Original subtitles

On September 11th, 2001, the United States was attacked in New York City and

Washington, D .C.

The entire world was shocked.

Al -Qaeda, a terrorist group in Afghanistan led by a certain bin Laden,

responsibility for the attack.

Just two days earlier, on September 9th, he had his only opponent assassinated.

A local hero in the Afghan resistance, Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

I remember Massoud saying, there's someone here who's very dangerous to

It's bin Laden.

Five months before the September 11th attacks, while on a visit to France,

Commander Massoud had warned the rest of the world.

He told us he only had one message for us, and it was that Osama bin Laden was

preparing a huge strike against the United States.

something extremely dangerous.

Massoud's message was loud and clear, so why did no one listen?

Was it the trade agreements or the arms sales to Pakistan that made the USA and

other Western countries look the other way?

Why did they refuse to help this man, the last line of defense against the

Taliban and the terrorists?

After ten years of war, to gain control of Afghanistan, the Soviets finally gave

up and left in 1989.

When Kabul's communist regime crumbled three years later, the country found

itself in a civil war between rebels from various ethnic groups.

Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Pashtuns.

Afghanistan spiraled into total chaos.

This ethnic civil war gave rise to a new movement, the Taliban.

In Pashtun language, Taleb literally means a theology student.

The Taliban are Islamic fundamentalists who study religion.

Their supreme leader was Mullah Mohammed Omar, a hardcore fundamentalist who

welcomed into his ranks terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, al -Qaeda

jihadists, and their leader, Osama bin Laden.

In September 1996, the Taliban seized Kabul and most of the country.

imposing a tyrannical Islamic regime and Sharia law.

Only one man dared resist, a Tajik from the Panjshir Valley, Commander Ahmad

Shah Massoud, who was famous for having defeated the Red Army during the Soviet

occupation.

Isolated in these mountains, he led a northern alliance that struggled to

the Taliban.

I was pretty good in school, and I went to the Sansevier Military Academy.

I spent three great years in France's finest school, receiving a military

education, but also learning engineering, history, and geography, the

needed to understand the modern world.

That's how I started my career as a military officer in the French Army.

But after several disappointments, I decided to resign in 1999 and became a

civilian again.

I thought the fight in Afghanistan with Massoud fighting the Taliban and Al

-Qaeda was a noble cause.

So I went to Afghanistan to join the adventure.

I introduced myself to Massoud as a former French officer.

and told him about the time I had been on a diving mission where we planted

mines under boats and sabotaged propellers.

And he made a joke about how the Taliban didn't have any boats.

And then I said something that finally caught his attention, which was that I

was a certified French commando instructor.

It turns out that Massoud had a team of commandos.

a group that was a mix of both young and experienced people.

He gathered them for me at a training camp and said, You're a commando

instructor. Here you go. Do your thing and teach them whatever you want. You

have carte blanche.

At that time, I think we had about 15 ,000 fighters on the various fronts.

We were up against 10 times as many men, but we resisted. The Taliban were well

equipped and had a lot of support from Pakistan who wanted them to take over

country.

Armed by Pakistan and supported by al -Qaeda fighters, the Taliban quickly

gained control of 90 % of Afghan territory.

In the heart of their oppressive regime, a single French representative remained

in office in Kabul, the chargé d 'affaires Jean -Yves Berthaud.

I had a position with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or

UNSMA, which was there to try to establish peace in a country that was

completely ripped apart back then.

I continued to do my job in Afghanistan, but I also became the sarge d

'affaires, which roughly coincided with the Taliban unfortunately taking control

of the country.

We were the last European country to have an embassy in Kabul.

I will never forget one of the first diplomatic telegrams I received when I

arrived at the ministry.

which was the report from the newly appointed French chargé d 'affaires,

-Yves Berthaud, in Kabul.

It said, I arrived in Kabul this morning, and as I approached the city

I noticed a garland hanging over the road.

As I got closer, I saw the garland was made of hands.

He went on to explain that punishment for theft was the loss of a hand, and

those severed hands were hung up on display by the regime's thugs.

Many Westerners had a false understanding of diplomacy in the

years, thinking through some sort of Western triumphalism that we only talk

people who shared our values.

