Public notices and posters attract a crowd at the blue mosque in Mazar E Sharif in the north of ...

Public notices and posters attract a crowd at the blue mosque in Mazar E Sharif in the north of Afghanistan. The centre poster is a portrait of Commander Ahmed Shad Massoud, otherwise know as 'The Lion of Panjshir', who in April 1992, led various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups known as the Mujahideen to overthrow the Soviets and the pro-Soviet Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Massoud later ordered a retreat from Kabul on September 26, 1996, after Taliban forces encircled the capital. He subsequently was a key figure in the formation of the 'Northern Alliance', an alliance of various political groups who later fought against Taliban rule in Afghanistan. A prominent moderate and later, as part of the Northern Alliance, a close ally of the USA, Massoud was assassinated on September 10, 2001 by the Taliban. In 2001, the Afghan Interim Government under president Hamid Karzai awarded Massoud the title of "Hero of the Afghan Nation" and declared the date of his death a national holiday.