Mr. Khan was killed on July 17 in his Kabul home, along with a member of parliament who was visiting at the time. The Taliban took responsibility for the suicide bombers responsible for his death.
Khan was part of President Karzai’s inner circle and a former governor of the southern Uruzgan Province, where his family runs a large private militia. He was a controversial figure, particularly in his home base of Uruzgan. The Dutch troops in control of the area refused to work with him and Karzai brought him to Kabul as a tribal affairs adviser. He was someone Karzai is reported to have relied on greatly.
“The Taliban wants to put pressure on the government through these assassinations and push the government to accept their demands,” Mangal Sherzad, a professor of law at Nangarhar University in Jalalabad, told the Monitor shortly after Khan’s assassination. “The enemy has lost the ability to fight government forces directly, so the second best option for them is to kill important people.”
