Deputy Intelligence Chief Is Slain in Afghanistan/Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes

Deputy Intelligence Chief Is Slain in Afghanistan
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and TAIMOOR SHAH
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 2, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


KABUL, Afghanistan — The second-ranking intelligence official in Afghanistan was assassinated by a suicide bomber Wednesday morning in a blast that killed 15 others and wounded 54 in Mehterlam, the capital of the eastern province of Laghman, security officials and witnesses said.

People gathered at the scene of the suicide bomb blast in the city of Mehterlam where Afghanistan's second-ranking intelligence official was killed on Wednesday.
Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy director of the National Directorate for Security, the country’s intelligence service, was killed about 10:30 a.m. as he left the main mosque in Mehterlam, where he had gone to talk with local residents about their problems, witnesses said.

The assassination was carried out by a suicide bomber on foot who targeted Dr. Laghmani and other government officials, said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Mr. Mujahid said the insurgency had long sought to kill Dr. Abdullah, the former head of intelligence for Kandahar Province, who he claimed had committed crimes by detaining and jailing many people.

“The main target was Dr. Abdullah,” Mr. Mujahid said in a telephone interview. “We were looking for him for a long time but today we succeeded.”

One of Dr. Abdullah’s aides at the national intelligence service also confirmed in a telephone interview that Dr. Abdullah had been killed.

The assassination of such a powerful member of the country’s security apparatus highlighted the lack of security even in cities that are not considered to have significant Taliban influence.

Of the 54 wounded, 20 of the most seriously injured were flown by helicopter to Kabul for treatment said Dr. Abdul Latif Qayomi, the head of public health for Laghman Province. Three of the 15 other fatalities were women, he said.

Witnesses said the bomber struck as a throng of people followed Dr. Laghmani outside the mosque to wish him goodbye.

“I helped take the wounded and the bodies of those who were killed to the hospital,” said Malem Malang, the head of a tribal council who was near the site of the attack.

Mehterlam is relatively safe city, compared to other cities in eastern Afghanistan, and the attack seemed clearly intended to strike Dr. Laghmani at a time when could be expected to feel at ease while visiting his home province.

Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar.







Tribal Leaders Say Karzai’s Team Forged 23,900 Votes
By DEXTER FILKINS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/world/asia/02fraud.html?ref=global-home


KABUL, Afghanistan — Just a week before this country’s presidential election, the leaders of a southern Afghan tribe called Bariz gathered to make a bold decision: they would abandon the incumbent and local favorite, Hamid Karzai, and endorse his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

Mr. Abdullah flew to the southern city of Kandahar to receive the tribe’s endorsement. The leaders of the tribe, who live in a district called Shorabak, prepared to deliver a local landslide.

But it never happened, the tribal leaders said.

Instead, aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali — the leader of the Kandahar provincial council and the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan — detained the governor of Shorabak, Delaga Bariz, and shut down all of the district’s 45 polling sites on election day. The ballot boxes were taken to Shorabak’s district headquarters, where, Mr. Bariz and other tribal leaders said, local police officers stuffed them with thousands of ballots.

At the end of the day, 23,900 ballots were shipped to Kabul, Mr. Bariz said, with every one marked for President Karzai.

“Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot — not a single person,” Mr. Bariz said in an interview here in the capital, where he and a group of tribal elders came to file a complaint. “Mr. Karzai’s people stuffed all the ballot boxes.”

The accusations by Mr. Bariz, and several other tribal leaders from Shorabak, are the most serious allegations so far that have been publicized against Mr. Karzai’s electoral machine, which faces a deluge of fraud complaints from around the country.

The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday that the number of complaints about vote stealing and other forms of fraud had reached 2,615.

Mr. Karzai’s campaign is accused of forging ballots, stealing votes and preventing people from going to the polls.

In Kandahar Province, where Mr. Karzai’s family is in control, allegations of a type similar to those made in Shorabak have been made in many of the province’s 17 districts. Early election returns show that Mr. Karzai has managed to capture nearly 48,000 votes, compared with only 3,000 for Mr. Abdullah, his nearest challenger.

Slightly less than half of all ballots have been counted. Mr. Karzai leads with about 46 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Mr. Abdullah.

Mr. Karzai and his aides deny any sort of fraud, and they have hunkered down in the presidential palace to await the final results. But the allegations are casting a cloud over his re-election campaign, raising the prospect that even if he wins his presidency could be seriously tainted.

At the same time, the allegations are increasing the pressure on American officials to ensure that the accusations of fraud are properly investigated. An election widely perceived as having been stolen could deal a serious setback to the Obama administration, which has committed itself to prevailing here in the nearly eight-year-old war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Allegations like those described by Mr. Bariz are throwing the basic integrity of the election into question. Much of the story told by Mr. Bariz and the other tribal elders was impossible to verify. But it appeared credible. All three men spoke in great detail. And all of them were willing to be publicly named and to have their photographs taken.

As recently as 10 months ago, Mr. Bariz said, he had considered himself an ally of President Karzai. He had been nominated by a group of Bariz elders to be the governor of the Shorabak District, a desolate stretch of sand and scrub that sits on the country’s southwestern border with Pakistan. Mr. Bariz’s nomination was ratified by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, who was appointed by President Karzai.

But as election day neared, Mr. Bariz and other leaders in his tribe said they could not bring themselves to support Mr. Karzai for another five-year term. The reason, he said, was that Mr. Karzai’s government had done so little good.

“There are no clinics, no schools, no roads, no water dams — nothing,” Mr. Bariz said. “We decided to support someone who would unify the country.” The leaders of the Bariz tribe picked Mr. Abdullah, a former foreign minister.

In theory, the decision by the elders sealed Mr. Abdullah’s victory in Shorabak: nearly everyone in Shorabak belongs to the Bariz tribe. As is common in many such societies, tribal leaders in Afghanistan often negotiate with politicians to deliver the votes of their tribe.

Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager in southern Afghanistan, Esmatullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the candidate met a large group of Bariz tribal elders in Kandahar on Aug. 12 to receive their endorsement. It was a joyous affair, Mr. Esmatullah said, for which even women turned out. But not everyone who wanted to come to the endorsement ceremony was able to make it.

“The police were blocking the roads,” Mr. Esmatullah said.


Sangar Rahimi contributed to this report from Kabul.