KABUL, Afghanistan, July 6 -- Ab- dul Qadir, a vice president and cabinet minister in the Afghan government and a key political figure for 25 years, was assassinated just after noon today as his vehicle left his ministry compound in the capital.
Qadir, 48, was the second-highest-ranking ethnic Pashtun in the ethnically mixed government of President Hamid Karzai. Officials declined to speculate on motives behind the slaying but blamed "enemies of Afghanistan" seeking to destabilize the fledgling government.
Qadir and his driver died in a hail of automatic-rifle fire when two assailants ambushed his vehicle and then escaped in a taxi. Qadir's vehicle was riddled with bullet holes, and windows on both sides were shattered. The front seats were covered with blood. On the armrest between the front seats lay a string of Muslim prayer beads.
Police officials said Qadir and his driver were traveling alone, without armed guards. Both were pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Kabul's military hospital.
"No member of this government is under any illusion that there are no risks. We are still fighting terrorism in all forms," said Omar Samad, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. "This was caused by the enemies of peace, stability and reconstruction. It was an act committed against everything the people of Afghanistan believe in."
Qadir's slaying was the second assassination of an Afghan cabinet minister in five months. On Feb. 14, Ab- dul Rahman, aviation and tourism minister in the then-interim government, was killed in a murky melee at Kabul's airport. Several senior officials were accused of involvement, but no one has been arrested or charged.
President Bush, vacationing in Kennebunkport, Maine, expressed his condolences to the Afghan government and described Qadir as "a man loved by his country."
"We are more resolved than ever to bring stability to the country so that the Afghan people can have peace and hope," Bush said.
After an emergency cabinet meeting tonight, the Afghan government said in a statement that it has established a high-level commission to investigate the assassination of Qadir. It called him "a great man of jihad," the armed resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in which Qadir was an important militia leader.
Police detained 10 members of the security force at the Ministry of Public Works, where Qadir had just taken up his duties. They also held two witnesses for questioning -- a cigarette vendor and a man who was guarding bicycles used by ministry employees.
Two weeks ago, Karzai named Qadir, the governor and longtime senior leader of the dominant ethnic Pashtun tribes in Nangahar province in eastern Afghanistan, to be one of three national vice presidents and the minister of public works. Karzai, who is also Pashtun, was elected by a national assembly last month to serve as president through next year.
Karzai has said repeatedly that he expected Qadir and other provincial governors who were given cabinet posts to remain in Kabul, a reference to his efforts to bring powerful former militia leaders into the fold of the central government.
"This is a terrible blow," said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on Afghanistan, in a telephone interview from Lahore, Pakistan. "Qadir was a linchpin in Karzai's strategy to bring the warlords into Kabul and extend the writ of the central government. Now the other warlords may be reluctant to come in."
The slaying also came five days after at least 40 ethnic Pashtun villagers in rural Uruzgan province were killed in an airstrike by U.S. warplanes, arousing widespread anger among Pashtuns and straining the anti-terrorist alliance between the post-Taliban Afghan government and the U.S. military.
Rashid and others said that Qadir's slaying could increase public sympathy for Karzai's government but was also bound to intensify unrest among Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, which is already unhappy with the dominant role of ethnic Tajik officials in the government.
There was widespread speculation in the capital today that Qadir had been targeted by opponents from former Tajik militias, whose leaders have dominated key ministries for the past six months, and who may have bristled at seeing an ethnic Pashtun given such a powerful role in the government.
"He was a beloved figure, and in Afghanistan anyone who advances gets enemies as well as friends," said a Kabul University professor and Qadir supporter. "He was the most important Pashtun in the government after Karzai. He had many friends, and his killing will bring a serious reaction."
But Barialai Qadir, a brother of the slain official, said today that it was "too early to speculate" on who might have killed Qadir. "He enjoyed the trust of the people, and he thought he had no enemies," Barialai Qadir said this afternoon as he left a private mourning ceremony in Kabul.
Samad, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Qadir had refused official offers of extra security guards, protesting that "it would send the wrong signal to the people."
"He wanted to show there was enough safety in Kabul for ministers to walk safely," Samad said.
But Qadir made many enemies during his long leadership role in Afghan politics. In Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar province, his political control was challenged repeatedly by two rival militia leaders, Zaman Khan and Hazrat Ali, after the Taliban's defeat.
More recently, his support as governor for a government program to eradicate opium poppy cultivation -- a sharp contradiction to his controversial support for poppy growing when he was governor in the early 1990s -- was violently protested by poppy farmers.
On April 9, rockets were fired at an official convoy in Jalalabad carrying Qadir and Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim. The officials went there to inaugurate the government's poppy eradication program, which has since been suspended because of the risk to officials.
Qadir and his family also made enemies in the former Taliban regime, which was driven from power in November. One of Qadir's brothers, Abdul Haq, was slain last fall when he secretly entered Afghanistan from Pakistan in an attempt to organize tribal opposition to the Taliban.
A funeral service for Qadir will be held Sunday morning in Kabul's largest mosque, the Eid Gah, and afterward his body will be carried in a cortege to his native village in Nangahar province, about a five-hour drive east.
