Key Afghan leader Rabbani killed in Kabul bombing

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: September 20 | Updated: Wednesday, September 21, 7:57 AM

KABUL — Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was appointed last year to head a commission trying to broker a peace deal with the Taliban, was killed inside his Kabul home Tuesday afternoon in a suicide bombing, Afghan officials said.

The man who killed Rabbani was brought to his house under the pretext of peace talks, Gen. Abdul Zahir, director of investigations for the Kabul police, said in a phone interview. The suicide bomber had hidden explosives in his turban, Zahir said.

“A group of people were brought to his room, saying they wanted to discuss the peace process,” Zahir said. “The man hugged Rabbani and blew himself up.”

Zahir said Rabbani’s killer was not searched because he was brought to the residence by senior members of the peace council. He said the council members thought the men, who arrived at the heavily-fortified residence at approximately 6 p.m., were representatives of the Taliban.

Before detonating the explosives, the suicide bomber lowered his head in an ostensible gesture of respect, the general added. “He was killed on the spot,” Zahir said, referring to Rabbani.

Four other people in the room, including Rabbani’s secretary, were also killed in the attack, Zahir said. Security officials said Masoom Stanekzai, a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai and another key player in the peace effort, sustained serious injuries during the attack.

Upon hearing the news, Karzai cut short a trip to New York, where he planned to attend the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. “The enemy has shown it has no mercy for the people who love their country,” he said in a statement.

Before leaving New York, Karzai met there with President Obama to discuss the transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces. In a joint appearance with Karzai before their meeting, Obama called the assassination of Rabbani “a tragic loss” and hailed his “enormous contribution to rebuilding the country.”

Obama vowed that “we will not be deterred from creating a path whereby Afghans can live in freedom and safety and security and prosperity,” and he called for continuing efforts to unite Afghans and end “a senseless cycle of violence.”

Karzai said, “This is a hard day for us in Afghanistan, but a day of unity and a day of continuity of our efforts.”

The assassination of the influential political leader is a blow to the Afghan government's embattled effort to bring insurgents into the political fold. The United States and other Western leaders have backed the so-far fruitless effort, seeing it as the best opportunity to bring the war to an end after a decade of fighting.

Rabbani, who served as president from 1992 to 1996, fled Kabul when the Taliban seized control of most of the country. He was one of the key leaders of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of warlords and political factions that fought against the Taliban during the nation’s fierce civil war.

The bombing comes as Karzai and the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul are struggling to argue that Afghanistan is ready to start assuming greater responsibility for security as NATO troops start pulling out.

Last week, a 20-hour grenade and rocket attack targeted the U.S. Embassy and the NATO headquarters in Kabul. U.S. officials said the assault, which included suicide bombings across the city, was likely carried out by the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, a group closely allied with the Taliban that has been linked to several high-profile attacks. Rabbani’s house is near the embassy.

In a statement condemning the assassination Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy said: “Those responsible for this attack show their disregard for the efforts that Dr. Rabbani has led in the cause of peace for Afghanistan. This kind of cowardly attack will only harden our resolve to work together with the Afghan government and people to end the insurgency and realize a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.”

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the bombing “an attack on the Afghan people as they begin to take their country’s security into their own hands.”

He added: “To those who offer only death and destruction to the Afghan people, our message is clear: you will not prevail.”

The commander of U.S. NATO troops in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, said the U.S.-led coalition would continue fighting for peace.

“The face of the peace initiative has been attacked,” Allen said in a statement. “This is another outrageous indicator that, regardless of what Taliban leadership outside the country say, they do not want peace, but rather war.”

The goal of the attack, Allen added, “is to turn the clock back to the darkness synonymous with the Taliban movement.”

Pakistani leaders were among the first Tuesday to condemn the attack. “The Pakistani leadership has conveyed to the brotherly people and government of Afghanistan extreme anger and shock on the terrorist attack,” a statement issued by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said.

Haroun Mir, a political analyst in Kabul, said Rabbani’s death would be a huge setback for the peace process.

“This is a big loss for the entire country,” he said in a phone interview. “We don’t know who was behind this assassination. But the message seems to be that at least one group within the Taliban is totally against the peace process. This is a very strong message.”

