KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of the Afghan president, was shot dead early Tuesday by a security guard who was well known to the family of the Kandahar political kingpin.
The alleged assassin, identified as Sardar Mohammed, was immediately gunned down by members of Karzai’s security detail, provincial police chief Brig.-Gen. Abdul Raziq told a news conference.
The murder opens up a potentially dangerous power vacuum in the province, which has been the focus of the Taliban insurgency.
“It was a big loss for us and the entire Afghan nation,” said Gov. Tooryalai Wesa, who is an Afghan-Canadian.
Initial reports had it that Karzai, 50, was gunned down outside his own compound, but provincial councillor Haji Agha Lalai later said the shooting took place inside the building following a meeting.
The assassin was apparently in charge of several checkpoints in the eastern portion of Kandahar city and not a member of Karzai’s close-protection detail, said Lalai, who once served as Karzai’s deputy.
Karzai was shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest.
Raziq said the motive remains unclear, although the Taliban have claimed responsibility, saying they recruited the security guard.
Mohammed, according to Afghan sources who knew him, was a former member of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, an Islamist party originally founded by warlord and insurgent commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
“We are condemning this cowardly attack, the man who carried it out was a good friend of Ahmed Wali Karzai,” said Raziq.
“Nobody (would) even think that he will do such (a) heinous act. He was trusted by him.”
The murder comes at critical time. Kandahar city has been awash in rumours for weeks that Ahmed Wali Karzai was about to be appointed governor in place of Wesa, who has served for nearly two-and-a-half years.
Fears that the death could spark retribution were palpable and Raziq appealed for calm.
“I am telling the people of Kandahar to tolerate this tragedy,” he said.
There were reports that NATO had dispatched extra troops to secure the city as an inordinate number of military convoys were seen heading down the highway.
A spokeswoman for Regional Command South said both NATO and Afghan forces had beefed up security, but would not comment further, citing operational security.
Karzai has been a polarizing figure throughout Canada’s involvement in Kandahar and was accused of corruption, being on the CIA payroll and playing a significant role in Afghanistan’s bustling drug trade — charges he always vehemently denied.
Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, William Crosbie, condemned the murder and extended the country’s condolences to the Karzai family.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was the target of at least nine assassination attempts and always travelled with a large contingent of bodyguards and provincial police.
During one recent trip to the Kandahar civilian airport, Karzai’s convoy of armoured SUVs was accompanied by two pickup trucks carrying gun-toting police officers as it swept along a highway lined with cops and heavy machine guns.
There was a virtual ring of steel around him.
AWK, as he was known, was fluent in English after spending years in Chicago tending to the family’s restaurant business. He was appointed to lead the provincial council in Kandahar in 2005 and quickly became indispensable to the president.
The two men were close.
Although he was a younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai took care of the president while the family was exiled in Pakistan during the Taliban years.
Hamid Karzai defended his brother against allegations of involvement in criminal activity and corruption, often at a great political cost to himself.
“My younger brother was martyred in his house today,” the president said during a news conference with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in Kabul.
“This is the life of all Afghan people, I hope these miseries which every Afghan family faces will one day end.”
After assuming control of the governing council, AWK set about consolidating the family’s hold on power among the fractious Pashtun tribes of the region, sometimes in a brutal fashion.
Among the Kandahar governing class, it is said that Karzai’s alienation of the restive Noorzai tribe in western Kandahar from provincial jobs and largesse contributed to the return of the Taliban.
Accusations and rumours that he meddled in tribal politics and played favourites among various factions bred a fierce resentment that fractured local governance and inflamed the insurgency as years went by.
His word had the force of law in Kandahar.
At a recent meeting, Karzai scolded the contractor who built the new provincial council building and warned him that “if anything went wrong, it’s on your head and you’ll never work in Kandahar again.”
The man left the meeting petrified.
In 2008, Ahmed Wali Karzai reportedly had a hand in the firing of the former governor Rahmatullah Raufi, according to senior Canadian military sources. The move set off a period of political instability in Kandahar and wave of assassinations involving municipal officials.
U.S. diplomats have long considered Karzai a disruptive influence and as far back as 2006 actively tried to convince the president to remove him and give him an ambassadorship somewhere.
Hamid Karzai always refused, demanding to see proof of the allegations against his brother.
Senior Canadian military sources say they looked hard for evidence, especially during 2008 and 2009, when Karzai was consolidating his power base.
Soldiers at the provincial reconstruction base were at one point in the winter of 2010 put on alert to raid one of Karzai’s compounds.
But no evidence was forthcoming and the raid was cancelled.