Resistance against Soviet invasion Khalili was a friend and adviser to
Ahmad Shah Massoud, resistance commander known as the "Lion of
Panjshir" against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979–1989), defense minister of Afghanistan (1992–2001) and leader of the United Front (
Northern Alliance) against the Taliban. Khalili and Massoud met for the first time in October 1978 after the communist
Saur Revolution had overthrown the government of
Mohammed Daoud Khan. Khalili remembers: :"We talked about the past and the future. I was talking more, maybe because I was older, but I found out later that listening was his habit." He traveled Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe as a diplomat for the resistance. Massoud went on to defeat nine major offensives by the Soviet Red Army. When the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, the
Wall Street Journal named him "the Afghan, who won the cold war". Masood Khalili describes
the period after the Soviet withdrawal with the following words: :"The communist retreat from Kabul marked the end of one war and the beginning of another.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was just beyond the capital, and that chapter would be very dark, bloody, and brutal. [...] Those were the worst years for us, and I think certainly the worst for Commander Massoud. [...] Whenever you go back to the years 1992 to 1996, you find this chapter of Afghanistan full of blood. But, why do people call it a "civil" war? [...] Unfortunately, Iran was helping one [...] group, Uzbekistan was helping another group, and Pakistan was helping another - Hekmatyar. They made up something like a council of solidarity [...] The Commander [who had been appointed as Afghan minister of defense in 1992 by the peace and power-sharing agreement, the
Peshawar Accords,] was almost alone with his own forces. [...] The various forces fighting the government [also established by the Peshawar Accords] were all supported by neighboring countries who had their own interests and wanted us to fight each other [...]" Relations between the Islamic State of Afghanistan and Pakistan were tense because of the latter's support to
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the
Taliban. In late 1995 Pakistan's government expelled Khalili in what the Washington Post called "the latest sign of worsening relations between the two countries". On September 27, 1996, the
Taliban seized power in Kabul with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia and established the
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban Emirate received no diplomatic recognition from the international community (except from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates). The United Nations and the international community kept recognition with the
Islamic State of Afghanistan government Masood Khalili was working for. The Taliban imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school, or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. The
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) analyze: Masood Khalili was not in Kabul during that time but he recalls a phone call he got from Massoud: :"He said: "Did you hear that we left Kabul?" "Yes. Are you okay? Are the others okay?" "Yes," and he added, "We'll go back." Then he asked: "Do you have something in mind to tell me?" [...] I told him a verse of my father's that night: ::
Oh the cruel, the despot, the oppressor! ::
I will not indeed be giving that to the one who wants to destroy me. ::
You will see me in another battle, in another time, ::
Because God has given hope to my heart, ::
And this hope will bring me back to what I want to reach. :"That is what I wanted. Hope will take us back! It's good that you have told me this tonight. Thank you very much." Defense minister Ahmad Shah Massoud created the United Front (
Northern Alliance) in opposition to the Taliban regime. The
resistance against the Taliban was joined by leaders of all Afghan ethnicities and backgrounds. The Taliban committed massacres killing thousands of civilians. As a consequence many civilians fled to the area of
Ahmad Shah Massoud.
National Geographic concluded in its documentary
"Inside the Taliban": Khalili remained an adviser to
Ahmad Shah Massoud. In 1996 he was appointed as ambassador of the United Front to India.
September 9, 2001 In September 2001, while preparing against planned offensives by the Taliban in Takhar province, Ahmed Shah Massoud asked Masood Khalili to come over to
Takhar to advise him. Speaking to BBC correspondent
Lyse Doucet Masood Khalili recalled the morning of 9 September 2001: :"The night before that [the assassination] we talked for about three-four hours until 3.30 in the morning. Around that time he told me, Let us open the book and see what will happen - a poetry book that he had, he opened it - it's
a kind of telling fortune, from
Hafez, the great poet, Persian poet. And mostly in Afghanistan we open
his book and see what happens to our future. And then I opened it and it came that ... 'Take out from your heart all the siblings of enmity, plant the tree and seed of love - Tonight you two are together. Valuate, many nights go, many days disappear. You two will not be able to see each other again'. Elsewhere he recalls: :"The ... morning around ten he came to my room. My passport was lying on the bed. He told me to put my passport in my shirt pocket. [...] We went to the river that divides central Asia and Afghanistan, the
Amu Darya. He told me two Arabs were there for an interview. ... We went in and he was on my left. The cameraman was in front of us. I remember the pious smile of the photographer ... And after five minutes he died and I survived." On September 9, 2001, Khalili interpreted for Massoud while he was interviewed by two Tunisians allegedly belonging to
al-Qaeda posing as journalists. During the interview the suicide assassins detonated a bomb hidden in the video camera. Ahmad Shah Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him and Khalili to hospital. Another aide of Massoud also died in the attack. The
Los Angeles Times writes: "The explosion left Khalili blind in his right eye, deaf in his right ear and badly burned over much of his body, which was peppered by about 1,000 pieces of shrapnel. About 300 pieces are still in his left leg." The passport, which Massoud had told him to put into his shirt pocket, had stopped eight pieces of shrapnel from entering Khalili's heart and had thereby saved his life. :"God saved me, but always God is helped by some means." About the death of Massoud he said: :"When you are buried in the hearts of the people, you are always alive." :"Whenever you fight for the right cause, if you die, you don't die. But if you fight for the wrong cause, you never live." Two days later the attacks of September 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people on U.S. soil. ==Recent activities==