title: Knull (character)

text: At the time when the Guardians of the Galaxy were investigating the death of Zn'rx Emperor Stote during the Galactic Council's meeting at the Proscenium and find that the Chitauri Peacekeeper and the Profiteer were responsible sometime after the events of the "Empyre" storyline, Zoralis Gupa of the planet Silnius takes an urgent call while mentioning to the person on the other side to warn all neighboring systems. He tells Victoria that it's the End of Everything as different planets are starting to die in the planets owned by the Shi'ar, the Kree/Skrull Alliance, and the Zn'rx while rendering the galactic economy fragile enough to go bankrupt. Knowing that she won't make a profit, the Profiteer teleports Peacekeeper and the bio-bomb away. While thanking Zoralis Gupa for fooling the Profiteer with the bluff, Zoralis Gupa states to Super-Skrull and everyone present that something darker than Galactus is destroying the worlds and its name is Knull. Emperor Hulkling dispatched Talos to investigate the Kree and Skrull bases that went dark with Av-Rom, Keeyah, M'lanz, Virtue, and Tarna. Two days later, a Kree/Skrull Alliance armada headed by General Kalamari finds Talos' escape pod. After recuperating in the sick bay, Talos recaps to Kalamari about what happened on his mission that involved an encounter with Knull. Talos then informs Kalamari that his distress beacon on his escape pod is a warning that Knull is coming. Outside the ship, Knull is riding a Symbiote Dragon as he swoops in for an attack.


title: Knull (character)

text: Sensing Knull coming at the start of the "King in Black" storyline, Eddie Brock alerts the Avengers. Knull unleashes the Symbiote Dragons on Earth as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men fight them even when Knull is shown to have Celestials Arishem the Judge and Tefral the Surveyor possessed by his symbiotes. When Captain America gives the command to the other heavy hitter they enlisted, it turns out to be the Sentry. He takes Knull into Earth's orbit and tried to do the same thing he once did to Carnage only for Knull to do a reversal upon being familiar with what happened to Carnage that time. Knull breaks Sentry and assimilates the Void into him upon it emerging from Sentry's body. Venom and Captain America react to this as Iron Man urges them to retreat. Knull then proceeds to have his Symbiote Dragons form a sphere around Earth to cut it off from the Sun and has the living abyss swallow some of the superheroes including Storm which Professor X reacts to. As Venom, Eddie goes to confront Knull and offer his services to him. Knull grabs Venom as he recognizes Eddie as the one who killed Grendel, then he states to Eddie that the Brock he is looking for is Dylan Brock. When Eddie begs for Knull to take him instead, Knull rips the Venom symbiote off him and absorbs it into his body while planning to absorb Dylan into him as well. Eddie is then dropped by Knull into the symbiote-covered streets below. Knull finds out where Dylan is and is about to get him when Thor arrives. Together, Thor and Dylan help free some of the infected heroes including the Hulk. Thor and Knull fight and Thor gains the upper hand until Knull distracts Thor by bringing in his symbiote-possessed Celestials and stabs Thor in the back. Knull plans to control Dylan since the latter has the Symbiote codex, but Dylan fights back freeing Cyclops, Invisible Woman, Doctor Strange, Black Cat, and the Human Torch. Doctor Strange morphs into a stronger form and together the heroes fight back against the symbiotes. Namor, Thor and Storm deal heavy damage while Jean Grey's psychic powers immobilize Knull, seeing Knull's past and realizing that the God of Light (another name for the Enigma Force) is the one thing that can take down Knull before passing out. Silver Surfer arrives to where the Enigma Force is and frees it from the Symbiotes. Knull reels in pain and Eddie is chosen to be the new Captain Universe. As Silver Surfer faces off against him, Knull recalls his previous fight against him. Through the God of Light, Silver Surfer assumes a chrome form and turns his surfboard into a sword while Knull transforms his armor into one that would enable him to combat Silver Surfer. As Knull begins to fight Silver Surfer, the members of the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men charge towards Knull so that they can aid Silver Surfer. Just then, Venom appears having been transformed into Captain Universe stating that he'll handle Knull from here. As Knull claims that he has killed Venom many times, Venom manages to make use of Mjolnir and Silver Surfer's surfboard which he then merged into a battle axe that is in the shape of Venom's spider emblem. Using his battle axe, Venom starts to shred his way through the Symbiote Dragons upon noting that Knull has become afraid of him. Knull even unleashes a Symbiote-controlled Celestial to aid him, only for Venom to behead it. As Venom rips off Knull's armor, Knull states that the darkness is in Dylan. Venom then picks up Knull, flies into the air, and punches through the Symbiote barrier surrounding Earth, where Knull states that the Void is eternal and the abyss has teeth. Venom then states he doesn't care if he is right as he plunges his hand into the sun and uses the Uni-Power to vaporize Knull. As a result of Knull's death, the Venom Symbiote translates to Eddie the language of the hostless Symbiotes and the Symbiote Dragons that he has become the new God of the Symbiotes now that they are free of Knull's control.


title: Knull (character)

text: Knull possesses superhuman strength and durability. He is depicted as an immortal being. He is able to generate and manipulate eldritch darkness, as he can manifest darkness to create weapons and living creatures, whom he calls the "Living abyss." He is able to forge different types symbiotes with various abilities, such as dragon-like symbiotes. He can remotely influence and control the symbiotes he creates. Knull is also a shapeshifter, being able to turn his human-like mouth into fanged jaws with an elongated tongue — a feature passed on to the symbiotes. With his regerative healing factor, Knull can recover quickly from injuries. Knull also has the ability to fly.


title: Knull (character)

text: He is an expert combatant, utilizing All-Black to kill Celestials and other gods, while wearing an armor made from symbiote-matter. Knull's armor is decorated with a red dragon and spiral emblem, which was based on Spiral of Carcosa from "True Detective".


title: Knull (character)

text: Despite his severed connection to the symbiotes, his influence can still be observed as when Gorr, Old Galactus, Ego, and King Loki, after being infected by All-Black, continued Knull's crusade to annihilate all existence. When Malekith bonded with the Venom symbiote he called himself the Butcher of Thor. Venom formed a similar emblem with mixed design of Knull's emblem and Spider-Woman's. Similarly, the Nameless, a group of Kree explorers, after being infected by the Exolons, had their skin slowly fade with their outward appearance now resembling Knull.


title: Knull (character)

text: Ian Cardona of "CBR.com" referred to Knull as a "cross between Marvel's Dracula and the main villain behind "Spider-Verse", Morlun," writing, "There is an ethereal, wraith-like quality to his demeanor. He's got the appropriately haunting build, with his broad shoulders and chest covered by armor that makes him appear both regal and powerful. He has terrifyingly sharp teeth, and the signature symbiote tongue." Bradley Prom of "Screen Rant" called Knull one of Marvel's "memorable antagonists," saying, "It took all of Earth's heroes, along with intergalactic heroes such as the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Kree-Skrull alliance to finally stop him. However, before they all teamed up, Knull beat Silver Surfer, the Avengers, the X-Men, and more, forcing the ultimate team-up to stop one of the most powerful Marvel Comics villains in history."


title: Knull (character)

text: Knull received particular attention in Sweden and Norway, due to the word being the noun form of "fuck" (referring to copulation), in Swedish and Norwegian.


title: Knull (character)

text: Knull appears in the "Spider-Man" promo "The Secret Story of Venom". This version created the Klyntar to serve as living weapons in his crusade against the Celestials before eventually abandoning the former after deeming his initial creations, the Symbiote Sisters, useless to him. The sisters went on to crash-land on an alien planet, split off into several spawn, and bond with the native inhabitants to find a harmonic purpose in life.


title: Julian Glover

text: Julian Wyatt Glover (born 27 March 1935) is an English classical actor with many stage, television, and film roles since commencing his career in the 1950s. He is a recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award and has performed many times for the Royal Shakespeare Company.


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover's well-known film roles have included General Maximilian Veers in "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), Aristotle Kristatos in "For Your Eyes Only" (1981), Brian Harcourt-Smith in "The Fourth Protocol" (1987) and Walter Donovan in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989). He also voiced the giant Acromantula spider Aragog in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002) and appeared as conductor Andris Davis in the psychological drama "Tár" (2022).


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover has also appeared frequently on television, especially in Britain, including guest appearances in cult series such as "The Avengers", "The Saint", "Thriller", "Doctor Who", "Blake's 7", "Remington Steele" and "Inside No. 9". He played the recurring supporting role of Grand Maester Pycelle in HBO's "Game of Thrones" (2011–2016) and appeared as General Beauvilliers in the BBC drama "Spies of Warsaw" (2013).


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover was born in Hampstead, London, the son of Honor Ellen Morgan (née Wyatt), a BBC journalist, and Claude Gordon Glover, a BBC radio producer. Glover and Wyatt divorced in the 1940s, after the birth of a daughter, Prue, and Honor Wyatt subsequently married George Ellidge. Julian Glover's younger half-brother is the musician Robert Wyatt.


