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TOPSHOT - Wearing his trademark brown Afghan woollen hat, the Afghan opposition's veteran military commander Ahmad Shah Masood uses 28 June 2001 his cellular phone wile looking at the front-line on a map during an interview with an AFP journalist in his private quarters inside a heavily-guarded compound, at one of his bases in northeastern Afghanistan. The 49-year-old leader of the armed resistance to the ruling Taliban, Masood voiced confidence that the tide was turning against the fundamentalist Taliban militia. "The Taliban and Pakistan want to defeat us, take the province of Badakhshan and Takhar and crush the resistance" he said. "But we are attacking them in different places, in the north, west, east and centre. They cannot concentrate their forces in one area. Everywhere the fighting is continuing", Masood added. "Pakistan will have to stop helping the Taliban because their economy is too weak to support such a strain, and then there will be no more Taliban', Masood said. AFP PHOTO JOEL ROBINE (Photo by JOEL ROBINE / AFP) (Photo by JOEL ROBINE/AFP via Getty Images)