A Kandahar Killing: What Does It Mean for the U.S. Military Mission? 
 
 A huge power vacuum has opened in southern Afghanistan with the assassination on July 12 of Ahmed Wali Karzai, a half brother of President Hamid Karzai and, fundamentally, the godfather of Kandahar. U.S. officials are debating whether he will be followed by a more benign tribal autocrat or someone alleged to be just as bad — and how much influence the Taliban will have over whoever fills his shoes. 
 
 Quick answer: there will be blood. 
 
 The assassination couldn't come at a worse time for the U.S. military, which is wrapping up more than a year's worth of intense fighting in the region. While the gains are routinely described as "fragile," Washington was counting on a steady hand from the Karzai clan — in both Kabul and Kandahar — to cement them into place. That effort may have been mortally wounded along with Wali Karzai on Tuesday. Or — if you buy into the notion that Wali Karzai was a corrupt warlord whose presence reduced the chance for progress in southern Afghanistan — his death could turn out to be a bloody blessing. No one knows yet. 
 
 It's not yet clear why Sardar Mohammed, a longtime family friend, apparently turned on Wali Karzai. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the slaying, and certainly it will reap a whirlwind of fear for its role. That's true even if the Taliban is limited to creating the conditions that make everyday Afghans fear for their safety. The assassination dramatically highlights the fact that the nation's security forces — in which the U.S. has invested $28.5 billion, more than the $24.2 billion spent on Iraq's military and police — cannot protect their nation's most powerful leaders. 
 
 Wali Karzai overshadowed Kandahar province's official governor, Tooryalai Wesa, by dint of the Karzai family legacy there. The Pashtun tribe, in which the Karzais are a prominent clan, has traditionally held sway over a wide swath of southern Afghanistan, lapping into Pakistan. That has made it tough for the U.S. military — or anyone else — to seal the border between the two nations. 
 
 Wali Karzai served as the provincial council chairman for Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace. He oversaw a web of warlords across the region, involved in trade that was legitimate and not — smuggling, narcotics and gun running have long been big businesses in the region. The Afghan President resolutely denies that his half brother, who was paid by the CIA for information, had a role in such traffic. "We have no intelligence that leads us to believe that he's criminally involved," then U.S. Army Lieut. General Douglas Lute said a year ago. But U.S. military officials in the region long believed Wali Karzai was involved in enterprises both fair and foul. 
 
 "He's either a candidate for an Oscar or he's the most maligned man in Afghanistan," British Major General Nick Carter told reporters at the Pentagon in May 2010. Wali Karzai repeatedly told allied military leaders that he was "trying to help his country, that he's trying to help us and he's trying to help his people," Carter said. "And he will also tell you that, as an avid Chelsea soccer club watcher and supporter, he'd rather be watching soccer than he would providing governance." 
 
 But Wali Karzai had his hands in everything, hindering the governor's role. He had "close links with a number of Kandahar's key private security and militia commanders," Moshe Schwartz, a military expert at the Congressional Research Service, told Congress in June 2010. "Several of these commanders control key logistics routes and are heavily relied upon by almost the whole host nation, trucking companies operating in southern Afghanistan. Ahmed Wali Karzai has used his connections to the Afghan government and to ISAF [the International Security Assistance Force] to build this network and, in some cases, to influence in the awarding of contracts to his own allies." 
 
 That's why there were always long lines of favor seekers in and out of Wali Karzai's home in central Kandahar. There were some 60 people there on Tuesday when he was killed. It was plain that, despite the best efforts of the U.S. and its allies, Wali Karzai was still the man to see to get things done in southern Afghanistan. Major General Carter knew what he had to measure to gauge the prospects for progress in the region: he wanted to see the governor's role increase and Wali Karzai's decline: "We will very much judge success by the extent to which that balance switches and, metaphorically speaking, the queue outside the governor's office goes up and the queue outside the provincial council's office goes down." 
 
 There will be no favor-seeking queue outside Wali Karzai's home on Wednesday. ||||| KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai , the powerful half brother of Afghanistan ’s president, was assassinated Tuesday, removing from the political scene a divisive power broker who was accused of corruption and alienated the American military, but whose connections and ruthlessness made him a critical force in volatile southern Afghanistan. 
 
