Mohammed Fahim - obituary --- Mohammed Fahim was a 'self-appointed field marshal’ whose time as Afghanistan’s vice president was beset by claims of corruption -- Mohammed Fahim, who has died of a heart attack aged 56 or 57, was a controversial figure in Afghanistan, where his title was first vice president; for critics of western involvement in the country, he illustrated the futility of trying to introduce liberal democracy into a society riven by ethnic and tribal divisions. --- The son of a Muslim cleric, Mohammed Qasim Fahim was born in 1957 in a small village in the Panjshir Valley, and went on to study Islamic law in Kabul. -- He first came to prominence as a Mujahideen commander for the Northern Alliance coalition of guerrilla fighters led by Ahmed Shah Massood during the campaign against Soviet occupation from 1979. -- After the collapse of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992, he became a key figure in Massoud’s United Front government, heading its intelligence operations. He was known to use torture and, on one occasion, ordered the arrest of his future ally, Hamid Karzai, then the deputy foreign minister, on suspicion of spying for a rival faction within the government. The future president managed to escape when a rocket hit the prison where he was being held. -- After the Taliban took power in 1996, Fahim retreated to the Panjshir to continue the campaign against the Taliban, both in the valley and in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where fighting erupted in 1997. -- He emerged into the international limelight in September 2001 after Massoud’s assassination by Tunisian Islamist militants posing as journalists two days before the 9/11 attacks in the United States. By the end of the month, as commander of the Northern Alliance, Fahim had become America’s main proxy in the fight against the Taliban. -- Fahim backed Hamid Karzai to lead the new UN-brokered interim government and in exchange was named defence minister. But within months American officials are said to have picked up intelligence that Fahim was considering an attempt to assassinate Karzai, as a result of which, in July 2002, US Special Forces wrested presidential bodyguard duties away from soldiers loyal to Fahim. The move followed the assassination earlier in the month of one of Karzai’s vice presidents, Abdul Qadir, a powerful Pashtun warlord and Karzai ally. -- Karzai was criticised for bringing Fahim into government. However his defenders argued that he had little choice after the international community deprived him of the resources he needed in the years immediately after 2001. One revealing story tells how when Karzai flew in a US military aircraft to Kabul after the defeat of the Taliban, Fahim arrived to greet him on the tarmac with nearly 100 bodyguards, all bristling with weapons. As Karzai emerged from the plane with just four companions, Fahim looked confused. “Where are your men?” he asked. “Why General,” replied Karzai, “you are my men — all of you are Afghans and are my men — we are united now — surely that is why we fought the war and signed the Bonn agreement?” -- But Fahim remained unconvinced and, as defence minister, was accused of delaying reforms that would have required him to replace his Tajik generals with a more ethnically balanced officer corps – a precondition for carrying out a $200 million UN-sponsored plan to pay off and disarm 100,000 militiamen loyal to the warlords. -- When Afghans finally got a chance to elect their president for the first time, in 2004, Karzai bowed to international pressure not to put Fahim on his ticket, though he later gave the man he called “my close friend and confidant” the honorary title of “marshal for life”. But Fahim remained a powerful figure and in 2006 Karzai, faced with a resurgent Taliban, returned him to government as an adviser. -- Fahim survived several Taliban assassination attempts, but in later years was beset by health problems which required hospital treatment in Germany. -- His death, which comes only a few weeks before Karzai is due to step down from the presidency, and as Nato forces pull out of Afghanistan , has added to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. - More, Telegraph, at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/10688191/Mohammed-Fahim-obituary.html