Qaseem Fahim Vice President of Afghanistan Passed Away.

[Abdaali]

Mohammed Fahim (Persian: محمد فهيم; born 1957; also known as "Marshal Fahim") was an Afghan military commander, politician and the Vice President of Afghanistan since November 2009.He was the Defense Minister of the Afghan Transitional Administration, beginning in 2002 and also served as Vice President from June 2002 to December 2004. Marshal Fahim was replaced by Abdul Rahim Wardak, who was appointed as defense minister by President Hamid Karzai on 23 December 2004 when the transitional administration gave way to a popularly-elected administration. Fahim returned to government however, after Karzai named him as candidate for Vice-President during his re-election campaign. Marshal Fahim was a member of Afghanistan's Tajik ethnic group. He was the recipient of the Ahmad Shah Baba Medal. He is fluent in Persian, Pashto and Arabic, but doesn't speak English. He was affiliated with Jamiat Islami (Shura-e Nazar) party of Afghanistan.
Fahim died due to heart attack on 9 March 2014

 

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This will have an affect on the upcoming elections. He was one of the most well known members of the erstwhile Northern Alliance.
At the the age of 57 he was still relatively young to die of natural causes. Does anybody know what the cause was?

How this development will effect the Tajik vote block. Comments please.

 

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I was thinking that Fahim's death will have some serious repercussions. Here is a very interesting article by Ambassador Bhadrakumar explaining the situation.
Fahim’s death is Taliban’s gain
By M K Bhadrakumar
When a war gets protracted, it reroutes the trajectory of the life of its commanders. An instance that stood out in past history was of the then US defence secretary Robert McNamara who ended up as the most famous dissident of the Vietnam War. The Afghan Vice-President Mohammed Fahim who died on Sunday is another such case.

I first met him in Panjshir Valley circa 1993 while on a mission to establish contact with the Afghan Mujahideen leaders. Fahim was an aide to the late Ahmed Shah Massoud at that time, in charge of intelligence and the military operations.
Unlike ‘Commander’ Massoud’s other key aides whom I came across — Yunus Qanooni (in charge of ’supplies’), late Dr. Abdur Rahman (ace negotiator and back room dealer who was later brutally killed) and Dr. Abdullah (in charge of PR ) — Fahim stood out as the quintessential military man already with a formidable reputation for violence.
Fahim became the natural inheritor of Massoud’s militia and war equipment. With his intelligence background and shadowy past — it was even rumored that he once served in the dreaded KHAD during the communist rule — Fahim shied away from contacts with foreigners.
But following the US invasion in 2001, the Americans needed him as the point person in Hamid Karzai’s government on military affairs and as his political career began, his metamorphosis from being a ruthless practitioner of coercion and violence to a successful, enormously wealthy businessman-cum-politician also happened.
The big break came in 2009 when Karzai picked him as vice-presidential candidate in the 2009 poll. Fahim gave rock-like support to Karzai, which enabled the latter to defeat the US plans to have him replaced as president. Fahim never looked back. All the covert campaign by the US through the Human Rights Watch to defame him as ‘war criminal’ came to nought.
Fahim’s departure has serious repercussions. On the political side, Karzai’s government loses the balance in ethnic representation. And it’s happening at a critical juncture when a delicate transition of power is due by June-July.

Fahim’s weighty presence had ensured that Tajiks were visibly well-represented in the power structure. Besides, there is no ‘Panjshiri’ who can easily step into the void Fahim has left.
Fahim never showed explicit preference for any of the candidates in the fray for the presidential poll on April 5. It stands to reason he might have favored Abdullah, but one cannot be sure because the ‘Panjshiris’ are a divided house today.
Fahim’s death constitutes a serious blow for India. On the contrary, Pakistani agencies will heave a sigh of relief. Again, unlike the other ‘Panjshiris’, Fahim levelled with Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum. At a time when Dostum is probing his future politico-military options in the post-2014 scenario — he paid unpublicized visits to some Central Asian capitals and Delhi last month — this would have implications.
The main thing to watch will be the impact of Fahim’s departure on the security front. He held together the Tajik forces, which are the mainstay of the Afghan army. There isn’t anyone in sight who can play that role. The advantage goes to the Taliban, therefore, if they indeed have a secret plan to push for a takeover in Kabul by force. Fahim’s death calls attention to the extreme fragility of the Afghan situation. The kaleidoscope has shifted and things can’t be the same again.

