Afghanistan's First Vice President Dies

An Afghan government spokesman says one of the country's two vice presidents, Field Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, has died at the age of 57.

The official said Fahim died of natural causes on Sunday. He added that three days of national mourning would be held.

Fahim was once a powerful warlord and had been a leading commander in the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban.

Slain Former Afghan President Led Peace Efforts

As head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, former President Burhannudin Rabbani was tasked with leading efforts to find a political solution to the ten-year war with the Taliban.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai appointed the council in October of 2010. The 68-member body made up of tribal elders, religious leaders, and politicians was set up to facilitate contacts with insurgents willing to lay down their arms and join the government.

Born in 1940 in the northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, Mr. Rabbani studied in Kabul and then at Cairo's Al-Azhar University.

In 1971, he took over the leadership of an Islamist party, Jamiat-e-Isami, which later formed one of the mujahedeen groups that fought Soviet forces following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Mr. Rabbani became president of a shaky mujahedeen coalition government in 1992 after the collapse of the country's Soviet-backed communist government.

The struggle for power among mujahedeen groups sparked a civil war that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Mr. Rabbani's presidency ended in 1996, with the rise of the Taliban.

An ethnic Tajik, he then became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, which joined with international forces in ousting the Taliban from power in 2001.

Mr. Rabbani was killed Tuesday in a suicide attack at his home in the Afghan capital.

Northern Alliance military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed by al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists on September 9, 2001, just two days before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Afghan President's Half-Brother Assassinated

12 July 2011
Phillip Ittner
Kabul

Ahmad Wali Karzai, the half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a powerful political figure in his own right, has been killed in his home in  Kandahar, apparently by his own bodyguard.

The Taliban is claiming responsibility for the assassination of Ahmad Wali Karzai, who served as the head of the provincial council in Kandahar, a region of Afghanistan significant both as the birthplace of the Taliban and the focus of the recent "surge" of U.S. troops in the country.

A clearly shaken Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed the death of his brother during a press conference with visiting French President Nikolas Sarkozy.

"My younger brother was martyred in his house today," the Afghan president said. "This is the life of all Afghan people. I hope these miseries which every Afghan family faces will one day end."

Ahmad Wali Karzai was a controversial figure on the Afghan political scene. Considered the most powerful man in Kandahar, he had been accused of criminality, corruption and drug running. But he was also a broker for stability in the strategically important area. He consistently rallied the tribes to show support for the central government in Kabul. His death will leave a vacuum at a time when NATO and Afghan government forces are trying to regain the initiative in the 10-year-old war.

The outgoing commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, conveyed his personal condolences to President Karzai and swiftly issued a condemnation of the killing. He said that the international forces would assist the government in bringing to justice those involved in the murder.

While the Taliban has issued a claim of responsibility for the killing of Ahmad Wali Karzai, there is no clear proof it orchestrated the murder. It has, in the past, capitalized on events not of its own making.

All sides in the conflict are trying to show strength as the apparent endgame in the war gains momentum. Both NATO forces and Taliban leaders want to enter peace negotiations from a position of strength.

The assassination sends the message that the Taliban is still very much a force to be reckoned with, says Afghan member of parliament Daud Sultanzoi.

"This is a show of power. And they show how far they can reach. How deep they can penetrate. And this means that we have to reckon with that and be prepared for worse things. Every time they do something like this, it’s not just the action itself but it’s the message that is sent through those actions that is more important," he said.

Reports that Ahmad Wali Karzai's killer was a member of the Karzai inner circle also show that security is far from guaranteed in Afghanistan, regardless of how much effort and expense is devoted to achieving it.

Police and military forces are on high alert in Kandahar, with extra roadblocks and checkpoints in place to try and capture any other individuals who may have had a role in the assassination.

President Karzai’s office says he is traveling to the city to collect his brother's body and initiate a full investigation.

Ahmad Wali Karzai
* Born in the southern Afghani city of Karz in 1961.
* Member of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the local governing body for the region, since 2005. Served as council's chief.
* Openly accused in the Afghan parliament in 2007 of being involved in the international drug trade.
* Suspected of orchestrating voter fraud in his brother's favor near Kandahar during the 2009 presidential election.

Photo: Ahmad Wali Karzai speaking to the media following a shura in Kandahar in June 2010. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O'Donald/Released, ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan

Bin Laden Spent 30 Years Fighting, Then Hiding

Monday, 2 May 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that the world's most wanted terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. He was 54.

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, then-U.S. president George W. Bush vowed to capture bin Laden – the man the president believed was behind the attacks.

Bin Laden first publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video released in October 2004. He eluded attempts to capture him, disappearing along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sparking perhaps the largest manhunt in history.

But bin Laden's image as the world's most-wanted terrorist stands in sharp contrast to his peaceful and comfortable upbringing.

He was one of more than 50 children of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate and was raised in the opulence of Saudi Arabia's upper-class.

Bin Laden went on to pursue an engineering degree and seemed prepared to work in the family business.

However, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden left home to join the fight against the Soviets.

He initially provided logistical support for new recruits to the Afghan mujahedin Islamic fighters – the same ones supported by the United States. But in the mid-1980s, bin Laden decided to use his share of his family's wealth to form his own militia force, which later became known as “al-Qaida” – Arabic for “The Base.”

In 1990, Saudi Arabia invited the U.S. to deploy troops within the country following Iraq's invasion of the oil-rich state of Kuwait. Bin Laden saw the arrival of non-Muslims on land considered holy in Islam as an affront to his religion. He protested strongly against the move, resulting in his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1991.

Bin Laden found refuge in Sudan, where he is said to have orchestrated attacks on the U.S. military in Somalia and Saudi Arabia. He returned to Afghanistan in 1996 after the Sudanese expelled him due to pressure from the U.S.

While there, he continued his campaign against the United States by allegedly masterminding the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. His popularity grew among disaffected Arabs and those unhappy with U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Stopping bin Laden became the top priority for the United States following the 2001 attacks, a goal that Mr. Obama says remained the top priority under his leadership.

The Taliban refused to surrender the al-Qaida leader to U.S. authorities, prompting the United States to go to war in Afghanistan. The U.S. ousted the Taliban in December 2001, and Osama bin Laden went into hiding.

In his years at large, bin Laden released a series of audiotapes condemning the United States.

Now, nine years, seven months and 20 days since the September 11 attacks, Mr. Obama says “justice has been done” after a U.S. strike team killed bin Laden in a firefight during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.