Ahmed Wali Karzai (
Pashto:
احمد ولي کرزی,
Aḥmad Walī Karzay, )was a prominent
politician in
Afghanistan and the younger paternal half-brother
[2] of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and son of
Abdul Ahad Karzai died from a gun shot he was , 50.. As an elder of the
Popalzai Pashtun tribe, he was elected to the
Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005 and served as its chairman.
[3][4] Karzai formerly lived in the
U.S. city of
Chicago,
Illinois, where he worked in a restaurant owned by his family.
[5] He returned to
Afghanistan following the removal of the
Taliban government in late 2001. He was shot and killed by one of his bodyguards on July 12, 2011.
(1961 – 12 July 2011)
Early life and political career
Karzai was born in 1961 in the village of
Karz, located in the
Dand district[7] of
Kandahar in
Afghanistan.
[1] He is the son of
Abdul Ahad Karzai and brother of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai,
Mahmud Karzai and
Quayum Karzai. He attended
Habibia High School in
Kabul but was not able to finish his studies due to the
Soviet war in Afghanistan. He migrated to neighbouring
Pakistan and then went to the
United States where lived for about ten years. He married there and has two sons and three daughters.
[8]
He came to political prominence in Afghanistan following the US occupation of the country in 2001, where he was a key ally of the US military in the country's south.
[9] He was elected to the
Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005 and exercised influence in the province to the extent that he was described as "effectively the governor".
[10] At the time of his death, he was the Council's chairman.
[11]
A few days before his death, Ahmed Wali Karzai appeared on a British television programme, "Afghanistan: The Unknown Country," presented by
Lyse Doucet, at his home in Kandahar, talking about public perceptions of him.
[12] Doucet said: "Like most strong men, he depended on family and fellow tribesmen to protect him." He was drug dealer accordance of many Afghan villagers.
Allegations of corruption
A June 2009
U.S. embassy cable alleged that much of the actual business of running the Afghan city of
Kandahar "takes place out of public sight, where Ahmed Wali Karzai operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises."
[13] In addition,
James Risen of the
New York Times and others
[14] stated that Ahmed Wali Karzai may have been involved in the
Afghan drug trade, which was denied by Karzai, who called the charges political
propaganda and stated, "I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be, ... I am a victim of vicious politics."
[15]
In meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, including a 2006 session with former
US Ambassador to Afghanistan,
Ronald E. Neumann, the
CIA's station chief and their British counterparts, American officials talked about the rumors in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks. "We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there," one official said. President Karzai has resisted, however, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. "We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment," a
White House official said.
[15] Ahmed Wali Karzai dismissed the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime rival groups in his country.
Before the
2009 Afghan presidential election, Wali Karzai and
Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, former governor of the
Helmand Province and a member of the
Upper House of the Afghan parliament, were accused of vote rigging.
[16] After the election, reports mentioned that all those running in the election were involved in
electoral fraud.
CIA connections
In October 2009 the
New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai received payments from the
CIA for "a variety of services", including the recruitment of the
Kandahar Strike Force, an
Afghan paramilitary force run by the CIA in the Kandahar region. It also stated that he was paid for allowing the CIA and
U.S. special forces to rent the former residence of Taliban supreme leader
Mullah Omar.
[17] However, Karzai has denied taking any payment from the CIA.
[18] U.S. Senator John Kerry and former
Afghan Ambassador to the United States,
Said Tayeb Jawad, defended Karzai in recent years, Kerry saying "We should not condemn Ahmed Wali Karzai or damage our critical relations with his brother, President Karzai, on the basis of newspaper articles or rumors."
[19][20] and Jawad saying, "There is presence of the intelligence, there's presence of many institutions of the United States and
NATO countries in Afghanistan, why don't they come up with a clear evidence of any corruption involving the president or his family?
[21][22]
Assassination
Karzai survived a number of assassination attempts by
Taliban militants[23] and at least two attacks against his office in Kandahar: one in November 2008
[24] and the other in April 2009.
