On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists in Khwaja Bahauddin District, Takhar Province, Afghanistan.
Massoud, a pivotal guerilla fighter nicknamed the "Lion of Panjshir", had led insurgent forces against the governments of Daoud Khan, communist government under the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), invading Soviet forces, and the late 1990s Taliban regime. At the time of his assassination, Massoud commanded the forces of the Northern Alliance, backed primarily by Iran and Tajikistan, fighting against Taliban forces, backed by Pakistan. Massoud remained a vocal critic of Pakistani interference in Afghanistan (through the Taliban) and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, including publicly warning U.S. president George W. Bush five months prior to 9/11 that the situation in Afghanistan, if unresolved, "will also affect the United States and a lot of other countries".
Shortly after a press conference in the European Parliament, in which Massoud denounced Pakistani interference, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden called for volunteers to "deal with Ahmad [Shah] Massoud". From their training camp in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hani al-Masri planned and prepared the operation. Two Tunisian Arab attackers in Europe, Abd as-Sattar Dahmane and Rachid Bouari el-Ouaer, were brought to Afghanistan where they were provided a stolen television camera and battery belt, packed with explosives. With an interview fraudulently arranged by Zawahiri and al-Masri, the two assassins were escorted by Taliban to the Panjshir Valley, flying by helicopter to join Massoud at his rear headquarters in Khwaja Bahauddin District. After weeks of failed attempts, Massoud agreed to sit with the Arabs and conduct the interview. After peppering Massoud with questions about his condemnation of bin Laden, al-Ouaer detonated his bomb, mortally wounding Massoud. Despite a timely medical evacuation by helicopter to a military clinic in Tajikistan, Massoud was pronounced dead on arrival.
The timing of Ahmad Shah Massoud's assassination has drawn significant attention, taking place only two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States. Though the attackers lacked any control over the exact date, waiting weeks for Massoud to make time for the purported interview, many still debate whether Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had planned Massoud's assassination with the intention of disabling the Northern Alliance before 9/11, after which the United States would join them in a campaign to topple the Taliban regime. A partially-declassified U.S. intelligence report in November 2001 revealed that Massoud's intelligence apparatus had "gained limited knowledge regarding the intentions of [Osama bin Laden] and his terrorist organization al-Qaida to perform a terrorist attack against the U.S. on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."
Though al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, debates continue over allegations of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) covert support to, or complicity in, the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Background
1973 Afghan coup d'état
In July 1973, the last and longest-serving king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, was deposed in a bloodless coup led by his cousin and prime minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan. With Zahir Shah exiled in Italy, Daoud Khan declared the end of Kingdom of Afghanistan, replaced by the Republic of Afghanistan, and announced that he would lead the country as president. Daoud, with a focus on Afghan nationalism, attempted the herculean tasks of administering the fiercely-independent Pashtun tribal areas, reuniting the two factions (Khalqis and Parchamists) of the Afghan communist party (PDPA), and reducing Soviet influence in Afghanistan in pursuit of Non-Aligned Movement ideals.
1978 Afghan coup d'état
In April 1978, Daoud was replaced in a coup by left-wing (communist) military officers of the Khalq communist faction, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki. The new but unpopular communist government, in contravention of Daoud's non-aligned policy, quickly sought a close relationship and support from the Soviet Union. Taraki's communist policies, to include substantial land reform, bloody purges of opposition by the secret police, and extreme social reform, ignited a fierce insurgency by socially and Islamically conservative anti-communists. Alongside an internal civil war between the Khalq and Parcham factions of the communist government. Both urban and tribal groups fighting against Taraki's government, united on shared Islamic values and envisaged a religious struggle (jihad) against the atheist Marxist–Leninist government, collectively known as the mujahideen (, lit. 'those who conduct jihad').
Soviet-Afghan War
Threatened by the insurgency, in December 1978, Taraki and Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin signed a friendship treaty with Moscow to secure a promise of Soviet military intervention should the government fear toppling. In mid-1979, with the mujahideen uprising only growing, the Soviet Union sent a limited contingent troops to Bagram Air Base, north of the capital Kabul, also prompting the CIA to begin non-lethal support to the mujahedeen movement. With the situation rapidly deteriorating and supporters of Amin executing Taraki (enraging Moscow), the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in a last-ditch effort to save the faltering fledgling communist government.
To counter the Soviet's December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, often described as a reversal of the Soviet arming of the Viet Cong in the American war in Vietnam, the United States initiated Operation Cyclone (depicted in the book and film Charlie Wilson's War), which armed the mujahideen movement against the Soviet Union and its communist government in Afghanistan.