And that's absurd.

Diplomacy exists for exactly the opposite reason.

It's designed as an alternative to war for addressing conflicts.

It's based on being open to dialogue with anyone and everyone to understand

their position.

Then you adjust the level of talks, their symbolism, the image they convey.

But once we understood the level of control the Taliban had in Afghanistan,

there was no way we could get involved, even if we thought we should be helping

Massoud without being in contact with the Taliban.

The moment they arrived in Kabul in 1996, the Taliban publicly hanged ex

-president Najibullah and his brother. It was an introduction to their barbaric

interpretation of the Quran.

While the religious students virtuously claim to be bringing back peace, this

comes at a huge cost to the 17 million Afghans in the country.

The mullah professes to be fighting vice with virtue and does so by imposing the

most obscurantist and inhumane Islamic system on the planet.

My name is Marui Kalmudin, and I'm currently the leader of the

Islamic movement in Afghanistan.

I was the Taliban's minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention

vice. My goal was to heavily promote virtue until all vices disappeared

naturally.

We never wanted to directly or brutally intervene.

That's why we trained people, young people.

They went to the mosques in small groups to raise awareness and warn against all

types of temptations.

This was necessary to get uneducated people to follow Islamic precepts.

We needed to teach them to abandon their vices.

and renounce everything that Islam prohibits.

The Taliban delegation that we invited to Islamabad for peace

negotiations stayed in a small guesthouse next to our offices.

It so happened that the UN mission leader's secretary was staying

in the same guesthouse.

She came in the next morning looking very tired because the Taliban in the

room had been watching porn until four in the morning, and this poor lady had

been unable to sleep.

That helped us understand that at the end of the day, the Taliban were still

human beings made of flesh and blood, and that their piety, despite what they

claimed, was not above a certain number of temptations.

The Taliban are terrorists.

They don't believe in peace.

Their philosophy is to create eternal war.

They view jihad as a religious principle, an Islamic obligation that

Taliban to fight constantly.

Otherwise, they believe they'll be lost to sin.

They believe that jihad guarantees them entry to heaven and that God will grant

them mercy.

The Taliban have absolutely nothing in common with the Afghan people or Afghan

society.

Pakistan, backed by Western nations and an ally of the U .S., wanted to control

Afghanistan. It was in Pakistan's Quranic schools that the Taliban were

trained.

Pakistan was the Taliban's major supporter.

The Pakistanis thought it would be good to have a regime that they controlled in

Kabul.

But they quickly realized they didn't really control it at all.

Sometimes their puppets were out of control.

And in our meetings with the Pakistanis, we asked them to rein in the Taliban,

and they said it wasn't that easy, because of course they were

Pakistan, the historic enemy of neighboring India, had always feared

trapped between two hostile countries.

Trained in the US or the UK, the Pakistani officials and military leaders

at reigning supreme over the region.

This meant that they needed to be heavily armed, which is how they became

preferred client of the US.

The Americans didn't really have a counterpart in Afghanistan.

They knew they couldn't really recognize the Taliban regime.

They couldn't be associated with it.

The American vision of Afghanistan was what was seen through Pakistani eyes.

Pakistan was an ally of the United States and told them that the Taliban

simply part of traditional Afghan culture and that they needed to accept

fact.

Massoud was simply a panchiri, a Tajik, a group that didn't mean much and that

had never ruled Afghanistan.

They weren't a proper solution to lead the country.

The Pakistanis didn't have a good relationship with Commander Massoud.

They knew that Ahmed Shah Massoud would never recognize a Pakistani puppet

government.

The Pakistanis saw that as resistance and as direct opposition to them. It's

true because my brother would never have accepted a pro -Pakistan government in

Kabul, and that's the real reason why the United States never helped him,

regardless of what they claimed.

That was the context in which Europe tried to make some progress by setting

visit with European deputies from France and Belgium.

I remember when the parliamentary representatives visited Panjshir.

In June 2000, a European parliamentary delegation travelled to Panjshir to meet

Commander Massoud, leading the charge with General Philippe Morillon.

who had previously served as commander of UN forces in the former Yugoslavia

was a well -established peace advocate.

