets were unable to defeat Massoud's forces. In 1982, the Soviets began deploying major combat units in the Panjshir numbering up to 30,000 men. Massoud pulled his troops back into subsidiary valleys, where they occupied fortified positions. When the Soviet columns advanced onto these positions, they fell into ambushes. When the Soviets withdrew, they handed over their positions to Afghan army garrisons, and Massoud and his mujahideen forces attacked and recaptured them one by one.
In 1983, the Soviets offered Massoud a temporary truce, which he accepted in order to rebuild his own forces and give the civilian population a break from Soviet attacks. He put the respite to good use. In this time he created the Shura-e Nazar
(Supervisory Council) which subsequently united 130 commanders from 12 Afghan provinces in their fight against the Soviet army. This council existed outside the fold of the Peshawar parties that were prone to internecine rivalry and bickering, and served to smooth out differences between resistance groups, due to political and ethnic divisions. It was the predecessor of what could have become a unified Islamic Afghan army.
Relations with the party headquarters in Peshawar
were often strained, as Rabbani insisted on giving Massoud no more weapons and supplies than to other Jamiat commanders, even those who did little fighting. To compensate for this deficiency, Massoud relied on revenues drawn from exports of emerald
s and lapis lazuli
, that are traditionally exploited in Northern Afghanistan.
To organize support for the mujahideen, Massoud established an administrative system that enforced law and order (nazm) in areas under his control. The Panjshir was divided into 22 bases (qarargah) governed by a military commander and a civilian administrator, and each had a judge, a prosecutor and a public defender
. Massoud's policies were implemented by different committees: an economic committee was charged with funding the war effort. The health committee provided health services, assisted by volunteers from foreign humanitarian
non-governmental organization
s, such as Aide médicale internationale
. An education committee was charged with the training of the military and administrative cadre. A culture committee and a judiciary committee were also created.
This expansion prompted Babrak Karmal
to demand that the Red Army resume their offensives, in order to crush the Panjshir groups definitively. However, Massoud had received advance warning of the attack through his intelligence agents in the government and he evacuated all 130,000 inhabitants from the valley into the Hindukush mountains, leaving the Soviet bombings to fall on empty ground and the Soviet battalions once again to face the mountains.
With the defeat of the Soviet-Afghan attacks, Massoud was able to carry out the next phase of his strategic plan, expanding the resistance movement and liberating the northern provinces of Afghanistan. In August 1986, he captured Farkhar in Takhar Province
. In November 1986, his forces overran the headquarters of the government's 20th division at Nahrin in Baghlan Province, scoring an important victory for the resistance. This expansion was also carried out through diplomatic means, as more mujahideen commanders were persuaded to adopt the Panjshir military system.
Despite almost constant attacks by the Red Army and the Afghan army, Massoud was able to increase his military strength. Starting in 1980 with a force of less than 1,000 ill-equipped guerillas, the Panjshir valley mujahideen grew to a 5,000-strong force by 1984. After expanding his influence outside the valley, Massoud increased his resistance forces to 13,000 fighters by 1989. These forces were divided into different types of units: the locals (mahalli) were tasked with static defense of villages and fortified positions. The best of the mahalli were formed into units called grup-i zarbati (shock troops), semi-mobile groups that acted as reserve
forces for the defense of several strongholds. A different type of unit was the mobile group (grup-i-mutaharek), a lightly equipped commando
-like formation numbering 33 men, whose mission was to carry out hit-and-run
attacks outside the Panjshir, sometimes as far as 100 km from their base. These men were professional soldiers, well-paid and trained, and, from 1983 on, they provided an effective strike force against government outposts. Uniquely among the mujahideen, these groups wore uniforms, and their use of the pakul
made this headwear emblematic of the Afghan resistance.
Massoud's military organization was an effective compromise between the traditional Afghan method of warfare and the modern principles of guerilla warfare that Massoud had learned from the works of Mao Zedong
and Che Guevara
. His forces were considered the most effective of all the various Afghan resistance movements.
The United States provided Massoud with close to no support. Part of the reason was that it permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan, which favored rival mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
. In an interview Massoud expressed: "We thought the CIA
knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people [meaning Hekmatyar]." Primary advocates for supporting Massoud instead were State Department's Edmund McWilliams and Peter Tomsen, who were on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others included two Heritage Foundation
foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns
and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of U.S. support under the Reagan Doctrine
.
Still, the Soviet army and the Afghan communist army were mainly defeated by Massoud and his mujahideen in numerous small engagements between 1984 and 1988. In 1989, after labeling the Soviet Union's military engagement in Afghanistan "a bleeding wound", Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
began a withdrawal of Soviet troops from the nation. On February 15, 1989, in what was depicted as an improbable victory for the mujahideen, the last Soviet soldier left the nation.
in 1989, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
regime, then headed by Mohammad Najibullah
, proved unexpectedly capable of holding its own against the mujahideen. Backed by a massive influx of weapons from the Soviet Union, the Afghan armed forces reached a level of performance they had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage and were able to maintain control over all of Afghanistan's major cities.
By 1992, however, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the regime began to crumble. Food and fuel shortages undermined the capacities of the government's army, and a resurgence of factionalism split the regime between Khalq
and Parcham
supporters.
A few days after it was clear that Najibullah had lost control of the nation, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over authority to resistance commanders and local notables throughout the country. Joint councils (shuras) were immediately established for local government in which civil and military officials of the former government were usually included. In many cases, prior arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had been made between foes.
Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of the demise of the Soviet Union, Massoud was aware of conflict within the government's northern command. General Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan
border crossing at the northern end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun
generals based in Mazari Sharif feared removal by Najibullah and replacement by Pashtun officers. The generals rebelled and the situation was taken over by Abdul Rashid Dostum
, who held general rank as head of the Jowzjani militia, also based in Mazari Sharif. He and Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyed Mansour, of the Ismaili
community based in Baghlan Province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21. Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul, there was no government force standing between the northern allies and the major air force base at Bagram
, some seventy kilometers north of Kabul. By mid-April 1992, the Afghan air force command at Bagram had capitulated to Massoud. On March 18, 1992, Najibullah announced his willingness to resign, and on April 17, as his government fell apart, he tried to escape but was stopped at Kabul Airport by Dostum's forces. He then took refuge at the United Nations mission, where he remained unharmed until 1995. A group of Parchami generals and officials declared themselves an interim government for the purpose of handing over power to Massoud, who at that time was the dominant military force and popular among the people.
Massoud transferred power to create an interim government to the political parties in order to give nobody a reason to continue the war. He kept his forces outside of Kabul trying to convince other commanders especially Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
to do the same in order to avoid bloodshed. In early 1992, in a recorded conversation, Massoud tried to convince Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
not to attack Kabul but instead to join the peace talks. see video Massoud was awaiting a political accord. In April 1992 the political leaders finally agreed on a plan for peace: the Peshawar Accords.
and appointed an interim government for a transitional period. Ahmad Shah Massoud was appointed as the minister of defense.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan
. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal
concludes in Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival:
Massoud enjoyed strong support inside Afghanistan but the Islamic State in general, although internationally recognized, received close to no outside funding or support. The United States and European countries after the communist defeat largely lost interest in Afghanistan and disengaged.
With the strong support of Pakistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - although he was repeatedly offered the position of prime minister - placed Kabul under intensive rocket bombardment in May 1992. Some sources cite up to 3,000 rockets being fired into Kabul daily, killing thousands of civilians. A report said: "Massoud, whose northern council was the dominant military power tried to keep order while the parties talked, but meantime, Pakistan urged on its Afghan client Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.... Massoud, with UN help tried to avoid civil war in the early 1990s but... Hekmatyar rained rockets on Kabul seeking power for himself." In addition, Saudi Arabia
and Iran
- as competitors for regional hegemony
- supported Afghan militias hostile towards each other. According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was assisting the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari
, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence. Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
and his Ittihad-i Islami faction. Massoud tried to avoid war between the Saudi-backed Ittihad and the Iran-backed Wahdat and frequently mediated between them. (see video)
But Saudi Arabia and Iran urged on their proxy forces and conflict between the two militias soon escalated into a full-scale war. A publication by the George Washington University
describes:
Abdul Rashid Dostum
and his Junbish-i Milli militia backed by Uzbekistan
joined an alliance with Hekmatyar in early 1994. An estimated 25,000 people died during the most intense period of bombardment by Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami, the Junbish-i Milli forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum
and the Hezb-e Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari
in early 1994. Atrocities were committed by individuals of different armed factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. The militias who fought against the Islamic State and Massoud were known for their systematic brutality. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
released 10,000 dangerous criminals from the main prisons into the streets of Kabul to destabilize the city. Hekmatyar also cut off Kabul from water, food and energy supplies. The Iran-controlled Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari
[as well as the Ittihad of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
supported by Saudi Arabia] targeted civilians of the 'opposite side' in systematic atrocities. Abdul Rashid Dostum
allowed crimes as a perceived payment for his troops. For civilians there was little security from murder, rape and extortion. The Taliban (who attacked Kabul in early 1995) in later years would commit massacres against civilians compared by United Nations
observers to those that happened during the War in Bosnia.
Ahmad Shah Massoud did not order any crimes. The Afghanistan Justice Project which is frequently used by Human Rights Watch as source concludes:
In those cases where crimes were committed by individuals fighting inside his troops, reports point out the responsibility of corrupted sub-commanders or individuals who used the chaos for their own purposes. John Jennings, a journalist from the Associated Press
(AP) and The Economist
, who was on the ground in Kabul from 1992 to 1994 and was considered as a reliable source by Human Rights Watch
, concluded:
Edward Girardet, director of the Global Journalism Network in Geneva, explained:
In contrast to the time of chaos in Kabul, Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for troops under the direct control of Massoud from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. But from 1992 to 1995, due to the sudden initiation of the wars and the decentralized power structures, working government departments, a police or a system of justice and accountability for the newly created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. An Afghan observer described the situation during that time:
Farid Amin reports the following exemplary incident:
Meanwhile there were also reports that individuals loyal to Massoud were helping civilians caught in crossfire or warning civilians of impeding attacks.
In 1993 Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation ("Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta'wani Mohammad-e Ghazali") to further humanitarian assistance and politically independent Afghan culture. The Ghazali Foundation provided free medical services during some days of the week to residents of Kabul who were unable to pay for medical treatment themselves. The Ghazali Foundation's department for distribution of auxiliary goods was the first partner of the Red Cross. The Ghazali Foundation's department of family consultation was a free advisory board, which was accessible seven days a week for the indigent. Although Massoud was responsible for the financing of the foundation, he did not interfere into its cultural work. A council led the foundation and a jury consisting of impartial university lecturers decided on the works of artists. The Ghazali foundation enabled Afghan artists to exhibit their works at different places in Kabul and numerous artists and authors were honoured for their works; some of them neither proponents of Massoud nor the Islamic State government.
