Posted on 07/07/2002 2:33:52 PM PDT by HAL9000
WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) -- Speculation continues to swirl around for the motives behind the assassination of Afghan Vice President Haji Abdul Qadeer -- who might have had a reason for wanting to kill him?There were at least three major groups within Afghanistan that he had serious differences with.
The first are supporters of Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim whose entourage was attacked by a group of ethnic Pashtuns on a visit to Qadeer's power base, the city of Jalalabad, in April.
Four civilians were killed and more than 50 others injured when a bomb exploded as Fahim's convoy visited the eastern Afghan town.
Qadeer, who was also the governor of Jalalabad, blamed a local commander Hazrat Ali for the attack. Although a Pashtun like Qadeer, Ali is believed to have close ties with Fahim.
Talking to reporters after the attack, Qadeer said that although Ali was in charge of security when Fahim was attacked, the defense minister gave Ali a promotion after the assassination attempt. He was given charge of the entire region bordering Pakistan despite Qadeer's protests, the late Afghan vice president reportedly told journalists.
Qadeer also complained that Fahim was using Ali to weaken his position in the eastern provinces. Qadeer was the most powerful Pashtun commander in Fahim's Northern Alliance, which is dominated by Tajik and other ethnic minorities. Fahim is also a Tajik.
Last month Afghan President Hamid Karzai promoted Qadeer, making him one of the three vice presidents he appointed after the Loya Jirga or grand tribal assembly. Karzai also made him the minister for national reconstruction.
In today's Afghanistan, there are four ministries that are considered the most powerful: defense, interior, foreign affairs and reconstruction. Whoever controls the defense and interior ministries also controls the troops, the police and the intelligence agencies. The foreign ministry allows direct contact with outside power, allowing the minister to win over external support for his group.
Although relatively low profile, the newly created ministry for national reconstruction also became very important because of the billions of dollars Afghanistan expects from the donors to rebuild the country. Holding the ministry gives control over the dollars that will be spent during the reconstruction process.
Before the Loya Jirga, the Northern Alliance -- particularly its Tajik leaders -- held all the important ministries. But after the Jirga, Karzai removed the former Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni, and replaced him with a Pashtun, Taj Mohammed Wardak.
On June 26, Karzai expanded his cabinet and appointed two more vice presidents.
Being careful not to annoy the powerful Tajiks, Karzai not only retained Fahim as defense minister but also made him the senior most among the five vice presidents besides giving ample representation to others from the Northern Alliance.
But in the reshuffle, Karzai increased the representation of his own ethnic group, the Pashtun, which is also the largest in Afghanistan, in his 29-member cabinet.
Besides Qadeer, he promoted Hidayat Amin Arsala, an adviser to the former King Zahir Shah, also a Pashtun, to the rank of the vice president.
The moves were noticed by the Tajiks who showed their first reaction soon after the new cabinet was announced. The mainly non-Pashtun employees of the interior ministry refused to accept the new interior minister, Wardak, when he arrived to take charge from Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik.
They allowed Wardak to assume his office only after Karzai made Qanooni a security adviser in his cabinet, a move that allows the former interior minister to retain his control over the troops.
Seen in this background, many in Kabul blame the rivalry between the Pashtuns and the Tajiks for Qadeer's death. Some also say that Fahim's move to weaken Qadeer's power base in eastern Afghanistan has further aggravated the situation. And that's why some of Qadeer's relatives and supporters are directly blaming Fahim for his assassination.
While talking to reporters, Qadeer's younger brother Nasrullah Khan said that he hoped the Afghan government will "catch the real culprits" behind Qadeer's murder otherwise "we will call a news conference and disclose their names."
Meanwhile, people within the Afghan government are also looking at the possibility that another Afghan warlord, Gulbadin Hekmatyar was behind Qadeer's assassination.
They say that Qadeer and Hekmatyar were old rivals and their supporters had clashed several times in the past. Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan recently from Iran after the Iranian government closed his offices and expelled him.
He arrived in Afghanistan earlier this year and is thought to be hiding somewhere in the Pashtun-dominated East of the country. In May, the United States attempted to kill him with a Hellfire missile, but failed.
The Afghan government has blamed Hekmatyar's men for carrying out bomb attacks in Kabul since his return.
However, it is unclear how much support Hekmatyar has inside Afghanistan and whether he is strong enough to arrange such a major assassination under the noses of international peacekeepers in the capital.
Qadeer's critics have long charged that he had links with the drug mafia in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They claim that in the past he had had dealings with a known heroin smuggler of Pakistan's tribal belt, Ayub Afridi, and say that the drug mafia could also have been involved in his murder.
Qadeer's brother Abdul Haq was also murdered while trying to whip up an uprising against the then Taliban regime in October last year.
And Qadeer's friend and former tourism minister, Abdur Rahman, was killed at the Kabul airport on Feb. 14 this year. His murder too was blamed on the supporters of the defense minister because Rahman, an ethnic Tajik, had ditched his allies to join the camp of the former Afghan king.
Like Karzai, Qadeer also had good relations with the former king and wanted to give him a greater role in Afghan affairs.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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