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover attended Bristol Grammar School, where he was in the same class as future actors Timothy West and David Prowse. He also attended Alleyn's School in Dulwich, London. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1954. He also performed national service in the British Army, where he went on the officers' training course.


title: Julian Glover

text: In the early 1950s, Glover appeared in several shows at Unity Theatre, London, and played Tolen in Ann Jellicoe's "The Knack" at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962. He also performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He became a regular actor in 1960s and 1970s British television series such as "The Avengers", "The Saint", "Strange Report", "Doctor Who" and "Blake's 7".


title: Julian Glover

text: In 1966, Glover played William the Conqueror in "A Choice of Kings", then in 1967 featured as Professor Quatermass's nemesis Colonel Breen in the Hammer Films production of "Quatermass and the Pit", an adaptation of Nigel Kneale's 1958–1959 BBC TV original. He has also appeared twice in "Doctor Who": as Richard the Lionheart in "The Crusade" (1965); and as the villain Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, in one of the original run's most popular serials, "City of Death" (1979). Glover later recorded DVD commentaries for "The Crusade" episode "The Wheel of Fortune" (from the "Lost in Time" set) and for "City of Death".


title: Julian Glover

text: In the 1980s, Glover made some of his most notable appearances: the Imperial general Maximilian Veers in "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), the ruthless Greek villain Aristotle Kristatos in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" (1981) and the deceptive American Nazi Walter Donovan in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989).


title: Julian Glover

text: On television, he played the leading role of Sir Martin Lacey in the BBC English Civil War drama series "By the Sword Divided", and played the guest role of surgeon Arnold Richardson in a 1989 episode of the BBC medical drama "Casualty" (he made a second guest appearance as a different character in 2011, and also appeared as a different character again in the sister series "Holby City" in 2014). He has also played a leading role in the British film "Brash Young Turks".


title: Julian Glover

text: In the 2002 film version of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", Glover voiced the giant spider Aragog.


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover has been associated with the epic poem "Beowulf" since the 1980s and has delivered staged interpretations in various forms, often taking the role of an Anglo-Saxon gleeman or traveller poet, delivering an abridged version of the tale while standing around a mead hall hearth and rendering selected passages in the poem's original Old English. This adaptation has been shown in documentaries on both the English language and Anglo-Saxon England and was also used for historian Michael Wood's documentary on the poem broadcast during the BBC Poetry Season in 2009. He adapted his interpretation in novel form as "".


title: Julian Glover

text: In 2009, Glover played the role of Mr. Brownlow in the West End revival of the musical "Oliver!" at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the short film "Battle for Britain" (2010), Glover played a 101-year-old Polish veteran Royal Air Force pilot.


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover portrayed the character of Grand Maester Pycelle in the HBO series "Game of Thrones" between 2011 and 2016, appearing in a total of 31 episodes across the first six seasons of the show.


title: Julian Glover

text: In 2013, Glover played the role of General Beauvilliers in the BBC Four drama series "The Spies of Warsaw". In May 2014, he played the character Joe Goodridge in two episodes of the BBC TV medical drama series "Holby City" ("My Name is Joe" and "No Apologies"). In the same year, he portrayed an old man in horror thriller "Backtrack".


title: Julian Glover

text: In 2019, Glover played the role of Nonno in the West End theatre production of Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana" at the Noël Coward Theatre.


title: Julian Glover

text: In 1993, Glover was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1992 production of "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". Theatre critic Michael Billington called his portrayal of the king in that production "superb".


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to drama.


title: Julian Glover

text: Glover has been twice married: to actresses Eileen Atkins and Isla Blair (with whom he has a son, actor Jamie Glover).


title: Julian Glover

text: In 2020, Glover sold 250 lots of photographs, costumes, props and memorabilia from his career at East Bristol Auctions, including his badge of rank from "The Empire Strikes Back" and the watch, overcoat and personal script from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Ahmad Shah Massoud (Dari/Pashto: , ; September 2, 1953September 9, 2001) was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud came from an ethnic Tajik, Sunni Muslim background in the Panjshir Valley of Northern Afghanistan. He began studying engineering at Polytechnical University of Kabul in the 1970s, where he became involved with religious anti-communist movements around Burhanuddin Rabbani, a leading Islamist. He participated in a failed uprising against Mohammed Daoud Khan's government. He later joined Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami party. During the Soviet–Afghan War, his role as a powerful insurgent leader of the Afghan mujahideen earned him the nickname "Lion of Panjshir" () among his followers. Supported by Britain's MI6 and to a lesser extent by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he successfully resisted the Soviets from taking the Panjshir Valley. In 1992, he signed the Peshawar Accord, a peace and power-sharing agreement, in the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan. He was appointed the Minister of Defense as well as the government's main military commander. His militia fought to defend Kabul against militias led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other warlords who were bombing the city, as well as later against the Taliban, who laid siege to the capital in January 1995 after the city had seen fierce fighting with at least 60,000 civilians killed.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud, who rejected the Taliban's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, returned to armed opposition until he was forced to flee to Kulob, Tajikistan, strategically destroying the Salang Tunnel on his way north. He became the military and political leader of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan or Northern Alliance, which by 2000 controlled only between 5 and 10 percent of the country. In 2001 he visited Europe and urged European Parliament leaders to pressure Pakistan on its support for the Taliban. He also asked for humanitarian aid to combat the Afghan people's gruesome conditions under the Taliban. Massoud was assassinated by two al-Qaeda assassins with a suicide bombing on September 9, 2001, ordered personally by the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself. Two days later, the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States, which ultimately led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invading Afghanistan and allying with Massoud's forces. The Northern Alliance eventually won the two-month-long war in December 2001, removing the Taliban from power.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud has been described as one of the greatest guerrilla leaders of the 20th century and has been compared to Josip Broz Tito, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Massoud was posthumously named "National Hero" by the order of President Hamid Karzai after the Taliban were ousted from power. The date of Massoud's death, September 9, is observed as a national holiday known as "Massoud Day". His followers call him "Amer Sāhib-e Shahīd" (), which translates to "(our) martyred commander". He has been posthumously honored by a plaque in France in 2021, and in the same year was awarded with the highest honor of Tajikistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Ahmad Shah Massoud was born in 1953 in the small village of Jangalak, Bazarak in the Panjshir Valley (now administered as part of the Panjshir Province), to a well-to-do family native to the Panjshir Valley. Massoud's name at birth was 'Ahmad Shah' after King Ahamad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern, unified state of Afghanistan, later taking the name 'Massoud' as a "nom de guerre" in 1974 when he joined the resistance movement against the forces of Daoud Khan. Massoud's father, Dost Mohammad, was a colonel in the Royal Afghan Army; his mother, Bibi Khorshaid has been described as a "modern-minded" woman who taught herself to read and write determined to educate her daughters no less than her sons.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Moving along with his father's postings, the adolescent Massoud attended primary school in Afghanistan's western city of Herat before his father was dispatched to Kabul. There, Massoud was sent to the renowned Franco-Afghan Lycée Esteqlal (lit. Independence High School) where he attained his proficiency in French. Massoud's experience at Lycée would be formative and, as he would later remark, was the happiest period of his life. At Lycée his classes were taught by French and Afghan tutors educated in France and the students donned Western jackets, neckties, trousers, skirts, scarves, and stockings. Although his knowledge of the French language would earn him greater affinity among French journalists and politicians, later conservative Islamist opponents such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Taliban would derogatorily dub him "The Frenchmen" or "The Parisian" suggestive of his sympathies to Western culture.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: While at the Lycée, Massoud was described as an intellectually-gifted student, hard-working, religiously devout, and mature for his age with a particular interest in ethics, politics, universal justice. Friends and family recall an instance where Massoud, returning from school, came to the defense of a younger boy leaving the three bullies knocked-out on the pavement. More formatively, Massoud followed closely reports of the 1967 Six-Day War and the defiant statements of Arab leaders like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He later told researcher Peter DeNeufville that, at fourteen, the war left him determined to be a soldier and gave him a new regard for Islamic nationalism after hearing the stories told by Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian soldiers defending their homelands. Massoud refused repeated suggestions to apply for a scholarship to study in France expressing his desire to remain in Afghanistan and apply to the nation's military academy in Kabul.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: By protest of his father and eldest brother, Massoud enrolled at Kabul Polytechnic Institute, then Kabul University's newest and most prestigious addition founded, financed, and operated by the Soviet Union. Massoud studied engineering and architecture but never attempted to learn Russian. There he found interest in politics, political Islam, and anti-communist nationalism which often put him and his pious peers at odds with communist-inspired students.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 1973, former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan was brought to power in a coup d'état backed by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and the Republic of Afghanistan was established. These developments gave rise to an Islamist movement opposed to the increasing communist and Soviet influence over Afghanistan. During that time, while studying at Kabul University, Massoud became involved with the Muslim Youth (Sazman-i Jawanan-i Musulman), the student branch of the Jamiat-e Islami (Islamic Society), whose chairman then was the professor Burhanuddin Rabbani. Kabul University was a center for political debate and activism during that time.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Infuriated by the arrogance of his communist peers and Russian professors, a physical altercation between Massoud and his Russian professor led Massoud to walk out of the university, and shortly after, Kabul. Two days later, Massoud and a number of fellow militant students traveled to Pakistan where, goaded by another trainee of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, Massoud agreed to take part in a coup against Daoud with his forces rising up in the Panjshir and Hekmatyar's elsewhere. In July 1975, Massoud, with help from the Pakistani intelligence, led the first rebellion of Panjshir residents against the government of Daoud Khan. While the uprising in the Panjshir began saw initial success, even taking the military garrison in Rokha, the promised support from Kabul never came and the rebellion was suppressed by Daoud Khan's forces sending Massoud back into Pakistan (after a day hiding in Jangalak) where he would attend a secret, paramilitary ISI training center in Cherat. Dissatisfied, Massoud left the center and returned to Peshawar where he committed himself to personal military studies. Massoud read Mao Tse-tung's writings on the Long March, of Che Guevara's career, the memoirs of General de Gualle, General Võ Nguyên Giáp, Sun Tzu's Art of War, and an unnamed handbook on counterterrorism by an American general which Massoud called "the most instructive of all".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: After this failure, a "profound and long-lasting schism" within the Islamist movement began to emerge. The Islamic Society split between supporters of the more moderate forces around Massoud and Rabbani, who led the Jamiat-i Islami, and more radical Islamist elements surrounding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who founded the Hezb-i Islami. The conflict reached such a point that Hekmatyar reportedly tried to kill Massoud, then 22 years old.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The government of Mohammed Daoud Khan tried to scale back the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's influence, dismissing PDPA members from their government posts, appointing conservatives to replace them, and finally dissolved the PDPA, with the arrests of senior party members. On April 27, 1978, the PDPA and military units loyal to it killed Daoud Khan, his immediate family, and bodyguards in a violent coup, and seized control of the capital Kabul declaring the new Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). The new communist government, led by a revolutionary council, did not enjoy the support of the masses. It implemented a doctrine hostile to political dissent, whether inside or outside the party. The PDPA started reforms along Marxist–Leninist and Soviet lines. The reforms and the PDPA's affinity to the Soviet Union were met with strong resistance by the population, especially as the government attempted to enforce its Marxist policies by arresting or executing those who resisted. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people were estimated to have been arrested and killed by communist troops in the countryside alone. Due to the repression, large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, organized into open revolt against the PDPA government. By spring 1979, unrest had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces, including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army either deserted or joined the insurrection.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: With religious elders declaring a jihad against the government, in May 1979 Massoud prepared in Peshawar to oppose the new communist government in Panjshir. Along with twenty-four of his friends, Massoud took a bus to Bajaur and, with arms-smuggling Pashtun tribesmen, marched on foot into the Panjshir Valley. Massoud's group seized control over a number of government outposts in the Valley, entered the Shomali Plain to capture Gulbahar, and cut off the Salang Highway, the main supply route between Kabul and the Soviet border raising alarm in both Kabul and Moscow which brought upon Massoud and his group a government counterattack.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Believing that an uprising against the Soviet-backed communists would be supported by the people, Massoud, on July 6, 1979, started an insurrection in the Panjshir, which initially failed. Massoud decided to avoid conventional confrontation with the larger government forces and to wage a guerrilla war. He subsequently took full control of Panjshir, pushing out Afghan communist troops. Oliver Roy writes that in the following period, Massoud's "personal prestige and the efficiency of his military organization persuaded many local commanders to come and learn from him."


