LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Northern Alliance
built 179 days ago
Covert CIA support for Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance guerrilla leader fighting the Taliban, is minimal and fraying. In the wake of the USS Cole bombing, the CIA develops a plan where the US would increase support for Massoud if he produces strong intelligence about bin Laden’s whereabouts. Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke outlines this CIA proposal to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, but Berger rejects it. Aid to Massoud continues to languish under the new Bush administration, until Clarke’s proposal (slightly modified) is tentatively approved a week before 9/11.
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Posters of late rebel leader Ahmed Shah Massoud grace the windshields of many cars in Northern Alliance-held territory. Known as the "Lion of Pansher," Massoud was killed by suicide bombers posing as journalists shortly several weeks ago. He has become a legend and a motivating force for the Afghan opposition.
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Massoud was the target of a suicide attack which occurred at Khwaja Bahauddin on September 9, 2001. The attackers were two Arabs, Dahmane Abd al-Sattar and Bouraoui el-Ouaer, who claimed to be Belgians originally from Morocco. However, their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality Tunisian. The assassins claimed to want to interview Massoud and set off a bomb in a belt worn by the cameraman while asking Massoud questions. The explosion ... killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a Northern Alliance official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili were injured. The assassins may have intended to attack several Northern Alliance council members simultaneously.
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Massoud was the victim of a suicide attack which occurred at Khvajeh Ba Odin on September 9, 2001, two days before the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack in the United States, a timing considered significant by some commentators. The attackers were two Arabs who claimed to be Belgians originally from Morocco. However their passports turned out to be stolen. According to some accounts they were posing as journalists, perhaps intending to attack several Northern Alliance council members simultaneously. They set off a bomb hidden in either a video camera or a belt worn by one of the attackers. It appears that Massoud died within 30 minutes, although his death was denied until September 13.
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Yunus Qanooni sits under a photo of slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in the living room of his home in the northern outskirts of Kabul. Qanooni was a leading member in the Northern Alliance and once a deputy to Massoud. He finished second to President Hamid Karzai in the 2004 presidential elections, and since the election he has emerged as Karzai's most influential critic. Qanooni is expected to be a leading member in the newly elected parliament.
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Worried about intercepts showing a growing likelihood of al-Qaeda attacks around the millennium, the CIA steps up ties with Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban. The CIA sends a team of agents to his headquarters in a remote part of northern Afghanistan, seeking his help to capture or kill bin Laden. Massoud complains that the US is too focused on bin Laden, and isn’t interested in the root problems of Taliban, Saudi, and Pakistani support for terrorism that is propping him up. He agrees to help nonetheless, and the CIA gives him more aid in return. However, the US is officially neutral in the Afghan civil war and the agents are prohibited from giving any aid that would “fundamentally alter the Afghan battlefield.”
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