Mohammad Qasim Fahim (, popularly known as "Marshal Fahim"; 1957 – 9 March 2014) was a military commander and politician in Afghanistan who served as Vice President 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. 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. 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. Fahim passed away due to natural causes in 2014; the president declared three days of national mourning in honor of him. Early years 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. 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. Careers 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. 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