The man who instigated the visit was a longtime friend of Commander Massoud,

Bertrand Gallet, who sought to raise political awareness about the Afghan

conflict.

I think that Pakistan, I'm convinced that Pakistan's goal is

a lot more religious in nature than it is geographical.

whose much talked about in Afghanistan these days, was trained by the Americans

back in the day.

They can't deny it.

It's in that context that he took control of all the big madrasas,

Quranic schools.

The resistance is much bigger than that.

It encompasses everyone who is Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara, and anyone else who

understands the threat.

They all oppose it.

From this moment forward, all ethnicities need to unite against the

invasion. We're living in the 21st century, and globalization is bringing

closer together.

No one could continue to exist in isolation without any contact from the

outside. It's a natural phenomenon.

With a tolerant and moderate Islam, our people can live in peace both internally

and within the international community.

I wore a pacol, like a local.

I speak the language, and since I didn't use French in front of them, they

thought I was Afghan, which suited me just fine.

I attended a number of those meetings.

Massoud wasn't a fool, he was sharp. What he needed, above all else, was

military support.

If an intellectual or a politician rallied behind him for their own

interests, so be it. What mattered...

was that they showed up and brought back a vision that counteracted what many

others in Paris were thinking.

But in the Western world, in the U .S., in Europe alike, arms dealer lobbyists

were numerous and powerful, and Pakistan was quite the client. In that regard,

Massoud was a problem.

Massoud was very good. He convinced them easily.

We'll see where that leads in political terms, but I think we're slowly moving

forward.

A country like Afghanistan is so far removed from the current concerns of

European parliamentary representatives, but this is how we'll get things to

evolve, through trips like this one.

They're tedious to put together, but they're productive.

Safe travels home.

My heart is here with you.

So we'll be back.

We'll be back to bring you to Paris.

And to Washington.

Then when Morion got back to Strasbourg, he convinced Nicole Fontaine, the

president of the parliament, to officially invite Massoud, which had

done by anyone anywhere.

I think France's hands were a little tied by the relationship and economic

connections with Pakistan, which was valuable back then.

Of course, French intelligence services were in contact with Massoud the same

way they were in contact with the Taliban.

They met him regularly to ask questions about the situation, to understand how

he saw things, and also to ask questions about al -Qaeda.

That was the major point of interest of the French intelligence services.

Given how Massoud had a significant network of informants in the country, he

might learn things about bin Laden or al -Qaeda.

and share that information with the French.

I shared military insights about the Somali plain front with French

services with Massoud's permission.

I was a messenger.

The messages transmitted by Western secret services, including the CIA, were

eventually heard.

Still sparing Pakistan.

The Americans decided to put pressure on the United Nations Security Council in

New York City.

The UN voted to put sanctions in place against the Kabul regime.

The United

States

was in what I call their hyper -power phase.

which meant that basically any other power almost anywhere in the world had

take U .S. policies into account.

That didn't mean they needed to agree with those policies.

In fact, the French government's position with regard to the United

that time was to be a friend, an ally, but not necessarily aligned with them.

The Americans found that unacceptable.

Because they thought, if you're an ally, you have to be allied with them.

Otherwise, you're useless.

The moment international sanctions were put into place, I knew they

would become even more radicalized.

And that the moderate, who were in favor of keeping open the communication

channels with the Western world, would essentially no longer have it their way.

As a result, it would be the radicals who would seize power. I tried to tell

them that.

I tried repeatedly.

The radicalization of the Taliban had brutal, inhumane consequences for women.

Their rights regressed even further.

Women were reduced to nothing, and any suspicion against a woman could lead to

her imprisonment, beating, or even stoning.

Thousands have come to the stadium to see a woman die, a woman whose face

never see.

We only know her as Zarmina.

That's her in the middle, between the two female guards.

The Taliban leader sentences her to death for adultery.

Zarmina's seven children watched her execution from the stands.

Their uncle was the one who pulled the trigger.

Of course, the Taliban tried to provoke me.

They couldn't resist the idea of luring me to their side.

For example, one time they sent me a beautiful written invitation asking me

honor them by attending a public execution.

at Kabul Stadium.

