Posted on 09/09/2002 8:05:48 PM PDT by kinghorse
With the turquoise dome of the shrine to the 18th-century father of the Afghan nation rising in the background, Muhammad Akbar paused, leaned on his pick and said that he had never before been asked to dig a grave in the sacred soil of this compound.
The grave was for Azimullah Muhammad, an 18-year-old who a week ago was an unknown seller of plastic water jugs from a dimly lit stall deep inside Kandahar's main bazaar. Now he is Afghanistan's newest hero, to be buried alongside mujahideen heroes of the guerilla war against the Soviet Union.
On Friday, television viewers around the world saw BBC footage of a man in a brown tunic watching as an Afghan Army guard shot at President Hamid Karzai and the Kandahar governor, Gul Agha Shirzai.
"Azimullah didn't hesitate a second, he just jumped on him when he saw him shooting," Khalil Pashtoon, the governor's press secretary, said. "If he had not been there, the soldier would have very easily assassinated President Karzai."
Unfazed by the attempt on his life, Mr Karzai on Saturday visited the grave of Ahmad Shah Massoud to mark the first anniversary of the commander's assassination at the hands of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
In a brief appearance at the grave, housed in a small, green-domed shrine amid the stunning mountain peaks of the Panjshir Valley, Mr Karzai presented a book and some flowers.
Mr Karzai's would-be assassin, Abdul Rahman, had been a soldier in the Taliban army. In the scuffle, the soldier apparently shot the young man as they wrestled to the ground. Then, American special forces bodyguards apparently shot them both dead.
A fervent supporter of Afghanistan's tolerant new government, Mr Muhammad, a member of the city's Persian-speaking minority, dreamed of getting a job as a bodyguard for the country's new Western-oriented president.
Surrounded by male relatives in the quiet of the city's largest Shi'ite mosque on Saturday, Azimullah Muhammad's father, Raz Muhammad, produced a small sheet of notebook paper that had been found on his son's body.
On it, Azimullah had written in neat Arabic script: "God willing, the time has come for me to meet Hamid Karzai. I will kiss his hand. I want to be a martyr for Afghanistan."
"That was his goal - to meet Hamid Karzai," reflected his older brother, Hikmatullah. "He met his goal."
Ten people were wounded in a bomb blast yesterday at a mini-cinema in the south-eastern Afghan city of Khost, near the border with Pakistan, witnesses said.
Suspected remnants of the former Taliban regime have carried out several such attacks in Khost and the Pakistani border town of Chaman this year.
Does the left have a hard on for tearing down the military or what? At any rate it's not surprising this brave lad would be killed in the cross fire. Your talking about protecting their president. Karzai has to feel like a lucky man today. It makes me wonder, however, if this wasn't done to signal a message for a bigger attack such as was the case when Massoud was assasinated a year ago. (Were these events exactly a year apart?). Again I don't want to read too much into this but...
It seems many Afghanis want to see this regime succeed. I hope the Afghan Govt. is compensating this poor lad's family. That would be an excellent use of our aid dollars IMHO.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.