Grief-stricken Hamid Karzai climbs into assassinated brother's grave

[Synthaholic]

Grief-stricken Hamid Karzai climbs into assassinated brother's grave

'It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives,' Afghan president later says


KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Pushing through a ring of his security men, President Hamid Karzai climbed into his slain half-brother's freshly dug grave Wednesday and sobbed alongside the coffin at a funeral attended by thousands of mourners.


Overcome with grief, the president and appealed to his countrymen to stop the violence.


Hours later, a bomb attack killed five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian in the east of the country.


The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was shot a point blank range by a close confidant a day earlier, left Afghanistan's leader without a powerful ally in the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and site of recent military offensives by the U.S.-led military coalition.


The radical Islamic movement claimed responsibility for the killing, and the president, speaking later at a somber press conference, challenged his insurgent adversaries to give up violence.


"My message for them (the Taliban) is that my countrymen, my brothers, should stop killing their own people," Karzai said. "It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives."

How assassin used ruse to kill Karzai brother


*snip*

 

[Sallow]

Much as I don't like President Karzai..this was a bitter pill.

 

[Douger]

Sounds like a great place for a vacation.

 

[waltky]

Granny says...

... Too bad somebody didn't cover him up.

 

[freedombecki]

Grief-stricken Hamid Karzai climbs into assassinated brother's grave

'It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives,' Afghan president later says

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Pushing through a ring of his security men, President Hamid Karzai climbed into his slain half-brother's freshly dug grave Wednesday and sobbed alongside the coffin at a funeral attended by thousands of mourners.

Overcome with grief, the president and appealed to his countrymen to stop the violence.

Hours later, a bomb attack killed five French soldiers and an Afghan civilian in the east of the country.

The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was shot a point blank range by a close confidant a day earlier, left Afghanistan's leader without a powerful ally in the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and site of recent military offensives by the U.S.-led military coalition.

The radical Islamic movement claimed responsibility for the killing, and the president, speaking later at a somber press conference, challenged his insurgent adversaries to give up violence.

"My message for them (the Taliban) is that my countrymen, my brothers, should stop killing their own people," Karzai said. "It is easy to kill and everyone can do it, but the real man is the one who can save people's lives."

How assassin used ruse to kill Karzai brother

*snip*

That's quite a telling link, Synthaholic, of the killing canards the Taliban does to strengthen its ties with Pakistan and gouge the Karzai regime.

 

[DiAnna]

It's difficult to feel sorry for Karzai, frankly. He's a completely corrupt, utterly worthless dictator, who has stolen every US aid dollar sent to Afghanistan to line the pockets of his family. He constantly betrays the US, trying to ally himself with the Taliban for his own protection, caring not one whit about his own people except when he can use a civilian death to lead an outraged chant against America. Meanwhile, Afghani females are still being oppressed, their schools burned to the ground, and Karzai continues to support laws that keep them that way.

One of his brothers, whom he set up to live the fat life on money that was supposed to help Afghani citizens, gets offed by the same Taliban Karzai is trying to cut a deal with? Color me unsurprised and not terribly sympathetic.

 

[waltky]

Security is complicated in Afghanistan by assassinations...

The wave of Afghan assassinations underscores a complicated security situation
July 18, 2011 - A reporter struggles to figure out what the murder of two sources says about the state of the Afghanistan war.

Afghanistan has always seemed to be a difficult country to read, but as the NATO has begun looking to exit, ever more divergent narratives are emerging. As a firsthand observer to it all, I'm often asked which narrative to believe. Is or isn't Afghanistan ready for drawdown? The best answer I can come up with? It’s complicated. Last night, Hashim Watanwal, a member of parliament from Uruzgan province was killed while visiting Jan Mohammed Khan, a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai and major power-broker here. Two suicide bombers entered Mr. Khan’s house in an a presumably secure neighborhood of Kabul and killed the two men.

While I’d never met Mr. Watanwal in person, I’d talked to him several times over the phone, most recently on Thursday, and he proved a helpful and friendly source. He’s also the second person I’ve talked to in recent months who has been killed within days of speaking with me: The other was Gen. Khan Mohammad Mujahid, police chief for Kandahar Province. Though Watanwal and General Mujahid held different opinions about where the country was headed shortly before their deaths – Watanwal was cynical and Mujahid said he’d seen major improvements – their murders inside secure compounds stand as a stark reminder of how unstable Afghanistan remains.

About 12 hours after Watanwal and Khan’s assassination, I attended US Army Gen. David Petraeus’s change of command ceremony. For anyone who follows Afghanistan, the speakers’ remarks may have been predictable. They spent a lot of time elaborating the successes of international and Afghan security forces. And then ceded that the gains were fragile and reversible, as NATO commanders tend to say. For firsthand observers to the conflict, it’s often easy to poke fun at NATO’s seemingly indefatigable public optimism in the face of incidents like Sunday night's assassination, however, it’s also sometimes difficult to know who is right.

Just a few days before Mujahid was killed inside the police headquarters in Kandahar this past April, I sat in his office drinking tea and chatting about the security situation. Later in the afternoon, I planned to drive into the Arghandab district, an area that just a year before was home to some of the most brutal fighting in the country. I made the trip without any problems. “I am hopeful that we will have a safe and secure environment in our city,” he told me, somewhat annoyed that I continued to press him with concerns that the situation might not be as good as it seemed. “We have destroyed and eradicated [militants’] safe havens, so they don’t have bases to plan their attacks and operations.”

A few days later, a man dressed in an Afghan police uniform approached Mujahid, hugged him, and detonated a suicide bomb in the courtyard of the police station. Does that mean everything he said about security improvements in the south of Afghanistan was wrong? Again, it’s complicated. There are definite gains, but the region still has a long way to go before the chief of police won’t have to worry about being killed by one of his own men or someone dressed like one of his own men. When it comes to consuming the news about Afghanistan, the best advice I can give readers hoping to make sense of the situation, is to take nothing at face value. It’s always more complicated than it seems, no matter how earnest the convictions or who they're coming from.

Source

 

[sablegsd]

Who cares? Faux emotion from a faux pali.