Massoud Khalili - September 9, 2001

September 9, 2001

In September 2001, while preparing against planned offensives by the Taliban in Takhar province, Ahmed Shah Massoud asked Masood Khallili to come over to Takhar to advise him.

Speaking to BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet Masood Khalili recalled the morning of the 9th of September 2001:

"The night before that we talked for about three-four hours until 3.30 in the morning. Around that time he told me, Let us open the book and see what will happen - a poetry book that he had, he opened it - it's a kind of telling fortune, from Hafez, the great poet, Persian poet. And mostly in Afghanistan we open his book and see what happens to our future. And then I opened it and it came that ... 'Take out from your heart all the siblings of enmity, plant the tree and seed of love - Tonight you two are together. Valuate, many nights go, many days disappear. You to will not be able to see each other again'.

Elsewhere he recalls:

"The ... morning around ten he came to my room. My passport was lying on the bed. He told me to put my passport in my shirt pocket. We went to the river that divides central Asia and Afghanistan, the Amu Darya. He told me two Arabs were there for an interview. ... We went in and he was on my left. The cameraman was in front of us. I remember the pious smile of the photographer ... And after five minutes he died and I survived."

On September 9, 2001, Khalili interpreted for Massoud while he was interviewed by two Tunisians allegedly belonging to Al Qaeda posing as journalists. During the interview the suicide assassins detonated a bomb hidden in the video camera. Ahmad Shah Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him and Khalili to hospital. Another aide of Massoud also died in the attack. The Los Angeles Times writes: "The explosion left Khalili blind in his right eye, deaf in his right ear and badly burned over much of his body, which was peppered by about 1,000 pieces of shrapnel. About 300 pieces are still in his left leg." The passport, which Massoud had told him to put into his shirt pocket, had stopped eight pieces of shrapnel from entering Khalili's heart and had thereby saved his life.

"God saved me, but always God is helped by some means."

About the death of Massoud he said:

"When you are buried in the hearts of the people, you are always alive."

"Whenever you fight for the right cause, if you die, you don't die. But if you fight for the wrong cause, you never live."

Two days later the attacks of September 11, 2001, killed 3000 people on U.S. soil.