Two rivals named Eric, both claiming the…

With the help of Iran, Mas'ud is an important player in establishing Ittehad-e Samt-e Shamal (Northern Alliance) in early 1992.

Isma'il Khan extends his military rule over most of the western provinces of Afghanistan.

After the emergence of the Taliban in Qandahar in 1994, Isma'il Khan battles them for control over such provinces as Helmand, Nimruz, Farah and Herat.

Defeated by the Taliban, he and his deputy, Alauddin Khan, flee to Iran on September 5, 1995.

By January 1996, Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, shares Iran's and Russia's view of the Taliban movement as a form of aggression by Pakistan.

Abdul Rashid Dostum, commander of the former Afghanistan government militia (renamed Junbish), now controls the northern region centered on Mazar-e Sharif.

Massoud, along with other mujahedin commanders in the north, has provided refuge to the Tajik Islamist guerillas in Tajikistan's civil war.

A recipient of support from the Karimov government and from Russia, Dostum maintains operational neutrality between Ahmed Massoud, who is allied to a different side in the Tajikistan conflict, and the Taliban, as long as neither side attacks his area.

(Source: WRITENET Country Papers Afghanistan: The Forgotten Crisis (February 1996)

In early 1996, Alauddin Khan returns to Heart to organize the anti-Taliban resistance, but on July 2 is killed there, along with seven of his companions, by Feda Mohammed, a Taliban agent.

In March 1996, Ghafuzai, the Deputy Foreign Minister for Rabbani, is appointed Foreign Minister.

Hekmatyar, cutting a deal with his arch-foes Rabbani and Mas'ud, becomes Prime Minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in May 1996.

The Taliban capture the city on September 27 and expel the government and its forces.

Rabbani and Massoud flee to northern Afghanistan; Hekmatyar flees to Iran.

After the Taliban capture Kabul on September 27, 1996, the non-Pashtun forces, expelled from the ruined Afghan capital, ally again as they did in the Northern Alliance of 1992.

Ahmad Shah Massoud, former defense minister and de facto vice president of the Rabbani government's Islamic State of Afghanistan, becomes military leader of the resistance to the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Rabbani declares Mazar-e Sharif as the country's temporary capital.

Fahim is appointed commander of mujahideen forces north of Kabul.

Massoud, Dostum, Karim Khalji, and Qanooni are participants in the meetings that lead to the creation of the Supreme Council for Defense of the Motherland.

On October 12, 1996, rival Afghan military commanders General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud form an alliance to fight the Taliban and establish a non-fundamentalist government in the nine northern provinces they control.

Three days later, Afghan forces opposing the Taliban open a second front east of Kabul.

On the 16th, leaders of the Taliban meet with General Dostum to discuss broad-based peace talks aimed at demilitarizing the capital of Kabul and the formation of a central government.

On the 20th, The advancing forces of Massoud launch a rocket attack on the Kabul airport.

On the 24th, fighting between the Taliban and rival militias intensifies outside Kabul as Taliban MiG fighter jets attack Jamaat-i-Islami positions north of the capital.
(Source: Washington Report On Middle East Affairs; A Chronology of US-Middle East Relatons)

The opposition parties form an alliance as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (UIFSA).

This essentially anti-Taliban coalition includes the Tajik-dominated Jamiat-i Islami of Rabbani and Massoud; the predominantly Pashtun Hizb-i Islami of Hekmatyar, the Uzbek-dominated Junbish of General Abdul Rashid Dostum; and the Hazara Hizb-i Wahdat with its stronghold in the central mountainous region of the country known as Hazarajat.

After the Taliban seize Kabul on September 27, 1996, Dostum joins in a loose anti-Taliban alliance with ousted government commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and a Shiite Muslim militia.

Declared president of the Supreme Defense Council of Afghanistan, which includes most major groups in the country except for the Taliban, Dostum is backed politically by Russia and other former Soviet republics of central Asia.

On May 27, 1997, some 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers are summarily executed in and around the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif by two largely ethnic Hazara United Front factions: Junbish forces under the command of General Abdul Malik Pahlawan and Hizb-i Wahdat forces led by General Muhaqqiq.

The killings follow Pahlawan's withdrawal from a brief alliance with the Taliban, and the capture of the Taliban forces that were trapped in the city.

Some of the Taliban troops are taken to the desert and shot, while others are thrown down wells and then blown up with grenades.

(Source: Human Rights Watch World Report 2001: Asia Overview: Fueling Afghanistan's War Press Backgrounder)