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Following the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Massoud devised a strategic plan for expelling the invaders and overthrowing the communist regime. The first task was to establish a popularly based resistance force that had the loyalty of the people. The second phase was "active defense" of the Panjshir stronghold, while carrying out asymmetric warfare. In the third phase, the "strategic offensive", Massoud's forces would gain control of large parts of Northern Afghanistan. The fourth phase was the "general application" of Massoud's principles to the whole country, and the defeat of the Afghan communist government.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud's mujahideen attacked the occupying Soviet forces, ambushing Soviet and Afghan communist convoys travelling through the Salang Pass, and causing fuel shortages in Kabul. The Soviets mounted a series of offensives against the Panjshir. Between 1980 and 1985, these offensives were conducted twice a year. Despite engaging more men and hardware on each occasion, the Soviets were unable to defeat Massoud's forces. In 1982, the Soviets began deploying major combat units in the Panjshir, numbering up to 30,000 men. Massoud pulled his troops back into subsidiary valleys, where they occupied fortified positions. When the Soviet columns advanced onto these positions, they fell into ambushes. When the Soviets withdrew, Afghan army garrisons took over their positions. Massoud and his mujahideen forces attacked and recaptured them one by one.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 1983, the Soviets offered Massoud a temporary truce, which he accepted in order to rebuild his own forces and give the civilian population a break from Soviet attacks. He put the respite to good use. In this time he created the Shura-e Nazar (Supervisory Council), which subsequently united 130 commanders from 12 Afghan provinces in their fight against the Soviet army. This council existed outside the Peshawar parties, which were prone to internecine rivalry and bickering, and served to smooth out differences between resistance groups, due to political and ethnic divisions. It was the predecessor of what could have become a unified Islamic Afghan army.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Relations with the party headquarters in Peshawar were often strained, as Rabbani insisted on giving Massoud no more weapons and supplies than to other Jamiat commanders, even those who did little fighting. To compensate for this deficiency, Massoud relied on revenues drawn from exports of emeralds and lapis lazuli, that are traditionally exploited in Northern Afghanistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Regarding infighting among different mujahideen factions, following a Soviet truce, Massoud said in an interview:


