Two days before 9/11, an Al-Qaeda suicide squad posing as journalists sat down for an interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the last major commander resisting the jihadist group's Taliban allies in northern Afghanistan.
Before he could answer a question, they detonated explosives that investigators said later had been cunningly disguised in their camera equipment.
Twenty years on, Massoud's assassination and the September 11 attacks on the United States are for many Afghans the twin cataclysms that started yet another era of uncertainty and bloodshed -- and which continue to reverberate following the Taliban's return.
The charismatic Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir after his native valley, built his name during the 1980s as a brilliant guerrilla commander repelling Soviet forces.
By the late 1990s, he was fighting the Taliban -- and their Al-Qaeda allies.
Both wanted him gone.
The audacious hit was ordered by Osama bin Laden himself.
The assassins pretended to be filming a documentary, and secured the Massoud interview by presenting a concocted back story printed on a letterhead from an Islamic centre in Britain. They used stolen Belgian passports to travel.
Then they hit a wall -- Massoud was too busy to sit down with them when they arrived in August 2001 at his base in Khwaja Bahauddin village.
"They spent 10 days with us calmly and patiently waiting, and never unnecessarily insisting on the interview," Fahim Dashti, a journalist and close Massoud aide, told AFP a few weeks after the assassination.
Dashti was setting up his own camera to record the interview as the two Al-Qaeda operatives relayed their questions in Arabic to the commander's close aide, Masood Khalili, for translation.
"We were not feeling comfortable," Khalili told AFP in October 2001, especially because they had asked questions about bin Laden.
"The 'cameraman' had a nasty smile. The 'journalist' was very calm," he said.
Just as Massoud heard the translation, the explosives went off.
- 'Your leader is dead' -
The killing sent shockwaves across Afghanistan and the world.
Massoud was seen as the last big hope by anti-Taliban Afghans at the time, and by Western governments as a potent ally against even more hardline Islamists.
With his Northern Alliance resistance already on the back foot against the Taliban, his aides hid his death for days.
A week after he was killed, Massoud was buried in his home district of Bazarak -- his body shrouded in the colours of the Afghan flag and with thousands of followers in the funeral procession.
A marble tomb was built attracting huge numbers of devotees.
"When (Massoud) was killed, I was in Panjshir. The resistance forces were...surrounded from all sides," a 47-year-old resident of the area told AFP on Monday, requesting anonymity because of security fears.
"The Taliban even announced on the radio: your leader is dead and you're done. But... the death of the leader gave the people another reason to fight harder."
The tables were turned within weeks as the United States, looking to punish the Taliban for harbouring the 9/11 perpetrators, invaded Afghanistan.
The Taliban regime fell by the end of 2001, pummelled by American bombers guided by Northern Alliance fighters.
Al-Qaeda, hoping to get the upper hand both against the United States and in Afghanistan with their two major attacks, was on the run.
- Panjshir falls -
The Taliban launched a lightning offensive as the last US-led troops left Afghanistan this year, capping their 20-year insurgency with the capture of Kabul on August 15.
Once again, the main opposition emerged in Panjshir -- led this time by Ahmad Massoud, who was 12 years old when Al-Qaeda killed his father.
But the Taliban swiftly sent fighters to surround the area, claiming eventually on Monday that they had captured Panjshir.
Among the resistance dead in the heavy fighting was Fahim Dashti, the journalist who survived the Massoud bombing 20 years ago.
One Taliban account posted a picture of fighters in Panjshir standing in front of a vandalised Ahmad Shah Massoud poster.
Ahmad Shah Massoud's brother Ahmad Wali said in Geneva Tuesday that while their National Resistance Front was "wounded", thousands of fighters can come back at any time.
It is a difficult scenario for Mohammad Sana Safa, a 63-year-old who worked with Massoud in the 1980s when there were daily attacks by the Soviets.
"Ahmad Massoud is a young man, patriotic, but he has no military experience like his father," Safa said Monday.
"Had (his father) been alive today, we would have not witnessed this... the fall of Panjshir to the Taliban."
Takaichi has the backing of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, local media said, and would base her challenge on policies to fend off China's technology threat and help strengthen an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Takaichi became the first female internal affairs minister in the second Abe administration in 2014.
But even as local media have said that influential Abe has thrown his support behind Takaichi, helping her obtain the 20 lawmaker backers needed to run in the leadership election, she has ranked poorly in popularity ratings, which could hamper her chances.
Grassroots LDP members will vote in the leadership election along with the party's members of parliament, and whoever wins will lead the party to the lower house election that must be held by Nov 28, making public appeal an important factor in choosing the new leader.
