Beautiful photos. I was actually born in Kabul and have been back twice: Despite the political reasons for naming Sept 9 "Massoud Day", he was not a hero but a turncoat who (by the CIA's own admission) took bribes from the Russians. He is despised by the majority of Afghans.

In the Makroyan area, where my family lived, a group of young women threw themselves off the roof to avoid being gang raped by his troops. His status as a national hero is merely a political tool to appease supporters of his faction. A family friend of ours knows his relatives, and they've been using the money Massud laundered during the war to buy up massive amounts of real estate throughout Europe. Sorry to say, but the majority of Americans have a very skewed and inaccurate perspective of Massud.