Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe

With Karzai’s help, Mohammad, who had been a melon farmer with a wife, three sons and four daughters, eventually became a police commander responsible for about 200 men who guarded eight checkpoints, the relatives said. Among his duties were to guard Karzai family homes and the cemetery where Ahmed Wali Karzai was buried on Wednesday.

He met six days a week with Ahmed Wali Karzai, who would pay his policemen’s salary if it was late and also provide additional money for him, Malik said. Their relationship was so close that Karzai brought his mother to Mohammad’s home. And just days before his death, Karzai asked the government for more equipment and personnel for Mohammad, according to the senior Afghan official.

Mohammad also met with U.S. and British military officials, and would be introduced to the new commanders when they rotated into Kandahar, the relatives said. Two of Mohammad’s brothers-in-law said they work as guards at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Kandahar — situated on a hillside at the former home of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar — as part of the agency-run paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.

These relatives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mohammad was not a member of the strike force, which Karzai helped recruit to fight the Taliban, but that he shared intelligence with U.S. officials and arrested hundreds of insurgents over the years.

“If there was something Sardar could do that the Americans couldn’t, they would ask him to do it,” Malik said. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they were asking Sardar to make the arrest.”

On the morning of the killing, Mohammad walked into Karzai’s bustling home, asked for a private moment, and showed him a document listing the names of men who worked for him. As Karzai looked at it, Mohammad pulled out a pistol and shot him. One bullet struck the right side of his face and exited behind his ear; another hit near his heart, according to his death certificate. He died before he reached nearby Mirwais Hospital; while there, a doctor said, someone stole his watch.

After the shooting, Karzai’s guards entered the room and riddled Mohammad with bullets — his death certificate said he was shot in the skull and had 11 other gunshot wounds. Mohammad’s body was taken into the streets and strung up from a building by a rope, before eventually arriving at the hospital. Despite Islamic custom demanding a swift burial, on Thursday morning Mohammad’s corpse was still in the hospital’s refrigerated morgue in a white body bag. Nobody has come to retrieve it and the relatives said they are waiting for it to be delivered.

“We feel sorry for both of them,” said one relative. “We don’t know what caused this killing.”

The families were still so close, he said, that he helped dig Ahmed Wali Karzai’s grave.

 

 

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.