Takaichi has said that she wants to work on issues left unresolved by previous administrations, such as achieving 2 per cent inflation, and introducing legislation "that prevents the leakage of sensitive information to China".
She said that an extra budget needed to be compiled as soon as possible to bolster Japan's medical system, which is under strain because of the pandemic.
A member of the party's most conservative wing, she often visits the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to Japan's war dead. Such visits by Japanese leaders infuriate old wartime foes such as China and South Korea.
She has also opposed allowing married couples to keep separate surnames, to the disappointment of promoters of women's rights.
Takaichi is due to speak at 4pm local time (3pm, Singapore time).
KABUL (NYTIMES, AFP) - The Taliban on Tuesday (Sept 7) formally declared a caretaker government, appointing acting Cabinet ministers who were largely loyalists from the group’s first years of rule in the 1990s.
Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund was named as leader while Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will be his deputy. Several Cabinet posts are yet to be announced.
The list of ministers was the clearest indication yet that the group sees power as something to be shared exclusively among the victors, rather than fulfilling their promise of an inclusive government that factored in the reality of a changed Afghanistan where women and ethnic minorities were represented in decision-making.
Though many of the new government’s senior figures have been in similar roles within the Taliban for years, relatively little is known about them, as the group's inner workings and leadership have long been shrouded in secrecy, even when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Here are details about some of them:
Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, prime minister
PHOTO: AFP
Seen as one of the founding members of the Taliban in the 1990s, Mr Hassan will hold the prime ministerial role that looks after the day to day of governing.
He is a Taliban veteran who was a close associate and political adviser to Mullah Omar, the founder of the movement and its first supreme leader.
A member of the group's Supreme Council, he was a former deputy prime minister and foreign minister during the Taliban’s government that took control in the 1990s.
During the two decades of insurgency after the Taliban fell from power, he remained low profile and in the shadows, helping to coordinate and run the Taliban’s leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan. From Kandahar, he also served as the Taliban governor of the key province.
The United Nations said he had a reputation of having been "one of the most effective Taliban commanders".
He was placed on a UN Security Council sanctions list connected to the "acts and activities" of the Taliban.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy prime minister
PHOTO: AFP
Mr Baradar was born in 1968 and raised in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Like most Afghans, his life was forever altered by the Soviet invasion of the country in the late 1970s, transforming him into an insurgent.
He was believed to have fought side by side with Mullah Mohammad Omar. The two would go on to found the Taliban movement in the early 1990s during the chaos and corruption of the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.
He held senior posts in the first Taliban government, starting in 1996, and gained a reputation as one of the most brutal commanders on the battlefield as the Taliban sought to suppress their opponents among the northern resistance.
He was serving as deputy minister of defence in 2001, and after the Taliban regime was topped by the US-led forces that year, like other leaders, he fled to Pakistan.
When the Taliban reformed as an insurgency, Mr Baradar was Mr Omar’s principal deputy, and he led the movement’s military operations. He oversaw a sharp escalation of the insurgency in 2006, but was also believed to have been engaged in secret consultations with the emissaries of interim leader Hamid Karzai and international assistance organisations over a potential deal that would have seen the militants recognise the new administration.
He was detained in a joint US-Pakistani raid in 2010, which Pakistani officials later said had been to end his dialogue with the Karzai government. He was kept in custody until 2018, when - because of his respect within the Taliban and his previous openness to dialogue - the US pressed Pakistan to release him so he could help lead the talks that began in 2019.
He relocated to Qatar, where he was appointed head of the Taliban's political office and oversaw the signing of the troop withdrawal agreement with the Trump administration in the US. During the talks, he struck up what several officials described as a warm relationship with US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
In recent days, his movements within Afghanistan – first to Kandahar, the wellspring of the Taliban movement, and then to Kabul, where he began conducting leadership meetings – were seen as confirmation that the Taliban’s new government was near.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, interior minister
Mr Haqqani, who is thought to be 48 and is the son of mujahedeen commander and Haqqani network founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, is emerging as one of the biggest winners in the return of the Taliban to power.
He will be the acting interior minister, in charge of law and order and possibly even local governance, and has also ensured his commanders’ positions in other key departments of the government.
In 2016, he became one of two deputies to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Hibatullah Akhundzada, overseeing a sprawling web of fighters and religious schools, and leading much of the Taliban’s military efforts.
His Haqqani network - a US-designated terror group long viewed as one of the most dangerous militant factions in Afghanistan - is known for its close ties to the Pakistani intelligence service.