Meanwhile, southern Afghanistan was neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local leaders such as Gul Agha Sherzai
and their militias. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. Mullah Omar
started his movement with fewer than 50 armed madrassah students in his hometown of Kandahar. When the Taliban took control of the city in 1994, they forced the surrender of dozens of local Pashtun leaders who had presided over a situation of complete lawlessness and atrocities. In 1994, the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.
In late 1994, most of the militia factions (Hezb-i Islami, Junbish-i Milli and Hezb-i Wahdat) which had been fighting in the battle for control of Kabul were defeated militarily by forces of the Islamic State's Secretary of Defense Ahmad Shah Massoud. Bombardment of the capital came to a halt. The Islamic State government took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again also convicting individuals inside government troops who had committed crimes. Massoud tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation
and democratic elections. A conference in three parts was arranged by Massoud. He united political and cultural personalities, governors, commanders, clergymen and representatives, in order to reach a lasting agreement. Massoud, like most people in Afghanistan, saw this conference as a small hope for democracy and for free elections. His favourite for candidacy to the presidency was Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, the first democratic prime minister under Zahir Shah, the former king. In the first meeting representatives from 15 different Afghan provinces met, in the second meeting there were already 25 provinces participating. Up until then the Islamic State's reach had been limited. Massoud was now trying to put a consolidation process into action to unite Afghanistan. He also invited the Taliban to join the process wanting them to be a partner in providing stability to Afghanistan during such a process. Massoud unarmed went to talk to some Taliban leaders in Maidan Shar. But the Taliban declined to join a process leading towards democratic elections. When Massoud returned to Kabul unharmed, the Taliban leader who had received him as his guest paid with his life: he was killed by other senior Taliban for failing to assassinate Massoud while the possibility had presented itself.
Neighboring Pakistan exerted strong influence over the Taliban. A publication with the George Washington University describes: "Initially, the Pakistanis supported ... Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... When Hekmatyar failed to deliver for Pakistan, the administration began to support a new movement of religious students known as the Taliban." Many analysts like Amin Saikal
describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy
force for Pakistan's regional interests which the Taliban decline. The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. (see video) Amnesty International
, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:
The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. Pakistan
provided strong support to the Taliban.
On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
. Massoud and his troops retreated to the northeast of Afghanistan.
(Northern Alliance) against the Taliban that were preparing offensives against the areas under the control of Massoud and against those under the control of other regional leaders. (see video) The United Front included forces and leaders from different political backgrounds as well as from all ethnicities of Afghanistan including Tajiks, Pashtuns
, Uzbeks
, Hazaras or Turkmens
. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled territory in which roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population was living in provinces such as Badakhshan
, Kapisa
, Takhar
and parts of Parwan, Kunar
, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan
, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.
Massoud did not intend for the United Front to become the ruling government of Afghanistan. His vision was for the United Front to help establish a new government, where the various ethnic groups would share power and live in peace through a democratic form of government. Massoud told Roger L. Plunk, George Washington University
author of the Wandering Peacemaker and international mediator, that his dream was of "an Afghanistan at peace with itself, and of the Panjshir Valley, which had been stripped of many of its trees, being once again full of flowering almond trees and laughing children."
Meanwhile, the Taliban imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school, or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative.
Women were required to wear the all-covering Afghan burqa
, denied access to health care and education, windows needed to be covered so that women could not be seen from the outside and they were not allowed to laugh in a manner they could be heard by others. The Taliban, without any real judicial process, cut people's hands or arms off when accused of stealing. Taliban hit-squads watched the streets conducting arbitrary brutal public beatings.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
- then as Army Chief of Staff - was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and their ally Osama Bin Laden
against the forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside Afghanistan against the forces of Massoud. 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers either from the Frontier Corps
or army and an estimated 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20-40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani." The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan." Further 3,000 fighters of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian Al Qaeda militants. Of roughly 45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan (Taliban).
According to a 55-page report by the United Nations
, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacre
s against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar
himself."
From 1996 to 2001 Al Qaeda, as led by of Osama Bin Laden
and Ayman al-Zawahiri
, became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. His so-called 055 Brigade
was responsible for mass killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations
quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.
In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary "Inside the Taliban":
In 1998, Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only main leader of the United Front in Afghanistan and the only leader who was able to defend vast parts of his area against the Taliban. Most major leaders including the Islamic State's President Burhanuddin Rabbani
, Abdul Rashid Dostum
, and others were living in exile. The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined. He explained in one interview:
Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. His proposals for peace can be seen here: Proposal for Peace, promoted by Commander Massoud. He also stated:
American journalist Sebastian Junger who frequently travels to war zones stated in March 2001:
In early 2001 the United Front employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. At the same time Massoud was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 the United Front leadership ordered the training of police forces specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.
In early 2001 Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament
in Brussels
asking the international community
to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. see video He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam
" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
The areas of Massoud
Life in the areas under direct control of Massoud was different from the life in the areas under Taliban or i. e. Dostum's control. (see video) In contrast to the time of chaos in which all structures had collapsed in Kabul, Massoud was able to control his troops very well during the period starting in late 1996. Human Rights Watch notes no human rights crimes for Massoud's troops in the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. Massoud always controlled the Panjshir
, Takhar, parts of Parwan and Badakhshan
during the war. Some other provinces (notably Kunduz
, Baghlan
, Nuristan and the north of Kabul
) were captured by his forces from the Taliban and lost again from time to time as the frontlines varied.
Massoud created democratic institutions which were structured into several committees: political, health, education and economic. Still, many people came to him personally when they had a dispute or problem and asked him to solve their problems.
Massoud also signed the Women's Rights Declaration. In the area of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa by law. They were allowed to work and to go to school. Although it was a time of war, girl schools were operating in some districts. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage in favour of the women to make their own choice. To Massoud there was reportedly nothing worse than treating a person like an object.
While it was Massoud's stated personal conviction that men and women are equal and should enjoy the same rights, he also had to deal with Afghan traditions which he said would need a generation or more to overcome. In his opinion that could only be achieved through education. Author Pepe Escobar wrote in Massoud: From Warrior to Statesman:
Humayun Tandar, who took part as a Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask the Jewish Princeton
Professor Michael Barry or his Christian friend Jean-José Puig: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."
International relations
U.S. policy regarding Massoud, the Taliban and Afghanistan remains ambiguous and differed between the various U.S. government agencies.
In 1997, U.S. State Department's Robin Raphel
told Massoud to surrender to the Taliban. She obtained a clear answer with Massoud stating that as long as he controlled an area the size of his hat he would continue to defend it from the Taliban.
Robin Raphel eventually became a lobbyist and adviser at Cassidy & Associates. The firm had a $1.2 million contract with the Musharraf military regime of Pakistan. At Cassidy & Associates she lobbied and advised Congress and the State Department for Pakistan on issues such as Afghan policy, Pakistan's relations with India, judicial independence and U.S. perceptions and congressional views of the Pakistan government. In late 2009 Raphel was (again) appointed to the Af-Pak region as deputy to Richard Holbrooke
, the US. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, by the Obama administration. Raphel will be the main person overlooking the $1.5 billion U.S. aid package "for non-military purpose" to Pakistan.
At one point in the war, in 1997, the Taliban were vulnerable and the road to the capital, Kabul, was wide open. Two top foreign policy officials in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan to convince - without success - the United Front not to take advantage of a opportunity to make crucial gains against the Taliban. Before the United Front could strike, Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth and American U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson flew to northern Afghanistan and tried to convince the leadership of the United Front that this was not the time for an offensive. Instead, they insisted this was the time for a cease-fire and an arms embargo. At the same time Pakistanis began a "Berlin-like airlift to resupply and re-equip the Taliban", financed with Saudi money.
On another note an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), Julie Sirrs, had visited Afghanistan, but only in those areas controlled by the Taliban. After returning, she had realized that this was a one-dimensional view of Afghanistan and there were gaping holes in the DOD's understanding of the situation. In 1998, she requested to officially go back to northern Afghanistan to the areas controlled by Commander Massoud. Subsequently she was denied the permission to go there. So she went to the Panjshir Valley on her vacation and paid the journey on herself (in 1998). U.S. congressman Dana Rohrabacher describes:
In the meantime, the only collaboration between Massoud and another U.S. intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), consisted of an effort to trace Osama bin Laden
following the 1998 embassy bombings
. The U.S. and the European Union provided no support to Massoud for the fight against the Taliban.
A change of policy, lobbied for by CIA officers on the ground who had visited the area of Massoud, regarding support to Massoud was underway in the course of 2001. According to Steve Coll's book "Ghost Wars" (who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize
for General Non-Fiction):
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher also recalled: "[B]etween Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan policy." CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush's signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war in favour of Massoud. This change in policy was finalized in August 2001 when it was too late.
After Pakistan had funded, directed and supported the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan, Massoud and the United Front received some assistance from India. India was particularly concerned about Pakistan's Taliban strategy and the Islamic militancy in its neighborhood; it provided US$70 million in aid including two Mi-17
helicopters, three additional helicopters in 2000 and US$8 million worth of high-altitude equipment in 2001. Furthermore, the alliance supposedly also received minor aid from Tajikistan
, Russia and Iran
because of their opposition to the Taliban and the Pakistani control over the Taliban's Emirate. Their support, however, remained limited to the most needed things. Meanwhile Pakistan engaged up to 28 000 Pakistani nationals and regular Pakistani army troops to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces against Massoud.
In April 2001, the president of the European Parliament Nicole Fontaine
(who called Massoud the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan") invited Massoud with the support of French and Belgian politicians to address the European Parliament
in Brussels
, Belgium. In his speech, he asked for humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan. Massoud further went on to warn that his intelligence agents had gained limited knowledge about a huge-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
at Khwaja Bahauddin, in Takhar Province
in northeastern Afghanistan on September 9, 2001. The attackers' names were alternately given as Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, husband of Malika El Aroud
, and Bouraoui el-Ouaer; or 34-year-old Karim Touzani and 26-year-old Kacem Bakkali.
The attackers claimed to be Belgians
originally from Morocco
. However, their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality was later determined to be Tunisia
n. Waiting for almost three weeks (during which they also interviewed Burhanuddin Rabbani
and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
) for an interview opportunity, on September 8, 2001, an aide to Massoud recalls the would-be suicide attackers "were so worried" and threatened to leave if the interview did not happen in the next 24 hours (until September 10, 2001). They were finally granted an interview. During the interview they set off a bomb that was composed of explosives hidden in the camera and in a battery pack belt. Commander Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him to a military field hospital in nearby Tajikistan. The explosion also killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a United Front official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili
were injured. One of the suicide attackers, Bouraoui, was also killed by the explosion while Dahmane was captured and shot while trying to escape.
