Killer of Karzai's Brother Was Longtime US Ally

The man who killed the half-brother of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai was a long-time U.S. ally who shared intelligence and played a role in the arrest of scores of Taliban fighters. The man, Sardar Mohammad, was a police commander who met on several occasions with U.S. and British military officials, three relatives interviewed in his home near Kandahar told The Washington Post.

Sources said that the Taliban somehow won Mohammad’s allegiance in recent months and convinced the 35-year-old officer to kill Ahmed Wali Karzai. Officials also told the Post that investigators are trying to determine whether Mohammad was a long-term Taliban sleeper agent.

President Karzai’s brother, Mahmood Karzai, said Mohammad traveled to the Pakistani city of Quetta within the past three months to meet with Taliban insurgents. He also said that Mohammad began to exhibit unusual behavior recently, including sleeping poorly, changing houses at night, and acting suspiciously toward his men, the Post reported.

“All of a sudden, he changed,” Mahmood Karzai told the Post in an interview Thursday. “This is the work of the Taliban.”

Mohammad’s relatives, however, denied that he would have worked on behalf of the Taliban. Brothers-in-law Abdul Malik said that Mohammad had not been in Pakistan for 20 years “We were just like one family,” one relative told the Post. “Until today, there wasn’t any dispute between us.”