Bear with me here.
Ahmed Shah Massoud, dynamic Northern Alliance leader and hero of the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was murdered by the Taliban on September 9th, 2001, eliminating the natural leader of post-invasion Afghanistan and forcing the Bush Administration to look to the far less effective (to say the least) puppet Karzai as the leader of post-Taliban Afghanistan. Massoud had real legitimacy and popular support, and would've been a far stronger leader than Karzai. How would the last nine years there have varied with him?
(If you want to take it in the direction that he was too disobedient and the Bush Administration disowns him, feel free, though I doubt that would be what would happen)
Massoud would have been wholly inacceptable to Bush as a puppet leader, and would have been largely inacceptable to the Pashtuns they were trying to win over. I suppose you could fashion a timeline where his role is not all that unlike Jalal Talabani's, but it's a quite unlikely best case scenario.
Quite frankly, the most likely scenario is one where Massoud is still doing what he's done for thirty years. Fighting for his home region's independence and opium income against whoever controls Kabul. Except now the west thinks him a devil incarnate and close ally of Osama bin Laden - which he is not.
Don't get me wrong and all - he was a great man by all accounts.
