Slain Anti-Taliban Leader Remembered

With helicopters circling above, thousands of Afghans gathered in a Kabul stadium on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the death of Ahmed Shah Massood, the martyred guerrilla commander who fought for years against the Soviets and the Taliban.

Massood was killed on Sept. 9, 2001 by suicide bombers believed sent by Osama bin Laden and posing as journalists.

"They thought when they killed him, it would all be finished," his 13-year-old son, Ahmed Massood, told a crowd under a searing sun. "But they didn't know that his spirit would live on."

Before he spoke, hundreds of senior army officials and government leaders leaned down to kiss the young Massood, dressed in a suit and sporting a tan-colored wool hat like those his father often wore.

Behind him stood a giant billboard photo of his late father, set against big bouquets of red roses. Dignitaries laid dozens of flower wreaths below it.

Monday's ceremonies took place under heavy security. Kabul has been tense following a failed assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai in the southern city of Kandahar on Thursday - an attack which came hours after a car bombing in the capital that killed at least 30 people.

Soldiers checked passing cars for bombs and frisked crowds streaming through the stadium's gates. Outside, peacekeepers with assault rifles stood guard, some manning vehicle-mounted machine guns.

A dozen speakers, including Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, praised the legendary commander for leading troops for 23 years - first against a Soviet-backed government and later against the Taliban. Fahim succeeded Massood as commander of the northern alliance.

In Mazar-e-Sharif, northern Afghanistan's biggest city, several thousand people gathered at a blue-tiled mosque to remember him. They listened to eulogies, songs and verses read from the Quran at the Blue Mosque, which houses a shrine and a tomb said to be that of Hazrat Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhamad.

Massood spent much of the last five years of his life battling the Taliban from the tiny patch of territory he controlled in northeastern Afghanistan.

The assassination took place two days before the Sept. 11 terror attacks brought America into the war. Backed by a superpower, Massood's troops swept into the capital with tanks bearing his photo.

His image in Kabul today is impossible to miss. Sometimes smiling, sometimes serious, it has been woven into carpets and festooned onto ministry buildings, the airport and thousands of small shops.

His followers in the Tajik-dominated northern alliance have promoted the Massood cult of personality in the capital which Massood and other warlords nearly destroyed in the 1992-1996 civil war that ended with the rise of the Taliban.

On Monday, black flags were erected outside shop-fronts in a traditional show of mourning. The government declared the anniversary a national holiday.

"The enemies of our country attempted to destroy everything, but our heroes struggled against them," Ahmed Massood said.

"Our heroes now live in the past, and it is up to us to give a new generation something to be proud of. We must always stand against our enemies."

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the governor of the eastern Afghan province of Khost said his forces remained in control of the provincial capital Monday after foiling a counter-attack by renegade warlord Padshah Khan Zadran.

Zadran had launched a counter-attack on Khost after being forced out of the town in fierce fighting over the weekend.

But provincial Gov. Hakim Taniwal said the attack had been repulsed and calm had returned to the volatile town, which lies 120 miles southeast of Kabul near the border with Pakistan.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said Monday Taniwal's people were in control and were urging people to reopen their businesses and remain calm.

Taniwal's forces had said they took control of key government buildings, including the governor's office, which Zadran had been occupying illegally for months.

The fighting began when Taniwal's forces attacked Zadran's positions Sunday after state-run local radio mistakenly reported that the burly, mustachioed Zadran had been arrested by U.S. troops.

Instead, the U.S. military said there was merely a meeting Sunday between Zadran and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill.

Col. Roger King said McNeill had not talked to Zadran about the fighting or his grievances with the government, but about the placement of roadblocks and checkpoints in the province, which were impeding the flow of coalition forces.

He also said there were no plans to take military action against the renegade warlord.

King said a brief firefight broke out between U.S. forces and some Afghans Sunday when tracer fire was directed at Chapman Air Field, the U.S. special forces base in Khost.

"The firing was returned, then the firing stopped," King said. "It all lasted less than five minutes."

Zadran became a key ally of the Americans after the fall of the Taliban last year, allowing his forces to be used to hunt for Taliban fugitives and their al Qaeda allies.

But he has openly challenged the authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai after being ousted as governor of Paktia province early this year.