KABUL, 15 January 2006 — Gunmen yesterday killed a former Taleban leader who renounced the extremist regime after it was ousted in 2001 and had since supported Afghanistan’s US-backed government, officials said. In a spate of other violence blamed on holdouts from the former regime, 10 people were killed and 41 wounded — 40 of them in two bombings targeting people celebrating the Islamic feast of sacrifice, Eid Al-Adha.
Two men on a motorbike shot Mohammed Khaksar, the former Taleban deputy interior minister, in the heart and head as he was walking with two of his children in the southern city of Kandahar, a former Taleban stronghold, police chief Gen. Abdul Wahid said. Khaksar secretly contacted the United States in 1999 to seek American help in stopping the Taleban, and renounced the movement after its collapse. Last September, he ran as a candidate in legislative elections, but lost.
In an interview at the time with The Associated Press, Khaksar said Taleban rebels had threatened his life several times. He said he supported President Hamid Karzai, as well as the deployment of international forces here. A purported Taleban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, called The Associated Press to claim responsibility. Yousaf’s exact ties to the insurgents’ leaders is not known. “He was a traitor to our cause,” he said. “We will kill all Taleban members who do this.”
The killing was believed to be the first of several former Taleban leaders who have swapped sides. The government has encouraged Taleban members to go through a formal reconciliation program and so far, about 300 rank-and-file members and some 50 senior officials have done so. The shooting comes after the deadliest year in rebel violence since 2001, with some 1,600 people killed, which has raised fears for Afghanistan’s nascent democracy.
US-led and Afghan government troops have killed about eight insurgents in the latest clashes in Afghanistan, the US military and Afghan government said. Two insurgents and an Afghan government soldier were killed early yesterday in the southeastern province of Paktia, the Defense Ministry said. Two soldiers were wounded in the fighting that began with a guerrilla attack on an army position, the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, the US military said about six insurgents were killed in a battle that erupted when gunmen fired on what it called an offensive patrol in the restive central province of Uruzgan on Friday. “An estimated six enemy fighters were killed; the remainder fled the area,” the US military said in a statement. The US military, which said no Afghan or US-led troops had been hurt in the clash in Uruzgan, said its offensive patrols were aimed at rooting out insurgents and disrupting supplies.
