On September 9, 2001, two fake al-Qaeda kamikaze journalists came to interview Ahmad Shah Massoud, then set off their bomb, killing the last great Afghan commander who still resisted the Taliban.
Twenty years later, this assassination and the 9/11 that immediately followed, which triggered the American invasion, remain for many Afghans the starting point of two decades of bloody conflict, punctuated this summer by the return to power of the Taliban.
To read: Ahmad Massoud, leader of the resistance in the Panchir, says he is ready to discuss with the Taliban
Brilliant leader of the armies
The charismatic Ahmad Shah Massoud forged a reputation as a brilliant warlord in the 1980s, fighting against the Soviet forces that occupied his province of Panchir, a deep valley in northeastern Afghanistan.
In the early 1990s, however, the "Lion of Panchir" was one of the warlords formerly united against the Soviets who tear each other apart, clash and partially destroy Kabul, one of the darkest periods in the life of the inhabitants of the region. capital city.
After the Taliban took power in 1996, he returned to resistance against the Islamist regime and its al-Qaeda allies, who track him down.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden himself will order the suicide mission that will kill him.
To approach him, his killers claim to shoot a documentary for an Islamic cultural center in Britain and use stolen Belgian passports.
When they arrived to interview Ahmad Shah Massoud at his base in Khwaja Bahauddin in August 2001, the latter was too busy to receive them.
"They spent ten days with us, calmly and patiently waiting for him to arrive, without insisting too much that the interview be done quickly," Fahim Dashti, a journalist in the entourage of Commander Massoud, told AFP. , two weeks after the assassination.
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When the time finally comes, Fahim Dashti prepares his own camera to record the interview and the two false journalists ask their questions in Arabic to Massoud's closest adviser, Masood Khalili, in charge of translating them.
"We were not at ease," Masood Khalili told AFP in October 2001, in particular because the two journalists had asked questions about Bin Laden.
"The cameraman smiled nastily. The so-called reporter was very calm."
As Commander Massoud listens to listen to the translated questions, they detonate their bomb, hidden in their camera.
The assassination triggered a shock wave in Afghanistan and the rest of the world, especially in the West where Massoud, who had studied at the Franco-Afghan high school Istiqlal in Kabul, was very popular.
For some Afghans, he was seen as the last hope against the Taliban, and the West saw him as a potential ally in the face of a fundamentalist regime they hated.
In September 2001, the Northern Alliance of anti-Taliban warlords was in bad shape, and those close to Massoud preferred to hide his death for days.
Mausoleum
A week after his death, thousands of people attend his burial in his native district of Bazarak.
A marble mausoleum will then be built to house it, where its supporters will worship over the years.
"I was in Panchir when he was killed. The resistance forces (panchirie) were surrounded on all sides," recalls to AFP a 47-year-old inhabitant of the province, who prefers to keep his name silent. for security reasons.
"On the radio, the Taliban announced: 'Your leader is dead and you are defeated'," he recalls.
"But the death of our leader gave us yet another reason to fight even harder."
The tide turns with September 11 and the intervention a few weeks later in Afghanistan by the United States to punish the Taliban for harboring bin Laden.
The Taliban regime fell at the end of the year, swept away by the bombardments of the Americans, themselves guided on the ground by the fighters of the Northern Alliance.
His al-Qaeda allies, who hoped to strike hard in Afghanistan with the death of Commander Massoud, also fled.
The return of the Taliban
Twenty years later, the Taliban have just regained power, thanks to the withdrawal of the Americans and a lightning offensive that caused the collapse of the pro-Western government, with little or no fighting in Kabul and other major cities. .
And the Panchir resumed his role of last resistance, led this time by the son of Commander Massoud, Ahmad, who was 12 at the time of his death and led the National Resistance Front (FNR) against the Taliban.
But the latter quickly sent fighters to surround the province, before entering and declaring it conquered last Monday.
Among their victims killed in the fighting is Fahim Dashti, the journalist who had survived the attack on Massoud twenty years earlier.
Ahmad Massoud, whose whereabouts are unknown, called for the fight to continue.
His uncle, Commander Massoud's brother, Ahmad Wali, admitted the FNR was on one knee, while claiming that thousands of fighters could return to fight in the province.
The situation is difficult for Mohammad Sana Safa, 63, who had fought the Soviets with Commander Massoud.
"Ahmad Massoud is a patriot, but he is young and does not have the military experience of his father," he said.
Then he sighs: "The fall of Panchir to the Taliban ... If (his father) was still alive, we would never have seen this."
With AFP
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