LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ahmed Shah Massoud
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(CNN) -- Ahmed Shah Massoud was one of the most well-known Afghan commanders in the 10-year war against the Soviet Union occupation. He became known as the "Lion of Panjshir" for the battles he led against Soviet troops in the Panjshir Valley.
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Reports conflicting stories about the death or injury of Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and whether the suicide bombers were connected with the Taliban or with Osama bin Laden. Includes video clip.
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When he joined the mujahidin around 1980, Ahmed Shah Massoud had no idea that the next twenty years - the rest of his life - would be involved in one war campaign after the other. When the Soviet Union finally left Afghanistan, factional fighting within the country lead to a civil war. The Taliban, financed and sponsored by Pakistan, went into Afghanistan with a promise of law and order. At first the war-weary citizens welcomed the Taliban and their promises of peace and control. It did not take long... for the enormity of the mistake to become known.
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Ahmed Shah Massoud had yet to turn over any missiles and had not received any funds. The CIA now hoped to change that. This was a key aspect of Gary Schroen's mission to Kabul that September. If Massoud would participate in the Stinger roundup, he could earn cash by selling his own stock piles and ... potentially earn commission income as a middleman. This revenue, some CIA officers hoped, might also purchase goodwill from Massoud for joint work in the future on the bin Laden problem.
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Today was one full of symbolism, because Ahmed Shah Massoud has become an icon in many parts of post-Taliban Afghanistan. Messages were read from the former Shah, Zahir Shah, who is known as the father of the nation. He said that this country owes its freedom to Massoud. Messages were read from Hamid Karzai, the current president, who is not here because he is traveling to the United States to commemorate the events of September 11. He had said that without Ahmed Shah Massoud, this country perhaps would forever have been occupied.
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On September 9, 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the 48-year-old leader of the forces which came to be known as the Northern Alliance, was assassinated by two men posing as journalists, believed to be acting on orders from Osama bin Laden. Massoud had been waging a lonely battle in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains and valleys, first against the Soviets and later against the Taliban. Charismatic and charming, looking more than a little like Bob Dylan, and trained as an architect, he seems an unlikely guerrilla hero. In the interviews he gives French journalist Christophe de Ponfilly, Massoud proves to be urbane and humane. The filmmaker, for his part, gives a first-person account of eight visits to Afghanistan over a 17-year period, beginning in 1981. It is an extraordinary journey, filled with images of unreal beauty (navy blue skies, red mountains) and terrible cruelty, punctuated by the filmmaker’s trenchant thoughts on the failure of the West to support Massoud and his followers over more than two decades.
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Ahmed Shah Massoud