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Britain's MI6 having activated long-established networks of contacts in Pakistan were able to support Massoud, and soon became their key ally. MI6 sent an annual mission of two of their officers as well as military instructors to Massoud and his fighters. They also gave supplies to Massoud which included sniper rifles with silencers and mortars. As well as training Massoud's junior commanders, MI6 team's most important contribution was help with organisation and communication via radio equipment which was highly useful for Massoud to coordinate his forces and be warned of any impending Soviet attacks. The United States however provided Massoud with comparatively less support than other factions. Part of the reason was that it permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan, which favored the rival mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In an interview, Massoud said, "We thought the CIA knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people [meaning Hekmatyar]." Primary advocates for supporting Massoud were the US State Department's Edmund McWilliams and Peter Tomsen, who were on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of U.S. support under the Reagan Doctrine. Thousands of foreign Islamic volunteers entered Afghanistan to fight with the mujahideen against the Soviet troops.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: To organize support for the mujahideen, Massoud established an administrative system that enforced law and order ("nazm") in areas under his control. The Panjshir was divided into 22 bases ("qarargah") governed by a military commander and a civilian administrator, and each had a judge, a prosecutor and a public defender. Massoud's policies were implemented by different committees: an economic committee was charged with funding the war effort. The health committee provided health services, assisted by volunteers from foreign humanitarian non-governmental organizations, such as Aide médicale internationale. An education committee was charged with the training of the military and administrative cadre. A culture committee and a judiciary committee were also created.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: This expansion prompted Babrak Karmal to demand that the Red Army resume their offensives, in order to crush the Panjshir groups. However, Massoud had received warning of the attack through Britain's GCHQ intelligence and he evacuated all 130,000 inhabitants from the valley into the Hindukush mountains, leaving the Soviet bombings to fall on empty ground and the Soviet battalions to face the mountains.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: With the defeat of the Soviet-Afghan attacks, Massoud carried out the next phase of his strategic plan, expanding the resistance movement and liberating the northern provinces of Afghanistan. In August 1986, he captured Farkhar in Takhar Province. In November 1986, his forces overran the headquarters of the government's 20th division at Nahrin in Baghlan Province, scoring an important victory for the resistance. This expansion was also carried out through diplomatic means, as more mujahideen commanders were persuaded to adopt the Panjshir military system.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Despite almost constant attacks by the Red Army and the Afghan army, Massoud increased his military strength. Starting in 1980 with a force of less than 1,000 ill-equipped guerrillas, the Panjshir valley mujahideen grew to a 5,000-strong force by 1984. After expanding his influence outside the valley, Massoud increased his resistance forces to 13,000 fighters by 1989. The junior commanders were trained by Britain's SAS as well as private military contractors, some being sent as far as Oman and even SAS training grounds in the Scottish Highlands. These forces were divided into different types of units: the locals (mahalli) were tasked with static defense of villages and fortified positions. The best of the mahalli were formed into units called grup-i zarbati (shock troops), semi-mobile groups that acted as reserve forces for the defense of several strongholds. A different type of unit was the mobile group (grup-i-mutaharek), a lightly equipped commando-like formation numbering 33 men, whose mission was to carry out hit-and-run attacks outside the Panjshir, sometimes as far as 100 km from their base. These men were professional soldiers, well-paid and trained, and, from 1983 on, they provided an effective strike force against government outposts. Uniquely among the mujahideen, these groups wore uniforms, and their use of the "pakul" made this headwear emblematic of the Afghan resistance.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud's military organization was an effective compromise between the traditional Afghan method of warfare and the modern principles of guerrilla warfare which he had learned from the works of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. His forces were considered the most effective of all the various Afghan resistance movements.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The Soviet army and the Afghan communist army were mainly defeated by Massoud and his mujahideen in numerous small engagements between 1984 and 1988. After describing the Soviet Union's military engagement in Afghanistan as "a bleeding wound" in 1986, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev began a withdrawal of Soviet troops from the nation in May 1988. On February 15, 1989, in what was depicted as an improbable victory for the mujahideen, the last Soviet soldier left the nation.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: After the departure of Soviet troops in 1989, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan regime, then headed by Mohammad Najibullah, held its own against the mujahideen. Backed by a massive influx of weapons from the Soviet Union, the Afghan armed forces reached a level of performance they had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage. They maintained control over all of Afghanistan's major cities. During late 1990, helped by hundreds of mujahideen forces, Massoud targeted the Tajik Supreme Soviet, trying to oust communism from the neighboring Tajikistan to further destabilize the dying Soviet Union, which would also impact the Afghan government. At that time, as per Asad Durrani, the director-general of the ISI during this period, Massoud's base camp was in Garam Chashma, in Pakistan. By 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Afghan regime eventually began to crumble. Food and fuel shortages undermined the capacities of the government's army, and a resurgence of factionalism split the regime between Khalq and Parcham supporters.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: A few days after Najibullah had lost control of the nation, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over authority to resistance commanders and local warlords throughout the country. Joint councils ("shuras") were immediately established for local government, in which civil and military officials of the former government were usually included. In many cases, prior arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had been made between foes.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of the demise of the Soviet Union, Massoud was aware of conflict within the government's northern command. General Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan border crossing at the northern end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun generals based in Mazar-i-Sharif, feared removal by Najibullah and replacement by Pashtun officers. When the generals rebelled, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who held general rank as head of the Jowzjani militia, also based in Mazar-i-Sharif, took over.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: He and Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyed Mansour, of the Ismaili community based in Baghlan Province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21. Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul, no government force stood between the northern allies and the major air force base at Bagram, some seventy kilometers north of Kabul. By mid-April 1992, the Afghan air force command at Bagram had capitulated to Massoud. On March 18, 1992, Najibullah decided to resign. On April 17, as his government fell, he tried to escape but was stopped at Kabul Airport by Dostum's forces. He took refuge at the United Nations mission, where he remained unharmed until 1996, while Massoud controlled the area surrounding the mission.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Senior communist generals and officials of the Najibullah administration acted as a transitional authority to transfer power to Ahmad Shah Massoud's alliance. The Kabul interim authority invited Massoud to enter Kabul as the new Head of State, but he held back. Massoud ordered his forces, positioned to the north of Kabul, not to enter the capital until a political solution was in place. He called on all the senior Afghan party leaders, many then based in exile in Peshawar, to work out a political settlement acceptable to all sides and parties.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: With United Nations support, most Afghan political parties decided to appoint a legitimate national government to succeed communist rule, through an elite settlement. While the external Afghan party leaders were residing in Peshawar, the military situation around Kabul involving the internal commanders was tense. A 1991 UN peace process brought about some negotiations, but the attempted elite settlement did not develop. In April 1992, resistance leaders in Peshawar tried to negotiate a settlement. Massoud supported the Peshawar process of establishing a broad coalition government inclusive of all resistance parties, but Hekmatyar sought to become the sole ruler of Afghanistan, stating, "In our country coalition government is impossible because, this way or another, it is going to be weak and incapable of stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan."


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: All the parties had participated in the war, in jihad in Afghanistan, so they had to have their share in the government, and in the formation of the government. Afghanistan is made up of different nationalities. We were worried about a national conflict between different tribes and different nationalities. In order to give everybody their own rights and also to avoid bloodshed in Kabul, we left the word to the parties so they should decide about the country as a whole. We talked about it for a temporary stage and then after that the ground should be prepared for a general election.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The Kabul regime is ready to surrender, so instead of the fighting we should gather. ... The leaders are meeting in Peshawar. ... The troops should not enter Kabul, they should enter later on as part of the government.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: We will march into Kabul with our naked sword. No one can stop us. ... Why should we meet the leaders?"


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: "It seems to me that you don't want to join the leaders in Peshawar nor stop your threat, and you are planning to enter Kabul ... in that case I must defend the people.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: At that point Osama bin Laden, trying to mediate, urged Hekmatyar to "go back with your brothers" and to accept a compromise. Bin Laden reportedly "hated Ahmad Shah Massoud". Bin Laden was involved in ideological and personal disputes with Massoud and had sided with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against Massoud in the inner-Afghan conflict since the late 1980s. But Hekmatyar refused to accept a compromise, confident that he would be able to gain sole power in Afghanistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: On April 24, 1992, the leaders in Peshawar agreed on and signed the Peshawar Accord, establishing the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan – which was a stillborn 'state' with a paralyzed 'government' right from its inception, until its final succumbing in September 1996. The creation of the Islamic State was welcomed though by the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Islamic State of Afghanistan was recognized as the legitimate entity representing Afghanistan until June 2002, when its successor, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, was established under the interim government of Hamid Karzai. Under the 1992 Peshawar Accord, the Defense Ministry was given to Massoud while the Prime Ministership was given to Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar refused to sign. With the exception of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, all of the other Peshawar resistance parties were unified under this peace and power-sharing accord in April 1992.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Although repeatedly offered the position of prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar refused to recognize the peace and power-sharing agreement. His Hezb-e Islami militia initiated a massive bombardment campaign against the Islamic State and the capital city Kabul. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from neighboring Pakistan. The Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, Amin Saikal, writes in "Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival" that without Pakistan's support, Hekmatyar "would not have been able to target and destroy half of Kabul." Saikal states that Pakistan wanted to install a favorable regime under Hekmatyar in Kabul so that it could use Afghan territory for access to Central Asia.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Hekmatyar's rocket bombardments and the parallel escalation of violent conflict between two militias, Ittihad and Wahdat, which had entered some suburbs of Kabul, led to a breakdown in law and order. Shia Iran and Sunni Wahabbi Saudi Arabia, as competitors for regional hegemony, encouraged conflict between the Ittihad and Wahdat factions. On the one side was the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari and on the other side, the Sunni Pashtun Ittihad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was strongly supporting the Hezb-i Wahdat forces, with Iranian intelligence officials providing direct orders, while Saudi Arabia supported Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction to maximize Wahhabi influence. Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos, as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Massoud's Jamiat commanders, the interim government, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) repeatedly tried to negotiate ceasefires, which broke down in only a few days. Another militia, the Junbish-i Milli of former communist general Abdul Rashid Dostum, was backed by Uzbekistan. Uzbek president Islam Karimov was keen to see Dostum controlling as much of Afghanistan as possible, especially in the north. Dostum repeatedly changed allegiances.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP) says, that "while [Hekmatyar's anti-government] Hizb-i Islami is frequently named as foremost among the factions responsible for the deaths and destruction in the bombardment of Kabul, it was not the only perpetrator of these violations." According to the AJP, "the scale of the bombardment and kinds of weapons used represented disproportionate use of force" in a capital city with primarily residential areas by all the factions involved – including the government forces. Crimes were committed by individuals within the different armed factions. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar released 10,000 dangerous criminals from the main prisons into the streets of Kabul to destabilize the city and cut off Kabul from water, food and energy supplies. The Iran-controlled Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari, as well as the Ittihad of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf supported by Saudi Arabia, targeted civilians of the 'opposite side' in systematic atrocities. Abdul Rashid Dostum allowed crimes as a perceived payment for his troops.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: "The major criticism of Massoud's human rights record" is the escalation of the Afshar military operation in 1993. A report by the Afghanistan Justice Project describes Massoud as failing to prevent atrocities carried out by his forces and those of their factional ally, Ittihad-i Islami, against civilians on taking the suburb of Afshar during a military operation against an anti-state militia allied to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. They shelled residential areas in the capital city in February 1993. Critics said that Massoud should have foreseen these problems. A meeting convened by Massoud on the next day ordered a halt to killing and looting, but it failed to stop abuses. Human Rights Watch, in a report based largely on the material collected by the Afghanistan Justice Project, concurs that Massoud's Jamiat forces bear a share of the responsibility for human rights abuses throughout the war, including the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Afshar, and that Massoud was personally implicated in some of these abuses. Roy Gutman has argued that the witness reports about Afshar cited in the AJP report implicated only the Ittihad forces, and that these had not been under Massoud's direct command.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Anthony Davis, who studied and observed Massoud's forces from 1981 to 2001, reported that during the observed period, there was "no pattern of repeated killings of enemy civilians or military prisoners" by Massoud's forces. Edward Girardet, who covered Afghanistan for over three decades, was also in Kabul during the war. He states that while Massoud was able to control most of his commanders well during the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban resistance, he was not able to control every commander in Kabul. According to this and similar testimonies, this was due to a breakdown of law and order in Kabul and a war on multiple fronts, which they say, Massoud personally had done all in his power to prevent:


