Ahmad Shah Massoud, the prominent Afghan resistance leader and one of the Taliban’s strongest rivals, was assassinated on September 9, 2001, just two days before the 9/11 attacks, in a killing believed to have been ordered by al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden as a favour to his Taliban hosts, according to a Newsweek report.Massoud, who led Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, was killed while being interviewed at his camp in the Panjshir Valley by two men posing as Belgian television journalists. The two al-Qaeda operatives had concealed explosives inside a video camera despite undergoing security checks before meeting the resistance leader, Newsweek reported.The Northern Alliance did not officially confirm Massoud’s death until September 15.Massoud had built a powerful insurgent network in northern Afghanistan and remained a major obstacle to Taliban control of the country. His influence and popularity also made him a key figure among forces opposed to the Taliban.According to Newsweek, bin Laden was believed to have ordered Massoud’s assassination partly as a favour to his Taliban hosts and partly because he expected the United States to launch retaliatory strikes following the planned September 11 attacks.Eliminating Massoud was also strategically important because bin Laden understood the Afghan leader’s value as a military commander and political figure who could have played a significant role in any campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.The assassination alarmed the CIA, which had maintained contacts with Massoud and other Afghan opposition figures.Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer who later led the agency’s first team into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, recalled that the news “made me feel sick to my stomach … I figured this was the end of the Northern Alliance.”CIA director George Tenet was less pessimistic, noting that the agency had maintained relationships with other Afghan warlords.Tenet later wrote, “Masood’s [sic] brutal murder by al-Qaeda on the eve of the 9/11 attacks might have undone our plan before it got under way if we hadn’t maintained contact with other warlords in the north.”Tenet’s meeting with Pakistan’s ISI chiefOn the day Massoud was assassinated, Tenet was having lunch with Pakistani Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, then head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s main intelligence agency.According to Tenet’s account, he pressed Mahmood on al-Qaeda and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Mahmood assured him that Omar wanted what was best for the Afghan people and suggested that the CIA try bribing key Taliban officials to secure bin Laden’s surrender.“As gracious as he could be over the lunch table, the guy was immovable when it came to the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” Tenet later wrote.Mahmood would be in Washington on September 11, when he met senior US lawmakers including Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham, House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss and Senator Jon Kyl.In the aftermath of the attacks, Mahmood held further meetings with US officials as Washington pressed Pakistan to cooperate in its campaign against terrorism. US military forces were also clandestinely deployed to Pakistani territory as the Bush administration prepared its response to the attacks.Massoud’s assassination therefore came at a critical moment. Two days before the attacks that transformed US foreign policy and triggered the war in Afghanistan, one of the Taliban’s most formidable opponents had already been eliminated.