That really made my blood boil, and I went in person to return the invitation

the protocol service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which at that point had

been reduced to its simplest form.

I said, take this back, I don't want to keep such an invitation, and I never

want to receive another one like it in the future.

Freedom for women?

It's false to say that they had no freedom.

They were not prisoners.

Granted, they did not have Western freedoms, but they had Islamic, Quranic

freedoms.

And in our country, it's true that stoning as prescribed by Islam is

Women are like ghosts, all shrouded in the same covering, the chedri.

These furtive silhouettes were filmed in secret.

In Afghanistan, one can't even look at them from behind.

And here, even their underwear is a man's business.

Women selling clothes?

No way.

Islam wouldn't allow it.

Because of this interpretation of the Koran, in Afghanistan, women's fashion

entirely decided by men, from the cut of the pattern to the actual models.

You know, when you own a rare pearl, you don't just leave it lying around.

You keep it safe in a beautiful box.

You find a very beautiful box and you keep it inside because it's very

Women in Islam are like pearls.

They are valuable, much more so than they are in the Western world.

A man must serve his wife.

I myself am a servant.

My wife is at home along with my daughter and I serve them.

Thanks to us, women do not have to work.

Women's rights are protected by Islam.

The Shadri also protects them.

Before the Taliban arrived in Kabul, women played a major role in Afghan

society.

They held 80 % of administrative positions and a third of medical jobs.

Massoud encouraged equality and advocated women's return to public life.

Massoud believed Islam's fundamental values that give women a space and the

right to have an education.

They fully belong in the organization of political life.

And I think Massoud pushed for those ideas.

Women's groups came to him asking him to sign a charter for women's rights,

which he did.

He was fully aligned with everything they brought up. He agreed with all of

Yet he still added a line about how these clauses had to respect Afghan

Another indication of the Taliban's radicalization was their desire to

all non -Islamic symbols.

After forbidding children to play with kites, to listen to music, and to take

photos of themselves, they now opposed looking at any work of art.

The Afghan government, with help from France and a protocol signed in 1921,

had promoted national archaeology.

By destroying Afghan archaeology, the Taliban wanted to prove that Afghanistan

had no culture other than that instilled by the Pakistani seminaries.

To access these beautiful works carved in the rock, one must take tunnels that

lead to an opening above them, where one discovers beautiful frescoes that have

already been vandalized with a view to the country's organized art trafficking.

This past Sunday, authorities in Kabul tried to reassure a Western diplomatic

team who had come to investigate the destruction of artworks.

Just two hours after our last meeting, Mullah Omar announced the decision to

systematically destroy all anti -Islamic works. Why?

Of course, there were obvious ideological and religious reasons.

To them, these statues represent idols and must hence be destroyed. That's also

a clear sign of radicalization.

I contacted the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I told him, that if

they did this, they needed to understand that their image would forever be

destroyed.

Stoning women was hard enough to swallow, but here you had something that

been around since the fifth century and which wasn't bothering anybody.

I said,

look, if you're really afraid that people will come and worship these

I'm sure I can find you a company somewhere that would be willing to

and donate curtains. You can cover the statues and just open the curtains when

people come to observe their splendor, as opposed to worshipping them.

He said, what a great idea.

and that he would relay it to Mullah Omar.

He promised me that those Buddhas wouldn't be destroyed.

He gave me his word.

When you play the diplomatic game, you're faced with two types of fanatics.

There's the one who doesn't really believe, so you can negotiate with him.

Then there's the fanatic who really believes.

How can you negotiate with that?

And how can you tell one from the other? And which one would you prefer?

I only found out what happened months later, after September 11th, from an

Afghan friend.

He told me the day we left Mutawakil's office, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,

he immediately picked up the phone and called Mullah Omar in Kandahar, the

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate, and told him he had given us his word,

and so on.

It turns out that Osama bin Laden was in Mullah Omar's office

at the time, and he said,

Don't you think that would be an embarrassment?

These foreigners are willing to spend millions to install curtains or build a

wall around the Buddhas, while our people are dying of starvation, and they

won't even lift a finger to help them.

That's shameful.

We need to destroy all that crap, those pieces of stone.

