Taliban explain Ahmad Wali's killing

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MG16Df02.html

The Taliban have issued a statement offering an explanation for the assassination in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar of Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger half-brother of President Hamid Karzai.

This statement was released on Thursday - the same day a suicide bomber disrupted the memorial service in Kandahar for Ahmad Wali, killing three people, including Maulawi Ekmatullah, the head of the local ulema shura (provincial religious council).

Earlier, the burial of Ahmad Wali on Tuesday, attended by President Karzai, passed off without incident. But the Taliban targeted the memorial service, which was held for those who were


had traveled from remote places and couldn't attend the funeral.

Direct references in the Taliban statement to the Afghan president were conspicuous in their absence. The focus was almost entirely on Ahmad Wali, since the Taliban wanted the Afghan elites to draw the necessary conclusions as to why the 49-year-old head of Kandahar's elected provincial council had to be eliminated.

[Demeter]

1. Destabilization is the Name of the Game

to move the US out.

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2. this from May -- Shift in Taliban tactics alarms Afghanistan government

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13589764

he killing of General Mohammad Daud Daud, the police commander for northern Afghanistan, on Saturday by a suicide bomber who infiltrated security wearing a police uniform, highlights a recent change in Taliban tactics, says the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

Attacks by rogue soldiers or police and Taliban infiltrators have increased in frequency and ambition in recent months, say Afghan officials, and have sparked panic among President Hamid Karzai and his government.

A week before his death, Gen Daud said that militants had tried to infiltrate his security. He had had warnings about a threat to his life.

"The Haqqanis and Taliban groups tried to offer money to some of my police, some of my guards," Gen Daud told me in his heavily armoured convoy as he travelled to a meeting with visiting US Senator John Kerry in Mazar-e-Sharif.