Afghan president’s brother murdered

THE younger half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one of the most powerful and controversial men in southern Afghanistan, was shot dead at his home yesterday by a senior and highly trusted bodyguard, officials said.

Ahmad Wali Karzai’s assassination will leave a dangerous power vacuum in volatile Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace and a focus of recent efforts by a surge of US troops to turn the tide against the insurgency.

He was accused of corruption and ties to the opium trade, but always denied any wrongdoing and was strongly supported by his brother whose influence he shored up in the south.

President Karzai may find his reach there is now limited as a power struggle plays out among the possible successors to Ahmad Wali Karzai’s unofficial crown.

“We felt more safe when Ahmad Wali Karzai was around,” said Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar who outranked Karzai, but like almost everyone in the province, deferred to him.

“His loss will have a negative impact on issues with tribes, and current affairs and security. Kandahar today witnessed the darkest day,” Wesa added at a news conference.

Wali Karzai was shot dead by Sardar Mohammad, a senior member of the Karzai family’s security team in Kandahar who had known his victim for at least a decade.

He was based at a compound in the village of Karz, where both brothers were born, and travelled into Kandahar yesterday morning saying he had an application he needed to give his boss, Kandahar police chief Abdul Razeq told a news conference.

“The man carried his pistol through the security checks to Wali Karzai’s room. As soon as Wali Karzai came out of bathroom, he opened fire and shot him in the head and chest,” Razeq said.

Mohammad was shot dead by Karzai’s bodyguards moments after opening fire, witnesses and officials said.

The killing cast a pall over the city of Kandahar, which has been a focus of violence in recent months as the Taliban came under pressure in surrounding districts from a wave of extra troops ordered in by US President Barack Obama in 2009.

“My younger brother was martyred in his house today,” President Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul held with his visiting French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy. “I hope these miseries which every Afghan family faces will one day end.”

The killing was condemned by Karzai’s backers and neighbours including the commander of NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, the US embassy in Kabul and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for one of the most high-profile assassinations of the last decade after news of his death became public. They have in the past taken responsibility for attacks that security services have questioned.

The half-brother of the president, Ahmad Wali Karzai returned to Afghanistan, leaving behind a career as a restaurateur in Chicago to eventually become probably the most powerful man in Kandahar.