22 September 2011
Updated 3 October 2011
Respected former president and head of the Afghan High Peace Council Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated September 20th by a suicide bomber. Reuters news agency reported immediately afterwards that the Taliban accepted responsibility for the killing. However, on their website, the Taliban contested the Reuters report but refused to discuss the incident further.
The work of the ethnic Tajik Rabbani and the Afghan High Peace Council to bring peace and reconciliation to Afghanistan were the subject of a report published in EdC earlier this year. Rabbani was deputized by Afghan President Hamid Karzai last year to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Taliban.
The earliest reports from the Taliban were that they had deliberately sought to gain the confidence of Rabbani in order to kill him. The suicide bomber gained entrance to Rabbani’s well-guarded residence by pretending to be a Taliban commander who wanted to surrender, according to reports. As a sign of respect, the man was not searched before gaining an audience with the former president of Afghanistan. He bowed, placing his head against the chest of Rabbani, and the bomb, hidden in his turban, exploded, killing Rabbani and wounding two other members of the Council as well as the killer’s unnamed accomplice.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid identified the suicide bomber as Mohammad Masoom, reported the Long War Journal. “As soon as Rabbani came three steps forward to hug Mohammad Massom, he triggered his explosive-filled jacket killing Rabbani, (another) Taliban militant Wahid Yar and four security guards present in the house,” he told Reuters.
The treachery involved in the manner of assassinating Rabbani could backfire on the Taliban, and may be the reason why senior Taliban spokesman refusing to accept or deny responsibility. Some analysts think killing Rabbani may be a seen as a step too far, even for the Taliban, reports the The Guardian. Wahid Mujda, a political analyst who held a mid-level position within the old Taliban regime said its Quetta Shura, believed to be led by Mullah Omar, would be reluctant to claim credit for killing a figure who commanded respect among a large group of Afghans.
The spectacle of this brutal murder is being cast as “a blow to the peace process” by the media.
US Marine General John Allen, who took over command of ISAF from General David Petraeus in July, released a statement in which he said that Rabbani’s assassination is a sign “that the insurgents are afraid: they are afraid of the peace process…These attacks are a sign of their weakness, not of their strength.” “Insurgent leaders understand that peace and Reintegration is one of the greatest threats they face.”
Rabbani was seen as a leading figure among Afghanistan’s Tajik minority. He led the Jamait Islami, a major guerrilla force against the Soviet occupation that ended in 1989, and took power in 1992. He served as Afghan president until 1996, fleeing Kabul after the Taliban takeover. He then became a leader of the Northern Alliance, a multi-ethnic coalition that fought against the Taliban and, with the help of US Special Forces and US air power, overthrew the Taliban regime in Kabul in 2001. He was briefly Afghan president again before giving way to Hamid Karzai, the current incumbent.
Mullah Omar either does or does not control the Taliban and its various factions, such as the so-called “Haqqani network.” If he does, then the treachery involved in the assassination of Rabbani lays on his shoulders. If he does not, and the Haqqani network is instead controlled or strongly influenced by Pakistan’s Interservices Intelligence Agency, the ISI, as Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen has stated; then the terrorist forces operating in Afghanistan are simply there to destabilize the country for no single political purpose relevant to Afghanis. Omar’s position cannot withstand either case.
If Omar accepts responsibility for treachery, then resistance within Afghanistan can only be hardened against him. No overture of peace could be trusted, and Afghanis working on behalf of the Karzai regime would be induced to work together in the common cause of saving their own skins.
If Omar disavows responsibility, then he is diminished. He either cannot control his own forces, or is exposed as merely one leader among several who are tools of Pakistan or Iran. Nothing unites Afghans more than dislike and distrust of Pakistan.
And a leader too weak to control his own forces cannot long survive unless he disciplines the miscreants who caused this embarrassment, leading to infighting among his own forces.
Mullah Omar knows the treacherous assassination of Rabbani was a strategic blunder. “Our position on [the assassination] is that we can’t talk about it and all the media reports that claim responsibility are groundless…Right now we don’t want to talk,” the Taliban said on their website.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is aware of Mullah Omar’s dilemma, and has begun to capitalize on it. On October 3rd, Karzai said that attempts to negotiate with the insurgent movement are futile and efforts at dialogue should focus on neighbouring Pakistan, according to AP.
“Their messengers are coming and killing…So with whom should we make peace?” Karzai asked in a videotaped speech broadcast to a gathering of Afghanistan’s top religious leaders. He continued to tag Omar and the insurgents as agents of the Pakistan government. “I cannot find Mullah Mohammad Omar. Where is he? I cannot find the Taliban council. Where is it? I don’t have any answer except to say that the other side for this negotiation is Pakistan.”
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