LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ahmed Shah Massoud: Northern Alliance
built 643 days ago
On 9 September 2001, two days before the attacks by al-Qa’eda terrorists on the WTC-towers in New York and the Pentagon, Ahmad Shah Massoud was murdered by a Belgian suicide bomber. General Massoud was the charismatic leader of the Northern Alliance, the main Afghan resistance group against the Taliban rulers in Kabul. The murderers intended his death as “a gift” to Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qa’eda and the most prominent protégé of the Taliban regime.
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Massoud denied his organisation had anything to do with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU - a movement blamed for several armed incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 1999 and 2000. He claimed the IMU was fighting alongside the Taleban and offered to produce several captives to prove this. Massoud said he was pleased with Northern Alliance relations with Russia and thanked Moscow for its active participation in the resolution of the Afghan conflict. He was less warm towards Turkmenistan, which he warned against furthering contact with the Taleban. "Turkmenistan will encounter the true face of the Taleban and their essence before too long," he said. Russian emergencies minister Sergei Shoigu was in Tajikistan at the same time as Massoud, but the Northern Alliance leader denied meeting the Moscow official.
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The US considers substantially aiding Ahmed Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance. As one counterterrorism official put it, “You keep [al-Qaeda terrorists] on the front lines in Afghanistan. Hopefully you’re killing them in the process, and they’re not leaving Afghanistan to plot terrorist operations.” A former US special envoy to the Afghan resistance visits Massoud this month. Massoud gives him “all the intelligence he [has] on al-Qaeda” in the hopes of getting some support in return. However, he gets nothing more than token amounts and his organization isn’t even given “legitimate resistance movement” status.
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CIA officers visit Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in Afghanistan, trading cash and supplies for intelligence on al-Qaeda. Massoud convinces key Alliance warlords living in exile—including Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan—to return to Afghanistan for a new campaign.
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Massoud made the most out of his success and was able to make a long journey around the northern regions of Afghanistan for the first time. This journey was very successful and therefore in winter 1362 (1984) Massoud was able to unite all resistance commanders, who were members of different parties, in a council, the so-called “Shoraa-ye-Nezaar” (Controlling Council). His goal was to build a united Afghan political strategy and united military forces that would not be guided by the parties, which were created in the neighbouring countries. The members of the Shoraa-ye-Nezaar fought for the common goal of a free Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan’s master guerrilla commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was assassinated by suspected al-Qaeda suicide bombers just two days before September 11. But his Northern Alliance coalition became the U.S.’s most important weapon against the Taliban in a war that combined 19th-century slaughter and 21st-century technology. As alliance soldiers marched on Kabul—with a massed-infantry assault amid the deadly shadows of B-52 bombers—the author saw Massoud’s legacy revealed, in the Afghans’ hatred of foreigners fighting for the Taliban, in their readiness to die for freedom, and even, poignantly, in one man’s act of mercy.
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