TALIBAN ATTACK KILLS KANDAHAR POLICE CHIEF
U.S. COMMANDER IN AFGHANISTAN TARGETED, BUT ESCAPES UNHARMED
After more than a decade, the Taliban finally got their man Thursday in a devastating attack that killed Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq, the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan.
The main target of the attack was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, who escaped unharmed. But Raziq was killed along with the Kandahar intelligence chief.
U.S. military officials confirmed that a U.S. soldier, a contractor and another civilian were wounded in the attack, which occurred shortly after a high-level meeting attended by Miller.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said the provincial governor, Zalmai Wesa, was wounded in the shooting and was rushed to a local hospital, where he was later reported to have died of his wounds.
A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire as officials were in the governor’s compound following a security meeting about crucial parliamentary elections on Saturday.
The lone attacker was killed after fatally shooting Raziq and wounding several of his bodyguards, Afghan and U.S. security officials said. He was reported to be a member of the provincial governor’s security team.
Several current and former officials lamented the death of Raziq, 39, a close U.S. ally and fierce anti-Taliban fighter.
“It is a big loss for Afghanistan,” Shakeba Hashimi, a legislator from Kandahar, said by cellphone as she was en route to his funeral at a hospital there. “We have security in Kandahar that we don’t have in the capital. It is because of this honorable general.”
Amrullah Saleh, a former Afghan national intelligence chief, tweeted that Raziq had been “an architect of stability” in Kandahar.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal, tweeted that Raziq’s death was “a dark day” for the country. He said Raziq had “single-handedly restored stability to a volatile Kandahar and the greater south.”
Raziq, a lieutenant general in the Afghan National Police, was a controversial official who had been repeatedly accused of torturing detainees and other abuses during his rise to power in Kandahar. At the same time, he earned a reputation as a ferocious opponent of the Taliban and gained the respect of successive American and NATO military officials in Afghanistan.
He had survived a number of assassination attempts, including suicide attacks, but had managed to strengthen security in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.
In September 2008, he escaped unharmed when he was targeted by two suicide bombers who slipped into the Afghan National Police headquarters in Kandahar City, killing themselves and at least two Afghan police officers.
Raziq earned a reputation for brutality and corruption in the border police beginning a decade ago. But in recent years, as a top police official and ruthless anti-insurgent fighter, he was widely praised for bringing Kandahar and the surrounding region under government control. His forces received Western training and funds, and U.S. military officials often consulted him.
Last year, a United Nations report said the worst torture in Afghanistan took place in police jails in Kandahar, and the UN Committee Against Torture called for the investigation and prosecution of Raziq. A decade earlier, a 2006 U.S. State Department study found that he had been removed from his post with the border police for arresting and tormenting a group of men from a rival clan. In 2011, the Atlantic magazine quoted two men who described being tortured with electric shocks in a prison operated by Raziq, who by then had been promoted to a senior police post. He categorically denied any wrongdoing.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yusuf Ahmadi, said in an email to journalists that the group carried out the attack and that its “main target” was Miller. Ahmadi described Raziq as “the savage commander of Kandahar.”
Miller, 57, took over last month as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, replacing Gen. John Nicholson. A veteran of some of the U.S. military’s most secretive combat units, he formerly served as commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and participated in numerous combat operations, including in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.