Freshta Jalalzai
The assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001, reverberated through Afghanistan with a shock akin to that felt in the United States following the attacks just two days later on September 11.
The scale of tragedy differs. Nearly 3,000 lives were lost on that fateful day in America, while in Afghanistan, it was the death of a single militia leader. Yet, Massoud’s killing marked a seismic shift in the Afghan political landscape and profoundly impacted the fate of a nation already burdened by decades of conflict and instability.
Massoud was reportedly assassinated by two al-Qaida operatives disguised as reporters in the Khwaja Bahauddin district of Afghanistan’s Takhar Province, approximately 90 miles from his native Panjshir Valley.
In a desperate attempt, his lifeless body was transported to a makeshift hospital, a temporary medical facility in Tajikistan that had been set up by India to treat wounded members of his resistance forces during the first Taliban regime in Afghanistan (1996-2001). His body was eventually flown by helicopter to his home province and laid to rest on September 16 in his native village of Bazarak, in the Panjshir Valley.
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