 The death of Mr. Karzai, who effectively ruled much of the country’s southern tier from Kandahar, sent tremors through the country’s political establishment and raised questions about whether tenuous security gains made by the influx of American forces in the south could hold. 
 
 Mr. Karzai was shot to death by a police official, Sardar Muhammad, a longtime confidant, who was immediately killed by Mr. Karzai’s bodyguards, Afghan officials said. Mr. Muhammad’s body was later hung above a busy Kandahar street. His motives were not known; the Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing, but there was no evidence that Mr. Muhammad, a member of the Karzais’ Populzai tribe, had ties to the insurgency. 
 
 The immediate implications of Mr. Karzai’s death for the American-led war against the Taliban and the withdrawal of American troops beginning this month were uncertain. Many in the region warned that the Taliban, as well as competitors for Mr. Karzai’s position, would try to take advantage of the power vacuum and that without him the hard-earned security gains made by American and Afghan troops over the past year could erode. 
 
 American military commanders have long argued that Mr. Karzai’s reputation for blatant self-dealing undercut support for the government among many Afghans, and some wondered on Tuesday whether his death might make room for a leader with greater integrity. 
 
 But those commanders had clashed with Central Intelligence Agency officers who had long paid Mr. Karzai for information and other services and saw him as a crucial broker of intelligence and influence. Mr. Karzai identified Taliban fighters for attack by American forces, recruited Afghan men for a NATO-allied “Kandahar Strike Force,” and even rented space to the agency in the city, officials said. 
 
 In a sense, contradictory American attitudes toward Mr. Karzai have reflected the evolving American war strategy. When the United States was trying to win over the population with a counterinsurgency strategy, the corruption he symbolized was an insurmountable obstacle. But as the Obama administration has gradually embraced a more limited counterterrorism policy — killing Taliban fighters and moving toward political negotiations — Mr. Karzai became an indispensable, if never fully trustworthy, ally. 
 
 “We viewed him as more of an enemy of our enemy than as a friend,” said Bill Harris, who until last November served as the senior American diplomat in Kandahar. 
 
 “The fact is, we made common cause with A.W.K. during the last fighting season to run the Taliban out of Kandahar, and we should make no apologies for that,” Mr. Harris said, using the government’s shorthand for Ahmed Wali Karzai. “His death will only complicate an already complicated situation.” 
 
 One American official on Tuesday lamented the “huge power vacuum” left by the assassination. “Do we care more about security and fighting the Taliban, or about drugs and corruption?” said the official, who would discuss the internal debate only on the condition of anonymity. “I think that most people would agree that taking on the Taliban is our top priority, and Ahmed Wali Karzai helped us with that.” 
 
 Mohammed Naim Hamidzai Lalai, the chairman of the Afghan Parliament’s internal security committee and a Kandahari, said, “His presence in Kandahar was like a backbone for the security of the province.” 
 
 The president, Hamid Karzai, held a news conference in Kabul with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France barely two hours after the shooting, speaking in a steady but somber voice as he confirmed the death of his half brother. ||||| By Max Fisher 
 
