He was part of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen in the 1980s, and was involved in the civil war of the Mujahideen provisional government of the early 90s. When the Taliban overthrew the Mujahideen government, Ahmad Shah Massoud continued the fight by banding together the Northern Alliance, a group of anti-Taliban Afghan fighters. Massoud was a supporter of a coalition government for a democratic and pluralist Afghanistan.