The network was the most dogged opponent of the US presence in Afghanistan, and was responsible for some of the most high-profile hostage-taking, targeted assassinations and suicide bombings over the years, including huge truck bombings that killed civilians in Kabul.
Known for their independence, fighting acumen and savvy business dealings, the Haqqanis are mainly based in eastern Afghanistan and hold considerable sway over the Taliban's leadership council. Mr Haqqani and his network also have some of the strongest and longest-running ties to the Al-Qaeda.
“The Haqqanis sit at the nexus between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda – they are one of the key bridges,” said Mr Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies and senior editor of the group’s Long War Journal.
Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, defence minister
Mr Yaqoub, who is thought to be about 30, is the head of the Taliban’s military commission, which oversaw the vast network of field commanders charged with executing the insurgency.
He is the oldest son of Omar, who enjoyed cult-like status as the Taliban leader, and that potent lineage makes him a unifying figure in the movement.
Mr Yaqoub's name came to public attention during the Taliban’s leadership succession in 2016. But though he had the support of some of the movement’s military commanders, concerns about his youth became a factor in the eventual decision to choose Mr Akhundzada as the insurgency’s overall leader.
In the years since, Mr Yaqoub has risen in prominence. And in recent days he took an increasingly public role in trying to keep order among the group’s triumphant rank and file, warning that anyone caught looting “will be dealt with”, and any theft of government property would be a betrayal of the country.
“There is no permission to take a car or a house from someone or anything else,” he said.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, foreign minister
Mr Muttaqi, who until recently was the head of the Taliban’s powerful Invitation and Guidance Commission responsible for persuading many members of the Afghan army and police forces to surrender in recent months, has been rewarded with the key post of foreign minister.
He served as information and culture minister, then education minister, in the first Taliban government. During the two decades of the Taliban insurgency, he helped shape the group’s strategy for propaganda and psychological warfare, before serving as chief of staff to the supreme leader and as a member of Taliban political delegation in Qatar.
In a movement known for its shadowy ways, Mr Muttaqi has been one of the few consistent public faces since the 1990s. He was among the Taliban leaders who held back channel talks with US officials over the years and was among the first senior Taliban figures seen meeting with former Afghan officials, including Mr Karzai, the former president, as well as Mr Abdullah Abdullah, the former chief executive of the government, after the fall of Kabul.
Abdul Haq Wasiq, intelligence chief
Mr Wasiq was one of the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners released in exchange for the last US prisoner of war, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Upon his release, he arrived in Doha, Qatar, and became a key member of the Taliban’s talks with the US, spending months negotiating with his former captors their departure from Afghanistan. He is a native of Ghazni province and is believed to be in his early 50s.
While all five of the detainees who were part of the Bergdahl exchange have gotten senior positions in the new government – three of them ministerial roles, one deputy minister and one governor – Mr Wasiq steps into the key role of leading the same intelligence agency where he served as deputy in the 1990s. The intelligence agency was central to the Taliban’s hold on power as a police state that ran wide networks of informants.
His interrogation files from his time in Guantánamo accuse Mr Wasiq of close ties to Al-Qaeda, including arranging for the terrorist group to provide training for intelligence agents of the Taliban government.
Zabihullah Mujahid, deputy information and culture minister
PHOTO: AFP
Mr Mujahid, who says he is 43 and a native of Paktia province, has been the Taliban’s main spokesman and chief propagandist for years, answering reporters’ calls and keeping up a barrage of social media posts. But the world did not see his face until Aug 17, when he conducted the Taliban’s first in-person news conference in Kabul.
Since then, he has played a primary role in trying to urge Afghans and the world to accept the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, and in saying that the group was turning away from some of the harsh policies of its first tenure in power.
“We don’t want Afghanistan to be a battlefield any more – from today onward, war is over,” he said at the news conference.
Khalil Haqqani, minister for refugees
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Mr Haqqani is a special representative of the Taliban’s supreme leader, and an uncle of the Taliban’s deputy leader. He has long been an important fundraiser for the Haqqani network, with close ties in the Gulf region, and he is included on US and UN lists of global terrorists.
In recent days, he has played a public role in establishing Taliban authority in Kabul.
Just a few days after Kabul’s fall, he appeared at a prominent mosque within the city and told a cheering crowd that the Taliban’s “first priority for Afghanistan is security – if there is no security, there is no life".
He has been the primary Taliban figure in securing bayat, an Islamic oath of allegiance, from prominent Afghan figures over the past two weeks.
When the Taliban swept into Kabul last month, capturing Afghanistan's capital without a fight, the sheer speed of the collapse of the Western-backed and trained army stunned the world.
