We then headed further up the Panjshir Valley, to the main security checkpoint. The valley was the site of the Panjshir offensives during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where a series of battles were fought between the Soviet Army and groups of Afghan Mujahideen under Ahmad Shah Massoud for the control of the strategic Panjshir Valley, and saw some of the most violent fighting of the war.


Looking down the valley. The valley is home to more than 140,000 people, including Afghanistan's largest concentration of ethnic Tajiks, who succesfully kept out the Taliban during the civil was in the 90's.


Some of the many Soviet APC's that fell victim during the Panjshir offensives.


In the background is the village of Bazarak, where Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former leader of the Northern Alliance that opposed the Taliban.


Looking up the valley, with Bazarak in the distance. Massoud was a relative moderate, and rejected the Taliban's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.


The tomb of the 'Lion of Panjshir'. Massoud was assassinated on order of Osama Bin Laden by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists on the 9th of September, 2001.


The 9th of September is now a national holiday in Afghanistan, known as "Massoud Day".