Tweet    As reported in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere, Ahmed Wali Karzi was killed by Sardar Mohammed. Mr. Mohammed, who is described as “an associate,” was a commander of security posts south of Kandahar. He was reported killed by Mr. Karzai’s bodyguards. The late Mr. Karzai had been linked to the drug trade and corrupt security companies.  The Christian Science Monitor sited Wikileaks here as quoting official US concern regarding Ahmad Karzi.

“AWK [Ahmad 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,” wrote a US official in one of the leaked cables.

What will happen next? What other shoes will drop?

Given the relative opacity of the situation(s)  in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States’ troubled relationships with both countries, the potential parallels to the plot of The Godfather and MacBeth are unsettling.

The NY Times article is exerpted here,  Half Brother of Afghan President Is Killed in Kandahar,

KABUL, Afghanistan — The powerful half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was shot dead on Tuesday by a close family associate, according to Karzai family friends who were nearby.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the provincial council chairman for Kandahar, who was the most powerful person in the province if not all of southern Afghanistan, was killed by Sardar Mohammed, a regular visitor to Mr. Karzai’s residence in central Kandahar, witnesses said.

Initial reports had said he was killed by a bodyguard.

Mr. Mohammed was a commander of security posts near Karza just south of Kandahar city, according to Mr. Karzai’s driver.

The killing shook the power structure in Kandahar, which is built around the Karzai family and its nexus of connections to powerbrokers across southern Afghanistan including narcotics smugglers, insurgents and others. It appeared likely to set off a struggle for control as members of the Karzai family and leaders from other influential clans jockey for power, and some Western officials here said they anticipated more assassinations. Whether the security situation as a whole deteriorates is hard to foresee since much depends on President Karzai’s choices about how to control the situation in the province.

President Karzai held a press conference in Kabul with French President Nicolas Sarkozy barely two hours after the shooting and, speaking in a steady voice, confirmed his brother’s death. “This is the life of Afghan people, this sorrow is in every Afghan home, everyone of us has this sorrow,” he said.

He then turned to Mr. Sarkozy and said, “We welcome Mr. Sarkozy and hope he forgives us for not speaking with a smile today.”

President Karzai was a stalwart supporter of his brother, defending him strongly when he was accused by opponents and Westerners of involvement with the drug trade and corrupt security companies.

 

Via PiePalace.ca: Sorry to say that we’ve just become aware that, last November, a

Richard Colvin by Pawel Dwulit for the Toronto Star

career Canadian diplomat blew the whistle on Afghani torture of prisoners turned over by Canadian troops.

a senior Canadian diplomat, Richard Colvin, who told a parliamentary committee last week that “the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured” during his time as second in command at the embassy in Kabul in 2006 and 2007.

Ian Austen, General Says Canada Fears for Afghans (The New York Times, November 22, 2009).

In the same piece, Austen reports a  “vigorous campaign by the Conservative government to discredit [Colvin's] testimony.”

PiePalace.ca has one excellent piece which is well-documented and makes clear what’s going on: Torture and the Afghanistan Mission.

See also

NATO has admitted a jail-break by hundreds of prisoners after Taleban fighters blew up a Kandahar prison gate was a success for the Taleban. But a Nato spokesman said the mass escape was an isolated incident that did not mean the militants were gaining strength in Afghanistan generally.

Afghan and Nato troops are searching for 350 militants who were among some 900 inmates to escape, officials said.

Fifteen guards died in the truck bomb and rocket attack in the southern city.

“I understand it was a very successful move for the Taleban, I’m not denying that, but we should not over-react and exaggerate in the results,” Nato spokesman General Carlos Branco told the BBC.

“It’s very soon to make an assessment and say that it was a strategic blow.”

‘Major breach’

The Afghan police and army are conducting house-to-house searches in Kandahar while Nato forces are using helicopters to secure the city and the outlying districts.A state of emergency was declared in the city, the second biggest in the country, after the attack on Friday night. All residents were ordered to stay in their homes.

Thirty fighters on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison on Friday night, freeing about 400 Taleban members, said Taleban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi.

A number of high-ranking Taleban field commanders are believed to be among those who escaped.

Prison chief Abdul Qabir said some of the inmates had chosen to stay behind during the break-out. They were said to be mostly women, children and political prisoners.

Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council and also the brother of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, suggested that the search for the escapees might prove futile.

“Honestly I don’t know because this area you can walk to the other districts,” he said.

“They might recapture some people but I don’t know.”

Key battleground

An eyewitness told the BBC that the force of the initial blast had been enough to blow out windows up to 3km (1.7 miles) from the prison.

The Post World War II G.I. Bill paid 100% of tuition for veterans. Plus other benefits. Now it maxes out at $800 month. As U.S. Senators Jim Webb and Chuck argued in “A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill,”The New York Times, November 8, 2007: “[i]t is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend man community colleges.

“In terms of providing true opportunity, the World War II G.I. Bill was one of the most important pieces of legislation in our history. It paid college tuition and fees, bought textbooks and provided a monthly stipend for eight million of the 16 million who served. Many of our colleagues in the Senate who before the war could never have dreamed of college found themselves at some of the nation’s finest educational institutions.

Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey went to Columbia on the G.I. bill; John Warner of Virginia to Washington and Lee and the University of Virginia Law School; Daniel Inouye of Hawaii to the University of Hawaii and the George Washington University Law School; and Ted Stevens of Alaska to the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Law School.

College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.

We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times. First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation.

Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel, A Post-Iraq G.I. Bill

, The New York Times, November 9, 2007.

I’m sorry I hadn’t learned of The Conjecturer until today. A blog – on initial reading – mostly about public affairs and political science by Joshua Foust and Dan Allen. I was moved by an excerpt from, and Foust’s review of, Rosanne Klass’s Land of the High Flags: Afghanistan When the Going Was Good.

From Klass:

What was lost could never be truly restored. The land had been depopulated, its people were dead, fled, or enslaved… The scholars were gone, the artists were gone, the poets, the heroes, the kings were gone, the land was stripped of life, the fields were ruined and barren. My horrors die with me, yours with you, but such horrors as these are ineffaceable, and heal, when they heal, like an amputation.

From Foust’s post:

What comes out the strongest, perhaps unintentionally, is grief. As the above passage indicates, Afghanistan has a particularly tragic past, an almost continuous record of horrendous loss and catastrophic destruction over the history of Man—what’s worse, such devastation was wrought by the hand of Man, and not Nature. It is the story of a land eternally torn back and forth by its more powerful neighbors (except for the brief, glorious Moghul empire), even if the first three-quarters of the 20th century were particularly calm.

Equally strong in Ms. Klass’ book, however, is the overwhelming sensation of beauty. Afghanistan is, she says, the face of the world—it’s people are of all colors and ethnicities (though, of course, Gul Baz Khan is worthy of particular merit). The landscape is unforgiving and painstakingly beautiful; at one point her endless commentaries upon the “glittering crystal landscape” of the mountains outside Jalalabad after a snowstorm prompt her husband to harshly rebuke her in recognition of the very real danger they were in of plummeting off a cliff to their deaths. Her description of the Buddhas of Bamiyan are of a similar ilk, as were the recordings of her trips into Paghman, Laghman, the Hazarajat, Charikar, and Bagram. Even in desolation, Afghanistan is a land of haunting beauty.

Foust is also a regular contributor to Registan

, which “covers Eurasian politics and news, seeking to draw more attention to issues and news rarely covered in much depth, if at all, by Western media. Our focus is primarily on the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, with an eye to domestic politics, relations with with rest of the world, and foreign policy as well as the occasional report on pop culture.”

From The Conjecturer.