Mullah Naqib injured in explosion
An important pro-government tribal leader in Afghanistan was injured in a roadside explosion in Kandahar early yesterday, prompting fears of reprisal attacks by members of his tribe.
Mullah Naqib, the leader of the Alikozai tribe, was travelling with his two sons when he was targeted by a remotely detonated roadside bomb in the Arghandab valley just outside Kandahar.
Mr Naqib was severely wounded in the attack and has been flown to India to undergo emergency treatment. One of his sons died yesterday morning, while the other is being treated by Coalition forces in a NATO military base.
Mr Naqib has recently been involved in drives to curb the Taliban led insurgency in Southern Afghanistan. He urged young men in the volatile Panjwayi and Zheray districts not to become involved in the fighting and linked the Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah to the death of another tribal leader. The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for the attack, and are just one of a number of potential culprits.
Rival tribes, the Taliban, Hezb-I Islami loyalists and foreign security services have all used assassination to deal with people hindering their goals in the past.
Naqib knew he was under threat and he had been given an armoured four wheel drive vehicle by President Karzai just a fortnight ago.
Sources in Kandahar say that Mr. Naqib’s tribe are already planning revenge attacks against the Taliban, who they suspect of carrying out the attack.
In the 1980’s Naqib was a prominent commander in the mujahideen who spearheaded resistance against the Soviet occupation. He came to prominence again after the US led invasion of Afghanistan as an important ally of the Karzai administration.
Since 2001, he has often negotiated key issues between the Taliban and central government including cease-fires, police corruption and local needs in Kandahar.
Before the fall of the Taliban, Naqib was close to movement’s supreme leader Mullah Omar and was once governor of Kandahar. It was Naqib's decision to quit the city with his fighters in 1994 that allowed the Taliban's rise to power to begin. And it was Naqib to whom Omar turned when Northern Alliance and US forces were closing in. Omar handed control of Kandahar to Naqib when Taliban forces abandoned the city.
In his last recorded interview, with the news agency AfghanWire, Naqib warned that he was “a little fed up” with Mullah Omar and criticized the number of civilian casualties caused by British troops in Helmand province.
afghanwire
London (Andrew Wilder)
AFGHANWIRE MEDIA BLOG
Sunday, 18 March 2007