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 1993, Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation ("Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta'wani Mohammad-e Ghazali") to further humanitarian assistance and politically independent Afghan culture. The Ghazali Foundation provided free medical services during some days of the week to residents of Kabul who were unable to pay for medical treatment. The Ghazali Foundation's department for distribution of auxiliary goods was the first partner of the Red Cross. The Ghazali Foundation's department of family consultation was a free advisory board, which was accessible seven days a week for the indigent. Although Massoud was responsible for the financing of the foundation, he did not interfere with its cultural work. A council led the foundation and a jury, consisting of impartial university lecturers, decided on the works of artists. The Ghazali foundation enabled Afghan artists to exhibit their works at different places in Kabul, and numerous artists and authors were honoured for their works; some of them neither proponents of Massoud nor the Islamic State government.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In March 1993, Massoud resigned his government position in exchange for peace, as requested by Hekmatyar, who considered him as a personal rival. According to the Islamabad Accord, Burhanuddin Rabbani, belonging to the same party as Massoud, remained president, while Gulbuddin Hekmatyar took the long-offered position of prime minister. Two days after the Islamabad Accord was put into effect, however, Hekmatyar's allies of Hezb-e Wahdat renewed rocket attacks in Kabul.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Both the Wahhabi Pashtun Ittehad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf backed by Saudi Arabia and the Shia Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat supported by Iran remained involved in heavy fighting against each other. Hekmatyar was afraid to enter Kabul proper, and chaired only one cabinet meeting. The author Roy Gutman of the United States Institute of Peace wrote in "How We Missed the Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan":


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Hekmatyar had become prime minister ... But after chairing one cabinet meeting, Hekmatyar never returned to the capital, fearing, perhaps, a lynching by Kabulis infuriated over his role in destroying their city. Even his close aides were embarrassed. Hekmatyar spokesman Qutbuddin Helal was still setting up shop in the prime minister's palace when the city came under Hezb[-i Islami] rocket fire late that month. "We are here in Kabul and he is rocketing us. Now we have to leave. We can't do anything," he told Massoud aides.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Hekmatyar, who was generally opposed to coalition government and struggled for undisputed power, had conflicts with other parties over the selection of cabinet members. His forces started major attacks against Kabul for one month. The President, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was attacked when he attempted to meet Hekmatyar. Massoud resumed his responsibilities as minister of defense.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In May 1993, a new effort was made to reinstate the Islamabad Accord. In August, Massoud reached out to Hekmatyar in an attempt to broaden the government. By the end of 1993, however, Hekmatyar and the former communist general and militia leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum, were involved in secret negotiations encouraged by Pakistan's secret Inter-Services Intelligence, Iran's intelligence service, and Uzbekistan's Karimov administration. They planned a coup to oust the Rabbani administration and to attack Massoud in his northern areas.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In January 1994, Hekmatyar and Dostum mounted a bombardment campaign against the capital and attacked Massoud's core areas in the northeast. Amin Saikal writes, Hekmatyar had the following objectives in all his operations:


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The first was to make sure that Rabbani and Massoud were not allowed to consolidate power, build a credible administration, or expand their territorial control, so that the country would remain divided into small fiefdoms, run by various Muajhideen leaders and local warlords or a council of such elements, with only some of them allied to Kabul. The second was to ensure the Rabbani government acquired no capacity to dispense patronage, and to dissuade the Kabul population from giving more than limited support to the government. The third was to make Kabul an unsafe city for representatives of the international community and to prevent the Rabbani government from attracting the international support needed to begin the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan and generate a level of economic activity which would enhance its credibility and popularity.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: By mid-1994, Hekmatyar and Dostum were on the defensive in Kabul against Islamic State forces led by Massoud. Southern Afghanistan had been neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor of the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local Pashtun leaders, such as Gul Agha Sherzai, and their militias. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. When the Taliban took control of Kandahar in 1994, they forced the surrender of dozens of local Pashtun leaders who had presided over a situation of complete lawlessness and atrocities. In 1994, the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Hizb-i Islami had bombarded Kabul from January 1994 until February 1995 when the Taliban expelled Hizb from its Charasiab headquarters, after which the Taliban relaunched the bombardment of Kabul and started to besiege the town.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: By early 1995, Massoud initiated a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections. He arranged a conference in three parts uniting political and cultural personalities, governors, commanders, clergymen and representatives, in order to reach a lasting agreement. Massoud's favourite for candidacy to the presidency was Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, the first democratic prime minister under Zahir Shah, the former king. In the first meeting representatives from 15 different Afghan provinces met, in the second meeting there were already 25 provinces participating.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud also invited the Taliban to join the peace process wanting them to be a partner in providing stability to Afghanistan during such a process. But the Taliban, which had emerged over the course of 1994 in southern Afghanistan, were already at the doors of the capital city. Against the advice of his security personnel, Massoud went to talk to some Taliban leaders in Maidan Shar, Taliban territory. The Taliban declined to join the peace process leading towards general elections. When Massoud returned to Kabul unharmed, the Taliban leader who had received him as his guest paid with his life: he was killed by other senior Taliban for failing to assassinate Massoud while the possibility had presented itself. The Taliban, placing Kabul under a two-year siege and bombardment campaign from early 1995 onwards, in later years committed massacres against civilians, compared by United Nations observers to those that happened during the War in Bosnia.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Neighboring Pakistan exerted strong influence over the Taliban. A publication with the George Washington University describes: "Initially, the Pakistanis supported ... Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... When Hekmatyar failed to deliver for Pakistan, the administration began to support a new movement of religious students known as the Taliban." Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. The Taliban's first major offensive against the important western city of Herat, under the rule of Islamic state ally Ismail Khan, in February 1995 was defeated when Massoud airlifted 2,000 of his own core forces from Kabul to help defend Herat. Ahmed Rashid writes: "The Taliban had now been decisively pushed back on two fronts by the government and their political and military leadership was in disarray. Their image as potential peacemakers was badly dented, for in the eyes of many Afghans they had become nothing more than just another warlord party." International observers already speculated that the Taliban as a country-wide organization might have "run its course".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Mullah Omar, however, consolidated his control of the Taliban and with foreign help rebuilt and re-equipped his forces. Pakistan increased its support to the Taliban. Its military advisers oversaw the restructuring of Taliban forces. The country provided armored pick-up trucks and other military equipment. Saudi Arabia provided the funding. Furthermore, there was a massive influx of 25,000 new Taliban fighters, many of them recruited in Pakistan. This enabled the Taliban to capture Herat to the west of Kabul in a surprise attack against the forces of Ismail Khan in September 1995. A nearly one-year siege and bombardment campaign against Kabul, however, was again defeated by Massoud's forces.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud and Rabbani meanwhile kept working on an internal Afghan peace process – successfully. By February 1996, all of Afghanistan's armed factions – except for the Taliban – had agreed to take part in the peace process and to set up a peace council to elect a new interim president. Many Pashtun areas under Taliban control had representatives also advocating for a peace agreement with the Islamic State government. But Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the Kandaharis surrounding him wanted to expand the war. At that point the Taliban leadership and their foreign supporters decided they needed to act quickly before the government could consolidate the new understanding between the parties. The Taliban moved against Jalalabad, under the control of the Pashtun Jalalabad Shura, to the east of Kabul. Part of the Jalalabad Shura was bribed with millions of dollars by the Taliban's foreign sponsors, especially Saudi Arabia, to vacate their positions. The Taliban's battle for Jalalabad was directed by Pakistani military advisers. Hundreds of Taliban crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border moving on Jalalabad from Pakistan and thereby suddenly placed to the east of Kabul. This left the capital city Kabul "wide open" to many sides as Ismail Khan had been defeated to the west, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had vacated his positions to the south and the fall and surrender of Jalalabad had suddenly opened a new front to the east.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: At that point Massoud decided to conduct a strategic retreat through a northern corridor, according to Ahmed Rashid, "knowing he could not defend [Kabul] from attacks coming from all four points of the compass. Nor did he want to lose the support of Kabul's population by fighting for the city and causing more bloodshed." On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban marched into Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Massoud and his troops retreated to the northeast of Afghanistan which became the base for the still internationally recognized Islamic State of Afghanistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Ahmad Shah Massoud created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban advance. The United Front included forces and leaders from different political backgrounds as well as from all ethnicities of Afghanistan. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001, the United Front controlled territory in which roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population was living, in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Meanwhile, the Taliban imposed their repressive regime in the parts of Afghanistan under their control. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to Northern Alliance territory, Pakistan and Iran. Massoud's soldiers held some 1,200 Taliban prisoners in the Panjshir Valley, 122 of them foreign Muslims who had come to Afghanistan to fight a jihad. In 1998, after the defeat of Abdul Rashid Dostum's faction in Mazar-i-Sharif, Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only main leader of the United Front in Afghanistan and the only leader who was able to defend vast parts of his area against the Taliban. Most major leaders including the Islamic State's President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Abdul Rashid Dostum, and others, were living in exile. During this time, commentators remarked that "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud."