But senior officials in the former Afghan administration told AFP that the lightning victory was not entirely unexpected, and the consequence of fundamental leadership failures, rampant corruption, slick Taliban propaganda -- and a crushing "betrayal" by US-led forces with their hasty pullout.
One top official close to the centre of power said that just two days before Taliban forces entered Kabul on August 15, he was present as former president Ashraf Ghani held an emergency meeting with his senior ministers, and military and spy chiefs.
"It was said that we had enough weapons, ammunition, and financial resources to hold Kabul for two years," said the official, who claimed $100 million in cash was available to secure Kabul.
"It didn't protect the city for two days," he said.
- 'Lying' -
The official, who like most sources AFP spoke to for this article did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said he was not surprised by the capitulation.
"Ministers were lying to Ghani, telling him that everything was fine, so they could keep their jobs and their privileges," he said.
As the Taliban raced through the country, the inner circle debated policy reforms.
"We didn't get our priorities right," he added.
"As the cities fell, one after the other, the National Security Council met to talk about recruitment and institutional reforms."
Taliban forces swept across the country in just two weeks, seizing provincial capitals often without a bullet being fired.
Another top ex-government official said nobody at the top showed leadership.
"None of them spoke to the media to reassure our men. None of them went into the field," he said.
Ghani also made basic strategic mistakes, the close adviser added.
"I suggested we leave the south, as we didn't have enough manpower to defend it in the long term.
"But the president disagreed. He said that all Afghanistan belonged to the government," he said.
- Corruption -
But for the Afghan army, holding everywhere against the Taliban was an impossible task.
Despite the billions of dollars of US-led military support, equipment and training, the army's capacity had been hollowed out by years of rampant corruption.
Senior officers creamed off what they could, stealing salaries from lower ranks, as well as selling fuel and ammunition supplies.
The situation worsened after Washington struck a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 for a troop withdrawal agreement.
"We were betrayed," said Sami Sadat, a general recognised for his bravery against the Taliban, who was brought in to lead the special forces in Kabul just days before its fall.
Without the critical protection of US air support -- and with the former government's own air force grounded after foreign contractors maintaining the fleet were pulled out by Washington -- the army lost its strategic advantage.
- 'Surreal' -
"The Taliban were emboldened," Sadat said, writing in the New York Times.
"They could sense victory... Before that deal, the Taliban had not won any significant battles against the Afghan Army. After the agreement? We were losing dozens of soldiers a day."
The final days of fighting were "surreal", Sadat added.
"We engaged in intense firefights on the ground against the Taliban as US fighter jets circled overhead, effectively spectators," he wrote.
Sadat dismissed the claim by US President Joe Biden that the Afghan had collapsed sometimes "without trying" to fight.
"We fought, bravely, until the end," Sadat said. "We lost 66,000 troops over the past 20 years; that's one-fifth of our estimated fighting force."
For the soldiers on the frontlines, they saw little reason to die when top leaders were fleeing.
"When the Taliban got to the gates of Kabul, the soldiers knew the president was leaving -- that's why they didn't fight," said a former senior army officer who asked not to be named.
At the same time, the Taliban deployed a savvy use of media messages to persuade soldiers to surrender, undermining morale even further.
"We had already lost the social media war," the first presidential confidante said.
"The Taliban were telling the soldiers that they were fighting needlessly, because at a higher level an agreement had already been signed."
Abandoned and exhausted, soldiers saw little point in fighting on.
Shortly before landing, an official disclosed that four Americans had left Afghanistan with Taliban knowledge, in the first departures arranged by Washington since its chaotic military pullout.
The four US citizens left by land and were greeted by US diplomats, said the senior official, without specifying to which country they crossed, adding that "the Taliban did not impede them".
Blinken, accompanied by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, is the most senior US official to visit the region since the Taliban's lightning takeover of Afghanistan on Aug 15.
He was not due to meet any of the Taliban's Doha representatives but State Department official Dean Thompson said Washington would continue to engage with the Islamist group "to ensure our messaging with them is clear".
"We are thankful for Qatar's close collaboration on Afghanistan," the State Department said ahead of Blinken's arrival in Doha at 1500 GMT, seen by an AFP correspondent.
Blinken's team praised Doha's "indispensable support in facilitating the transit of US citizens, embassy Kabul personnel, at-risk Afghans, and other evacuees from Afghanistan through Qatar".
Qatar, which hosts a major US airbase, has been the gateway for 55,000 people airlifted out of Afghanistan, nearly half the total number evacuated by US-led forces after the Taliban's lightning takeover.
Before his arrival, Blinken said that in Qatar he would "express our deep gratitude for all that they're doing to support the evacuation effort" and meet rescued Afghans.
