The visiting reporter read out a list of questions while his colleague prepared to film. About half of his questions concerned Osama bin Laden. Massoud listened, then he said he was ready. The explosion ripped the cameraman's body apart. It smashed the room's windows, seared the walls in flame, and tore Massoud's chest with shrapnel. He collapsed, unconscious.
His guards and aides rushed into the building, carried his limp body outside, lifted him into a jeep, and drove to the helicopter pad. They were close to the Tajikistan border. There was a hospital 10 minutes flight away.
Several of Massoud's aides and the lanky Arab reporter sitting to the side of the blast recovered from the noise, felt burning sensations, and realized they were not badly hurt. The Arab tried to run but was captured by Massoud's security guards. They locked the assassin in a nearby room, but he wiggled out through a window. He was shot to death as he tried to escape.
On the helicopter, Massoud's longtime bodyguard, Omar, held the commander's head and watched him stop breathing. Omar thought to himself, he said later, ‘He's dying and I'm dying'."
That is how Steve Coll described the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary Tajik commander who had fought the Soviets and later the Taliban successfully as the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in the last pages of his book "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to Sept. 10, 2001." By the way, this is the book that US President-elect Barack Obama reads nowadays to understand the Afghan problem.
Massoud, one of the most talented guerrilla fighters of the 20th century, was the leader of Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group, the Tajiks, with the Pashtuns the largest, and was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, just two days before the infamous Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
He was killed by two men, Abdessater Dahmane and Bouraoui el Quaer, both Tunisians, and recruited, trained and sent to kill by al-Qaeda. Both men posed as television journalists to deceive Massoud and his entourage, and in the end, killed Massoud by a bomb hidden in their camera.
After seven-or-so years, Dahmane's name is once again in the news, because although Belgian officials have not released the names of the suspects, according to Belgian and international reports, his wife, Malika el Aroud, is among 14 al-Qaeda suspects arrested by Belgian police last Thursday.
The arrests took place during a series of raids in Brussels and included suspects who had been under surveillance for more than a year and had previously traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police action came just hours before the leaders of 27 EU countries assembled in Brussels for their annual review summit.
Massoud's co-assassin Dahmane, who was el Aroud's first husband, went to Afghanistan in mid-2001 and was recruited by al-Qaeda for a special mission. He never told his wife that he was going to be a suicide bomber. El Aroud said in a 2006 interview that she had learned of her husband's death on Sept. 12, 2001. On that day an al-Qaeda courier dropped off a letter from Osama bin Laden that included a $500 bill. With the letter came a tape, chillingly, from her dead husband in which he told her he loved her but that he was "already on the other side."
Dahmene's mission was special because the Taliban's support and protection was vital for al-Qaeda before the planned Sept. 11 attacks against the US. For this, the Taliban's archenemy Massoud had to be eliminated to shore up this support. In the end, by the elimination of Massoud, al-Qaeda managed to get both the support of and protection of the Taliban and decided to go ahead with the attacks against the US.
In short, Sept. 9, 2001, the day Massoud was assassinated, paved the way for Sept. 11, 2001. That's why that day was so significant.
The last word: Massoud was killed by two al-Qaeda militants, and not by the CIA or by any other Western intelligence agency, as most people still believe in Turkey. Through this article, I intend to correct this mistake for good. I hope I have done this.