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud stated that the Taliban repeatedly offered him a position of power to make him stop his resistance. He declined, declaring the differences between their ideology and his own pro-democratic outlook on society to be insurmountable.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. He also predicted that without assistance from Pakistan and external extremist groups, the Taliban would lose their hold on power.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In early 2001, the United Front employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. At the same time, Massoud was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 the United Front leadership ordered the training of police forces specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: From 1999 onwards, a renewed process was set into motion by the Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Pashtun Abdul Haq to unite all the ethnicities of Afghanistan. Massoud united the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks as well as several Pashtun commanders under his United Front. Besides meeting with Pashtun tribal leaders and acting as a point of reference, Abdul Haq received increasing numbers of Pashtun Taliban themselves who were secretly approaching him. Some commanders who had worked for the Taliban military apparatus agreed to the plan to topple the Taliban regime as the Taliban lost support even among the Pashtuns. Senior diplomat and Afghanistan expert Peter Tomsen wrote that ""[t]he 'Lion of Kabul' [Abdul Haq] and the 'Lion of Panjshir' [Ahmad Shah Massoud] would make a formidable anti-Taliban team if they combined forces. Haq, Massoud, and Karzai, Afghanistan's three leading moderates, could transcend the Pashtun – non-Pashtun, north-south divide."" Steve Coll referred to this plan as a "grand Pashtun-Tajik alliance". The senior Hazara and Uzbek leaders took part in the process just like later Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They agreed to work under the banner of the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah in Rome.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In November 2000, leaders from all ethnic groups were brought together in Massoud's headquarters in northern Afghanistan, travelling from other parts of Afghanistan, Europe, the United States, Pakistan and India to discuss a Loya Jirga for a settlement of Afghanistan's problems and to discuss the establishment of a post-Taliban government. In September 2001, an international official who met with representatives of the alliance remarked, ""It's crazy that you have this today ... Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara ... They were all ready to buy in to the process"."


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In early 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud with leaders from all ethnicities of Afghanistan addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, asking the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On that visit to Europe, he also warned the U.S. about Bin Laden.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Life in the areas under direct control of Massoud was different from the life in the areas under Taliban or Dostum's control. In contrast to the time of chaos in which all structures had collapsed in Kabul, Massoud was able to control most of the troops under his direct command well during the period starting in late 1996. Massoud always controlled the Panjshir, Takhar, parts of Parwan and Badakhshan during the war. Some other provinces (notably Kunduz, Baghlan, Nuristan and the north of Kabul) were captured by his forces from the Taliban and lost again from time to time as the frontlines varied.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud created democratic institutions which were structured into several committees: political, health, education and economic. Still, many people came to him personally when they had a dispute or problem and asked him to solve their problems.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In September 2000, Massoud signed the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women drafted by Afghan women. The declaration established gender equality in front of the law and the right of women to political participation, education, work, freedom of movement and speech. In the areas of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa by law. They were allowed to work and to go to school. Although it was a time of war, girls' schools were operating in some districts. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage in favour of the women to make their own choice.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: While it was Massoud's stated personal conviction that men and women are equal and should enjoy the same rights, he also had to deal with Afghan traditions which he said would need a generation or more to overcome. In his opinion, that could only be achieved through education. Author Pepe Escobar wrote in "Asia Times":


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Humayun Tandar, who took part as an Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask the Jewish Princeton Professor Michael Barry or his Christian friend Jean-José Puig: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: U.S. policy regarding Massoud, the Taliban and Afghanistan remained ambiguous and differed between the various U.S. government agencies.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 1997, U.S. State Department's Robin Raphel suggested to Massoud he should surrender to the Taliban. He soundly rejected the proposal.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: At one point in the war, in 1997, two top foreign policy officials in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan in an attempt to convince Massoud not to take advantage of a strategic opportunity to make crucial gains against the Taliban.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 1998, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Julie Sirrs, visited Massoud's territories privately, having previously been denied official permission to do so by her agency. She reported that Massoud had conveyed warnings about strengthened ties between the Taliban and foreign Islamist terrorists. Returning home, she was sacked from her agency for insubordination, because at that time the U.S. administration had no trust in Massoud.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In the meantime, the only collaboration between Massoud and another U.S. intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), consisted of an effort to trace Osama bin Laden following the 1998 embassy bombings. The U.S. and the European Union provided no support to Massoud for the fight against the Taliban.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: A change of policy, lobbied for by CIA officers on the ground who had visited the area of Massoud, regarding support to Massoud, was underway in the course of 2001. According to Steve Coll's book "Ghost Wars" (who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction):


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: [B]etween Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan policy.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush's signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war in favour of Massoud. This change in policy was finalized in August 2001 when it was too late.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: After Pakistan had funded, directed and supported the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan, Massoud and the United Front received some assistance from India. The assistance provided by India was extensive, including uniforms, ordnance, mortars, small armaments, refurbished Kalashnikovs, combat and winter clothes, as well as funds. India was particularly concerned about Pakistan's Taliban strategy and the Islamic militancy in its neighborhood; it provided U.S.$70 million in aid including two Mi-17 helicopters, three additional helicopters in 2000 and US$8 million worth of high-altitude equipment in 2001. Also In the 1990s, India had run a field hospital at Farkor on the Tajik-Afghan border to treat wounded fighters from the then Northern Alliance that was battling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: It was at the very same hospital that the Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood was pronounced dead after being assassinated just two days before the 9/11 terror strikes in 2001. Furthermore, the alliance supposedly also received minor aid from Tajikistan, Russia and Iran because of their opposition to the Taliban and the Pakistani control over the Taliban's Emirate. Their support, however, remained limited to the most needed things. Meanwhile, Pakistan engaged up to 28,000 Pakistani nationals and regular Pakistani army troops to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces against Massoud.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In April 2001, the president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine (who called Massoud the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan"), invited Massoud with the support of French and Belgian politicians to address the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. In his speech, he asked for humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan. Massoud further went on to warn that his intelligence agents had gained limited knowledge about a large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil being imminent.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud, then aged 48, was the target of an assassination plot at Khwājah Bahā ud Dīn (Khvājeh Bahāuḏḏīn), in Takhar Province in northeastern Afghanistan on September 9, 2001. The attackers' names were alternately given as Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, husband of Malika El Aroud, and Bouraoui el-Ouaer; or 34-year-old Karim Touzani and 26-year-old Kacem Bakkali.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The attackers claimed to be Belgians originally from Morocco. According to "Le Monde" they transited through the municipality of Molenbeek. Their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality was later determined to be Tunisian. Waiting for almost three weeks (during which they also interviewed Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf) for an interview opportunity, on September 8, 2001, an aide to Massoud recalls the would-be suicide attackers "were so worried" and threatened to leave if the interview did not happen in the next 24 hours (until September 10, 2001). They were finally granted an interview. During the interview, they set off a bomb composed of explosives hidden in the camera and in a battery-pack belt. Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him to an Indian military field hospital at Farkhor in nearby Tajikistan. The explosion also killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a United Front official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili were injured. One of the suicide attackers, Bouraoui, was killed by the explosion, while Dahmane Abd al-Sattar was captured and shot while trying to escape.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Despite initial denials by the United Front, news of Massoud's death was reported almost immediately, appearing on the BBC, and in European and North American newspapers on September 10, 2001. On September 16, the United Front officially announced that Massoud had died of injuries in the suicide attack. Massoud was buried in his home village of Bazarak in the Panjshir Valley. The funeral, although in a remote rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud had survived assassination attempts over a period of 26 years, including attempts made by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI and before them the Soviet KGB, the Afghan communist KHAD and Hekmatyar. The first attempt on Massoud's life was carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975 when Massoud was 22 years old. In early 2001, al-Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The assassination of Massoud is considered to have a strong connection to the September 11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. soil, which killed nearly 3,000 people. It appeared to have been the major terrorist attack which Massoud had warned against in his speech to the European Parliament several months earlier.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In late 2001, a computer was seized that was stolen from an office used by al-Qaeda immediately after the fall of Kabul in November. This computer was mainly used by Aiman al-Zawahri and contained the letter with the interview request for Massoud. The two assassins had completed military training in training camps in Afghanistan at the end of 2000 and were selected for the suicide mission in the spring or early summer of the following year. The Afghan publicist Waheed Muzhda, who worked for the Taliban in the Foreign Ministry, confirmed the two assassins met with al-Qaeda officials in Kandahar and bin Laden and al-Zawahri saw them off when they left. Following the assassination, bin Laden had an emissary deliver Dahmane Abd al-Sattar's widow a letter with $500 in an envelope to settle a debt. An al-Qaeda magazine in Saudi Arabia later published a biography of Youssef al-Aayyiri, who headed al-Qaeda's operations in Saudi Arabia from 2002, which described al-Qaeda's involvement in Massoud's assassination. Osama bin Laden commissioned the assassination attempt to appease the Taliban because of the imminent terrorist attacks in the US, which would cause serious problems for the Taliban.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The Taliban denied any involvement in Massoud's assassination, and it is very unlikely that they were privy to the assassination plans. There were a few minor attacks by the Taliban after the attack, but no major offensive.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In April 2003, the Karzai administration created a commission to investigate the assassination of Massoud. In 2003, French investigators and the FBI were able to trace the provenance of the camera used in the assassination, which had been stolen in France some time earlier.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud was the only chief Afghan leader who never left Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviet Union and later in the fight against the Taliban Emirate. In the areas under his direct control, such as Panjshir, some parts of Parwan and Takhar, Massoud established democratic institutions. One refugee who cramped his family of 27 into an old jeep to flee from the Taliban to the area of Massoud described Massoud's territory in 1997 as "the last tolerant corner of Afghanistan".<ref name="Journeyman Picture/ABC Australia"></ref>