Despite initial denials by the United Front, news of Massoud's death was reported almost immediately, appearing on the BBC, and in European and North American newspapers on September 10, 2001. On September 16, however, the United Front officially announced that Massoud had died of injuries in the suicide attack. Massoud was buried in his home village of Bazarak
in the Panjshir Valley. The funeral, although happening in a rather rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. (see video).
Afghan journalist Fahim Dashty summarized: "He was the only one, ever, to serve Afghanistan, to serve Afghans. To do a lot of things for Afghanistan, for Afghans. And we lost him." (see video)
Until he was assassinated, Massoud had survived assassination attempts for 26 years, including attempts made by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI and before them the Soviet KGB, the Afghan communist KHAD and Hekmatyar. The first attempt on Massoud's life was carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975 when Massoud was only 22 years old. In early 2001 Al Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory.
Connection to September 11, 2001
The assassination of Massoud is considered to have a strong connection to the September 11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. soil which killed nearly 3,000 people and which appeared to be the terrorist attack that Massoud had warned against in his speech to the European Parliament several months earlier.
John P. O'Neill
was a counter-terrorism expert and the Assistant Director of the FBI until late 2001. He retired from the FBI and was offered the position of director of security at the World Trade Center (WTC). He took the job at the WTC two weeks before 9/11. On September 10, 2001, John O'Neill told two of his friends, "We're due. And we're due for something big.... Some things have happened in Afghanistan. [referring to the assassination of Massoud] I don't like the way things are lining up in Afghanistan.... I sense a shift, and I think things are going to happen... soon." John O'Neill died on September 11, 2001, when the south tower collapsed.
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
would later claim that he immediately saw the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud as a sign that "something terrible [was] about to happen." Rohrabacher recounted his convictions in a 2004 speech to congress: "As I mourned his loss, I struggled to fully understand the significance of his death. Then it dawned on me. It dawned on me why Massoud had been assassinated. America was going to be attacked. It would be so monstrous that bin Laden's gang in Afghanistan wanted to cut us off from a means of counterattacking them in their base of operations in Afghanistan. We would have turned to Massoud if we were attacked. That is what we would have done, and they were cutting us off from turning to Massoud, but now Massoud was dead. Perhaps his death was a signal to set the planned attack on our country in motion...."
Analysts believe Osama bin Laden
ordered the assassination to help his Taliban protectors and ensure he would have their protection and co-operation in Afghanistan. Following the assassination, Osama bin Laden had an emissary deliver a cassette of Dahmane speaking of his love for his wife and his decision to blow himself up as well as $500 in an envelope to settle a debt, to the assassin's widow. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
, an Afghan Wahhabi Islamist, have also been mentioned as possible organizers or collaborators of the Massoud assassins. The assassins are said to have entered United Front (Northern Alliance) territory under the auspices of the Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
and had his assistance in bypassing "normal security procedures."
Investigative commission
In April 2003, the Karzai administration
announced the setup of a commission to investigate the assassination of Massoud, as the country celebrated the 11th anniversary of the defeat of the communist government The French secret service revealed on October 16, 2003 that the camera used by Massoud's assassins had been stolen in December 2000 in Grenoble
, France from a photojournalist, Jean-Pierre Vincendet, who was then working on a story on that city's Christmas store window displays. By tracing the camera's serial number, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
was able to determine that Vincendet was its original owner. The French secret service and the FBI then began working on tracing the route the camera took between the time it was taken from Vincendet and the Massoud assassination.
In 2001, the Afghan Interim Government under president Hamid Karzai
officially awarded Massoud the title of "Hero of the Afghan Nation". One analyst in 2004 put it this way: "One man holds a greater political punch than all 18 living [Afghan] presidential candidates combined. Though already dead for three years.... Since his death on September 9, 2001 at the hands of two al Qaeda-linked Islamic radicals, Massoud has been transformed from mujahedin to national hero—if not saint. Pictures of Massoud, the Afghan mujahedin who battled the Soviets, other warlords, and the Taliban for more than 20 years, vastly outnumber those of any other Afghan including those of Karzai." Dr. Abdullah Abdullah
, one of the closest friends of Massoud, was Karzai's strongest rival in the Afghan Presidential Elections of 2009. Dr. Abdullah said about Massoud: "He was everything. He was a friend. He was a leader. He was a teacher without acting as a teacher."
Journalist Sebastian Junger reports: "A lot of people who knew him felt that he was the best hope for that part of the world." Junger who traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to profile Massoud further states: "Afghanistan's government has been accused of being corrupt and weak. Massoud had a reputation for integrity and strength.... He would have been very hard for the [insurgents] to intimidate." Shorish-Shamley, a women's rights activist, says: "If they [al Qaeda leaders] were hiding under a rock, he would have found them. He was that type of person. He would have found bin Laden." Among supporters of the Taliban or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
's Hezb-i Islami he is obviously seen differently. Still, a 2009 CNN report concludes: "He remains today a hero on the streets of Kabul among a people who have more faith in a leader from the past than the leaders of the future." (see video)
Today Panjshir - the home of Massoud - "is arguably the most peaceful place in the entire country. A small US military reconstruction team is based here, but there are none of the signs of foreign occupation that exist elsewhere. Even Afghan soldiers are few and far between. Instead, the people like to boast about how they keep their own security," observes the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National. The people of Panjshir (and Takhar) remain realistic however: "We are very sure that if they [the Taliban] come back they will not leave one man in Panjshir alive. If we don't fight they will kill us, so if we fight we will at least die with glory." The National further states: "Those who knew him say he would never have accepted the Taliban's return to power and they have vowed to defend his memory."
Many documentaries, books and movies have been made about Ahmad Shah Massoud. Massoud is the subject of Ken Follett
's Lie Down With Lions, a novel about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also plays a significant role in James McGee
's thriller Crow's War. Another is Fire by Sebastian Junger. Junger was one of the last Western journalists to interview Massoud in depth. The bulk of this interview was first published in March 2001 for National Geographics Adventure Magazine, along with photographs by the renowned Iranian photographer Reza Deghati
.
The Massoud Foundation was established in 2003, as an independent, non-aligned, non-profitable and non-political organization by people who have been affected by Massoud. It provides humanitarian assistance to Afghans especially in the fields of health care and education. It also runs programs in the fields of culture, construction, agriculture and welfare.
"Lion of Panjshir", is a rhyme and play on words in Persian
, which alludes to the strength of his resistance against the Soviet Union, the mythological exaltation of the lion in Persian
literature, and finally, the place name of the Panjshir Valley
, where Massoud was born. The place name of "Panjshir" Valley in Persian
means (Valley of the) Five Lions. Thus, the phrase "Lion of Panjshir", which in Persian
is "Shir-e-Panjshir," شیر پنجشیر is a rhyming play on words, with the connotation "Lion of the Five Lions".
Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents from November 2001 show that Massoud had gained "limited knowledge... regarding the intentions of [al-Qaeda] to perform a terrorist act against the US on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." They also point out that he warned about such attacks.
In 2002, French singer-songwriter and author Damien Saez
wrote a song about 9/11 entitled "Massoud". He was also featured in the ABC Television
mini-series The Path to 9/11
, which aired commercial-free in the USA in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The mini-series depicts Massoud warning U.S. intelligence agents of the coming U.S. attack by al-Qaeda
and Massoud's September 9, 2001 assassination.
Massoud's wife and his children live in Iran. In 2005 Sediqa Massoud published a personal account on her life with Massoud (co-authored by two women's rights activists and friends of Sediqa Massoud, Chékéba Hachemi and Marie-Francoise Colombani) called "Pour l'amour de Massoud" (For the love of Massoud) in which she describes a very decent and loving husband.
After his death, Massoud was interred in a mausoleum in Panjshir Valley
. A larger mausoleum is currently being constructed to replace the current one.
A major road in Kabul was named Great Massoud Road, and just outside the US Embassy stands a monument to Massoud.
The family has a great deal of prestige in the politics of Afghanistan. One of his six brothers, Ahmad Zia Massoud
, was a vice-president of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai. There have been unsuccessful attempts on the life of Ahmad Zia Massoud in 2004 and late 2009. The Associated Press reported that 8 Afghans died in the attempt on Ahmad Zia Massoud's life.
Another brother, Ahmad Wali Massoud, was Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2006. He founded the Nahzat-e-Mili political party which is now known as the National Movement of Afghanistan party.
Interviews
Obituaries and articles
Afghanistan - the Squandered Victory (documentary film) by the BBC
(documentary film directly from the year 1989 explaining the beginning of the turmoil to follow)
Commander Massoud's Struggle (documentary film) by Nagakura Hiromi
(from 1992: one month after the fall of the communist regime, after Hekmatyar had been expelled to the southern outskirts of Kabul, before he restarted his heavy bombardment of Kabul with Pakistani support)
Massoud's Conversation with Hekmatyar (original document of 1992)
Ahmad Shah Massoud - Destiny's Afghan (documentary film) by Iqbal Malhotra
Massoud l'Afghan (documentary film) by Christophe de Ponfilly
Who Killed Massoud? (documentary film) by Didier Martiny
The Lion Of Panjshir (Symphony No. 2) for narrator and symphonic band by composer David Gaines
Photographs
Kabul University
Kabul University is located in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It was founded in 1931 but officially opened for classes in 1932. Kabul University is currently attended by approximately 7,000 students, of which 1,700 are women. As of 2008, Hamidullah Amin is the chancellor of the university...
engineering student turned military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
out of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, earning him the name Lion of Panjshir. His followers call him Āmir Sāhib-e Shahīd (Our Beloved Martyred Commander). A devout Sunni Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
reportedly also always carrying a book of Sufi mystic Ghazali with him, he strongly rejected the interpretations of Islam followed by the Taliban, Al Qaeda or the Saudi establishment. His followers not only saw him as a military commander but also as a spiritual leader.
Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...
the Wall Street Journal named Massoud "the Afghan who won the Cold War". After the collapse of the communist Soviet-backed government
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was both ideologically close to and economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.- Saur Revolution :...
of Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai , originally merely Najibullah, was the fourth and last President of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:Najibullah was born in August 1947 to the Ahmadzai...
in 1992, Massoud became the Minister of Defense under the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhanuddin Rabbani
Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani was President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was...
. Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud returned to the role of an armed opposition leader, serving as the military commander and political leader of the United Islamic Front
United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan
The United Islamic Front , known in the West and Pakistan as the Northern Alliance, was a military-political umbrella organization created by the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996 under the leadership of Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud...
(also known in the West as Northern Alliance).