And that's what happened. All of our appeals were unfortunately totally

The Taliban's relentless destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in March 2001

was a huge shock because it revealed an extremely deep -seated way of thinking,

which is why the world reacted.

It represented a resurgence of a way of thinking

that we thought we were done with in our world.

This thought that monuments and works of art from civilizations that are not our

own carry ideological messages and pose religious dangers, which

is why they must be completely eradicated.

In favor of a moderate Islam, Then French Minister

Alain Madelin took a keen interest in Afghanistan very early on and visited

country on numerous occasions.

I went to Panjshir to explicitly meet Massoud and spend time with him.

He was a true force of nature, an extraordinary man.

While I was in there, Massoud gave me a clear message, warning of the dangers

Afghanistan presented to the world, and saying that the Afghan people needed to

be freed from this tyrannical regime.

I told him that he needed to come to France.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was afraid for many reasons, but the main

reason, according to one of the senior officials at the Ministry, was weapons

negotiations with Pakistan.

We couldn't upset Pakistan.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't want him to come, which was strange

because in reality, and for a bunch of reasons, the French military had people

on the ground there who knew the country.

And they had a completely different opinion.

They knew we needed to help Massoud, but their voices were snuffed out as they

passed through military, diplomatic and government channels.

I talked to people and offered them solutions.

The Taliban were losing popular support, and there were Taliban commanders that

we could have paid off.

To these 50 commanders or so, we could have offered $40 ,000 each.

It would have cost $2 million. If someone had just lent us $2 million, we

have taken down an entire front, or multiple fronts, and taken back big

like Herat, Madari Sharif, or Jalalabad.

It would have been possible, but it never happened.

In March, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs invited a Taliban

I offered to greet them because I was curious.

I wanted to see what they were like after having read so many horrible

about them.

I remember they were completely closed off. They never looked at me in the eye.

Even when we were two feet from one another, they didn't say anything.

But it was done, and it probably had to be done because we didn't know what was

next.

This March 2001 visit took place in great secrecy without any cameras or

present.

Diplomacy required keeping both parties happy in order to see the weapons deal

with Pakistan through.

Invited by the European Parliament and not France itself, Massoud made his

stop in Paris.

Once again, our friends at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs were quite sneaky.

They said Jospin was busy, Chirac was busy, but the Ministry of Foreign

could probably give him just a bit of his time.

Simultaneously, they had the nerve to issue a press release announcing that

Ministry of Foreign Affairs was acting as a bridge between all parties which

naturally included the Taliban.

We had a good discussion with Mr. Badrin, even though the meeting was

hurried. It began over breakfast, which was followed by discussions that led to

profound debates.

And that was when they realized they were debating with a real leader

who was on the same level as they were.

I had many other meetings with Mr. Badrin after that, every time.

He mentioned that first interview with Commander Massoud.

Before that meeting, it was obvious that they didn't trust us.

He was ecstatic about coming to Paris and very happy to be received by the

minister. There's a certain prestige and status attached to that.

Then he asked if the DGSE could help more by providing weapons.

Let's be clear.

He was trying to rally the international community to his side of the fight and

prove that his fight was just.

And his enemy was a serious threat, not just to him, but to everyone.

He didn't get much out of that besides talk.

He told me France didn't even give him a Kalashnikov cartridge.

He made his pinky and said it in Dari.

Five months before September 11th, Massoud came to Europe to deliver a

Of course I saw Massoud when he came to Paris, and we had a meal together.

Of course we talked about all these problems, and I was able to share my

and how disappointed I was with my compatriots.

Of course I told him all about my trials and tribulations at the various NGO

conventions in Washington, where everyone had gone out of their way to

organizations.

to recognize the Taliban government and cooperate with them.

I'll never forget when this official from the U .S. State Department came to

in spring 2000 and said, listen, at the end of the day, we know that

the Saudis are also violating human rights that we consider fundamental, but

need to be realistic.

We collaborate with them, so why wouldn't we recognize the Taliban?

People met with Massoud and they listened to him.

He spoke in France and in Europe.

And of course there were some people who really advocated that he should be

helped.

But what you need to understand is that there were just as many people, maybe

more influential, who believed the opposite.

They branded Massoud as a...

fundamentalist, like all the others.