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: One man holds a greater political punch than all 18 living [Afghan] presidential candidates combined. Though already dead for three years... Since his death on September 9, 2001 at the hands of two al Qaeda-linked Islamic radicals, Massoud has been transformed from mujahedin to national heroif not saint. Pictures of Massoud, the Afghan mujahedin who battled the Soviets, other warlords, and the Taliban for more than 20 years, vastly outnumber those of any other Afghan including those of Karzai.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: is arguably the most peaceful place in the entire country. A small US military reconstruction team is based here, but there are none of the signs of foreign occupation that exist elsewhere. Even Afghan soldiers are few and far between. Instead, the people like to boast about how they keep their own security.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: The road near the Afghanistan Embassy is a "symbol of ties" that binds the two nations that have always "enjoyed excellent relations".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: His friend Abdullah Abdullah said that Massoud was different from the other guerilla leaders. "He is a hero who led a clear struggle for the values of the people".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In a 2001 mourning ceremony at Moscow to honour the memory of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one-time foe Colonel Abdul Qadir stated: "Though Massoud and I used to be enemies, I am sure he deserves great respect as an outstanding military leader and, first of all, as a patriot of his country".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud's byname, "Lion of Panjshir" (, "Shir-e-Panjshir"), earned for his role during the Soviet occupation, is a rhyming play on words in Persian, as the name of the valley means "five lions".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: "The Wall Street Journal" referred to Massoud as "The Afghan Who Won the Cold War", referring to the global significance of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan for the subsequent collapse of the Eastern Bloc.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In 2007, the government of India decided to name a road in New Delhi's Chanakyapuri district after Massoud.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In February 2021, the Council of Paris in France honored Massoud by installing a plaque in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The decision reflected Massoud's unique connections with France. In March 2021, the Mayor of Paris named a pathway in the Champs-Élysées gardens after Massoud. The ceremony was attended by Massoud's son and former president Hamid Karzai.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Although Pakistan were supporting the mujahideen groups during the Soviet-Afghan War, Ahmad Shah Massoud increasingly distrusted the Pakistanis and eventually kept his distance from them. In a 1999 interview, Massoud says "They [Pakistan] are trying to turn us into a colony. Without them there would be no war".


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In the spring 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, saying that Pakistan was behind the situation in Afghanistan. He also said that he believed that, without the support of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. He said the Afghan population was ready to rise against them. Addressing the United States specifically, he warned that should the U.S. not work for peace in Afghanistan and put pressure on Pakistan to cease their support to the Taliban, the problems of Afghanistan would soon become the problems of the U.S. and the world.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents from November 2001 show that Massoud had gained "limited knowledge... regarding the intentions of al-Qaeda to perform a terrorist act against the U.S. on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." They noted that he warned about such attacks.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: In September 2019, his son Ahmad Massoud was declared as his successor. Following the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Fall of Kabul, Massoud allied with self-proclaimed acting president Amrullah Saleh and established the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan to the Taliban in the Panjshir Valley. Massoud called for West's support to resist the Taliban.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud was married to Sediqa Massoud. They had one son, Ahmad Massoud (born in 1989) and five daughters (Fatima born in 1992, Mariam born in 1993, Ayesha born in 1995, Zohra born in 1996 and Nasrine born in 1998). In 2005 Sediqa Massoud published a personal account on her life with Massoud (co-authored by two women's rights activists and friends of Sediqa Massoud, Chékéba Hachemi and ) called ""Pour l'amour de Massoud"" (For the love of Massoud), in which she describes a decent and loving husband.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud liked reading and had a library of 3,000 books at his home in Panjshir. He used to read the works of revolutionaries Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, and was a great admirer of Charles de Gaulle, founder of the French Fifth Republic. Massoud said his favorite author was Victor Hugo and he was also a fan of classical Persian poetry, including the works of Bidel and Hafez. He was keen at playing football and chess.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud's reputation for fearlessness is illustrated by a story about him told in Afghanistan, which cannot be confirmed. Once, while inspecting the front lines with a deputy, Massoud's driver had become lost and driven into the middle of a Taliban encampment. In tremendous peril, since he was recognized immediately, Massoud demanded to see the Taliban commander, making polite conversation for just long enough to bluff that he had arrived intentionally and not accidentally. The confused Taliban allowed him to leave.


title: Ahmad Shah Massoud

text: Massoud's family since his death have had a great deal of prestige in the politics of Afghanistan. One of his six brothers, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was the Vice President of Afghanistan from 2004 until 2009 under the first democratically elected government of Afghanistan. Unsuccessful attempts have been made on the life of Ahmad Zia Massoud in 2004 and late 2009. The Associated Press reported that eight Afghans died in the attempt on Ahmad Zia Massoud's life. Ahmad Zia Massoud leads the National Front of Afghanistan (a United Front group). Another brother, Ahmad Wali Massoud, was Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2006. He is a member of Abdullah Abdullah's National Coalition of Afghanistan (another United Front group).


title: Tourmaline

text: Tourmaline ( ) is a crystalline silicate mineral group in which boron is compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. Tourmaline is a gemstone and can be found in a wide variety of colors.


title: Tourmaline

text: Brightly colored Ceylonese gem tourmalines were brought to Europe in great quantities by the Dutch East India Company to satisfy a demand for curiosities and gems. Tourmaline was sometimes called the "Ceylonese Sri Lankan Magnet" because it could attract and then repel hot ashes due to its pyroelectric properties.


title: Tourmaline

text: Tourmalines were used by chemists in the 19th century to polarize light by shining rays onto a cut and polished surface of the gem.


title: Tourmaline

text: The most common species of tourmaline is "schorl", the sodium iron (divalent) endmember of the group. It may account for 95% or more of all tourmaline in nature. The early history of the mineral schorl shows that the name "schorl" was in use prior to 1400 because a village known today as Zschorlau (in Saxony, Germany) was then named "Schorl" (or minor variants of this name), and the village had a nearby tin mine where, in addition to cassiterite, black tourmaline was found. The first description of schorl with the name "schürl" and its occurrence (various tin mines in the Ore Mountains) was written by Johannes Mathesius (1504–1565) in 1562 under the title "Sarepta oder Bergpostill". Up to about 1600, additional names used in the German language were "Schurel", "Schörle", and "Schurl". Beginning in the 18th century, the name "Schörl" was mainly used in the German-speaking area. In English, the names "shorl" and "shirl" were used in the 18th century. In the 19th century the names "common schorl", "schörl", "schorl" and "iron tourmaline" were the English words used for this mineral.


title: Tourmaline

text: Dravite, also called brown tourmaline, is the sodium magnesium rich tourmaline endmember. Uvite, in comparison, is a calcium magnesium tourmaline. Dravite forms multiple series, with other tourmaline members, including schorl and elbaite.


title: Tourmaline

text: The name "dravite" was used for the first time by Gustav Tschermak (1836–1927), Professor of Mineralogy and Petrography at the University of Vienna, in his book "Lehrbuch der Mineralogie" (published in 1884) for magnesium-rich (and sodium-rich) tourmaline from village Dobrova near Unterdrauburg in the Drava river area, Carinthia, Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today this tourmaline locality (type locality for dravite) at Dobrova (near Dravograd), is a part of the Republic of Slovenia. Tschermak gave this tourmaline the name dravite, for the Drava river area, which is the district along the Drava River (in German: "Drau", in Latin: "Drave") in Austria and Slovenia. The chemical composition which was given by Tschermak in 1884 for this dravite approximately corresponds to the formula , which is in good agreement (except for the OH content) with the endmember formula of dravite as known today.


