KABUL — A surging crowd of mourners on Friday touched and kissed the coffin of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, slain by a suicide bomber claiming to carry a Taliban peace message, and vented at their own government and its efforts to reconcile with the insurgency.
In angry chants at a hilltop cemetery, grieving followers of Rabbani’s political faction vilified President Hamid Karzai, blamed Taliban insurgents for Afghanistan’s woes and denounced Pakistan for allegedly stirring up the conflict. Shouts against the United States, which backs the government, reflected frustration that a decade of Western support has failed to unite their divided land.
“Death to Karzai . . . Death to the foreign puppets,” chanted the throng, some young men, others veterans of the guerrilla war against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s.
At one point, presidential security guards tried to stop a Rabbani ally, former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, from joining the swelling crowd in an area around the walled-off grave. He forced his way in anyway, and guards briefly opened fire in the air to block thousands of other mourners, some of whom threw stones at security forces.
The chaotic outpouring of frustration, and statements that the time for peacemaking has passed, pointed to Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions and the fragility of its government. It also contrasted with an earlier, stately ceremony at the presidential palace, where Karzai hailed Rabbani as a tireless advocate for reconciliation.
“It is our responsibility to act against those who are enemies of peace,” said Karzai, urging Afghans to shun despair over the death of Rabbani in an attack at his home Tuesday, and instead escalate efforts to end the fighting. One by one, lawmakers and foreign envoys at the palace paid tribute before Rabbani’s casket, draped in a red, black and green national flag. Then a procession of vehicles drove up a hill overlooking Kabul.
There, the observances turned unruly.
Supporters of the former president’s political faction, chanting and distraught, reached out to the coffin, and the funeral at one point resembled an opposition rally.
Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik leader who lost to Karzai in the 2009 presidential election, said the president has to explain who killed Rabbani. He appeared enraged when his microphone was turned off, saying it was an effort to silence him.
“Death to those wanting to make a deal,” mourners shouted. “We don’t want Karzai.”
