Karzai lives in shadow of early death

The shadow of death has fallen across Hamid Karzai many times in his life, and the latest assassination attempt is unlikely to be the last.

The attempted shooting in Kandahar after a car bomb in the centre of Kabul killed at least 15 people outside Government ministries on Thursday - state-run Kabul TV later put the death toll at 25, with 150 wounded - was condemned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The UN predicted the attacks would bolster global efforts to improve security in the country.

The Afghan leader was almost killed twice last year during the campaign to overthrow the Taleban and al Qaeda - on one of those occasions inadvertently by his United States mentors.

The American influence in Karzai's life is now overwhelming, despite his strenuous attempts to prove he is not a poodle of Washington. After Thursday's ambush, American bodyguards fired on the attackers, and the American-led international force is keeping his Government in power.

The assassination attempt, and the bomb blast hours earlier, drew a swift reaction from Washington. President George W. Bush was informed of the attempt and expressed relief that President Karzai was unhurt.

The bomb was in a taxi parked near the ministries of information and communications in Kabul. The blast was preceded by a smaller explosion, intended to draw people on to the streets and cause the maximum number of deaths and injuries, police said.

Witnesses said thousands of people fled Kabul's central business district after the second explosion. Pieces of flesh, sandals and scraps of clothing littered the road. Hundreds of windows were shattered in nearby buildings.

"When I came to the scene, I saw five dead bodies," a construction worker said. "I could hear wounded people through the smoke shouting and calling for help."

In the second attack a car carrying Karzai and Governor Gul Agha Sherzai was fired on. The President was unhurt but the governor was grazed in the neck.

Since taking over the interim Government, Karzai has lived with the constant threat of retribution from the Taleban and al Qaeda. Earlier this year Western intelligence agencies claimed to have foiled several attempts to attack the presidential palace.

But while Karzai has survived, some of his allies have not been so fortunate. Vice-President Haji Abdul Qadir was shot dead in Kabul in July, and the Defence Minister, Marshal Mohammed Fahim, narrowly escaped death in a bomb attack in Jalalabad. Civil Aviation Minister Abdul Rahman was beaten to death at Kabul airport.

A small elite US military force was assigned to guard Karzai in late July after speculation that Government leaders would be assassinated. Its brief was to provide around-the-clock security at the presidential palace alongside Karzai's existing bodyguards from the Northern Alliance, the most powerful faction in his coalition Government.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at the time that the job for American soldiers could last several months. Some reports said that his American guards had killed three attackers in the latest incident. Fifteen soldiers were assigned at that time

Karzai has personal experience of Afghanistan's lethal violence. His father, Abdul Ahmad Karzai, the chief of the Popolzai tribe, was assassinated by a Taleban agent in the Pakistani city of Quetta in 1999.

One of Hamid Karzai's brushes with death came last November. With Mullah Omar's regime hanging on, Karzai secretly slipped across the border from Pakistan into southern Afghanistan in an attempt to organise an uprising by his fellow Pashtuns.

It was a highly dangerous mission of a type which had already ended fatally for his friend, Abdul Haq, seen by the West as another post-Taleban leader.

The Taleban also discovered Karzai and his men, around 100-strong. After a six-hour gun battle with an enemy five times the size, he managed to escape. Rumsfeld says Karzai was rescued and flown to safety by an American helicopter, but Karzai insists he made his own getaway after the Americans had bombed the Taleban.

Soon afterward Karzai narrowly escaped being killed by the Americans when they bombed him and a group of Pashtuns by mistake during an assault on an al Qaeda position.

While receiving treatment for cuts to his head, he received the news that he had been elected as the interim leader of Afghanistan by the Bonn Conference.

Eight years previously Karzai had survived another attempt on his life. He and several associates were travelling inside Afghanistan when they were ambushed. The driver was killed and a number of others injured.

The men who ordered his murder on that occasion sat with him at the Loya Jirga earlier this year in which the composition of this Government was hammered out.

After the death of Abdul Haq, Karzai became Washington's favourite candidate for Afghan leader. The Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance was not deemed suitable to form the Government in a country where 40 per cent of the population were Pashtun. Karzai, of Royal Pashtun blood, fitted the bill.

But the latest incidents highlight the precariousness of the international effort to haul Afghanistan out of years of war, famine and impoverishment.

The US said it had no information on who was responsible, but Afghan officials quickly blamed al Qaeda, the hard-line Islamic network accused of carrying out the September 11 attacks.

If their suspicions are correct, the bloodshed was a shot across the bow to the 8000 US forces still trying to crush al Qaeda forces inside the country.

Afghan Ambassador Ishaq Shahryar said the bloodshed showed Kabul was right to insist on expanding an international peacekeeping force outside Kabul.

- INDEPENDENT and agencies