The Russians Were the First to Break the News
Author: Tatiana Logunova-Nugaeva, special correspondent for Russia’s ORT television network in Tajikistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s
25 Years Ago…
September 10, 2001, has remained etched in my memory forever.
That morning, I arrived in Dushanbe from Nepal via Moscow. The first thing I did was go to the Russian Embassy. My husband had sent some gifts for diplomats we knew. The embassy was literally in turmoil — tense commotion, hurried movements, fragments of conversations.
They already knew about the death of Ahmad Shah Massoud in Panjshir and the circumstances surrounding it.
On September 9, the mortally wounded Massoud had been flown by helicopter from Farkhar in Afghanistan to Parkhar in Tajikistan.
The Supreme Council of the Northern Alliance had decided not to announce the death of its leader for the time being. The military leadership was being reshuffled, and the information remained confidential.
The weight of the news, combined with the realization that I had to remain silent, made my head feel as though it weighed all of fifty kilograms. In an instant, images flashed before my eyes: my assignments in Afghanistan, the winding trails of Panjshir, my meetings with Ahmad Shah Massoud, our conversations, and the faces of people who had become part of that life.
Another moment came back to me. Once, from Panjshir, I called my husband at his office at the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe, using the satellite phone of Massoud’s press secretary.
My husband had previously served in Afghanistan, having been sent there during the Soviet military intervention. Massoud himself, along with his mujahideen, had fought against those Soviet forces.
“Can you imagine? I’ve just interviewed Ahmad Shah Massoud,” I told him.
My husband was silent for a moment and then replied:
“For me, that would be like calling my grandfather, who fought in the war, and telling him you’re interviewing Hitler…”
That was how differently the same man was perceived by people who had found themselves on opposite sides of that war.
From the embassy, I went to see ITAR-TASS correspondent Galina Ivanovna Gridneva on Rudaki Street. Our meeting was brief. Galina Ivanovna was calling every possible source, trying to verify each fact before sending the information to the news agency. And I was struggling with the fact that I could not share what I already knew.
Massoud’s death seemed impossible, like some terrible mistake that would surely be disproved at any moment.
Music drifted in through the open window. Dushanbe was still celebrating the tenth anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence.
I kept watching the news agency feeds. ITAR-TASS was the first to report the news of Massoud’s death.
“TASS is authorized to announce…” — a phrase familiar from Soviet times and from the film of the same name. But this was no longer a newsreel or a screenplay. This was reality — a reality that would forever change the history of Afghanistan.
Ahmad Shah Massoud was more than a military commander or a politician. He was a man who held Panjshir for years against forces many times stronger than his own. For many, he would forever remain a symbol of resilience, dignity, and unbreakable will.
Fate had it that the last time I saw Ahmad Shah Massoud was in the autumn of 1998. Not in Afghanistan — but in Dushanbe.
I had gone to see my dentist when I suddenly noticed three of Massoud’s bodyguards in the corridor. Panjshir, the mountains, those roads we had once traveled — what did any of that have to do with Dushanbe and an ordinary day in the city?!
The bodyguards greeted me so calmly, as though there were nothing unusual about our encounter. A few minutes later, Ahmad Shah Massoud himself emerged from the dentist’s office. We were both surprised to see each other and smiled. It turned out that we had the same dentist, a native of Leninabad, an extraordinarily kind man.
He would begin every appointment with some warm, uplifting story, as though helping his patients forget their worries and believe that everything would be all right.
My conversation with Massoud lasted only a minute. We spoke neither about politics nor about war. It was simply a conversation between two people.
And the last words I said to him were:
“Salomat boshed…” (“Stay well…”)
A month later, I left — first for Moscow and then for another country. Three years after that chance encounter, he was gone.
A quarter of a century has passed. Yet even today, when I remember that September day in Dushanbe, I understand clearly that with Ahmad Shah Massoud, it was not simply a man who was passing away.
An entire era was coming to an end…