On September 9, 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States, Massoud was assassinated in Takhar Province
Takhar Province
Takhār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It was established in 1964 when Qataghan Province was divided into three provinces: Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar. It is in the north-east of the country. Its capital is Taloqan. Its salt mines are one of Afghanistan's major mineral resources...
of Afghanistan by two suspected Arab al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
suicide bombers posing as journalists. The following year, he was named "National Hero" by the order of Afghan President Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
. The date of his death, September 9, is observed as a national holiday known as "Massoud Day" in Afghanistan. The year following his assassination, in 2002, Massoud was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
.
Early life
The son of police commander Dost Mohammad, an ethnic Tajik, Ahmad Shah Massoud was born on September 2, 1953 in BazarakBazarak, Panjshir
Bazarak is a town in the Panjshir Valley, in northern Afghanistan. It is also the provincial capital of Panjshir Province. It has six villages: Khanez, Jangalak, Malaspa, Parandeh, Rahmankhil...
, Panjshir
Panjshir Province
Panjshir is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Containing the Panjshir Valley, in April 2004 it was created from parts of Parwan Province, which now lies along its southwestern border. Panjshir's population is about 139,000 and covers an area of 3,610 square kilometers...
, Afghanistan. At the age of five, he started grammar school in Bazarak and stayed there until second grade. Since his father was promoted to be police chief of Herat
Herat
Herāt is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan...
, he attended 3rd and 4th grade at the Mowaffaq School in Herat. He also received a religious education at the "Masjed-e Jame" mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
in Herat. Later, his father was moved to Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
where he attended the Lycée Esteqlal
Lycée Esteqlal
The Lycée Esteqlal is a Franco-Afghan school in Kabul, Afghanistan. It is the second oldest school in Kabul, and was recognized as one of the prestigious schools in the country....
and obtained his Baccalaureate
Baccalauréat
The baccalauréat , often known in France colloquially as le bac, is an academic qualification which French and international students take at the end of the lycée . It was introduced by Napoleon I in 1808. It is the main diploma required to pursue university studies...
. Since his childhood, he was considered exceedingly talented; from 10th grade on, his school acknowledged him as a particularly gifted student. He knew many languages including Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Pashtu, Urdu, Hindi and French. He also had a good working knowledge of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
While studying in Kabul in 1972, Massoud became involved with the Sazman-i Jawanan-i Musulman
Muslim Youth
Muslim Youth was an underground Islamist group founded in 1969 in Kabul by several Afghan junior professors and a handful of students at Kabul University...
("organization of Muslim youth"), the student branch of the Jamiat-i Islami ("Islamic Society"), whose chairman was professor Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhanuddin Rabbani
Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani was President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was...
. This Islamist organization opposed the rising communist and Soviet influence that became especially evident after the coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
that brought Mohammed Daoud Khan
Mohammed Daoud Khan
Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...
to power in 1973: the coup was orchestrated by the Parcham
Parcham
Parcham was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Parcham faction seized power in the country after toppling Hafizullah Amin....
faction of the PDPA
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
, the Afghan communist party.
In 1976, the movement split between supporters of Rabbani, who led the Jamiat, and the extremist elements surrounding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
, who then founded the Hezb-i Islami. Massoud who had regular and vehement disputes with Hekmatyar joined Rabbani's faction.
Communist revolution in Afghanistan (1978)
The government of Mohammed Daoud KhanMohammed Daoud Khan
Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...
increasingly distanced itself from the Afghan communists and the Soviet Union. In 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
(PDPA, حزب دیموکراتیک خلق افغانستان) orchestrated a bloody coup assassinating Mohammed Daoud Khan
Mohammed Daoud Khan
Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...
, his family and bodyguards and consequently assuming power. The PDPA soon started reforms along Marxist-Leninist and Soviet lines. The reforms and the PDPA's affinity to the Soviet Union were met with heavy resistance among the population and also the Afghan Islamic fundamentalists
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. Definitions of the term vary. According to Christine L...
, especially as the government attempted to enforce its Marxist policies by arresting or simply executing those who resisted. Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 100,000 people may have been killed in the countryside alone by government troops. The repression plunged large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, into open revolt against the new Marxist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection.
Having ascertained that an uprising against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was both ideologically close to and economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.- Saur Revolution :...
would be backed by the people, Massoud made his way to the Panjshir and started an insurrection on July 6, 1979. The fight lasted 40 days, during which the whole Panjshir, Salang, and Bola Ghain were in open revolt against the Marxist government. After these 40 days, Massoud's leg was severely injured and the troops under his command had no more weapons and ammunition. In the end the government troops defeated them. Drawing lessons from this failure, Massoud decided to avoid conventional confrontation with larger and better armed government troops and to instead wage a guerrilla war
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
.
Resistance against the Soviet Union (1979-1989)
Following the 1979 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, Massoud devised a strategic plan for expelling the invaders and overthrowing the communist regime. The first task was to establish a resistance force which had the hearts and minds of the people. The second phase was one of "active defense" of the Panjshir stronghold, while carrying out asymmetric warfareAsymmetric warfare
Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly....
. The third phase, the "strategic offensive", would see Massoud's forces taking control of large parts of Northern Afghanistan. The fourth phase was the "general application" of Massoud's principles to the whole country, and the final demise of the Afghan communist government.
From the start of the war, Massoud's mujahideen proved to be a thorn in the side for the occupying Soviet forces by ambushing Soviet and Afghan communist convoys travelling through the Salang Pass, resulting in fuel shortages in Kabul.
The Soviets mounted a series of offensives
Panjshir offensives
The Panjshir offensives were a series of battles between the Soviet Army and groups of Afghan Mujahideen under Ahmad Shah Massoud for the control of the strategic Panjshir Valley, during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the period from 1980 to 1985....
against the Panjshir. Between 1980 and 1985, these offensives were conducted twice a year. Yet, despite engaging more men and hardware on each occasion, the Soviets were unable to defeat Massoud's forces. In 1982, the Soviets began deploying major combat units in the Panjshir numbering up to 30,000 men. Massoud pulled his troops back into subsidiary valleys, where they occupied fortified positions. When the Soviet columns advanced onto these positions, they fell into ambushes. When the Soviets withdrew, they handed over their positions to Afghan army garrisons, and Massoud and his mujahideen forces attacked and recaptured them one by one.
In 1983, the Soviets offered Massoud a temporary truce, which he accepted in order to rebuild his own forces and give the civilian population a break from Soviet attacks. He put the respite to good use. In this time he created the Shura-e Nazar
Shura-e Nazar
The Shura-e Nazar was created by Ahmad Shah Massoud in 1984 during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It comprised about 130 commanders from 12 northern, eastern and central regions of Afghanistan....
(Supervisory Council) which subsequently united 130 commanders from 12 Afghan provinces in their fight against the Soviet army. This council existed outside the fold of the Peshawar parties that were prone to internecine rivalry and bickering, and served to smooth out differences between resistance groups, due to political and ethnic divisions. It was the predecessor of what could have become a unified Islamic Afghan army.
Relations with the party headquarters in Peshawar
Peshawar
Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....
were often strained, as Rabbani insisted on giving Massoud no more weapons and supplies than to other Jamiat commanders, even those who did little fighting. To compensate for this deficiency, Massoud relied on revenues drawn from exports of emerald
Emerald
Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point Mohs scale of mineral hardness...
s and lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....
, that are traditionally exploited in Northern Afghanistan.
To organize support for the mujahideen, Massoud established an administrative system that enforced law and order (nazm) in areas under his control. The Panjshir was divided into 22 bases (qarargah) governed by a military commander and a civilian administrator, and each had a judge, a prosecutor and a public defender
Public defender
The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
. Massoud's policies were implemented by different committees: an economic committee was charged with funding the war effort. The health committee provided health services, assisted by volunteers from foreign humanitarian
Humanitarian aid
Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disaster and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity...
non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
s, such as Aide médicale internationale
Aide médicale internationale
Aide médicale internationale is a secular humanitarian-aid non-governmental organisation.- External links :More information* *...
. An education committee was charged with the training of the military and administrative cadre. A culture committee and a judiciary committee were also created.
This expansion prompted Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal was the third President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is the best known of the Marxist leadership....
to demand that the Red Army resume their offensives, in order to crush the Panjshir groups definitively. However, Massoud had received advance warning of the attack through his intelligence agents in the government and he evacuated all 130,000 inhabitants from the valley into the Hindukush mountains, leaving the Soviet bombings to fall on empty ground and the Soviet battalions once again to face the mountains.
With the defeat of the Soviet-Afghan attacks, Massoud was able to carry out the next phase of his strategic plan, expanding the resistance movement and liberating the northern provinces of Afghanistan. In August 1986, he captured Farkhar in Takhar Province
Takhar Province
Takhār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It was established in 1964 when Qataghan Province was divided into three provinces: Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar. It is in the north-east of the country. Its capital is Taloqan. Its salt mines are one of Afghanistan's major mineral resources...
. In November 1986, his forces overran the headquarters of the government's 20th division at Nahrin in Baghlan Province, scoring an important victory for the resistance. This expansion was also carried out through diplomatic means, as more mujahideen commanders were persuaded to adopt the Panjshir military system.
Despite almost constant attacks by the Red Army and the Afghan army, Massoud was able to increase his military strength. Starting in 1980 with a force of less than 1,000 ill-equipped guerillas, the Panjshir valley mujahideen grew to a 5,000-strong force by 1984. After expanding his influence outside the valley, Massoud increased his resistance forces to 13,000 fighters by 1989. These forces were divided into different types of units: the locals (mahalli) were tasked with static defense of villages and fortified positions. The best of the mahalli were formed into units called grup-i zarbati (shock troops), semi-mobile groups that acted as reserve
Military reserve
A military reserve, tactical reserve, or strategic reserve is a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander so that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing...
forces for the defense of several strongholds. A different type of unit was the mobile group (grup-i-mutaharek), a lightly equipped commando
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
-like formation numbering 33 men, whose mission was to carry out hit-and-run
Hit-and-run tactics
Hit-and-run tactics is a tactical doctrine where the purpose of the combat involved is not to seize control of territory, but to inflict damage on a target and immediately exit the area to avoid the enemy's defense and/or retaliation.-History:...
attacks outside the Panjshir, sometimes as far as 100 km from their base. These men were professional soldiers, well-paid and trained, and, from 1983 on, they provided an effective strike force against government outposts. Uniquely among the mujahideen, these groups wore uniforms, and their use of the pakul
Pakul
The Pakol also spelled Pakul or Khapol, from Nurestan is a soft, round-topped men's hat, typically of wool and found in any of a variety of earthy colors: brown, black, gray, or ivory. Before it is fitted, it resembles a bag with a round, flat bottom. The wearer rolls up the sides nearly to the...
made this headwear emblematic of the Afghan resistance.
Massoud's military organization was an effective compromise between the traditional Afghan method of warfare and the modern principles of guerilla warfare that Massoud had learned from the works of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
. His forces were considered the most effective of all the various Afghan resistance movements.