Someone who would never have a political future in Afghanistan, and a horse it

would be stupid to bet on.

Welcome to the European Parliament. I'm so happy to have you here.

His message would finally be heard and listened to.

You all know that for a long time now, the European Parliament has been very

concerned with the situation in Afghanistan, the serious and repeated

infringements of fundamental rights and human dignity, the appalling situation

facing women,

the famine that threatens the country, as well as refugees.

I would venture to say that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statue

straw that broke the camel's back,

which confirmed beyond any doubt that the Taliban simply have no respect for

anything.

The invitation I extended is first and foremost the political acknowledgement

what Commander Massoud represents.

But I must also tell you that the Pakistani ambassador wrote me a letter.

When his government had invited Khomeini, that letter

gives me the opportunity to give a strict warning to the Pakistani

authorities.

The support that they give the Taliban is a threat to the entire region.

And in my response to this letter, I will formally ask Pakistan to

cease supporting a regime which, through its fanaticism and obscurantism, has

ostracized itself from the world.

The groups that accompany them, like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban,

have similar ideas.

I want to say this way that the goal of these groups is not

Afghanistan, but the first step of Afghanistan and then the exit of

And unfortunately,

I must remind you that...

Masoud's visit to Europe was a very good thing.

But it was also the worst possible thing he could have done for himself.

Because I'm pretty convinced that's what gave the enemy the idea that Masoud

himself had to be physically eliminated.

That idea came out of the sick minds of al -Qaeda leaders.

To put it simply, Massoud's assassination was bin Laden's gift to

I had noticed the fanatic radicalization of the Taliban.

But I didn't really understand how much influence bin Laden had at the time. Bin

Laden had married one of his own sons to one of

Mullah Omar's daughters.

That meant their relationship had become familial and dynastic, which

posed a lot of problems.

It was a gift to Mullah Omar in the sense that it gave him the last little

of Afghanistan he was missing.

Assassinating Massoud meant he could launch a massive operation to conquer

Panjshir and the entire northeast, ruling over the entire country.

All of this without bin Laden having to share what he was planning in the US.

Al -Qaeda thought that one of Massoud's weaknesses was

his willingness to accept visits from journalists and politicians.

So they decided to use that as a way to get close to him. They can go in

pretending to be journalists with a camera or batteries that were filled

explosives.

On September 9th, 2001, two al -Qaeda kamikazes met with Commander Massoud.

The two terrorists pretended to be journalists working for Arab media

Fahim Dashti, one of Massoud's loyal lieutenants, is one of the only two

witnesses still alive today.

It's always hard for me to talk about what happened on September 9th, 2001.

It always brings back terrible memories, the worst of my life.

It was around 8 or 8 .30 in the morning when I came out of my room.

I asked where those Arab journalists had gone.

Someone told me they had already gone to the commander's headquarters to

interview him.

Part of our work back then as a Mujahideen was to record videos.

So I grabbed my camera and headed to the commander's headquarters.

Before they started the interview, the commander asked them to share what

questions they were planning to ask.

The Arab sitting next to the commander listed a dozen or so questions, mostly

about al -Qaeda, the Taliban, bin Laden, Pakistan, the war.

It was always the same questions back then.

When I sensed the interview was about to begin, I sat in a chair beside them and

prepared my camera to film.

I was suddenly blinded by a very strong yellow light.

My eyes closed instinctively, and then I realized that I was burned and wounded.

Since I had been setting up my camera, the first thing I thought was there had

to have been a short circuit and that it had exploded in my face.

I managed to open my eyes and I saw there was dust and smoke everywhere and

the windows had been blown out.

Two people carried the commander from the room with his pachol covering his

face.

He had injuries to his head and legs, but most seriously to his chest.

When Commander Massoud was killed, for the first time in my life, I realized

what a great responsibility that man had been carrying up until that point.

Everything depended on him.

Millions of us felt it, and we weren't strong enough to carry the weight of

responsibility.

I once read a sentence in a book that said, Woe betide a nation in need of

heroes. And back when the commander was still alive, I thought that that author

was stupid.

He didn't understand that it was great to have a hero.

One should be so lucky.

