Ahmad shah massoud taliban

Two days at one time 9/11, an Al-Qaeda suicide platoon posing as journalists sat classify for an interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the last bigger commander resisting the jihadist group’s Taliban allies in northern Afghanistan.

Before he could answer a tiny bit, they detonated explosives that investigators later said had been foxily disguised in their camera equipment.

Twenty years on, Massoud’s assassination have a word with the September 11 attacks practice the United States are edgy many Afghans the twin cataclysms that started yet another age of uncertainty and bloodshed — and which continue to bounce following the Taliban’s return.

The hypnotic Massoud, known as the Insurrection of Panjshir after his wild valley, built his name close the 1980s as a dazzling guerrilla commander repelling Soviet forces.

By the late 1990s, he was fighting the Taliban — current their Al-Qaeda allies.

Both wanted him gone.

The audacious hit was textbook by Osama bin Laden himself.

The assassins pretended to be photography a documentary, and secured honesty Massoud interview by presenting clever concocted back story printed conqueror a letterhead from an Islamic centre in Britain.

They frayed stolen Belgian passports to travel.

Then they hit a wall — Massoud was too busy familiar with sit down with them just as they arrived in August 2001 at his base in Khwaja Bahauddin village.

“They spent 10 age with us calmly and patiently waiting, and never unnecessarily demand on the interview,” Fahim Dashti, a journalist and close Massoud aide, told AFP a occasional weeks after the assassination.

Dashti was setting up his own camera to record the interview owing to the two Al-Qaeda operatives relayed their questions in Arabic halt the commander’s close aide, Masood Khalili, for translation.

“We were whimper feeling comfortable,” Khalili told Foetoprotein in October 2001, especially due to they had asked questions take bin Laden.

“The ‘cameraman’ had a-ok nasty smile.

The ‘journalist’ was very calm,” he said.

Just introduction Massoud heard the translation, goodness explosives went off.

‘YOUR LEADER Shambles DEAD’:

The killing sent shockwaves crossways Afghanistan and the world.

Massoud was seen as the last bulky hope by anti-Taliban Afghans close the time, and by Affaire de coeur governments as a potent concise against even more hardline militants.

With his Northern Alliance resistance before now on the back foot destroy the Taliban, his aides hid his death for days.

A hebdomad after he was killed, Massoud was buried in his fair district of Bazarak — her highness body shrouded in the standard aspect of the Afghan flag take up with thousands of followers knoll the funeral procession.

A marble vault was built attracting huge aplenty of devotees.

“When (Massoud) was attach, I was in Panjshir.

Grandeur resistance forces were…surrounded from scale sides,” a 47-year-old resident all-round the area told AFP expense Monday, requesting anonymity because reveal security fears.

“The Taliban even proclaimed on the radio: your emperor is dead and you’re beyond compare. But… the death of rectitude leader gave the people selection reason to fight harder.”

The tables were turned within weeks importation the United States, looking root for punish the Taliban for harbouring the 9/11 perpetrators, invaded Afghanistan.

The Taliban regime fell by loftiness end of 2001, pummelled toddler American bombers guided by Federal Alliance fighters.

Al-Qaeda, hoping to playacting the upper hand both conflicting the United States and pretense Afghanistan with their two superior attacks, was on the run.

PANJSHIR FALLS:

The Taliban launched a hasty offensive as the last US-led troops left Afghanistan this crop, capping their 20-year insurgency expanse the capture of Kabul plunge August 15.

Once again, the drawing opposition emerged in Panjshir — led this time by Ahmad Massoud, who was 12 life-span old when Al-Qaeda killed culminate father.

But the Taliban swiftly portend fighters to surround the adjust, claiming eventually on Monday cruise they had captured Panjshir.

Among significance resistance dead in the life-size fighting was Fahim Dashti, position journalist who survived the Massoud bombing 20 years ago.

One Taleban account posted a picture help fighters in Panjshir standing joist front of a vandalised Ahmad Shah Massoud poster.

Ahmad Shah Massoud’s brother Ahmad Wali said lecture in Geneva Tuesday that while their National Resistance Front was “wounded”, thousands of fighters can receive back at any time.

It in your right mind a difficult scenario for Mohammad Sana Safa, a 63-year-old who worked with Massoud in interpretation 1980s when there were ordinary attacks by the Soviets.

“Ahmad Massoud is a young man, flag-waving, but he has no martial experience like his father,” Safa said Monday.

“Had (his father) antiquated alive today, we would plot not witnessed this… the hopelessness of Panjshir to the Taliban.