The United States provided Massoud with close to no support. Part of the reason was that it permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan, which favored rival mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
. In an interview Massoud expressed: "We thought the CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people [meaning Hekmatyar]." Primary advocates for supporting Massoud instead were State Department's Edmund McWilliams and Peter Tomsen, who were on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others included two Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns
Michael Johns (executive)
Michael Johns is an American health care executive, former federal government of the United States official and conservative policy analyst and writer.-Biography:...
and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of U.S. support under the Reagan Doctrine
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
.
Still, the Soviet army and the Afghan communist army were mainly defeated by Massoud and his mujahideen in numerous small engagements between 1984 and 1988. In 1989, after labeling the Soviet Union's military engagement in Afghanistan "a bleeding wound", Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
began a withdrawal of Soviet troops from the nation. On February 15, 1989, in what was depicted as an improbable victory for the mujahideen, the last Soviet soldier left the nation.
Fall of the Afghan communist regime (1992)
After the departure of Soviet troopsSoviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan
The Withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from the Afghanistan began on May 15, 1988 and successfully executed on February 15, 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov who also was the last Soviet general officer to walk from the Asfghanistan back into Soviet territory through the...
in 1989, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
regime, then headed by Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai , originally merely Najibullah, was the fourth and last President of the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.-Early years:Najibullah was born in August 1947 to the Ahmadzai...
, proved unexpectedly capable of holding its own against the mujahideen. Backed by a massive influx of weapons from the Soviet Union, the Afghan armed forces reached a level of performance they had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage and were able to maintain control over all of Afghanistan's major cities.
By 1992, however, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the regime began to crumble. Food and fuel shortages undermined the capacities of the government's army, and a resurgence of factionalism split the regime between Khalq
Khalq
Khalq was a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Its historical leaders were Presidents Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin. It was also the name of the leftist newspaper produced by the same movement. It was supported by the USSR and was formed in 1965 when the PDPA was born...
and Parcham
Parcham
Parcham was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Parcham faction seized power in the country after toppling Hafizullah Amin....
supporters.
A few days after it was clear that Najibullah had lost control of the nation, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over authority to resistance commanders and local notables throughout the country. Joint councils (shuras) were immediately established for local government in which civil and military officials of the former government were usually included. In many cases, prior arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had been made between foes.
Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of the demise of the Soviet Union, Massoud was aware of conflict within the government's northern command. General Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan
Hairatan
Hairatan is a border town in the north of Balkh province, Afghanistan, on the Amu Darya river. The river forms the border with Uzbekistan, and the two nations are connected by the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge. The city of Termez in Uzbekistan is close to Hairatan...
border crossing at the northern end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun
Pashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
generals based in Mazari Sharif feared removal by Najibullah and replacement by Pashtun officers. The generals rebelled and the situation was taken over by Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum is a former pro-Soviet fighter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and is considered by many to be the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community and the party Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan...
, who held general rank as head of the Jowzjani militia, also based in Mazari Sharif. He and Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyed Mansour, of the Ismaili
Ismaili
' is a branch of Shia Islam. It is the second largest branch of Shia Islam, after the Twelvers...
community based in Baghlan Province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21. Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul, there was no government force standing between the northern allies and the major air force base at Bagram
Bagram Air Base
Bagram Airfield, also referred to as Bagram Air Base, is a militarized airport and housing complex that is located next to the ancient city of Bagram, southeast of Charikar in Parwan province of Afghanistan. The base is run by a US Army division headed by a major general. A large part of the base,...
, some seventy kilometers north of Kabul. By mid-April 1992, the Afghan air force command at Bagram had capitulated to Massoud. On March 18, 1992, Najibullah announced his willingness to resign, and on April 17, as his government fell apart, he tried to escape but was stopped at Kabul Airport by Dostum's forces. He then took refuge at the United Nations mission, where he remained unharmed until 1995. A group of Parchami generals and officials declared themselves an interim government for the purpose of handing over power to Massoud, who at that time was the dominant military force and popular among the people.
Massoud transferred power to create an interim government to the political parties in order to give nobody a reason to continue the war. He kept his forces outside of Kabul trying to convince other commanders especially Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
to do the same in order to avoid bloodshed. In early 1992, in a recorded conversation, Massoud tried to convince Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
not to attack Kabul but instead to join the peace talks. see video Massoud was awaiting a political accord. In April 1992 the political leaders finally agreed on a plan for peace: the Peshawar Accords.
War in Kabul and other parts of the country (1992-1996)
The Peshawar Accords created the Islamic State of AfghanistanIslamic State of Afghanistan
The Islamic State of Afghanistan was the name of the state of Afghanistan after the collapse of the communist regime, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, in 1992. In 1996, the country was renamed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan by the Taliban, after seizing control of the majority of the...
and appointed an interim government for a transitional period. Ahmad Shah Massoud was appointed as the minister of defense.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal
Amin Saikal
Professor Amin Saikal is Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Professor Saikal has specialised in the politics, history, political economy and international relations of the Middle East and Central Asia...
concludes in Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival:
Massoud enjoyed strong support inside Afghanistan but the Islamic State in general, although internationally recognized, received close to no outside funding or support. The United States and European countries after the communist defeat largely lost interest in Afghanistan and disengaged.
With the strong support of Pakistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - although he was repeatedly offered the position of prime minister - placed Kabul under intensive rocket bombardment in May 1992. Some sources cite up to 3,000 rockets being fired into Kabul daily, killing thousands of civilians. A report said: "Massoud, whose northern council was the dominant military power tried to keep order while the parties talked, but meantime, Pakistan urged on its Afghan client Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.... Massoud, with UN help tried to avoid civil war in the early 1990s but... Hekmatyar rained rockets on Kabul seeking power for himself." In addition, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
- as competitors for regional hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
- supported Afghan militias hostile towards each other. According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was assisting the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari was a political leader of the Hezbe Wahdat during and following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Mazari was an ethnic Hazara, and believed the solution to the divisiveness in Afghanistan was in federalism, where every ethnic group would have specific constitutional...
, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence. Saudi Arabia supported the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan....
and his Ittihad-i Islami faction. Massoud tried to avoid war between the Saudi-backed Ittihad and the Iran-backed Wahdat and frequently mediated between them. (see video)
But Saudi Arabia and Iran urged on their proxy forces and conflict between the two militias soon escalated into a full-scale war. A publication by the George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
describes:
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum is a former pro-Soviet fighter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and is considered by many to be the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community and the party Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan...
and his Junbish-i Milli militia backed by Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
joined an alliance with Hekmatyar in early 1994. An estimated 25,000 people died during the most intense period of bombardment by Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami, the Junbish-i Milli forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum is a former pro-Soviet fighter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and is considered by many to be the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community and the party Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan...
and the Hezb-e Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari was a political leader of the Hezbe Wahdat during and following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Mazari was an ethnic Hazara, and believed the solution to the divisiveness in Afghanistan was in federalism, where every ethnic group would have specific constitutional...
in early 1994. Atrocities were committed by individuals of different armed factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. The militias who fought against the Islamic State and Massoud were known for their systematic brutality. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
released 10,000 dangerous criminals from the main prisons into the streets of Kabul to destabilize the city. Hekmatyar also cut off Kabul from water, food and energy supplies. The Iran-controlled Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari
Abdul Ali Mazari was a political leader of the Hezbe Wahdat during and following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Mazari was an ethnic Hazara, and believed the solution to the divisiveness in Afghanistan was in federalism, where every ethnic group would have specific constitutional...
[as well as the Ittihad of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan....
supported by Saudi Arabia] targeted civilians of the 'opposite side' in systematic atrocities. Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum is a former pro-Soviet fighter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and is considered by many to be the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community and the party Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan...
allowed crimes as a perceived payment for his troops. For civilians there was little security from murder, rape and extortion. The Taliban (who attacked Kabul in early 1995) in later years would commit massacres against civilians compared by United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
observers to those that happened during the War in Bosnia.
Ahmad Shah Massoud did not order any crimes. The Afghanistan Justice Project which is frequently used by Human Rights Watch as source concludes:
In those cases where crimes were committed by individuals fighting inside his troops, reports point out the responsibility of corrupted sub-commanders or individuals who used the chaos for their own purposes. John Jennings, a journalist from the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
(AP) and The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, who was on the ground in Kabul from 1992 to 1994 and was considered as a reliable source by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, concluded:
Edward Girardet, director of the Global Journalism Network in Geneva, explained:
In contrast to the time of chaos in Kabul, Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for troops under the direct control of Massoud from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. But from 1992 to 1995, due to the sudden initiation of the wars and the decentralized power structures, working government departments, a police or a system of justice and accountability for the newly created Islamic State of Afghanistan did not have time to form. An Afghan observer described the situation during that time:
Farid Amin reports the following exemplary incident:
Meanwhile there were also reports that individuals loyal to Massoud were helping civilians caught in crossfire or warning civilians of impeding attacks.
In 1993 Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation ("Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta'wani Mohammad-e Ghazali") to further humanitarian assistance and politically independent Afghan culture. The Ghazali Foundation provided free medical services during some days of the week to residents of Kabul who were unable to pay for medical treatment themselves. The Ghazali Foundation's department for distribution of auxiliary goods was the first partner of the Red Cross. The Ghazali Foundation's department of family consultation was a free advisory board, which was accessible seven days a week for the indigent. Although Massoud was responsible for the financing of the foundation, he did not interfere into its cultural work. A council led the foundation and a jury consisting of impartial university lecturers decided on the works of artists. The Ghazali foundation enabled Afghan artists to exhibit their works at different places in Kabul and numerous artists and authors were honoured for their works; some of them neither proponents of Massoud nor the Islamic State government.
Meanwhile, southern Afghanistan was neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local leaders such as Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai is the current Governor of Nangarhar province in Afghanistan.He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province, in the early 1990s and from 2001 until 2003.-Biography:...
and their militias. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam is a political party in Pakistan. It formed a combined government in national elections in 2002 and 2008...
-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. Mullah Omar
Mohammed Omar
Mullah Mohammed Omar , often simply called Mullah Omar, is the leader of the Taliban movement that operates in Afghanistan. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001, under the official title "Head of the Supreme Council"...
started his movement with fewer than 50 armed madrassah students in his hometown of Kandahar. When the Taliban took control of the city in 1994, they forced the surrender of dozens of local Pashtun leaders who had presided over a situation of complete lawlessness and atrocities. In 1994, the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.