He will also meet US diplomats, after Washington relocated its embassy in Kabul to Doha, along with a number of allies including Britain and the Netherlands.
The State Department said Blinken would discuss with Qatar its efforts, alongside Turkey, to reopen Kabul's ramshackle airport - essential to fly in badly needed humanitarian aid and to evacuate remaining Afghans.
Qatar invited the Taliban to open a political office in Doha in 2013, subsequently hosting talks between Washington and the Taliban that concluded in 2020 with a troop withdrawal agreement. It was followed by direct negotiations between the former insurgents and Afghan government.
RETRUBUTION FEARS
The Taliban on Monday claimed total control over Afghanistan, saying they had won the key battle for the Panjshir Valley, the last remaining holdout of resistance against their rule.
The group is yet to finalise its new regime after rolling into the capital Kabul three weeks ago at a speed that analysts say likely surprised even the hardline Islamists themselves.
After Doha, Blinken will head Wednesday to the US air base at Ramstein in Germany, a temporary home for thousands of Afghans moving to the United States.
A: On Sunday (Sept 5), the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba, said that those vaccinated overseas will need to have their vaccination certificate verified by Malaysian health authorities before it can be reflected in Malaysia's contact tracing application MySejahtera.
Q: What is the purpose of the vaccination verification?
A: It will enable a traveller to enjoy the privileges currently being accorded to fully vaccinated individuals in Malaysia. In several states, where Covid-19 restrictions remain, only fully vaccinated individuals are given certain privileges such as being allowed to dine at restaurants, shop at malls, or even travel beyond district borders. A fully vaccinated status reflected in the MySejahtera app is necessary for businesses and authorities to extend such privileges to individuals.
Q: What does this mean for travellers?
A: The new rule does not restrict anyone from entering Malaysia. Entry is still dependent on approval by border authorities under available travel schemes, such as the Periodic Commuting Arrangement (PCA), which allows cross-border travel with Singapore. Non-Malaysians entering Malaysia must be permanent residents or those with long-term social visit passes.
Q: What does a traveller have to do to verify a vaccination?
A: Vaccinated travellers are required to go to the nearest District Health Office after arriving in Malaysia to provide details of their vaccination history, along with proof of vaccination. Upon verification, the status will then appear in the traveller's MySejahtera app. The government has not said how long it will take to verify a traveller's vaccination status, and further details on the verification process has not been released yet.
Q: What are the current protocols for entering Malaysia?
A: Under the PCA, all travellers need to serve 14 days of quarantine at designated facilities or hotels upon arriving in Malaysia. The PCA used to have a seven-day quarantine period, but this was extended in May this year following a spike in Covid-19 cases in both Malaysia and Singapore.
The Reciprocal Green Lane (RGL) - another scheme that allowed cross-border travel between Malaysia and Singapore, but for a shorter duration - has been suspended indefinitely due to the Covid-19 situation.
Q: Is home quarantine possible after entering Malaysia?
A: To qualify for this, one needs to be fully vaccinated and an application lodged at least a week before arrival via the land border in Johor. Home quarantine will be allowed on a case-by-case basis, based on a risk assessment by the Health Ministry. Last week, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin disclosed that fewer than a quarter of home quarantine applications were approved by Aug 10, the day before rules on it were released.
In his three interventions made during the meeting, Mr Ong spoke about Singapore’s COVID-19 experience as a city-state, emphasising the importance of strengthening health emergency preparedness in an urban setting.
He also called on countries to keep global supply chains open, and to avoid a situation where different parts of the world recognise different vaccines, which will divide the global people’s network.
STRONG PRIMARY CARE SYSTEM NEEDED
In his first intervention, Mr Ong highlighted the different experiences of countries dealing with the pandemic, in particular Singapore's challenges.
Mr Ong detailed Singapore's vaccination take-up rates, noting that the country's main challenge was "persuading the people who needed vaccines the most to get vaccinated", namely the seniors.
The vaccination rate for seniors above 70 in the country now stand at 88 per cent, when it used to be between 60 and 70 per cent.
"And therein we realised our weakness," said Mr Ong.
"Our weakness was our primary care system. To get the most vulnerable members of our society to get vaccinated, you need a strong primary care system to persuade them. So when we think about other countries, the problem will be multi-fold."
Mr Ong said that a strong international system is thus needed to build up the healthcare response for the next pandemic, and urgently get going the reforms recommended by the G20 High Level Independent Panel to strengthen multilateralism in healthcare.
This would in turn strengthen the support for WHO to play its key role at the centre of global health security.
