It would be wise not to entirely swallow the Taliban claim to have killed Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar on Tuesday. The man who killed him was his long-time bodyguard with no known Taliban leanings, and there is no shortage of reasons for one man to kill another in Afghanistan. The Taliban may have had a hand in his death but it is equally possible that he died as a result of personal enmity, business gone bad, or a power struggle in the criminal underworld which he was, for years, credibly associated with. The backstory is irrelevant to a degree because his passing leaves a vacuum not only in the political life of Kandahar, but of Afghanistan as a whole. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the lynch-pin for his half-brother in the presidential palace – Hamid Karzai. He it was who was able to deliver elections, to be the broker in the eternal feuding between tribes and families that characterises much of Afghan life, and he it was that Nato and the CIA looked to as a powerful fixer eternally useful in the fight against the Taliban.
The death of Wali Karzai also brings into sharp focus the folly of relying on individuals rather than building institutions of governance, a folly repeated by Nato and Isaf virtually everywhere in Afghanistan. Many of the men that Nato and Isaf have cultivated have colourful and decidedly murky pasts – hardly the kind of compost from which might spring the green shoots of an emerging democracy. As the country moves into the transition wherein Isaf and Nato forces decline in numbers, and responsibility for security devolves to the Afghan army and police force, this death is going to have a profound effect on security and stability. There is no obvious successor and the Taliban, who are keen to consolidate their own political positions preparatory for the inevitable talks that might see them entering government, will capitalise on his death. Whoever succeeds Wali Karzai will need to give careful thought to their choice of bodyguard.
Copyright TheNews 14.7.2011
