Osama bin Laden (File photo)
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.
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. " 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. "
According to Tenet's account, he pressed Mahmood on al-Qaeda and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. In the aftermath of the attacks, Mahmood held further meetings with US officials as Washington pressed Pakistan to cooperate in its campaign against terrorism. Massoud's assassination therefore came at a critical moment.
