The Death of Ahmad Shah Mas'oud: Coincidence or Part of a Plan?

Ahmad Shah Mas'oud

On September 9, the most famous Afghan field commander of all, Ahmad Shah Mas'oud — "Lion of the Panjshir" and mainstay of the Northern Alliance's anti-Taliban front north of Kabul — was to give an interview to two Arab men who claimed to be journalists. A suicide bomb went off — either in a camera or on one of the journalists' bodies — in an assassination attempt. Though Western reports suggested that Mas'oud might have died immediately, over the next few days his allies (including his brother abroad) said that he was first in a coma, then had been able to utter a few words. But on September 15 it was announced that he had died the previous night.

Ahmad Shah Mas'oud's reputation as a guerrilla commander ranks among the biggest names of the past century, and he had eluded capture or assassination by Soviet SpetsNaz and later the Taliban for decades. That he died, not in battle, but as a result of an assassination is ironic.

But there is an obvious question which Afghanistan watchers began asking on September 11. Was the assassination linked to the air attacks on New York and Washington two days later? Was the last remaining successful field commander against the Taliban being taken out before the US began to rally support against that regime?

Already after the September 9 attack, the Afghan Northern Alliance had been blaming the attack on Usama bin Ladin, since the use of a suicide bomb seems to have Bin Ladin's favor. The "journalists" claimed to be with "Arab News International" and were meeting with Mas'oud in his office in Takhar. Almost immediately after the blast, the Taliban launched a major offensive in the north. (The Alliance struck back, hitting an ammunition dump near Kabul airport, in turn spurring reports on CNN suggesting a US missile attack was under way.) Though the Taliban denied any role in the attack on Mas'oud, it is hard to deny that it at least appears linked to the Taliban offensive, if not to what was about to happen on the other side of the world.

The Northern Alliance has, of course, offered its assistance in any coalition against the Taliban, and some of its leaders would doubtless hope that their enemies have finally bitten off more than they can chew, and are on the way to a fall. But the Northern Alliance has been rather toothless in recent years, losing territory persistently to the Taliban except for a few ethnic enclaves of Tajik, Uzbek, and Turkmen populations along the northern border which have resisted the Pashtun-dominated Taliban. But the only front where the Northern Alliance has continued to give trouble to the Taliban was the Panjshir Valley and neighboring regions where Mas'oud's forces are entrenched.

Without Mas'oud and his (largely ethnic Tajik) fighters, there is little to the Northern Alliance's position. After Kabul fell in 1996, Mas'oud fought hard to block the Taliban north of the capital and for years has managed to battle back towards Kabul whenever a Taliban offensive threatened the Panjshir.

While some skeptics have claimed his military reputation is overrated, others believe that he ranks with the greatest guerrilla leaders of all time. No other Afghan commander against the Soviets had anything like his success (or his public relations, for that matter). Certainly he had the most charismatic image of the leaders of the (otherwise rather colorless) Northern Alliance.

If the attack on Mas'oud was a Bin Laden operation, and the use of Arabs to carry it out, as well as the suicide bomb, would seem to point in that direction, then it suggests that the Taliban have become not merely the protectors of Bin Laden, but perhaps that he has become a key operational planner for them as well. The fact that a Taliban offensive immediately followed the blast makes it unlikely that the Taliban (or at least Taliban Amir Mullah Muhammad 'Umar, who has a marriage link with Bin Laden) did not know about the attack on Mas'oud in advance.

Mas'oud's fighters are hardened by years of war, but now they are bereft of their leader. His successor as field commander, the Intelligence Chief General Mohammad Fahim, has large shoes to fill.

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