Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani Assassinated in Kabul

Former afghan president burhanuddin rabbani assassinated in kabul 1
Former afghan president burhanuddin rabbani

The former Afghan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani has been killed in Kabul. The professor had been working as part of the Chairman of the High Peace Council in Afghanistan. Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the joint secretariat of Afghanistan’s Peace and Reintegration Programme, was also injured.

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and the NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, both condemned the attack. Initial reports suggest that a trusted person entered a house where Professor Rabbani was meeting with Taliban negotiators and detonated an explosive vest.

An ethnic Tajik with a masters degree in Islamic philosophy from Al-Azhar University in Egypt, Professor Rabbani had links to the Muslim Brotherhood. His expertise in Islamic academia led to his flight from Kabul during the 1979 Communist coup.

He took part in the resistance to Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan until its fall, leading the Afghan government as President from 1992 until 1996 when the Taliban overran Kabul. He acted as President again in 2001 and formed the political opposition to Hamid Karzai thereafter.


In This Story: Afghanistan

Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south; Iran to the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north; and China to the northeast.

Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is around 32 million, composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks.

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