Four years ago, Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the first vice president under former president Hamid Karzai, was died on this day, 09th March 2014. His death anniversary is marked every year.  

Marshal Fahim was born in 1957 in Omraz, a small village in Panjshir province. 

He started his primary education in his birthplace and completed his studies in Islamic Sharia at Arabic Institute of Kabul.

He fled Afghanistan to Pakistan after the Sawr Revolution in 1978 and returned to Shegal area in Kunar province to fight the then Soviet troops.

Following the Sawr Revolution, Dr Najibullah took over as president in April 1978.

“A big part of the responsibilities was assigned to the Marshal. I think he lead the convoy in a good way and made big decisions in different occasions,” Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said. 

“He had the thought and idea of struggle and liberation from his adolescence and it was with him from that time,” Atta Mohmmad Noor, CEO of Jamiat-e-Islami party, said. 

Fahim visited Panjshir in summer of 1979 to mobilize Mujahideen groups and become a commander for Ahmad Shah Masoud, the National Hero of Afghanistan.

After starting political activities with Mujahideen, he became a close and trusted aide to Massoud. 

In 1988, he was appointed as the general commander of Mujahideen in north of Kabul and in 1990 he visited Balkh, Jawzjan and Faryab provinces to mobilize more Mujahideen.

“Marshal is a figure who has played a great role in the recent four decades' events and his influence in directing the events of two and half decades are clear,”former defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said.

“We can find few areas in Afghanistan that he has not stepped in and has not participated in defending those areas against the occupier forces. The resistance period is a golden time in which he fought in Hindu Kush Mountains, in the north and in different corners of the country,” head of High Peace Council Mohammad Karim Khalili said. 

During their fight against Taliban, called as ‘Resistance’, Marshal Fahim played a vital role in Afghanistan and following Ahmad Shah Massoud's assassination in 2001, he became the leader of government and Resistance forces and came to Kabul with the assistance of international coalition forces in the same year.  

“He was an honest, determined and purposeful man,” former Jihadi leader Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf said. 

“When he was given the title of Afghanistan's Marshal by the former president, he deserved it. Because the Mujahideen had won the war against the occupier forces," second deputy chief executive Mohammad Mohaqiq said. 

Fahim was defense minister during the interim government under Hamid Karzai and at that time,  he was entitled as Afghanistan’s Marshal. 

“He wad always a defender of the national unity and was against discrimination and discord. He played a vital role in preserving Afghanistan's territory,” President Ashraf Ghani said. 

After the interim government, he was the first vice president during Hamid Karzai’s government until he died in 2014.

Marshal Fahim died at his home in Kabul in 2014 due to an illness when he was the first vice president of Afghanistan.