Suicide bomber kills ex-Afghan President Rabbani

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Suicide bomber kills ex-Afghan President Rabbani

By AMIR SHAH and DEB RIECHMANN - Associated Press | AP – 1 hr 42 mins ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who

headed a government peace council set up to facilitate contacts with Taliban

insurgents, was assassinated Tuesday by a suicide bomber concealing explosives

in his turban, officials said. Four of Rabbani's bodyguards also died and a key

presidential adviser was wounded.

President Hamid Karzai cut short a visit to the U.S. over the attack, which

dealt a harsh blow to peace efforts after a decade of war.

The turban bomber entered Rabbani's house in the capital Kabul on Tuesday

evening and blew himself up inside, said Mohammad Zahir, the chief of criminal

investigation for the Kabul police.

Rabbani headed the country's High Peace Council, which was set up by the Afghan

government to work toward a political solution to the decade-long war. However,

it had made little headway since it was formed a year ago.

Rabbani was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban rule.

After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the

Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in

Kabul after the Taliban's fall. Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik.

His killing dampens hopes of starting peace negotiations with Taliban insurgents

and also will hamper efforts to keep regional and ethnic rivalries, which feed

the insurgency, in check.

As one of the wise old man of Afghan politics and the leader of the anti-Taliban

Northern Alliance, Rabanni's role in the attempts to reach out to the Taliban

and seeking a political deal with them — with the U.S. blessing — will be hard

to replicate in the near future.

His death could unleash a well of resentment building up among some senior

Northern Alliance members, who accuse President Hamid Karzai of colluding with

the Taliban.

Already Afghanistan's ethnic minorities have begun to re-arm in the face of

negotiations with the Taliban. Rabbani's death is likely to accelerate the

re-arming and lay the foundation for a bitter civil war once U.S. troops leave

the country in 2014.

Karzai's adviser Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai was wounded in the attack. A relative

who answered Stanekzai's phone said that the wounds did not appear to be

life-threatening, but Stanekzai was in the hospital. The relative declined to

give his name because of the sensitivity of the situation

Stanekzai is chief executive of the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program,

a highly touted program funded by the U.S. and its coalition allies to bring

mid- and lower-level Taliban back into Afghan society. The program has so far

only managed to reintegrated about 2,000 of the estimated 25,000-40,000

insurgents in Afghanistan.

Reintegration was the other half of reconciliation, which is aims to try and

broker a peace deal with the senior Taliban leadership.

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Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt, Quinn, Torchia and

Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.