Parliamentarian killed in northeast

Unidentified gunmen killed the speaker of the provincial parliament in Afghanistan’s northeastern Takhar province on Saturday, officials confirmed on Sunday.

“On Saturday night, gunmen broke into the house of Sayed Sadeq in Khoja Ghar district [65 km north of the provincial capital, Taloqan] and shot him on the spot,” Mohammad Zaman Mamozai, chief of police of Takhar province, told IRIN.

Sadeq is believed to be the first law maker killed since the inauguration in October of the country's first parliamentary and provincial legislatures in more than three decades.

“Police have launched an investigation but no one has been arrested in this connection yet,” Mamozai noted.

An influential local figure and supporter of President Hamid Karzai, Sadeq had been a vocal critic of opium production and trafficking and has implicated local officials in the illicit drug trade in Takhar, which is a key transit point for opium and heroin smuggled into Central Asia across the porous Tajik border.

Condemning the murder of Sadeq, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) spokesman Adrian Edwards said: “We hope that the case will be properly investigated and those responsible brought to account.”

Although Takhar has been a relatively calm province with little evidence of Taliban activity, the area has been plagued by rivalry between former commanders who opposed them between 1996 and 2001. Some of these local warlords retain private armies and pay for them from the proceeds of the lucrative opium trade.

The ongoing UN-backed disarmament programme across the country has only been partially successful in removing weapons from such private militias, meaning many continue to threaten security across the country.