In late 1994, most of the militia factions (Hezb-i Islami, Junbish-i Milli and Hezb-i Wahdat) which had been fighting in the battle for control of Kabul were defeated militarily by forces of the Islamic State's Secretary of Defense Ahmad Shah Massoud. Bombardment of the capital came to a halt. The Islamic State government took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again also convicting individuals inside government troops who had committed crimes. Massoud tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation
Democratic consolidation
Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that means it is unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock...
and democratic elections. A conference in three parts was arranged by Massoud. He united political and cultural personalities, governors, commanders, clergymen and representatives, in order to reach a lasting agreement. Massoud, like most people in Afghanistan, saw this conference as a small hope for democracy and for free elections. His favourite for candidacy to the presidency was Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, the first democratic prime minister under Zahir Shah, the former king. In the first meeting representatives from 15 different Afghan provinces met, in the second meeting there were already 25 provinces participating. Up until then the Islamic State's reach had been limited. Massoud was now trying to put a consolidation process into action to unite Afghanistan. He also invited the Taliban to join the process wanting them to be a partner in providing stability to Afghanistan during such a process. Massoud unarmed went to talk to some Taliban leaders in Maidan Shar. But the Taliban declined to join a process leading towards democratic elections. When Massoud returned to Kabul unharmed, the Taliban leader who had received him as his guest paid with his life: he was killed by other senior Taliban for failing to assassinate Massoud while the possibility had presented itself.
Neighboring Pakistan exerted strong influence over the Taliban. A publication with the George Washington University describes: "Initially, the Pakistanis supported ... Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... When Hekmatyar failed to deliver for Pakistan, the administration began to support a new movement of religious students known as the Taliban." Many analysts like Amin Saikal
Amin Saikal
Professor Amin Saikal is Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Professor Saikal has specialised in the politics, history, political economy and international relations of the Middle East and Central Asia...
describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy
Proxy war
A proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed...
force for Pakistan's regional interests which the Taliban decline. The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. (see video) Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:
The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
provided strong support to the Taliban.
On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was founded in 1996 when the Taliban began their rule of Afghanistan and ended with their fall from power in 2001...
. Massoud and his troops retreated to the northeast of Afghanistan.
Resistance against the Taliban (1996-2001)
Ahmad Shah Massoud created the United FrontUnited Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan
The United Islamic Front , known in the West and Pakistan as the Northern Alliance, was a military-political umbrella organization created by the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996 under the leadership of Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud...
(Northern Alliance) against the Taliban that were preparing offensives against the areas under the control of Massoud and against those under the control of other regional leaders. (see video) The United Front included forces and leaders from different political backgrounds as well as from all ethnicities of Afghanistan including Tajiks, Pashtuns
Pashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
, Uzbeks
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...
, Hazaras or Turkmens
Turkmen people
The Turkmen are a Turkic people located primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Qashqai,...
. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled territory in which roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population was living in provinces such as Badakhshan
Badakhshan Province
Badakhshan is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, consisting of 28 districts. It is located in the north-east of the country, between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya. It is part of the Badakhshan region.-Geography:...
, Kapisa
Kapisa Province
Kapisa is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. It is in the north-east of the country. Its capital is Mahmud-i-Raqi, and other districts include Kohistan, Nijrab and Tagab. The population of Kapisa is estimated to be 364,900, although there has never been an official estimate...
, Takhar
Takhar Province
Takhār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It was established in 1964 when Qataghan Province was divided into three provinces: Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar. It is in the north-east of the country. Its capital is Taloqan. Its salt mines are one of Afghanistan's major mineral resources...
and parts of Parwan, Kunar
Kunar Province
Kunar is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. Its capital is Asadabad. It is one of the four "N2KL" provinces...
, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan
Samangan Province
Samangan is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. The province covers and has a population of approximately 313,211, as of 2006.Its capital, Samangan, is known for its ancient ruins including, notably, the Takht e Rostam...
, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.
Massoud did not intend for the United Front to become the ruling government of Afghanistan. His vision was for the United Front to help establish a new government, where the various ethnic groups would share power and live in peace through a democratic form of government. Massoud told Roger L. Plunk, George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
author of the Wandering Peacemaker and international mediator, that his dream was of "an Afghanistan at peace with itself, and of the Panjshir Valley, which had been stripped of many of its trees, being once again full of flowering almond trees and laughing children."
Meanwhile, the Taliban imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school, or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative.
Women were required to wear the all-covering Afghan burqa
Burqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
, denied access to health care and education, windows needed to be covered so that women could not be seen from the outside and they were not allowed to laugh in a manner they could be heard by others. The Taliban, without any real judicial process, cut people's hands or arms off when accused of stealing. Taliban hit-squads watched the streets conducting arbitrary brutal public beatings.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf , is a retired four-star general who served as the 13th Chief of Army Staff and tenth President of Pakistan as well as tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Musharraf headed and led an administrative military government from October 1999 till August 2007. He ruled...
- then as Army Chief of Staff - was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and their ally Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
against the forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside Afghanistan against the forces of Massoud. 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers either from the Frontier Corps
Frontier Corps
The Frontier Corps is a federally-controlled paramilitary force of Pakistan, recruited mostly from the tribal areas along the western borders and led by officers from the Pakistan Army...
or army and an estimated 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20-40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani." The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan." Further 3,000 fighters of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian Al Qaeda militants. Of roughly 45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan (Taliban).
According to a 55-page report by the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
s against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar
Mohammed Omar
Mullah Mohammed Omar , often simply called Mullah Omar, is the leader of the Taliban movement that operates in Afghanistan. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001, under the official title "Head of the Supreme Council"...
himself."
From 1996 to 2001 Al Qaeda, as led by of Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
and Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician, Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life...
, became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. His so-called 055 Brigade
055 Brigade
The 055 Brigade was an elite guerrilla organization sponsored and trained by Al Qaeda that was integrated into the Taliban army between 1995 and 2001...
was responsible for mass killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.
In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary "Inside the Taliban":
In 1998, Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only main leader of the United Front in Afghanistan and the only leader who was able to defend vast parts of his area against the Taliban. Most major leaders including the Islamic State's President Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhanuddin Rabbani
Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani was President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was...
, Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Abdul Rashid Dostum is a former pro-Soviet fighter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and is considered by many to be the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek community and the party Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan...
, and others were living in exile. The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined. He explained in one interview:
Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. His proposals for peace can be seen here: Proposal for Peace, promoted by Commander Massoud. He also stated:
American journalist Sebastian Junger who frequently travels to war zones stated in March 2001:
In early 2001 the United Front employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. At the same time Massoud was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 the United Front leadership ordered the training of police forces specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.
In early 2001 Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
asking the international community
International community
The international community is a term used in international relations to refer to all peoples, cultures and governments of the world or to a group of them. The term is used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between them...
to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. see video He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
The areas of Massoud
Life in the areas under direct control of Massoud was different from the life in the areas under Taliban or i. e. Dostum's control. (see video) In contrast to the time of chaos in which all structures had collapsed in Kabul, Massoud was able to control his troops very well during the period starting in late 1996. Human Rights Watch notes no human rights crimes for Massoud's troops in the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. Massoud always controlled the Panjshir
Panjshir Province
Panjshir is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Containing the Panjshir Valley, in April 2004 it was created from parts of Parwan Province, which now lies along its southwestern border. Panjshir's population is about 139,000 and covers an area of 3,610 square kilometers...
, Takhar, parts of Parwan and Badakhshan
Badakhshan
Badakhshan is an historic region comprising parts of what is now northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan. The name is retained in Badakhshan Province which is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, in the far northeast of Afghanistan, and contains the Wakhan Corridor...
during the war. Some other provinces (notably Kunduz
Kunduz
Kunduz also known as Kundûz, Qonduz, Qondûz, Konduz, Kondûz, Kondoz, or Qhunduz is a city in northern Afghanistan, the capital of Kunduz Province. It is linked by highways with Mazari Sharif to the west, Kabul to the south and Tajikistan's border to the north...
, Baghlan
Baghlan
Baghlan is a city in northern Afghanistan, in the eponymous province, Baghlan Province. It is located three miles east of the Kunduz River, 35 miles south of Khanabad, and about 1,700 metres above sea level in the northern Hindu Kush...
, Nuristan and the north of Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
) were captured by his forces from the Taliban and lost again from time to time as the frontlines varied.
Massoud created democratic institutions which were structured into several committees: political, health, education and economic. Still, many people came to him personally when they had a dispute or problem and asked him to solve their problems.
Massoud also signed the Women's Rights Declaration. In the area of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa by law. They were allowed to work and to go to school. Although it was a time of war, girl schools were operating in some districts. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage in favour of the women to make their own choice. To Massoud there was reportedly nothing worse than treating a person like an object.
While it was Massoud's stated personal conviction that men and women are equal and should enjoy the same rights, he also had to deal with Afghan traditions which he said would need a generation or more to overcome. In his opinion that could only be achieved through education. Author Pepe Escobar wrote in Massoud: From Warrior to Statesman:
Humayun Tandar, who took part as a Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask the Jewish Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
Professor Michael Barry or his Christian friend Jean-José Puig: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."
International relations
U.S. policy regarding Massoud, the Taliban and Afghanistan remains ambiguous and differed between the various U.S. government agencies.
In 1997, U.S. State Department's Robin Raphel
Robin Raphel
Robin Lynn Raphel is a career diplomat who is currently the coordinator for non-military assistance to Pakistan with the rank of ambassador.. She has been the Ambassador to Tunisia and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs during the Clinton administration. In this capacity she...
told Massoud to surrender to the Taliban. She obtained a clear answer with Massoud stating that as long as he controlled an area the size of his hat he would continue to defend it from the Taliban.
Robin Raphel eventually became a lobbyist and adviser at Cassidy & Associates. The firm had a $1.2 million contract with the Musharraf military regime of Pakistan. At Cassidy & Associates she lobbied and advised Congress and the State Department for Pakistan on issues such as Afghan policy, Pakistan's relations with India, judicial independence and U.S. perceptions and congressional views of the Pakistan government. In late 2009 Raphel was (again) appointed to the Af-Pak region as deputy to Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker....
, the US. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, by the Obama administration. Raphel will be the main person overlooking the $1.5 billion U.S. aid package "for non-military purpose" to Pakistan.
At one point in the war, in 1997, the Taliban were vulnerable and the road to the capital, Kabul, was wide open. Two top foreign policy officials in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan to convince - without success - the United Front not to take advantage of a opportunity to make crucial gains against the Taliban. Before the United Front could strike, Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth and American U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson flew to northern Afghanistan and tried to convince the leadership of the United Front that this was not the time for an offensive. Instead, they insisted this was the time for a cease-fire and an arms embargo. At the same time Pakistanis began a "Berlin-like airlift to resupply and re-equip the Taliban", financed with Saudi money.
