KABUL — President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday lamented the slaying of a provincial official and renewed his appeal to insurgents to reconcile with the government, weeping when he said he worries that his son might not be able to grow up in Afghanistan.
The deputy governor of southeastern Ghazni province, Khazim Allayar, was killed along with his son, a nephew and a bodyguard early Tuesday in the provincial capital when a suicide bomber rammed a rickshaw into the group’s vehicle, according to provincial spokesman Ismail Jahangir.
“This was an act of the Taliban,” Jahangir said.
The Taliban has killed several provincial officials whom NATO commanders have sought to empower in an effort to boost local governance.
Speaking at an event to promote literacy programs, Karzai addressed Taliban members as “my countrymen” and pleaded with them to refrain from “destroying your own homeland for the benefit of others.”
Tuesday afternoon, Karzai’s spokesman released a list of 70 Afghans who will sit on a council tasked with implementing the president’s plan to get the Taliban and other militants to join the political process.
Publicly, Taliban leaders say they will not negotiate while foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. But on Monday, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, told reporters that senior Taliban leaders have privately reached out to the Afghan government.
Two of the individuals appointed to the High Council for Peace, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayaf and Muhammad Ismail Khan, are former jihadi leaders who fought the Taliban during the 1990s.
During his speech for World Literacy Day, Karzai accused NATO members and other countries of using Afghanistan as a battleground to settle their scores.
“It has been about 10 years,” the president said, referring to the U.S.-led war. “The result remains unclear.”
He lamented the state of insecurity in the country in uncharacteristically personal terms, noting that schoolchildren and teachers are afraid to go to school because of the violence that plagues several provinces and saying he fears that young Afghans might abandon their country.
“I don’t want my son Mirwais to be a foreigner. I want Mirwais to be Afghan,” he said, breaking into tears as he mentioned his 4-year-old son.
