Burhanuddin Rabbani

Born in Badakhshan Province in 1940, Rabbani studied and later taught Islamic theology at Kabul University, where he founded Jamiat-e Islami and drew future mujahideen commanders Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud into the fold. After the fall of the communist regime in 1992, he became Afghanistan's sixth president, presiding over an Islamic State government plagued by internal clashes between rival factions. The Taliban drove him into exile in 1996, and he led the Northern Alliance politically until their overthrow in 2001. He returned to Kabul that November and served until December, when Hamid Karzai took over at the Bonn Conference. In his final years he headed the Afghanistan National Front, the largest opposition bloc, until a suicide bomber entered his Kabul home on 20 September 2011 - his 71st birthday - and killed him during talks meant to bring the Taliban to the table.