On another note an analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
(DIA), Julie Sirrs, had visited Afghanistan, but only in those areas controlled by the Taliban. After returning, she had realized that this was a one-dimensional view of Afghanistan and there were gaping holes in the DOD's understanding of the situation. In 1998, she requested to officially go back to northern Afghanistan to the areas controlled by Commander Massoud. Subsequently she was denied the permission to go there. So she went to the Panjshir Valley on her vacation and paid the journey on herself (in 1998). U.S. congressman Dana Rohrabacher describes:
In the meantime, the only collaboration between Massoud and another U.S. intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), consisted of an effort to trace Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
following the 1998 embassy bombings
1998 United States embassy bombings
The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capitals of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The date of the...
. The U.S. and the European Union provided no support to Massoud for the fight against the Taliban.
A change of policy, lobbied for by CIA officers on the ground who had visited the area of Massoud, regarding support to Massoud was underway in the course of 2001. According to Steve Coll's book "Ghost Wars" (who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for General Non-Fiction):
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher also recalled: "[B]etween Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan policy." CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush's signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war in favour of Massoud. This change in policy was finalized in August 2001 when it was too late.
After Pakistan had funded, directed and supported the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan, Massoud and the United Front received some assistance from India. India was particularly concerned about Pakistan's Taliban strategy and the Islamic militancy in its neighborhood; it provided US$70 million in aid including two Mi-17
MI-17
MI-17 can refer to:* Mil Mi-17, Soviet helicopter*M-17...
helicopters, three additional helicopters in 2000 and US$8 million worth of high-altitude equipment in 2001. Furthermore, the alliance supposedly also received minor aid from Tajikistan
Tajikistan
Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....
, Russia and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
because of their opposition to the Taliban and the Pakistani control over the Taliban's Emirate. Their support, however, remained limited to the most needed things. Meanwhile Pakistan engaged up to 28 000 Pakistani nationals and regular Pakistani army troops to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces against Massoud.
In April 2001, the president of the European Parliament Nicole Fontaine
Nicole Fontaine
Nicole Fontaine is a French politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Île-de-France. She is a member of the Union for a Popular Movement, part of the European People's Party...
(who called Massoud the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan") invited Massoud with the support of French and Belgian politicians to address the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Belgium. In his speech, he asked for humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan. Massoud further went on to warn that his intelligence agents had gained limited knowledge about a huge-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
Assassination
Massoud, then aged 48, was the target of a suicide attackSuicide attack
A suicide attack is a type of attack in which the attacker expects or intends to die in the process.- Historical :...
at Khwaja Bahauddin, in Takhar Province
Takhar Province
Takhār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It was established in 1964 when Qataghan Province was divided into three provinces: Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar. It is in the north-east of the country. Its capital is Taloqan. Its salt mines are one of Afghanistan's major mineral resources...
in northeastern Afghanistan on September 9, 2001. The attackers' names were alternately given as Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, husband of Malika El Aroud
Malika El Aroud
Malika El Aroud is a Moroccan-born Belgian Muslim activist known for her Islamist writings on the internet....
, and Bouraoui el-Ouaer; or 34-year-old Karim Touzani and 26-year-old Kacem Bakkali.
The attackers claimed to be Belgians
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
originally from Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. However, their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality was later determined to be Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
n. Waiting for almost three weeks (during which they also interviewed Burhanuddin Rabbani
Burhanuddin Rabbani
Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani was President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was...
and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan....
) for an interview opportunity, on September 8, 2001, an aide to Massoud recalls the would-be suicide attackers "were so worried" and threatened to leave if the interview did not happen in the next 24 hours (until September 10, 2001). They were finally granted an interview. During the interview they set off a bomb that was composed of explosives hidden in the camera and in a battery pack belt. Commander Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him to a military field hospital in nearby Tajikistan. The explosion also killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a United Front official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili
Massoud Khalili
Masood Khalili, also Massoud Khalili and Masud Khalili is a diplomat, linguist and urbane poet. He was an adviser and close friend of legendary Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Khalili is the current Afghan Ambassador to Spain. He has previously been the ambassador to Turkey and India. He speaks...
were injured. One of the suicide attackers, Bouraoui, was also killed by the explosion while Dahmane was captured and shot while trying to escape.
Despite initial denials by the United Front, news of Massoud's death was reported almost immediately, appearing on the BBC, and in European and North American newspapers on September 10, 2001. On September 16, however, the United Front officially announced that Massoud had died of injuries in the suicide attack. Massoud was buried in his home village of Bazarak
Bazarak, Panjshir
Bazarak is a town in the Panjshir Valley, in northern Afghanistan. It is also the provincial capital of Panjshir Province. It has six villages: Khanez, Jangalak, Malaspa, Parandeh, Rahmankhil...
in the Panjshir Valley. The funeral, although happening in a rather rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. (see video).
Afghan journalist Fahim Dashty summarized: "He was the only one, ever, to serve Afghanistan, to serve Afghans. To do a lot of things for Afghanistan, for Afghans. And we lost him." (see video)
Until he was assassinated, Massoud had survived assassination attempts for 26 years, including attempts made by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI and before them the Soviet KGB, the Afghan communist KHAD and Hekmatyar. The first attempt on Massoud's life was carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975 when Massoud was only 22 years old. In early 2001 Al Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory.
Connection to September 11, 2001
The assassination of Massoud is considered to have a strong connection to the September 11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. soil which killed nearly 3,000 people and which appeared to be the terrorist attack that Massoud had warned against in his speech to the European Parliament several months earlier.
John P. O'Neill
John P. O'Neill
John Patrick O'Neill was an American counter-terrorism expert, who worked as a special agent and eventually a Special Agent in Charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation until late 2001...
was a counter-terrorism expert and the Assistant Director of the FBI until late 2001. He retired from the FBI and was offered the position of director of security at the World Trade Center (WTC). He took the job at the WTC two weeks before 9/11. On September 10, 2001, John O'Neill told two of his friends, "We're due. And we're due for something big.... Some things have happened in Afghanistan. [referring to the assassination of Massoud] I don't like the way things are lining up in Afghanistan.... I sense a shift, and I think things are going to happen... soon." John O'Neill died on September 11, 2001, when the south tower collapsed.
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
Dana Rohrabacher
Dana Tyron Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 45th and 42nd, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Republican Party...
would later claim that he immediately saw the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud as a sign that "something terrible [was] about to happen." Rohrabacher recounted his convictions in a 2004 speech to congress: "As I mourned his loss, I struggled to fully understand the significance of his death. Then it dawned on me. It dawned on me why Massoud had been assassinated. America was going to be attacked. It would be so monstrous that bin Laden's gang in Afghanistan wanted to cut us off from a means of counterattacking them in their base of operations in Afghanistan. We would have turned to Massoud if we were attacked. That is what we would have done, and they were cutting us off from turning to Massoud, but now Massoud was dead. Perhaps his death was a signal to set the planned attack on our country in motion...."
Analysts believe Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
ordered the assassination to help his Taliban protectors and ensure he would have their protection and co-operation in Afghanistan. Following the assassination, Osama bin Laden had an emissary deliver a cassette of Dahmane speaking of his love for his wife and his decision to blow himself up as well as $500 in an envelope to settle a debt, to the assassin's widow. The Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
(ISI) and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan....
, an Afghan Wahhabi Islamist, have also been mentioned as possible organizers or collaborators of the Massoud assassins. The assassins are said to have entered United Front (Northern Alliance) territory under the auspices of the Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan....
and had his assistance in bypassing "normal security procedures."
Investigative commission
In April 2003, the Karzai administration
Karzai administration
The Karzai administration is the official government of Afghanistan under President Hamid Karzai, who became the head of state of Afghanistan in December 2001, after the Taliban government was removed. He was appointed at the 2002 Loya Jirga as the Interim President of the Afghan Transitional...
announced the setup of a commission to investigate the assassination of Massoud, as the country celebrated the 11th anniversary of the defeat of the communist government The French secret service revealed on October 16, 2003 that the camera used by Massoud's assassins had been stolen in December 2000 in Grenoble
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
, France from a photojournalist, Jean-Pierre Vincendet, who was then working on a story on that city's Christmas store window displays. By tracing the camera's serial number, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
was able to determine that Vincendet was its original owner. The French secret service and the FBI then began working on tracing the route the camera took between the time it was taken from Vincendet and the Massoud assassination.
National Hero of Afghanistan
Massoud was the only main Afghan leader who never left Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviet Union and later in the fight against the Taliban Emirate. The National Geographic about that time concluded: "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres [was] Ahmad Shah Massoud." (see video) In the areas under his direct control such as Panjshir, some parts of Parwan and Takhar Massoud established democratic institutions. One refugee who cramped his family of 27 into an old jeep to flee from the Taliban to the area of Massoud described Massoud's territory in 1997 as "the last tolerant corner of Afghanistan". About his life in Massoud's area he stated:"I feel freedom here. I like... you know, nobody bothers me. I do my job. I take care of my family. The way which I like I live in this area."In 2001, the Afghan Interim Government under president Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
officially awarded Massoud the title of "Hero of the Afghan Nation". One analyst in 2004 put it this way: "One man holds a greater political punch than all 18 living [Afghan] presidential candidates combined. Though already dead for three years.... Since his death on September 9, 2001 at the hands of two al Qaeda-linked Islamic radicals, Massoud has been transformed from mujahedin to national hero—if not saint. Pictures of Massoud, the Afghan mujahedin who battled the Soviets, other warlords, and the Taliban for more than 20 years, vastly outnumber those of any other Afghan including those of Karzai." Dr. Abdullah Abdullah
Abdullah Abdullah
Abdullah Abdullah is an Afghan politician and a doctor of medicine. He was an adviser and friend to Ahmad Shah Massoud, legendary anti-Taliban leader and commander known as the "Lion of Panjshir". After the fall of the Taliban regime, Dr. Abdullah served as Afghanistan's Foreign Minister from 2001...
, one of the closest friends of Massoud, was Karzai's strongest rival in the Afghan Presidential Elections of 2009. Dr. Abdullah said about Massoud: "He was everything. He was a friend. He was a leader. He was a teacher without acting as a teacher."
Journalist Sebastian Junger reports: "A lot of people who knew him felt that he was the best hope for that part of the world." Junger who traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to profile Massoud further states: "Afghanistan's government has been accused of being corrupt and weak. Massoud had a reputation for integrity and strength.... He would have been very hard for the [insurgents] to intimidate." Shorish-Shamley, a women's rights activist, says: "If they [al Qaeda leaders] were hiding under a rock, he would have found them. He was that type of person. He would have found bin Laden." Among supporters of the Taliban or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
's Hezb-i Islami he is obviously seen differently. Still, a 2009 CNN report concludes: "He remains today a hero on the streets of Kabul among a people who have more faith in a leader from the past than the leaders of the future." (see video)
Today Panjshir - the home of Massoud - "is arguably the most peaceful place in the entire country. A small US military reconstruction team is based here, but there are none of the signs of foreign occupation that exist elsewhere. Even Afghan soldiers are few and far between. Instead, the people like to boast about how they keep their own security," observes the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National. The people of Panjshir (and Takhar) remain realistic however: "We are very sure that if they [the Taliban] come back they will not leave one man in Panjshir alive. If we don't fight they will kill us, so if we fight we will at least die with glory." The National further states: "Those who knew him say he would never have accepted the Taliban's return to power and they have vowed to defend his memory."
