KABUL – Afghan president Hamid Karzai yesterday buried his younger brother, who was assassinated in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Tuesday, underscoring the country’s security challenge as the US begins to withdraw troops.
The funeral of Ahmed Wali Karzai took place in Karz, the family’s ancestral village in Kandahar, where he dominated politics as head of the provincial council, Afghan state television reported.
Ahmed Wali was shot dead at his home yesterday by a senior bodyguard. A spokesman for the Taliban said the movement had secretly recruited the gunman.
Ahmed Wali’s death raises questions over Mr Karzai’s ability to provide security for the country’s leaders, let alone ordinary Afghans, said Waliullah Rahmani, director of the Kabul Centre for Strategic Studies. “This is a strategic and psychological blow for President Karzai,” Mr Rahmani said. “Afghans will now ask if Karzai’s government cannot protect his own brother in his home and stronghold in Kandahar, what security can he bring to Afghanistan in general?”
A convoy carrying the governor of neighbouring Helmand province and his police chief to the funeral was hit by a roadside bomb, wounding two guards.
Ahmed Wali ran a political fiefdom that was seen as corrupt and suspected of drug-dealing. For years, it undermined support for his brother and for the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban, according to a study of Kandahar politics last year by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Ahmed Walii’s “influence over Kandahar is the central obstacle to any of ISAF’s governance objectives,” the report by the institute said, referring to the US-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
“Wali Karzai’s behaviour and waning popularity among local populations promote instability and provide space for the Taliban to exist,” Carl Forsberg, an analyst who specialises in southern Afghan politics, wrote in the report.
President Barack Obama said last month that the US would withdraw 10,000 troops from Afghanistan before the end of this year and an additional 23,000 by September 2012. Other nations have announced their own troop reduction plans. France plans to withdraw a quarter of its 4,000 troops by the end of 2012. – ( Washington Post/Bloomberg)