On this day in 2001, at Khwaja Bahauddin in Takhar Province in the north of Afghanistan, two men presenting themselves as journalists were granted an interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud. They had asked for it over some days. The explosives were in their camera equipment. Massoud, who had led armed resistance in Afghanistan for more than twenty years, died of his wounds; one of the attackers was killed in the blast and the other shortly afterwards. Others in the room were injured, and one of Massoud's associates was killed.
Two days later came the attacks in the United States, and the world's attention turned. For a long time the two events were spoken of separately, and then not.
I have sat in a great many rooms with a notebook and been trusted with a chair and an hour of someone's time. That trust is a small, ordinary thing until it is used as a weapon. The ninth of September is marked in Afghanistan each year in his memory.
Marguerite, thank you for the care in this. In Afghanistan the day is a public commemoration, with recitations and prayers for the dead offered at his tomb in the Panjshir valley, where families still come.
The valley he defended runs northeast from a narrow gorge north of Kabul, perhaps 100 kilometres long, with the Anjuman pass at its head above 4,000 metres and closed by snow for much of the winter. Supplies went in over the high ground on foot and by pack animal, carried by men whose names are not written down.