[25] According to Karzai himself, he had survived a total of nine assassination attempts.
[26]
On 12 July 2011, Karzai was assassinated by his long-time head of security, Sardar Mohammad. Reports say that Wali was shot twice with a pistol, once in the head and once in the chest, as he was coming out of the bathroom inside his residence.
[27] Abdul Raziq, a top official from the
Afghan National Police at Kandahar, stated that the assailant Sardar Mohammad was well known by the
Karzai family.
[7] He had served as Wali Karzai's most trusted security guard for the last seven years. "As he entered Wali's room, Wali came out of his bathroom. Mohammad fired twice at Wali without any conversation passing between the two. Wali received one bullet in the chest and second in the head," Abdul Raziq said.
[7] The assailant was immediately killed by other bodyguards and then his body was hanged at a city square on public view.
[28] In the meantime, Karzai's body was taken to
Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar.
[29]
Thousands of people turned up for his funeral the next day, led by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and many more waited in buses where his body lay to be taken to his hometown of
Karz. Security was tightened around the funeral procession and some reports indicated Hamid Karzai's elite security team were deployed to secure
Kandahar, where the funeral was held.
[30] At the funeral procession Hamid Karzai issued a message to the Taliban:
"My message for [the Taliban] is that my countryman, my brother, stop killing your own people. It's easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives."
[31]Hamid Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer said that "We know we live in a dangerous country. We know that security has to be tight all the time and the president knows [this]. He's got good security and that is not a worry for the president. The president is upset, he is still in grief, about the death of his brother. Wali was a very close brother of the president."
[32] En route to the funeral
Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal escaped an assassination attempt, while later in the evening two more blasts went off in Kandahar. Though Hamid Karzai led the funeral procession, he was not present at a memorial service which was attacked by a suicide bomber killing the senior cleric of the mosque Hikmatullah Hikmat, the head of the Provincial Ulema Council, who died along with three others while 13 others were also wounded.
[33]
Reactions
President Hamid Karzai issued a statement on the day his brother died saying: "My younger brother was martyred in his house today. This is the life of all Afghan people, I hope these miseries which every Afghan family faces will one day end"
[6] Afghan families, every one of us, have suffered from it, and we hope, God willing, for our suffering to be over.
[32] US General David Petraeus
[34] as well as other top NATO personnel serving in Afghanistan, officials at the
White House and many world leaders condemned the assassination.
[27]
Taliban spokesman
Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed that one of their agents was behind the assassination saying, "Today in Kandahar city, Hamid Karzai's brother was killed during the Operation al-Badr... We hired a person by the name of Sadar Mohammad, who was hired for this job for some time now. Ahmed Wali Karzai was punished for all his wrongdoings."
[6]
However, according to
The Christian Science Monitor, the Taliban has "a dubious record of claiming responsibility for attacks it had nothing to do with",
[35] and its claim has been denied by several sources. Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, head of the counter-terrorism department at the
Interior Ministry, told
Reuters that "It appears Ahmed Wali Karzai has been killed by one of his bodyguard, and there was nobody from outside involved."
[6] The news was confirmed by Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for Kandahar province, as well as by Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. Following the killing police were mobilised in Kandahar and helicopters were seen overhead as checkpoints were locked down leading towards the hospital his body was taken to.
[36]
Investigation into the murder
Investigators believe that Sardar Mohammad may have been a Taliban
sleeper agent or a government defector.
Mahmud Karzai, Karzai's other brother, stated that Sardar Mohammad traveled to the Pakistani city of
Quetta within the past three months to meet with the
Shura Council of the Taliban. Mahmoud Karzai claimed that he has been acting very erratically in recent weeks, including
sleeping poorly, moving from house to house during nights, acting suspiciously toward his men and demanding to know who they were talking to on their
mobile phones. It suggests that he may have been using
narcotics since the area is well known for
opium production.
[37]
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