Ghulam Haidar Hameedi, the mayor of Kandahar speaking during a press conference in Kandahar province seen in this file photo. The mayor of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan and the birthplace of the Taliban movement, was killed in a suicide attack on July 27, police said. The death comes two weeks after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the so-called "King of Kandahar", who was a key strongman in the region and an alleged drugs baron who was also half-brother to President Hamid Karzai. Ghulam Haidar Hameedi died when a suicide bomber set off explosives hidden in his turban as the mayor spoke with citizens in the courtyard of the city hall, police General Abdul Raziq told AFP.
This month has witnessed a good deal of killing in Kandahar City. Most of those the public hears about are high-profile "political" murders, such as the killing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother, Wali, or the city's senior cleric, or Wednesday's killing of the city's mayor.
There is one recent murder, however, that also has all the hallmarks of a Taliban-planned attack but has never been reported — no news conference, no words of outrage or condemnation. Just silence.
Twenty-year-old Reena is one of the unknown victims of this seemingly endless war.
On Sunday around 6 p.m., she was coming home from high school along her usual route, which passed close to the governor's palace in central Kandahar — the area with the most intense security in the city.
She was, as usual, dressed in her aqua burka.
As she walked through the centre of town in the Hazrat Jee Baba area, two men pulled alongside her on a motor bike and shot her three times. Once in the head, once in the mouth and once in the neck. They then sped away, disappearing into the constant traffic.
Reena died instantly.
As her father, Faiz Muhammed, 62, a retired school teacher, later told Postmedia News: "We didn't expect that Reena would be killed and she did not say anything about any threats, and she did not feel any fears."
Six months ago, the young woman got a contract job with an Afghan non-governmental organization called The Organization for Human Welfare. It is funded primarily by western charitable organizations, according to its director, who declined to be named for fear of her life.
Reena's job was to visit the rural districts Dand and Daman in Kandahar province to raise awareness about good health practices among women and to try to teach them the value of a peaceful existence, said one of her colleagues.
Both districts are traditional Taliban breeding grounds, where coalition forces are struggling to maintain security.
"She was calm, cheerful and a decent human being and was very committed to her work," one colleague said. "She was very brave when talking to the village women."
Her colleagues said at the beginning of the project, she travelled to the Dand and Daman districts by yellow taxi three times a week. More recently, as the project wound down, her visits dwindled to one or two times a week.
She was paid $300 U.S. a month, which was all her family had to rely on.
"I know the danger when she was going to the districts, but I had no other means of income," her father said. "I miss her a lot. She was a girl who took care of family, a good human being."
Reena was in Grade 10 at the Zarghona Ana Girls high school. Her colleagues said she wanted to go to university, was keen to establish herself in a career but was undecided about what she would study. It's said she believed strongly in women's rights.
"Her dream was destroyed by the enemy," her father said.
After her drive-by killing in the centre of town, people gathered. Nearby security troops rushed over. Eventually, police arrived to collect what little evidence existed.
Although her body was taken to hospital, nobody bothered to do an autopsy or even examine her to tell if she was male or female. Doctors said they assumed she was female because she was wearing a dress.
The family came to collect the body. And her murder was added to the mounting police files.
Faisal Javid, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, said police are investigating whether this was a "crime, or a political assassination."
He said it's not clear why she was killed, noting several times that she was not a government official.
Her colleagues, however, are sure that she was killed because of her work educating women.
According to Shir Ali, director of the Criminal Investigation Department in Kandahar, the bullets that killed her will be examined.
The process, however, is slow.
Gov. Tooryalai Wesa acknowledged Wednesday after a suicide bomber killed the mayor that investigations and justice are slow "because we don't have a professional staff to investigate the cases properly and in a skilful way and also we don't have enough judges to review the cases and hear the final case in good time."
Wesa's statement is only half true.
About half an hour's drive from Kandahar is a fully equipped forensic unit at the Kandahar Air Force Base, where technicians examine improvised explosive device components to trace them to the insurgents' IED networks for prosecution and targeting.
Army engineers send the bombs they disarm or the fragments of the ones that have exploded to the biometrics and forensic units. Technicians then dissect them for fingerprints and other intelligence in an effort to paint a picture of the bomb makers and link them through a database to terrorist or insurgent networks.
Coalition forces have an agreement with the Afghans to help them with civilian forensic investigations.
The problem is the police are not using these resources, Lt. Col. Webster Wright, chief of the U.S. army public affairs office, said.
"We will extend assistance when asked," Wright said. "So far they have not requested any assistance."
Reena was quickly buried Monday in her father's village of Roh Abad, which is in the same Dand district where she tried to educate local women.
There are no flowers or any form of memorial to mark the scene of her killing.
The blood that stained the pavement where she fell has been scattered in the dust that blows through this sun-baked city.
Source : The Gazette
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