title: Tourmaline

text: A lithium-tourmaline elbaite was one of three pegmatitic minerals from Utö, Sweden, in which the new alkali element lithium (Li) was determined in 1818 by Johan August Arfwedson for the first time. Elba Island, Italy, was one of the first localities where colored and colorless Li-tourmalines were extensively chemically analysed. In 1850 Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg described fluorine (F) in tourmaline for the first time. In 1870 he proved that all varieties of tourmaline contain chemically bound water. In 1889 Scharitzer proposed the substitution of (OH) by F in red Li-tourmaline from Sušice, Czech Republic. In 1914 Vladimir Vernadsky proposed the name "Elbait" for lithium-, sodium-, and aluminum-rich tourmaline from Elba Island, Italy, with the simplified formula . Most likely the type material for elbaite was found at Fonte del Prete, San Piero in Campo, Campo nell'Elba, Elba Island, Province of Livorno, Tuscany, Italy. In 1933 Winchell published an updated formula for elbaite, , which is commonly used to date written as . The first crystal structure determination of a Li-rich tourmaline was published in 1972 by Donnay and Barton, performed on a pink elbaite from San Diego County, California, United States.


title: Tourmaline

text: The tourmaline mineral group is chemically one of the most complicated groups of silicate minerals. Its composition varies widely because of isomorphous replacement (solid solution), and its general formula can be written as , where:


title: Tourmaline

text: Tourmaline is a six-member ring cyclosilicate having a trigonal crystal system. It occurs as long, slender to thick prismatic and columnar crystals that are usually triangular in cross-section, often with curved striated faces. The style of termination at the ends of crystals is sometimes asymmetrical, called hemimorphism. Small slender prismatic crystals are common in a fine-grained granite called aplite, often forming radial daisy-like patterns. Tourmaline is distinguished by its three-sided prisms; no other common mineral has three sides. Prisms faces often have heavy vertical striations that produce a rounded triangular effect. Tourmaline is rarely perfectly euhedral. An exception was the fine dravite tourmalines of Yinnietharra, in western Australia. The deposit was discovered in the 1970s, but is now exhausted. All hemimorphic crystals are piezoelectric, and are often pyroelectric as well.


title: Tourmaline

text: A crystal of tourmaline is built up of units consisting of a six-member silica ring that binds above to a large cation, such as sodium. The ring binds below to a layer of metal ions and hydroxyls or halogens, which structurally resembles a fragment of kaolin. This in turn binds to three triangular borate ions. Units joined end to end form columns running the length of the crystal. Each column binds with two other columns offset one-third and two-thirds of the vertical length of a single unit to form bundles of three columns. Bundles are packed together to form the final crystal structure. Because the neighboring columns are offset, the basic structural unit is not a unit cell: The actual unit cell of this structure includes portions of several units belonging to adjacent columns.


title: Tourmaline

text: Tourmaline has a variety of colors. Iron-rich tourmalines are usually black to bluish-black to deep brown, while magnesium-rich varieties are brown to yellow, and lithium-rich tourmalines are almost any color: blue, green, red, yellow, pink, etc. Rarely, it is colorless. Bi-colored and multicolored crystals are common, reflecting variations of fluid chemistry during crystallization. Crystals may be green at one end and pink at the other, or green on the outside and pink inside; this type is called watermelon tourmaline and is prized in jewelry. An excellent example of watermelon tourmaline jewelry is a brooch piece (1969, gold, watermelon tourmaline, diamonds) by Andrew Grima (British, b. Italy, 1921–2007), in the collection of Kimberly Klosterman and on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Some forms of tourmaline are dichroic; they change color when viewed from different directions.


title: Tourmaline

text: The pink color of tourmalines from many localities is the result of prolonged natural irradiation. During their growth, these tourmaline crystals incorporated Mn and were initially very pale. Due to natural gamma ray exposure from radioactive decay of K in their granitic environment, gradual formation of Mn ions occurs, which is responsible for the deepening of the pink to red color.


title: Tourmaline

text: Opaque black schorl and yellow tsilaisite are idiochromatic tourmaline species that have high magnetic susceptibilities due to high concentrations of iron and manganese respectively. Most gem-quality tourmalines are of the elbaite species. Elbaite tourmalines are allochromatic, deriving most of their color and magnetic susceptibility from schorl (which imparts iron) and tsilaisite (which imparts manganese).


title: Tourmaline

text: Red and pink tourmalines have the lowest magnetic susceptibilities among the elbaites, while tourmalines with bright yellow, green and blue colors are the most magnetic elbaites. Dravite species such as green chromium dravite and brown dravite are diamagnetic. A handheld neodymium magnet can be used to identify or separate some types of tourmaline gems from others. For example, blue indicolite tourmaline is the only blue gemstone of any kind that will show a drag response when a neodymium magnet is applied. Any blue tourmaline that is diamagnetic can be identified as paraiba tourmaline colored by copper in contrast to magnetic blue tourmaline colored by iron.


title: Tourmaline

text: Some tourmaline gems, especially pink to red colored stones, are altered by heat treatment to improve their color. Overly dark red stones can be lightened by careful heat treatment. The pink color in manganese-containing near-colorless to pale pink stones can be greatly increased by irradiation with gamma-rays or electron beams. Irradiation is almost impossible to detect in tourmalines, and does not, currently, affect the value. Heavily included tourmalines, such as rubellite and Brazilian paraiba, are sometimes clarity-enhanced. A clarity-enhanced tourmaline (especially the paraiba variety) is worth much less than an untreated gem of equal clarity.


title: Tourmaline

text: Tourmaline is found in granite and granite pegmatites and in metamorphic rocks such as schist and marble. Schorl and lithium-rich tourmalines are usually found in granite and granite pegmatite. Magnesium-rich tourmalines, dravites, are generally restricted to schists and marble. Tourmaline is a durable mineral and can be found in minor amounts as grains in sandstone and conglomerate, and is part of the ZTR index for highly weathered sediments.


title: Tourmaline

text: Gem and specimen tourmaline is mined chiefly in Brazil and many parts of Africa, including Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi, and Namibia. It is also mined in Asia, notably in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia as well as in Sri Lanka and India, where some placer material suitable for gem use is found.


title: Tourmaline

text: Some fine gems and specimen material have been produced in the United States, with the first discoveries in 1822, in the state of Maine. California became a large producer of tourmaline in the early 1900s. The Maine deposits tend to produce crystals in raspberry pink-red as well as minty greens. The California deposits are known for bright pinks, as well as bicolors. During the early 1900s, Maine and California were the world's largest producers of gem tourmalines. The Empress Dowager Cixi of China loved pink tourmaline and bought large quantities for gemstones and carvings from the then new Himalaya Mine, located in San Diego County, California. It is not clear when the first tourmaline was found in California. Native Americans have used pink and green tourmaline as funeral gifts for centuries. The first documented case was in 1890 when Charles Russel Orcutt found pink tourmaline at what later became the Stewart Mine at Pala, California in San Diego County.


title: Tourmaline

text: Almost every color of tourmaline can be found in Brazil, especially in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais and Bahia. The new type of tourmaline, which soon became known as paraiba tourmaline, came in blue and green. Brazilian paraiba tourmaline usually contains abundant inclusions. Much of the paraiba tourmaline from Brazil actually comes from the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Norte. Material from Rio Grande do Norte is often somewhat less intense in color, but many fine gems are found there. It was determined that the element copper was important in the coloration of the stone.


title: Tourmaline

text: A large bluish-green tourmaline from Paraiba, measuring and weighing , is the world's largest cut tourmaline. Owned by Billionaire Business Enterprises, it was presented in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on 14 October 2009.


title: Tourmaline

text: In the late 1990s, copper-containing tourmaline was found in Nigeria. The material was generally paler and less saturated than the Brazilian materials, although the material generally was much less included. A more recent African discovery from Mozambique has also produced tourmaline colored by copper, similar to the Brazilian paraiba. While its colors are somewhat less bright than top Brazilian material, Mozambique paraiba is often less-included and has been found in larger sizes. The Mozambique paraiba material usually is more intensely colored than the Nigerian.


title: Tourmaline

text: Another highly valuable variety is chrome tourmaline, a rare type of dravite tourmaline from Tanzania. Chrome tourmaline is a rich green color due to the presence of chromium atoms in the crystal. Of the standard elbaite colors, blue indicolite gems are typically the most valuable, followed by green verdelite and pink to red rubellite.


title: Summary execution

text: A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes included, but the term generally refers to capture, accusation, and execution all conducted within a very short period of time, and without any trial. Under international law, refusal to accept lawful surrender in combat and instead killing the person surrendering is also categorized as a summary execution (as well as murder).


title: Summary execution

text: Summary executions have been practiced by police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are frequently associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and any other situation which involves a breakdown of the normal procedures for handling accused prisoners, civilian or military.


title: Summary execution

text: In nearly all civilian jurisdictions, summary execution is illegal, as it violates the right of the accused to a fair trial. Almost all constitutions or legal systems based on common law have prohibited execution without the decision and sentence of a competent judge, and the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) has declared the same:


title: Summary execution

text: In practice, though, extrajudicial killings have been performed by police and domestic forces in various countries and times, sometimes under martial law. It is also performed by armed bands fighting against governments and common citizens.