In the late 1980s, having failed to suppress the mujahideen insurgency, amounting staggering casualties, lacking territorial control outside urban areas and the ring road, and with the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union only two years away, the Soviets withdrew in a substantial political defeat.
Afghan Civil War
Following the December 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the Afghan mujahideen continued their campaign against the communist PDPA government until its collapse in 1992. The power vacuum created by the fall of the PDPA government transitioned Afghanistan into a second civil war between insurgent factions, largest among these being the Tajik-Pashtun Jamiat-e Islami led by Berhanuddin Rabbani and Hezb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. These warlord-led insurgent factions ruthlessly shelled Afghan urban areas, none more than Kabul.
Having fought against Daoud Khan's government, Taraki's communist government, Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and the remaining communist government from his base in the Panjshir Valley, Ahmad Shah Massoud joined Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami as his military commander where he earned the title "Lion of the Panjshir".
During both the Soviet-Afghan War and CIA-led Operation Cyclone, Pakistan's military and its intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), played the most outsized role in supporting political Islamist mujahideen groups. The Pakistani government, namely under the dictatorship of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, sought to create a Pashtun-dominated Islamist government in neighboring Afghanistan that would anchor its foreign policy to the Islamic and Pashtun-friendly Pakistani establishment. Despite more than a decade of support as ISI's most-favored group to assume power in Kabul, Hezb-e Islami (Gulbuddin) failed each attempt to take control of Kabul and bled popular support under its persistent and bloody shelling of the city.
Taliban conquest
Losing confidence in Gulbuddin's group, and committed to opening Afghanistan's Central Asian land trade routes (once part of the Silk Road) the ISI turned to the infant but promising Taliban movement. Pashtun, conservative, Deobandi, and Islamist, the Taliban movement in Kandahar appealed greatly to the Pakistani ISI after demonstrating it could seize the Spin Boldak border crossing from a variety of mujahideen who had set up informal chain tolls along Afghan roads. As the route for Pakistani trucking opened, support from the ISI increased and replaced Gulbuddin's faction as Pakistan's most favored group to take power in Afghanistan. After Spin Boldak, the Taliban captured Kandahar Airport, Kandahar City in November 1994, and western Herat in 1995.
With the rising Taliban threat to Kabul, Rabbani and Massoud's Jamiat-e Islami united with other mujahideen groups in Kabul and the north to form the United Islamic Front for Salvation of Afghanistan, better known as the United Front or (in the West) the Northern Alliance. Despite a number of tactical successes against the Taliban, Massoud was forced to withdraw his forces north from Kabul into the Panjshir, ceding the capital city to the Taliban in 1996.
Northern Alliance resistance
Holding the northern portion of the country, principally the Panjshir Valley to the north of Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif in the northwest, the Northern Alliance was recognized by its backers (India, Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United States, and Uzbekistan) as the lawful and representative, though displaced, government of Afghanistan with Rabbani as President and Massoud as Minister of Defense. Fighting against the de facto rulers of Afghanistan, the Pakistan-backed Taliban, Ahmad Shah Massoud continued to vocally denounce Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan.
Following the 1992 Aden hotel bombings, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 1995 car bombing of American troops in Riyadh, 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, a number of governments became especially concerned with the Taliban's post-1996 hosting of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps. After the East African embassy bombings, the United States conducted Operation Infinite Reach, bombing al-Qaeda targets in Sudan (where bin Laden had stayed prior to 1996) and Afghanistan. In early 2001, prior to the September 11th attacks in America, the CIA, R&AW, IRGC, and SCNS routinely met with Ahmad Shah Massoud in Afghanistan to coordinate support to the Northern Alliance against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Speech in Strasbourg
On 2 April 2001, President of the European Parliament Nicole Fontaine announced that she had invited Ahmad Shah Massoud, describing him as the "Vice-President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan", to Strasbourg, France to discuss human rights under the Taliban including the disenfranchisement of and violence against women and their destruction of the revered Bamiyan Buddhas, which had occurred one month prior. The 5 April 2001 visit, Massoud's first to Europe, comprised a meeting with Fontaine, Presidents of the French Senate (Christian Poncelete) and National Assembly (Raymond Forni), and later a press conference in the European Parliament during which he received a standing ovation. Fontaine's invitation was not without opposition within the French government, the strongest of which came from the French Foreign Minister, Hubert Védrine, who had thrice met with Taliban ministers, and eventually agreed to a short breakfast meeting with Massoud before the latter's press conference.