But when Massoud died, I finally understood what the author was trying to

What he meant was that it's so sad when people need a hero, because when that

hero disappears, all is lost.

Two days after Massoud's assassination, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at 8 .45

a .m., an airliner crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in

York. Just 18 minutes later, a second plane hit the South Tower. Then a third

crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D .C., and a fourth in Pennsylvania.

It was the worst terrorist attack in human history.

The two events are closely connected.

Before the attacks on September 11th, al -Qaeda wanted to eradicate the leader

of the resistance so there would be no more opposition to the Taliban in

Afghanistan.

Yes, bin Laden understood that Massoud was his enemy for sure.

Perhaps he had thought that after the attack on the Twin Towers, there would

a crackdown on Afghanistan.

And if such retaliations occurred, he needed to ensure Massoud was gone,

he represented the main danger against him.

The rest would work itself out, but the connection between the two events is

absolutely obvious.

After September 11th, the United States went after public enemy number one,

Osama bin Laden.

They took military action in Afghanistan.

Helped by the Americans, the troops of the late Commander Massoud liberated

Kabul in November 2001.

The Taliban's departure was a relief to the local population.

I shaved, says the man. There's no more Taliban.

This al -Qaeda command center shows clear signs of its occupants' hurried

departure. But the most surprising thing of all was found in the basement.

A dozen brand -new Milan -type anti -tank missiles, weapons manufactured in

France and abundantly sold to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

In the Western world, the discovery of this arsenal almost

went unnoticed.

Only one person was surprised and dared raise the issue of certain dealings with

Pakistan. I yield the floor to Mr. Alan Madland, the first speaker.

Today, Kabul has been liberated. The Taliban have been chased out, and I'm

first to rejoice because for a very long time, I've had the feeling that very

few of us were ready to denounce the blind eye that France and the world's

democracies turned towards the oppression of the Afghan people under

criminal Taliban regime.

Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you can enlighten us as to the origin of the

Milan missiles that were just found in the Taliban's deserted arsenals in

Kabul.

By answering you would at least partially explain the French

ambiguous position, because never once, Mr.

Prime Minister,

Did you say that Afghanistan should be free of the Taliban regime?

Taliban? You've never even said the word a single time.

I wanted him to explain where those French military Milan missiles were

from, the wire -guided Milan missiles that had been found in the Taliban's

arsenals in Kabul.

He never answered.

Anyway, I'm not saying France delivered Milan missiles directly to the Taliban.

That's highly unlikely.

That said, it might have been via a country like Pakistan or some other

that somehow these missiles ended up in the Taliban's arsenal.

Massoud remains a living legend to its multi -ethnic and multicultural

population.

But Afghanistan is still threatened by terrorists that coexist with the

And the Taliban continue to be supported by Pakistan.

In this context, Massoud's heritage is a source of inspiration and hope, a hope

that lives on through the political arrival of the commander's only son,

who is following the footsteps of his father.

and embody the new front against the Taliban and international terrorism.

Well, before the collapse of the New York Towers, the oppressed people of

Afghanistan were the first victims of terrorism and its brutality.

If we consider how much of the world's attention we have now,

if even 1 % of that attention had existed in my father's days, the enemy

have been chased out of Afghanistan in a week or two.

No more terrorism.

As long as Pakistan still wants to control Afghanistan, there will never be

peace in the region and the war will continue.

Only when Pakistan ceases to support terrorism, when the leaders of Pakistan

change their policies with regard to Afghanistan, will the region stabilize

find its way on the road to peace.

Pakistan could then develop and so could Afghanistan.

My biggest regret is my own personal failure.

I think that Massoud, I think he counted on me at least a little bit. He counted

on me to relay his message.

Yes, it didn't work.

So it's a personal failure on my part.

That said, the collective failure is even more consequential than my personal

failure.

Massoud's image remains untarnished.

It's an image that isn't exactly what his supporters in Paris thought, but he

was still a strong figure, even if he was a warlord.

I guess he never got a chance to disappoint us.

He died too soon for that.

It all happened like a great tragedy.

Total disaster for Afghanistan.

We let the chips fall where they may.

And no matter how much of a fight we put up, things took

a turn for the worse.

And that's still the case.