Suicide bomber kills Kandahar mayor

The outspoken mayor of Kandahar, a self-styled corruption fighter and persistent thorn in the side of Canadian officials, was assassinated Wednesday in a rising tide of violence that’s shaken the troubled southern Afghan province to its foundation.

Ghulam Haider Hamidi was killed by a suicide bomber whose turban was laced with explosives. He is the second top official to be murdered in the war-ravaged city this month.

The mayor had been mentioned as a possible replacement for provincial council head Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of the president, who was gunned down July 12 in his heavily-fortified home by a long-time employee and friend.

Hamidi, who has family in Toronto, spent 30 years in exile in Arlington, Virginia as an accountant before being appointed mayor of the volatile provincial capital by President Hamid Karzai in 2007.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for his murder, saying it was revenge over a land dispute involving the demolition of illegally constructed homes.

In several recent interviews with The Canadian Press, Hamidi expressed frustration with powerbrokers who were upset with his attempts at land reform and to clean out corruption in the municipal office.

“I am conducting jihad against these corrupt people,” he said in an interview earlier this month in his office at the provincial governor’s palace.

During his tenure, he fired a number of municipal officials who were working as engineers under false credentials.

Hamidi also tossed some district managers who were taking bribes.

He recently angered the establishment by ordering that shops set up near the city’s beautiful blue mosque be closed and bulldozed because they were too close to the holy site.

The decision prompted loud complaints before a recent provincial council meeting.

Hamidi survived other assassination attempts, including a March 2009 bombing, which prompted Canadian officials to buy him an armour-plated SUV.

Instead of blaming it on the Taliban, he pointed the finger at powerbrokers and noted the attack against him happened within sight of a police station.

“They put (a) bomb 60 metres from a police checkpoint. How are they coming here?” Hamidi asked in a separate interview last December.

“The municipality office is the only organization that wants to fight corruption. Now those corrupt people want to destroy the municipality office and (don’t want it) to serve the people.”

Two of his deputies were assassinated by the Taliban over the last few years, prompting a mass exodus of municipal staff who felt it too dangerous to work for the city.

The mayor’s death has the potential to destabilize Kandahar to a greater extent than the recent murder of Wali Karzai.

Unlike the president’s half-brother, Hamidi was reasonably popular among ordinary Kandaharis because of his willingness to stick a finger in the eye of powerbrokers and foreign governments alike.

He complained loudly about Canada’s $1.9 million project to erect solar streets lights in the city. Many of the devices didn’t work.

Hamidi wrote to Ambassador William Crosbie in Kabul with his frustration about the contractor.