Published: September 20, 2011
Afghanistan's former president Burhanuddin Rabbani smiles during an interview with Reuters in Kabul in this November 1, 2004 file photograph. Rabbani, the chairman of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, was killed in an attack on his home in Kabul on September 20, 2011. PHOTO: REUTERS
KABUL: The head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, and former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, was killed on Tuesday evening, a senior police officer said.
His home is in Kabul’s heavily guarded diplomatic enclave, and the attack came just a week after a 20-hour siege at the edge of the area sometimes known as the “green zone”.
“Rabbani has been martyred,” Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told Reuters. He had no further details.
Hashmatullah Stanikzai, spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, said it was “probably” a suicide attack.
A senior Karzai advisor Masoom Stanekzai, who was also in the meeting was alive but badly wounded as they met with two members of the Taliban.
Rabbani was formerly leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and served as president in the 1990s when mujahideen factions waged war for control of the country after the Soviet withdrawal.
Rabbani is a well liked figure among the political echelons of Afghanistan, though the Taliban have a reserved approach towards him. It is unclear whether the members of Taliban with whom they were meeting were the bombers.
The assassination comes a week after a 20-hour gun and grenade attack that on Kabul’s diplomatic enclave by insurgents, and three suicide bomb attacks on other parts of the city — together the longest-lasting and most wide-ranging assault on the city.
Last week’s siege was the third major attack on the Afghan capital since June and included three suicide bombing in other parts of the city. At least five policemen and 11 civilians were killed.
All three of those attacks are believed to be the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent faction, based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border
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Advisor to Afghan president badly wounded in Kabul attack - police
20 Sep 2011 14:35
Source: reuters // Reuters
KABUL, Sept 20 (Reuters) - A senior advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai was seriously wounded in an attack in Kabul on Tuesday that killed former President and High Peace Council head Burhanuddin Rabbani, a senior police source said.
"Masoom Stanekzai is alive but badly wounded," the police source, who asked not to be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
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Afghans bury murdered peace broker
21 Sep 2011 06:50
Source: reuters // Reuters
Supporters of Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan president and head of the government's peace council, hold a picture of him as they stand outside his house a day after he was killed in Kabul September 21, 2011. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
By Hamid Shalizi and Martin Petty
KABUL, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Afghans gathered to mourn assassinated former President and chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani on Wednesday, world peace day, as fears mounted that his death could worsen ethnic divisions and nudge the country towards civil war.
Rabbani, perhaps the most prominent Afghan to be killed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He died at his home early on Tuesday evening after a suicide bomber detonated explosives concealed in a turban.
The killing was a strong statement of Taliban opposition to peace talks, and the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations to shake the confidence of ordinary Afghans that security can be improved.
Since Rabbani was a prominent Tajik, his killing is also likely to exacerbate ethnic divides, which in themselves could do more to halt any peace process than the death of a man who while influential, had so far produced limited evidence of concrete steps towards negotiations.
His inner circle have not yet decided where to bury Rabbani, who first made his name as a fiery lecturer and activist and then became an anti-Soviet fighter, before briefly heading the country after the fall of the Soviet-backed regime.
"Discussions are still going on whether to bury professor Rabbani on the Wazir Akbar Khan hilltop, or the west of Kabul in the university," Abdul Wali Niazi, a close aide to Rabbani, told Reuters.
Wazir Akbar Khan is Kabul's diplomatic enclave, where Rabbani had his well-guarded home.
His killer was reported to have been escorted through layers of security without checks, because of promises he brought a message from the Taliban leadership.
On Wednesday morning, crowds gathered on the blocked-off street where Rabbani had his home, and armoured cars with blacked-out windows carried senior officials, friends and other prominent Afghans to a memorial service inside.
Students from Kabul university carrying banners, angry at the government, were among the hundreds-strong crowd on a street draped with black banners.
"The situation will further deteriorate because of the killings of our leaders," said Mujeed, a 21 year-old student of political law, from Rabbani's home province of Badakhshan.
"We have no choice but to arm ourselves and defend the country. This is a plot hatched by the government to get rid of Rabbani, because he was exposing the fact that the government wanted the Taliban to come back," he said.
A group of about nine other students clustered around him nodded in agreement.
Various activities planned to celebrate peace day across the city, including a concert for women by famous Afghan singer Farhad Darya, were cancelled after the assassination.
(Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Ed Lane)
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INTERVIEW-Rabbani death shuts Afghan "door of stability"-colleague
24 Sep 2011 17:03
Source: Reuters // Reuters
By William Maclean
Sept 24 (Reuters) - The killing of chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani has robbed Afghanistan of the only figure with the range of international contacts to end the conflict there, an influential Arab colleague said on Saturday.
"Whoever killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, the intention was to kill any opportunity for peace and stability in Afghanistan," said Abdullah Anas, a former anti-Soviet fighter and Algerian Islamist activist who has worked behind the scenes in recent years to prepare contacts between warring Afghan factions.
"After this assassination, to be honest, I do not know what will happen ... Any group who was behind this assassination meant to close the door of stability in Afghanistan."
Rabbani's killing at his Kabul home on Tuesday by a bomber claiming to be carrying a message of peace from the Taliban leadership has triggered fears of dangerous divisions in Afghans fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.
In the past year, Anas has assisted the High Peace Council overseen by Rabbani, a former Afghan president, guerrilla leader and academic, and a few weeks ago was named Rabbani's adviser for peace talks in Europe.