 

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BACKGROUNDER
The death of First Vice President Marshal Qasim Fahim will have an even bigger impact on the aftermath
of the forthcoming presidential election than on its outcome.

Mara Tchalakov and Saša Hezir

A consensus view has emerged from the slew of obituaries issuing forth in the wake of Afghanistan’s First Vice President
Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim’s demise: his death has left a significant void.1 What form we can expect that void will take
or how long it might take to be filled are questions left largely unanswered by the rush of media attention in the wake of his passing on March 9. His sudden departure has introduced three significant uncertainties into Afghanistan’s political landscape at a very crucial time: the selection of the next interim Vice President, the event’s impact on the outcome of the forthcoming presidential elections in a few short weeks, and the future of the fractious Northern Alliance and its influential
Tajik-dominated political party, Jamiat-i Islami. Speculation is already running rampant on the implications of his death
for the first two of these three struggles for political control; in the longer-term, this third struggle will be the most critical
to watch. The following sections analyze the impact of Fahim’s death on the upcoming presidential elections and the larger
role his void might play in the future of the fractured Northern Alliance. An investigation of both counts makes clear that the
death of First Vice President Marshal Qasim Fahim will have an even bigger impact on the aftermath of the forthcoming
presidential election than on its outcome.

Fahim and the Presidential Elections
The relative openness of the presidential field has produced a collective belief that the demise of the Afghan First Vice
President will have a significant impact on the outcome of the Afghan election. Given Fahim’s vast network in Kabul and
across the northern provinces, his leadership of the ethnicTajik minority, and his influence within the more cohesive
elements of the Afghan security apparatus, such a conclusion appears logical. This collective sense has been heightened by
indications that Fahim was privately supporting Dr. Abdullah Abdullah’s candidacy; indeed, Abdullah is widely expected to
suffer the most from Fahim’s departure.2 As the only Tajik presidential candidate and as a fellow Panjshiri with a solid
pedigree from Jamiat-i Islami, Abdullah might easily have been Fahim’s natural preference. The other major Tajik figure
in the race, Ahmad Zia Masoud, presently running as Zalmai Rasoul’s First Vice Presidential candidate, replaced Fahim on
the 2004 Karzai presidential ticket and had in the past vied with him for leadership of the Panjshiri faction of Ahmad
Shah Masoud’s former party. As far back as September of last year, Fazl Rahmand Oria, a spokesperson for Abdullah’s
National Coalition of Afghanistan (NCA) party, triumphantly announced that Fahim had pledged his early support to
Abdullah’s campaign.3 Upon Fahim’s death, Abdullah aides issued self-serving affirmations to the press that “since Marshal
Fahim’s supporters are aware that he (Fahim) threw his weight behind Abdullah in the coming elections they will cast their
votes in Abdullah’s favor.”4

In December 2013, the United States government indicated it had plans to sponsor a series of nine polls conducted by
three polling companies over the course of the Afghan election period. Formalized polling is a relatively new phenomenon
in Afghanistan and one whose impact on the outcome of the election is at present very hard to predict. Two of the polls
securing the most attention in recent months, one by Democracy International and another by the popular Afghan Tolo News
Channel in conjunction with ATR Consulting, found former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah leading the race,
closely followed by Dr. Ashraf Ghani. Both polls indicate that a run-off among the field of candidates is likely. Abdullah won
31 percent of the vote among 2,500 Afghans surveyed in the Democracy International poll and approximately 27 percent
in the less methodologically rigorous but more locally popular Tolo survey.5 Afghan Independent Election Commission
(IEC) officials have confirmed their suspicions in this regard: Yusuf Nuristani, Chairman of the Commission, stated there
was a 50 percent chance that a presidential run-off would be required in late May or early June. Nuristani singled out four
of the eleven candidates — former Foreign Ministers Abdullah Abdullah and Zalmai Rassoul, former Finance Minister Ashraf
Ghani, and former Islamist warlord Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf — as likely to garner the most votes.6

