Ahmad Shah Massoud

Biography

Ahmad Shah Massoud (c. 1953 – 9 September 2001) was an Afghan military leader and politician. Known as the "Lion of Panjshir", he was the foremost commander of the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet occupation during the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979 to 1989. Later, in the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias, and actively fought against the Taliban and their allies, from the time the regime rose to power in 1996, and until his assassination in 2001.

Massoud came from a Tajik Sunni Muslim background in the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan. He began studying engineering at Polytechnical University of Kabul in the 1970s, where he developed Islamist and anti-c...