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’s assassination therefore came at a critical moment.
Two days before the attacks that transformed US foreign policy and triggered the war in Afghanistan, one of the Taliban’s most formidable opponents had already been eliminated.
Mahmood would be in Washington on September 11, when he met senior US lawmakers including Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham, House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss and Senator Jon Kyl. 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 , according to Newsweek.
He pressed Mahmood on al-Qaeda and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, according to Tenet’s account. Mahmood assured him that Omar wanted what was best for the Afghan people and suggested that the CIA try bribing key Taliban officials to secure bin Laden’s surrender. In the aftermath of the attacks, Mahmood held further meetings with US officials as Washington pressed Pakistan to cooperate in its campaign against terrorism. US military forces were also clandestinely deployed to Pakistani territory as the Bush administration prepared its response to the attacks.