Many documentaries, books and movies have been made about Ahmad Shah Massoud. Massoud is the subject of Ken Follett
Ken Follett
Ken Follett is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels. He has sold more than 100 million copies of his works. Four of his books have reached the number 1 ranking on the New York Times best-seller list: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, and World Without End.-Early...
's Lie Down With Lions, a novel about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also plays a significant role in James McGee
James McGee (author)
James McGee is an English novelist known for his historical novels about a fictional Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood. The books are set in Regency London....
's thriller Crow's War. Another is Fire by Sebastian Junger. Junger was one of the last Western journalists to interview Massoud in depth. The bulk of this interview was first published in March 2001 for National Geographics Adventure Magazine, along with photographs by the renowned Iranian photographer Reza Deghati
Reza Deghati
Reza Deghati, born 1952 in Tabriz, Iran is an Iranian-French photojournalist, who works under the name Reza .-Biography:Reza has covered much of the globe for National Geographic Magazine. Several films about Reza's work have been produced by National Geographic Television, most notably Frontline...
.
The Massoud Foundation was established in 2003, as an independent, non-aligned, non-profitable and non-political organization by people who have been affected by Massoud. It provides humanitarian assistance to Afghans especially in the fields of health care and education. It also runs programs in the fields of culture, construction, agriculture and welfare.
Lion of Panjshir
Massoud was named "The Afghan who won the cold war" by the Wall Street Journal. He defeated the Soviet Red Army nine times in the Panjshir. The Soviet Union's defeat was not only a defeat in Afghanistan, but led to the collapse of the Soviet system and was followed by the liberation of the Central Asian and Eastern European countries from Moscow's control. His struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan earned him the name "Lion of Panjshir"."Lion of Panjshir", is a rhyme and play on words in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, which alludes to the strength of his resistance against the Soviet Union, the mythological exaltation of the lion in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
literature, and finally, the place name of the Panjshir Valley
Panjshir Valley
The Panjshir Province is a valley in north-central Afghanistan, 150 km north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. Located in the Panjshir Province it is divided by the Panjshir River...
, where Massoud was born. The place name of "Panjshir" Valley in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
means (Valley of the) Five Lions. Thus, the phrase "Lion of Panjshir", which in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
is "Shir-e-Panjshir," شیر پنجشیر is a rhyming play on words, with the connotation "Lion of the Five Lions".
Warning the world (September 11, 2001)
In spring 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels stating that behind the situation in Afghanistan there was the regime in Pakistan. He also stated his conviction that without the support of Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year, also because the Afghan population was ready to rise against them. Addressing the United States specifically he issued the warning that should the U.S. not work for peace in Afghanistan and put pressure on Pakistan to cease their support to the Taliban, the problems of Afghanistan would soon become the problems of the U.S. and the world.Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents from November 2001 show that Massoud had gained "limited knowledge... regarding the intentions of [al-Qaeda] to perform a terrorist act against the US on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." They also point out that he warned about such attacks.
In 2002, French singer-songwriter and author Damien Saez
Damien Saez
- Early life :Damien Saez was born in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Savoie, on 1 August 1977, where he lived until the age of 3–4 years before his family moved to Marseille...
wrote a song about 9/11 entitled "Massoud". He was also featured in the ABC Television
ABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
mini-series The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11
The Path to 9/11 was a two-part miniseries that aired in the United States on ABC television from September 10 – 11, 2006, and also in other countries. The film dramatizes the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City and the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks.The film...
, which aired commercial-free in the USA in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The mini-series depicts Massoud warning U.S. intelligence agents of the coming U.S. attack by al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
and Massoud's September 9, 2001 assassination.
Personal
Massoud was married to Sediqa Massoud. They have one son (Ahmad born in 1989) and five daughters (Fatima born in 1992, Mariam born in 1993, Ayesha born in 1995, Zohra born in 1996 and Nasrine born in 1998).Massoud's wife and his children live in Iran. In 2005 Sediqa Massoud published a personal account on her life with Massoud (co-authored by two women's rights activists and friends of Sediqa Massoud, Chékéba Hachemi and Marie-Francoise Colombani) called "Pour l'amour de Massoud" (For the love of Massoud) in which she describes a very decent and loving husband.
After his death, Massoud was interred in a mausoleum in Panjshir Valley
Panjshir Valley
The Panjshir Province is a valley in north-central Afghanistan, 150 km north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. Located in the Panjshir Province it is divided by the Panjshir River...
. A larger mausoleum is currently being constructed to replace the current one.
A major road in Kabul was named Great Massoud Road, and just outside the US Embassy stands a monument to Massoud.
The family has a great deal of prestige in the politics of Afghanistan. One of his six brothers, Ahmad Zia Massoud
Ahmad Zia Massoud
Ahmad Zia Massoud was the First Vice President of Afghanistan in the first elected administration of President Hamid Karzai, from December 2004 to November 2009...
, was a vice-president of Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai. There have been unsuccessful attempts on the life of Ahmad Zia Massoud in 2004 and late 2009. The Associated Press reported that 8 Afghans died in the attempt on Ahmad Zia Massoud's life.
Another brother, Ahmad Wali Massoud, was Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2006. He founded the Nahzat-e-Mili political party which is now known as the National Movement of Afghanistan party.
Further reading
- Marcela Grad (2009): Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader; Webster University Press, 310pp
- Sediqa Massoud with Chékéba Hachemi and Marie-Francoise Colombani (2005): Pour l'amour de Massoud; Document XO Editions, 265pp (in French)
- Amin Saikal (2006): Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival; I. B. Tauris, 352pp ("One of the "Five Best" Books on Afghanistan" - Wall Street Journal)
- Roy Gutman (2008): How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan; United States Institute of Peace Press, 304pp
- Coll, SteveSteve CollSteve Coll is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer. Coll is currently president and CEO of the New America Foundation. Prior to assuming that post on September 17, 2007, Coll was a staff writer for The New Yorker, and served as managing editor of The Washington Post from 1998 to...
(2004): Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 9, 2001Ghost WarsGhost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, written by Steve Coll, published in 2004 by Penguin Press, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction....
; Penguin Press, 695pp, ISBN 1-59420-007-6. (won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction) - Stephen Tanner: Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban
- Christophe de Ponfilly (2001): Massoud l'Afghan; Gallimard, 437pp (in French)
- Gary W. Bowersox (2004): The Gem Hunter-True Adventures of an American in Afghanistan; Geovision, Inc. (January 22, 2004), ISBN 978-0974732312.
- Gary C. Schroen (2005): 'First In' An Insiders Account of How The CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan; New York: Presido Press/Ballantine Books, ISBN 978-0-89141-872-6.
- Peter Bergen: Holy War, Inc.
- Ahmed RashidAhmed RashidAhmed Rashid is a former Pakistani revolutionary, a journalist and best-selling author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.-Biography:...
: TALIBAN - The Story of the Afghan Warlords; ISBN 0-330-49221-7. - A. R. Rowan: On The Trail Of A Lion: Ahmed Shah Massoud, Oil Politics and Terror
- MaryAnn T. Beverly (2007): From That Flame; Kallisti Publishing
- Roger Plunk: The Wandering Peacemaker
- References to Massoud appear in the book "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled HosseiniKhaled HosseiniKhaled Hosseini , is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician of ethnic Tajik origin. He is a citizen of the United States where he has lived since he was fifteen years old. His 2003 debut novel, The Kite Runner, was an international bestseller, selling more than 12 million copies worldwide....
.
See also
- Amrullah SalehAmrullah SalehAmrullah Saleh is an Afghan politician who last served as the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security...
- Abdullah AbdullahAbdullah AbdullahAbdullah Abdullah is an Afghan politician and a doctor of medicine. He was an adviser and friend to Ahmad Shah Massoud, legendary anti-Taliban leader and commander known as the "Lion of Panjshir". After the fall of the Taliban regime, Dr. Abdullah served as Afghanistan's Foreign Minister from 2001...
- Massoud KhaliliMassoud KhaliliMasood Khalili, also Massoud Khalili and Masud Khalili is a diplomat, linguist and urbane poet. He was an adviser and close friend of legendary Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Khalili is the current Afghan Ambassador to Spain. He has previously been the ambassador to Turkey and India. He speaks...
- Malika El AroudMalika El AroudMalika El Aroud is a Moroccan-born Belgian Muslim activist known for her Islamist writings on the internet....
- Reagan DoctrineReagan DoctrineThe Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to oppose the global influence of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War...
- Sebastian Junger's "Fire"
- James McGee Novel "Crow's War"
External links
- Massoud's Letter To The People Of America 1998
- Proposal for Peace, promoted by Commander Massoud, in English in Dari (Persian), April 19, 1998
Interviews
- The Last Interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud Piotr Balcerowicz, early August 2001
- "Breakfast with Massoud" by Roger Plunk The Source, December 1, 2001
Obituaries and articles
- Ahmad Shah Mas’ud (1953-2001), Bharat Rakshak Monitor, November–December 2001
- Remembering Massoud, a fighter for peace, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, September 10, 2002 - The Assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud Paul Wolf, Global Research, 14 September 2003
- 60 Years of Asian Heroes: Ahmad Shah Massoud Time, 2006
- Profile: Afghanistan's 'Lion Of Panjshir' Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 5, 2006
- Afghan Commander Massoud, Killed on Eve of 9/11 Attacks, is a National Hero by The LA Times, 22 September 2010
Afghanistan - the Squandered Victory (documentary film) by the BBC
(documentary film directly from the year 1989 explaining the beginning of the turmoil to follow)
Commander Massoud's Struggle (documentary film) by Nagakura Hiromi
(from 1992: one month after the fall of the communist regime, after Hekmatyar had been expelled to the southern outskirts of Kabul, before he restarted his heavy bombardment of Kabul with Pakistani support)
Massoud's Conversation with Hekmatyar (original document of 1992)
Ahmad Shah Massoud - Destiny's Afghan (documentary film) by Iqbal Malhotra
Massoud l'Afghan (documentary film) by Christophe de Ponfilly
Who Killed Massoud? (documentary film) by Didier Martiny
The Lion Of Panjshir (Symphony No. 2) for narrator and symphonic band by composer David Gaines
David Gaines (composer)
David Gaines is an American composer of contemporary classical music.He grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, and was a euphonium and bass trombone player in both bands and orchestras , a backgroundthat enabled him in later years, as a composer, to champion solo opportunities for low brass...
Photographs