The assassination of President Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, gets a huge amount of attention in the Canadian press and broadcast media.

As Canada winds down its mission in Afghanistan and leaves Kandahar to the Americans, AWK, the province’s fixer and de facto governor, is gunned down by a trusted bodyguard.

Ottawa is still thinking how best to react to the news.

The Toronto Star’s Rosie Dimanno writes today: 

Out of all seven Karzai brothers, AWK was the most predatory and maybe the most politically astute, with little of Hamid’s charm – a quality, admittedly, rapidly diminished.

He raised extortion and tribal connections to a ruthless art, raking in the dough through lucrative contracts and subcontracting deals for NATO convoy protection, construction, security and fuel.

He punished critics, allegedly to the point of murder, and rewarded friends.

And he was supposedly an ally!

If we can’t leave Afghanistan with a clean government it’s not worth being there at all.

Here, the CBC’s Susan Ormiston interviews AWK, the one time power behind Karzai's throne.

Blair on Brown

Blair tells us New Labour died when he stood down as PM.

Should we be interested in such a statement or just yawn again?

I suppose it was our collective misfortune to have the dysfunctional Broon follow Blair into Downing Street. It made the latter look like a titan.

Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, reveals in his book,The New Machiavelli, that because of some perceived slight, Broon didn’t speak to him (Powell) for eleven years.

Weird? I’d say so.

Powell had to go through Ed Balls - speaking to him on the phone while hearing Broon in the background telling Balls what to say.

Broon was a machine politician down to his chewed fingernails.

After prising Blair out of office, Broon was telling the press he wanted a contest for the Labour leadership while, at the very same time, he was doing all he could to close down this possibility (another story for another day).

After Broon had assumed the leadership, I recall being invited over to Downing Street to see him about 42 days detention. I was closeted in his little office, listening to him pleading for my support. He could get people up to the constituency to help secure my re-election!

After 15 minutes I was feeling sorry for Broon and I heard myself telling him I’d think about what he had said but I wasn’t likely to change my mind.

Anyway… We forget that by 2007 Blair was deeply unpopular. Over the years, as he marched rightwards, his imperial Premiership began to grate on more and more people.

By September 2006, I was telling the Pendle Labour Party of the manoeuvrings at Westminster to get rid of Blair. Tom Watson had just resigned as a Minister and Blair was furious.

But it was Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 that sealed his fate. It was the last straw that triggered open revolt in the PLP.

In his golden years, nothing made Blair happier than taking on and facing down his own Party. It is how he defined himself: as the fearless (but exasperated) Premier forever urging his people to “modernise”.

If only he had taken on the Murdoch Empire with the same resolution he reserved for the left in the Labour Party.

No. That wouldn't have been Blair.

Attachments:

9 September 2006.pdf

[Report to Pendle Labour Party September 2006]

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