Speaking to Reuters from Britain, where he is now based, Anas said Rabbani's varied career in politics, academia and international Islamic circles, and his record of cooperating with Afghan ethnic groups in the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s, made him acceptable to many inside the country and out as an interlocutor in peace talks.
Regional rivalries, the competing demands of different groups inside Afghanistan and international counter-terrorism concerns have complicated the search for peace in Afghanistan and a negotiated settlement is likely to require contacts among a wide array of players, diplomats say.
Anas said Rabbani was not comparable to other politicians inside Afghanistan, most of whom where limited in their contacts due to ethnic or political background and therefore not well placed for the international mediation likely to be required.
"Some of them can visit Tehran, but not Riyadh. Some can visit Riyadh but not Tehran. Some can visit India, but not Islamabad. And vice versa - except one man (RabbanI). He was welcomed in Tehran as he was in Riyadh and in Islamabad."
"At the level of the agendas of the region, no one can have as good a chance for the future of peace talks as this man," he told Reuters.
RABBANI "BEST MAN" TO MAKE PEACE
Some Afghans fear the country's most high-profile killing since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban will re-open fractures from Afghanistan's civil war and make peace more elusive.
"Politically this assassination is assassinating stability and reconciliation in Afghanistan, because to target such a personality, so balanced politically and socially, it's at the heart of that goal. There is no way for happiness to come back to Afghanistan but through reconciliation. Nothing else," Anas said.
He said he was commenting on the political context of the killing "not about who will be found to have killed him after a legal investigation. This is the domain of the law."
Rabbani, a professor, president and mujahideen fighter, was the most prominent surviving leader of the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance of fighters and politicians. In recent years he had formed an uneasy alliance with President Hamid Karzai, who comes from the largely Pashtun south, but the rapprochement and the push for talks with the Taliban were not supported by all of his old allies.
Not everyone is mourning Rabbani. His appointment was divisive, largely because of his mujahideen past and his role in the civil war that followed the fall of the Soviet-backed government and devastated Kabul.
But Anas said Rabbani had exceptional connections across Afghanistan's ethnic communities that were vital for peace talks. "Although he was a Tajik, ... his organisation during the Soviet war contained many, many big commanders from the Pashtuns, from Kandahar ... Paktia, Jalalabad and elsewhere," he said.
"Rabbani was the best man to facilitate among the ethnic groups in Afghanistan. He was a moderate, reasonable voice among the nasty ethnic rivalries of Afghanistan."
Anas, head of the UK-based Taruf conflict resolution consultancy, was an aide to anti-Soviet guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. (Reporting by William Maclean in Tripoli; Editing by Robert Woodward)
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TIMELINE-"Rogue" attacks in Afghanistan
26 Sep 2011 13:27
Source: Reuters // Reuters
Sept 26 (Reuters) - An Afghan employee of the U.S. government killed a U.S. civilian and wounded one other during a shooting incident inside a CIA compound in Kabul on Sunday.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul said an investigation was underway to determine the motivation for the attack, during which the gunman was killed.
The shooting follows a series of attacks by Afghan security personnel against their NATO-led mentors carried out either by "rogue" soldiers and police or by insurgents who have infiltrated security forces.
Here is a list of recent rogue attacks in Afghansitan:
Aug 4 - A service member from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed when a man dressed as an Afghan policeman opened fire during a security operation in the country's east.
July 16 - An Afghan army soldier killed at least one foreign soldier during a joint patrol in southern Helmand province. The gunmen fled and surrendered to insurgents, the Taliban said.
May 13 - An Afghan National Civil Order police officer shot and killed two members of the NATO-led coalition in southern Helmand province.
April 27 - An Afghan Air Force pilot opens fire at the military wing of Kabul's main airport, killing eight U.S. troops and a U.S. contractor.
April 18 - An insurgent dressed in Afghan army uniform opens fire inside the Afghan Defence Ministry in central Kabul, killing two employees and wounding seven.
April 16 - A suicide bomber in an Afghan army uniform kills five foreign and four Afghan soldiers at a base in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangarhar province.
April 15 - A suicide bomber in police uniform evades tight security at the police headquarters in southern Kandahar city and kills provincial police chief Khan Mohammad Mujahid.
April 4 - Two American soldiers are shot dead by an Afghan border policeman in northern Faryab province.
Feb 18 - Two German soldiers are shot dead and eight others wounded by a gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform in northern Baghlan province.
Nov 30, 2010 - A trainee Afghan border policeman shoots dead six U.S. soldiers during a training mission in Nangarhar province.
Aug 25, 2010 - Two Spanish police and an interpreter shot dead by an Afghan policeman during a weapons training exercise at a Spanish-run base in Qalay-e Naw, in northwestern Badghis province.
July 13, 2010 - Three British soldiers belonging to the Royal Gurkha Rifles are killed in an attack by a renegade Afghan soldier at a joint British-Afghan base in the Nahr-e Saraj district of southern Helmand province.
July 20, 2010 - Two U.S. security contractors are killed by an Afghan soldier at a firearms range at Camp Shaheen near Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Balkh province.
Dec 29, 2009 - An Afghan soldier kills one U.S. soldier and wounds two Italian troops at a military base in the Bala Murghab district of Badghis province.
Nov 3, 2009 - A renegade Afghan policeman kills five British soldiers and wounds six others in a gun attack while they were resting in Helmand province. He escaped and has not been captured. (Compiled by Kabul burea; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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