LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Beginning
built 615 days ago
Massoud[16]: “Cigarettes have been banned since the beginning of the resistance against the Russians - for economic reasons. People smoke too much. The region spends too much money on cigarettes, and they don't eat as much as they should.”
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On September 9, 2001 al-Qaeda suicide bombers assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud. They had been posing as Moroccan documentary film makers. One man had a video camera filled with explosives. The other assassin tried to escape but was killed by Massoud's bodyguards. While the initial blast did not kill Massoud, he was severly injured in the head, chest, and legs. Efforts were made to get him to a hospital in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, but he died enroute.
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The question everyone is now asking is whether the anti-Taleban bloc, without Massoud, is able to resist the Taleban any longer. Many experts are ... wondering if an internal rift may now develop within the Northern Alliance which will allow the Taleban to take control of the whole country.
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Roy & Ponfilly: “Ahmad Shah Massoud is, contrary to today's political personalities, in no case on the search for a task to which he is not up to. It is correct that Massoud talks to those who visit him; he does ... not do anything that would cause them to visit him. It is difficult to make Massoud talk to the media. He permits filming him since he has nothing to hide.”
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The assassination of Massoud closely resembles the suicide approach of suspected terrorist operatives in the US. The fact that the murder was well planned and that the Arab perpetrators were clearly educated and sophisticated - but ... fanatical enough to die for their cause - suggests a similar profile to the hijackers of the American planes.
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Massoud looked at the figure. "Do you know how many of those missiles I received?" He wrote a number on the paper and showed it to Schroen. In a very neat hand Massoud had written "8." "That was all," Massoud declared, "and only at the end of the fight against the communist regime."
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