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The man who would have led Afghanistan

Ahmed Shah Massoud's assassination one year ago foreshadowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

[Times photos: Jamie Francis]

Portraits and drawings of Ahmed Shah Massoud, like this one in a Kabul stadium, are everywhere in Kabul and along the road leading to the Panjshir Valley, his birthplace.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent St. Petersburg Times published September 9, 2002

MARTIN E-mail: Click here Archive

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan -- Exactly one year ago today, two suicide bombers posing as TV journalists murdered a man named Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Few Americans had heard of Massoud then, and few know much about him now. But what happened to Massoud on Sept. 9 would become one of the chilling mysteries of Sept. 11: Did the death of one man in a remote part of Afghanistan foreshadow the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in America just two days later? In all likelihood, the answer is yes. Massoud, 48, was the dashing commander of the Northern Alliance, the resistance group hoping to rid Afghanistan of its repressive Taliban rulers and the terrorist network they sheltered, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.