TEHRAN, October 19 - The assassination of a powerful police commander has left Afghanistan reeling ahead of parliamentary elections on Saturday and raised questions over talks begun recently between the Taliban and U.S. officials.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it was too soon to say if the death of Gen. Abdul Razeq, the police commander in southern Kandahar, would hurt voter turnout, but added that the U.S. military's mission was unaltered.
"We need to find who's done this," Mattis told reporters traveling with him in the southeast Asian city-state of Singapore. "But right now, we are going toward the election and we will continue to defend the Afghan people."
Razeq, a survivor of numerous previous attacks, was killed outside the governor's office in the southern province on Thursday, when a bodyguard opened fire on a group of officials as they left a meeting.
Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was also attending, but survived uninjured, although a regional intelligence agency commander was killed and the provincial governor severely wounded.
Thursday's attack underlined how precarious the situation remains in Afghanistan after more than 17 years of war and even after Taliban and U.S. officials have opened preliminary contacts to find a basis for future peace talks.
It was unclear if the attack would affect the process, following a meeting last week of Taliban officials and the U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, but complicates an already difficult situation.
"You're going to start asking questions about, 'Well, how trustworthy are they (the Taliban)? What influence do they really have?'" said one recently retired Defense Department official. "And you know the bottomline question is, 'Why are we still dealing with them?' or 'Should we deal with them?'"
Mattis said he had not yet spoken to Miller and could not confirm the Taliban's claim of responsibility but believed the attack would not affect Miller's security arrangements or U.S. military movements in Afghanistan.
Source: Reuters
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