Rabbani, a Tajik from Badakhshan province, was an unusual choice to lead the peace council, which was seated last September. His ethnicity did not go unnoticed when he was selected to broker talks between Karzai, and ethnic Pashtun, and the Taliban, which also draws its strength from Pashtun committees.

Mir said Karzai likely picked Rabbani because he “wanted to make this a national process and wanted the approval of all factions in the country. He could not make peace only with Pashtun leaders.”

The 68-member High Peace Council has accomplished little. Taliban leaders have said they will not negotiate while foreign troops remain in the country. Council members have complained that the Taliban didn’t take them seriously because the body was seen as largely powerless.

U.S. officials have opened back-channel talks with representatives of Taliban leaders, an effort designed to set conditions for formal talks. But those efforts have appeared to gain little traction, and it is unclear whether they continue.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which is blocks away from Rabbani’s house, said diplomats were instructed “to take cover” late Tuesday afternoon as a result of a nearby security incident.

“We are working to account for all embassy personnel and staff,” the statement said.

The Rabbani assassination was reminiscent of the suicide bombing that killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the revered Afghan commander who helped lead the insurgency that ultimately drove Soviet occupation forces from Afghanistan in 1989. Massoud was killed two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States by two al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists and carrying hidden bombs.

Bashir Bezhan, a politician close to Rabbani, said the fatal meeting had been arranged by Rahmatullah Wahidyar, a former Taliban leader who reconciled with Karzai’s government in 2005.

Wahidyar, a member of the peace council, served as deputy minister for refugees during the Taliban’s rule in the late 1990s.

Rabbani arrived in Kabul from Dubai on Tuesday afternoon after peace council members notified him that they had scheduled a meeting that could mark a breakthrough in peace talks, Bezhan said.

Bezhan said Rabbani was told, “You have to come and meet this guy.”

Rabbani landed in Kabul at 3 p.m. and rushed home to prepare for the meeting, Bezhan said.

Bezhan, who talked to reporters after stepping outside Rabbani’s house, said he was told Wahidyar was among those wounded in the attack.

Officials did not say whether they have found evidence that members of the high peace council could have been complicit.

Rabbani was born into a Tajik family in northeastern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in 1940. He studied Islam at a religious school in Kabul, at Kabul University and at the renowned al-Azhar University in Cairo. While in Cairo, he developed close ties to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

After returning to Afghanistan in 1968 with an advanced degree in Islamic philosophy, Rabbani became involved in organizing university students and was named head of Jamiat-i-Islami, or Islamic Society, a predominantly Tajik opposition party. Increasingly alarmed by a succession of leftist governments in Afghanistan, members of the party took up arms in the late 1970s, joining the mujaheddin, or Islamic holy warriors, who fought the central government in Kabul.

One of Rabbani’s early followers was Massoud, an engineering student and fellow Tajik from the Panjshir Valley, who formed the armed wing of Jamiat-i-Islami in 1978. Massoud was assassinated on Sept. 9, 2001, in northern Afghanistan.

The resistance by Rabbani’s followers escalated after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979 and installed a client communist government. After Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, the mujaheddin continued to gather strength, eventually capturing Kabul in 1992 and toppling the Soviet-backed government. Rabbani was named president of the new Islamic State of Afghanistan, and Massoud became his defense minister.

But mujaheddin unity was quickly shattered by ethnic infighting, with Pashtun forces — notably those of Rabbani’s rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of the Hezb-i-Islami faction — launching a new civil war that subjected Kabul to deadly bombardment and claimed thousands of lives. During this period, the radical Islamist Taliban movement gained strength, with support from neighboring Pakistan.

By September 1996, the Rabbani government was forced to flee Kabul, and the Taliban took over. But Rabbani’s forces joined other anti-Taliban groups in forming the Northern Alliance and maintained control of a swath of territory in the Panjshir Valley and parts of northern Afghanistan. The Rabbani government also retained the recognition of the United Nations and most countries, including the United States.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States intervened to punish the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, providing support for the Northern Alliance and launching a devastating air campaign that decimated Taliban forces.

The Northern Alliance steadily recaptured territory, and the Taliban was forced to abandon Kabul in November 2001. Their way paved by U.S. airstrikes, Northern Alliance forces from the Panjshir Valley rolled into the capital and briefly reinstalled Rabbani as interim president. After little more than a month, Rabbani gave way to Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who took over as head of a transitional administration and later was elected president.

Special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.