Mohammed Fahim

He is reported to have finished his studies in Islamic Sharia law at an Arabic institute in Kabul in 1977.

Most reports show that he had been fighting the Communist rulers since the late 70s.

A TOLOnews video chronicling his life reports that Fahim joined the Muslim Youth Movement of Afghanistan while he was still in college.

He fled Afghanistan after the Communist coup of 1978, he became a refugee in Peshawar.

He returned to Panjshir and began to work under Commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

Fahim continued to serve as head of the Intelligence and Minister of National Security of the internationally recognised United Islamic Front Government, even when it was ousted and the Taliban took the power over most provinces of Afghanistan in the second half of the 1990s.

During this time of Taliban rule in Afghanistan Fahim was active as military commander for the United Islamic Front in the north of Afghanistan, especially in Panjshir and Mazar-i-Sharif.

When the Soviet-backed Afghan government collapsed in 1992, Fahim became a key member in the new government.

He was appointed head of the Afghan intellgicence service KHAD, under interim president Sibghatullah Mojaddedi.

He continued to serve as the country's head of intelligence under president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

In 1996, Fahim personally offered to evacuate former President Mohammad Najibullah, then in custody in Kabul, from the advancing Taliban forces, but Najibullah refused to be evacuated and was captured and executed by a Taliban mob.

Affiliated with Ahmad Shah Massoud's Jamiat Islami (Shura-e Nazar) party, Fahim captured the Afghan capital Kabul in the fall of 2001 from the Taliban government as a military commander of the Northern Alliance.

Between December 2001 and December 2004, he served as Defense Minister under the Afghan Transitional Administration.

On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's most important resistance leader and Defense Minister of the ousted but international recognized government, was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists.

Two days later, Fahim was confirmed as the new defence minister of the United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance), succeeding Massoud.

Fahim was a close ally and protégé of Massoud.

In the wake of building pressure of the US against the Taliban regime after September 11, 2001, as general commander of the mujahideen resistance forces, Fahim became America's main proxy in the fight against the Taliban.

He was anxious to start a military offensive and even pledged to launch an attack against the Taliban, without waiting for US military action, saying: "Today we have a chance to defeat the Taliban and the terrorists, and we will use it whatever the cost."

On 7 October, the day the US started bombing Taliban targets, he proclaimed an offensive on the northern and western fronts.

On October, 20, a US team of Green Berets landed in Afghanistan and teamed up with Fahim.

On 30 October, Fahim met with American General Tommy Franks where they discussed the idea to launch the first major strike of the war against Mazar-e-Sharif, a city that Fahim a month earlier named as the first city that he would conquer.

Mazar-e Sharif was captured by opposition forces on 9 and 10 November and only a few days later, the Taliban evacuated Kabul.

US President George W. Bush had requested that opposition forces would not enter the city before a new, broad-based, multi-ethnic government was formed.

But Fahim went into the city with a group of specially trained security personnel, although he made sure to leave the main body of his troops outside the city.

At the end of November, forces loyal to Fahim captured the city of Kunduz.

That brought Fahim in charge of two of the five biggest cities, since other main cities were captured by militias of Gul Agha Sherzai and Hamid Karzai (Kandahar), Ismail Khan (Herat) en Abdul Rashid Dostum (Mazar-e-Sharif).

In the first days after the fall of Kabul, a supreme military council, headed by Fahim, was set up to administer the captured parts of the country.

The military council gave itself a three-month mandate in which they proclaimed not to hand over the power to United Islamic Front president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

During these three months, the international community sponsored a conference on Afghanistan in Bonn to decide about the future leadership of the country.

With crucial US military help, the opposition forces had captured virtually all of Afghanistan from the Taliban in the beginning of December 2001, and in Bonn the formation of an interim administration was discussed.

As the US started bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, it became clear that the United Islamic Front of Fahim would play an important role in the transition government that would emerge after the Taliban was ousted.

However, since Fahim lacked Massoud's magnetism, his role as opposition leader was generally seen as temporary.

When in the first weeks of US bombardments Fahim's forces did not make any large breakthroughs, it was speculated that he was struggling with his role and he appeared wooden and awkward in front of his troops.

In 2004, President Hamid Karzai provided Fahim the honorary title Marshal and a year later, he became member of the House of Elders.

He later became a recipient of the Ahmad Shah Baba Medal.

Mohammad Qasim Fahim (, popularly known as "Marshal Fahim"; 1957 – 9 March 2014) was an Afghan military commander and politician who served as Vice President of Afghanistan from June 2002 until December 2004 and from November 2009 until his death.

He was considered a powerful and influential figure during the Karzai Administration.

Fahim died due to natural causes in 2014; the president declared three days of national mourning in honor of him.

Fahim was born in Omarz, a small village in the Panjshir Province of Afghanistan and is of Tajik ethnicity.

He was the son of Qala Dar from the Panjshir Valley.