Ahmad Shah Masoud
| Ahmad Shah Massoud | |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | "Lion of Panjshir" (Persian: شیر پنجشیر) |
| Born |
September 2, 1953 Bazarak, Panjshir, Afghanistan |
| Died | September 9, 2001 (aged 48) Takhar Province, Afghanistan |
| Service/branch |
 Mujahideen Afghan military United Islamic Front
|
| Years of service | 1978–2001 |
| Rank |
Commander Minister of Defense Vice President of Afghanistan |
| Commands held | Prominent Mujahideen commander during the Soviet war in Afghanistan Defense Minister of Afghanistan and commander of the anti-Taliban United Islamic Front |
| Battles/wars |
Soviet war in Afghanistan Afghan Civil War † |
| Awards | National Hero of Afghanistan |
Ahmad Shah Massoud (Dari Persian: احمد شاه مسعود; September 2, 1953 – September 9, 2001) was an Afghan political and military leader. He was a powerful military commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989 and in the following years of civil war, during which time he became known as the Lion of Panjshir (Persian: Shire Panjshir ; شیر پنجشیر). Massoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001.
Massoud came from an ethnic Tajik, Sunni Muslim background in the Panjshir valley of northern Afghanistan. He began studying engineering at Polytechnical University of Kabul in the 1970s, where he became involved with fundamentalist Muslim anti-communist movements around Burhanuddin Rabbani, a leading Islamist. He was part of a Pakistan-backed failed rebellion against Mohammed Daoud Khan's government. After the Soviet occupation of 1979, his role as an insurgent leader earned him the nickname of "Lion of Panjshir" (شیر پنجشیر) among his followers. In 1992, after he disturbed the UN plan to install an interim government to replace that of President Mohammad Najibullah, he was appointed as the minister of defense through the Peshawar Accord, a peace and power-sharing agreement, in the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan. His militia fought to defend the capital against militias led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Abdul Ali Mazari, Abdul Rashid Dostum and eventually the Taliban, who started to lay siege to the capital in January 1995 after the city had seen fierce fighting; at least 60,000 civilians were killed, many more injured, public property, government offices and the Kabul Museum had been looted, and two thirds of the population had fled the city.
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