 Reuters 
 
 In late 2009, when the New York Times first reported that the CIA had for years been working with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's half-brother and a major player in the heroin trade, Major General Michael T. Flynn, the top military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, told the newspaper, "If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves," he said. "The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone." Flynn's comment underscored one of the war's many challenges: the military, which has led the international mission in Afghanistan since 2001, and the CIA, which had spearheaded U.S. interests in Afghanistan from the 1979 Soviet invasion through September 11, 2001, often work at cross purposes and toward different goals.Today's killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, reportedly by a close business associate , is a reminder of the complicated web of loyalties, interests, and contradictions that the U.S. has attempted to navigate for nearly a decade. Ahmed Wali Karzai was a politician working within the system and a criminal working against it; he ran militias on behalf of the CIA and funded drug networks that were the stated enemy of the U.S. military; he worked with trucking contractors that sold services to NATO and that funded anti-NATO warlords; he was a close ally of the U.S. and a tremendous drag on its mission to win over the Afghan people.Even in death, he is a contradiction. His killing, as the half brother of the nation's president, is both major news for the Afghan war and barely news at all; in March, President Karzai's cousin was killed by a U.S. night raid, a tragedy for the family that had little appreciable affect on an already sour Obama-Karzai relationship.Ahmed Wali Karzai was exactly the kind of local "big man" -- he was a major player in the southern province of Kandahar, which has seen heavy fighting and a big U.S. push -- whom the U.S. mission both relied on and worked against. His cooperation and help was crucial in arranging day-to-day political deals; guys like Ahmed Wali, quite simply, can get things done in a way that we can't. But the things that make men like Ahmed Wali useful in the particular also make them burdensome in general. His power, inextricably linked with his corruption, came from a self-interested, unaccountable Afghan political system that enrages many Afghans and leaves them feeling disconnected from their government. He was part of a system that fueled the war, and he helped us navigate that system while simultaneously worsening it.Whatever the meaning of Ahmed Wali Karzai's death for the Afghan war, his killing, like so much in the final ten years of his life, underscores the challenge that the U.S. has faced in the Afghan political system, which we rely upon in the short-term but which, in the long term, is a major hurdle in our effort toward peace and stability. Despite many efforts, we have not succeeded in unknotting this contradiction. It's little wonder, then, that President Obama appears bent on extricating the U.S. from a conflict that we have been unable to untangle, much less win. ||||| A suicide bomber struck a Kandahar mosque where a memorial service was being held Thursday for the assassinated half brother of President Hamid Karzai . The attack killed at least four people and could mark the start of a violent power struggle in the wake of Ahmed Wali Karzai's death.A number of high-ranking officials were present at the time of the attack, according to the Kandahar provincial government. The dead included a prominent cleric and a child, and 15 other people were injured, the Interior Ministry said.President Karzai was not at the service; he had returned to the capital, Kabul , after his half brother's turbulent funeral Wednesday. At the burial in the family's ancestral village outside Kandahar, the Afghan leader wept and wailed aloud, and at one point climbed into the open grave before making an emotional appeal for an end to violence.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's bombing. The Taliban claimed that the man who shot Ahmed Wali Karzai dead in his home Tuesday had acted at insurgents' behest, but others blamed a personal feud. The assailant, a police commander and a trusted family associate, was himself fatally shot moments after killing the younger Karzai, who wielded enormous power in southern Afghanistan.Authorities said the bomber who carried out Thursday's attack apparently managed to slip into the mosque among the throng of mourners paying their respects. A day earlier, President Karzai anointed another half brother, Shah Wali Karzai, as the slain man's successor.Many observers believe that Shah Wali Karzai can adequately carry out duties as the head of his family and tribe, but that it would be extremely difficult for him to assume meaningful control of Ahmed Wali Karzai's lucrative empire, built on a complex network of tribal connections and thought to have included some illicit dealings. U.S. military officials had relied heavily on Karzai's clout and his ability to serve as an interlocutor with the Taliban. The power vacuum in Kandahar is expected to complicate American efforts to establish order in the south as a U.S. troop drawdown begins.
– So what does the killing of Hamid Karzai's powerful half-brother in southern Afghanistan mean for the war effort? Such is the contradiction of Ahmad Wali Karzai that the only answer seems to be "stay tuned": Mark Thompson, Time: The killing of the "godfather of Kandahar" is horrible timing for the US military, which needs stability from the Karzai clan to shore up fragile gains. "Or— if you buy into the notion that Wali Karzai was a corrupt warlord whose presence reduced the chance for progress in southern Afghanistan—his death could turn out to be a bloody blessing. No one knows yet." Max Fisher, Atlantic: He personifies the US entanglement in the war itself. "The things that make men like Ahmed Wali useful in the particular also make them burdensome in general. His power (is) inextricably linked with his corruption ... He was part of a system that fueled the war, and he helped us navigate that system while simultaneously worsening it." Reuters: The killing will likely set off a bloody power struggle to fill the leadership vacuum in Kandahar. "Regardless of whether they had a hand in the killing, the Taliban are likely to benefit from his death ." New York Times: The killing is bad news for Hamid Karzai, "who depended on his half brother’s unchallenged influence in southern Afghanistan to maintain the Karzai family’s nexus of connections to power brokers across the region, including tribal leaders, elected officials, narcotics smugglers and insurgents."