Twenty years ago today, Tunisians helped carry out the assassination of Afghan Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. In the late 1990s, Massoud had been a key U.S. ally against the Taliban’s advances, and although his fortunes had changed significantly by 2001, Washington would no doubt have relied on him heavily during the post-9/11 invasion were he still alive. Flash forward to this week, and the Taliban has just declared victory over resistance forces led by Massoud’s son Ahmad in the Panjshir Valley—a sobering bookend to a battle the group has been waging against the Northern Alliance for two decades.
Yet the heavy Tunisian involvement and other circumstances of the 2001 assassination merit a closer look, not only for their impact on subsequent developments in the global jihadist movement, but also because of the implications they hold now that Afghanistan is once again under Taliban control. Massoud’s death served multiple purposes, some of which were not entirely evident until after the fact: his killing was a gift that the Tunisian Combat Group (TCG) and al-Qaeda gave the Taliban for fighting their local enemy, as well as a public signal to launch the 9/11 attacks and an important part of al-Qaeda’s preparations for the eventual coalition invasion of Afghanistan. This is the story of the assassination, who was behind it, and why it still matters for individuals attempting to understand how jihadist networks change over time—and what types of operatives may now return to Afghanistan.
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