KABUL, 7 July— Gunmen assassinated Afghan Vice President Abdul Qadir in broad daylight in the capital Kabul yesterday, threatening to shatter the fragile peace imposed by the US-led coalition after the fall of the Taleban. Qadir was shot through the head as he drove away from his office.
The death of Qadir, a crucial link between the majority Pashtun community and the Northern Alliance, the mainly Tajik and Uzbek group that ousted the Taleban last year, adds to the problems facing President Hamid Karzai.
Qadir was a veteran warlord and a Pashtun like Karzai. He was one of the five newly-appointed vice presidents.
Police and witnesses said his four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruiser crashed into a wall as bullets riddled the side and windscreen, killing both Qadir and his driver, and wounding two passengers. Both the gunmen escaped in a taxi.
Blood was spattered over the dashboard and the seats. A blood-stained set of prayer beads lay on the cushion in between the front seats.
Kabul police chief Basir Salangi said two gunmen fired some 36 rounds at the car. Witnesses said the gunmen had been waiting near the gates of his office. A total of five people were in Qadir’s Landcruiser. "I arrived shortly afterward. Qadir had bullet holes in his head and chest," an official at the scene said.
The vehicle was cordoned off by police but blood and bullet holes could be clearly seen.
"The motive for the killing isn’t clear," Salangi told reporters.
Salangi said 10 guards, who had been appointed by Qadir’s predecessor at the Public Works Ministry, Abdul Khaliq Fazal, were arrested after yesterday’s assassination.
One Afghan expert said it could have been a Taleban-organized hit because of Qadir’s links with the Northern Alliance. "He was one of the few Pashtuns in the Northern Alliance, so it could have been a kind of Taleban hit," he said.
Officers from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in Kabul to help keep the peace, said they were investigating.
Qadir, a tall and imposing man with a trim white beard, was also public works minister and a key to Karzai’s bridge-building with a power base in the strategic eastern province of Nangahar, where Osama Bin Laden set up his base in the early 1990s.
Qadir, who was until recently governor of the main eastern province of Jalalabad, was one of the most powerful regional leaders in Afghanistan.
Qadir was the brother of former Mujahedeen commander Abdul Haq who was assassinated by the Taleban last October as he tried to stir up a rebellion against the Teleban militia.
He was also one of the wealthiest men in Afghanistan, with suspicions that his fortune was largely funded through the drugs trade.
He came from Afghanistan’s biggest ethnic group but was a rare Pashtun member of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance which swept into Kabul with US help in November to oust their long-time foe Taleban.
Karzai has set up a five-member delegation to investigate the killing, headed by another Vice President Karim Khalili, while US President George W. Bush offered American help to track down the assassins. Bush expressed his "deepest condolences" over the slaying of Qadir.
"We are more resolved than ever to bring stability to the country so the Afghan people can have peace and hope," Bush said, adding that a member of his national security team had discussed the killing of vice president Qadir by telephone with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. Britain, France Germany, China, Pakistan and Iran have also condemned the assassination of Qadir.
"It is too early to say who was behind the assassination, Karzai’s spokesman Sayed Fazl Akbar told Reuters. "Karzai is deeply affected by his death. He is sad as an Afghan, he is upset because he lost a prominent member of his government and a Pashtun."
Karzai’s Cabinet went into emergency session after the slaying and later issued a joint statement saying Qadir, one of five vice presidents appointed by Karzai last month, had been "martyred in a terrorist attack."
His assassination illustrates the problems facing Karzai just weeks after a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of Afghan leaders approved a new Cabinet to lead the country out of 23 years of war and prepare for elections in 18 months time. The assembly faced the tough task of finding a government acceptable to the Pashtun majority, the Northern Alliance which has a strong presence on the ground, and the various warlords who dominate swathes of the country.
In February, Tourism Minister Dr. Abdul Rehman was killed at the airport under circumstances which have never been made clear. (The Independent)