However, rumors that leading contenders such as Zalmai Rasoul and Ashraf Ghani were also courting Fahim’s patronage in the weeks before his death — and Fahim’s own reticence to publicly confirm his preference — suggest that his loyalties were far from fixed. History is instructive in this regard. Fahim withdrew his support for Abdullah’s candidacy in the 2009 presidential race after striking a political bargain with President Karzai, one that eventually led to his being placed on the winning ticket.7
In the ensuing years, the First Vice President remained closely tied to the Karzai family through an intricate web of business
and financial partnerships led by their respective brothers, Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim.8 If President Karzai
indeed favors Zalmai Rasoul — a rumor that has gained currency in the past few weeks due to his brother Qayum’s departure
from the contest and his announced alliance with Rasoul — Fahim’s preference for Abdullah would have placed the sitting
President and First Vice President on different sides of what could evolve into a highly contested three-way presidential race
among Abdullah, Ghani, and Rasoul.9

Fahim’s close affiliation with the country’s central state apparatus and his longstanding desire to consolidate his power in that
regard suggest his interest in the electoral process had much to do with cementing his authority in the next administration,
whatever the outcome.10 In an article for Al-Jazeera, Ahmad Wali Masoud, younger brother to Vice Presidential candidate
Zia Masoud and the slain anti-Soviet resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masoud, observed:

It is true that Fahim has not always been a supporter of
Dr Abdullah, a former comrade-in-arms during the
jihad against the Soviets. But in the country’s second
presidential election, he announced his support. If he
had allied himself with Karzai during the last decade,
it was probably because they had come to a pragmatic
arrangement. And if Karzai is not in the running, who
should he have supported? Fahim’s endorsement of Dr
Abdullah’s campaign, in the days before he died, shows
that his vision for Afghanistan has never wavered.11

Such an observation assumes that Fahim’s predilection for “pragmatic arrangements” would have ceased with the conclusion
of a Karzai presidency. Wali Masoud refers to the same months old assertion by the National Coalition’s spokesman to justify
Fahim’s unstinting support for Abdullah’s campaign. However, a close or fraudulent presidential run-off come April will likely
produce an election outcome that is decided behind closed doors and not in the voting booth. “Pragmatic arrangements”
in such a context are the lifeblood of modern Afghan politics There is a reason none of the principal contenders had given
up their courtship of Fahim’s favor.

The view that Fahim’s preference for Abdullah was vital to his electoral campaign also overlooks the voting data from
the previous two presidential elections. When Fahim threw his support to Yunus Qanooni after the former was dropped
from the Karzai ticket in 2004, Qanooni only secured 16.3 percent of the total vote, carrying seven of Afghanistan’s thirtyfour
provinces. When Abdullah ran against the Karzai-Fahim ticket in 2009, Abdullah carried most of the northern and
northeastern provinces considered Jamiat-i Islami strongholds,including Panjshir, Parwan, Badakhshan, Balkh, Kunduz,
Baghdis, Samangan, and Takhar. Fahim’s support, in other words, was not enough for the Karzai team to collect majority
votes in the “home” provinces of the First Vice President and his Jamiat affiliates.

At best, Fahim’s backing might have augmented Abdullah’s victory in these northern provinces in April. However, with
the Tajik vote already likely split between those supporting an Abdullah-Muhammad Khan ticket and those favoring
a Zalmai Rasoul-Ahmad Zia Masoud pairing, and with the Uzbek vote up for grabs with the presence of an Ashraf Ghani-
Rashid Dostum ticket, Fahim’s influence on this front should not be overstated. Abdullah’s previous inability to carry the
Pashtun-dominated southern and southeastern provinces of the country — provinces whose insecure terrain make them
particularly vulnerable to vote fraud — is likely to remain the biggest stumbling block to an Abdullah presidency. On this
front, Abdullah’s Pashtun First Vice Presidential candidate, a deputy leader of Hezb-i Islami’s registered political faction,
seems likely to split the vote among Hezb-i Islami sympathizers with presidential candidate Qutbuddin Hilal, the former head
of the party’s political council. Hilal has reportedly secured the support of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, his father-in-law and
leader of Hezb-i Islami’s militant wing, who had until recently opposed the holding of Afghan elections in the presence of
foreign forces.12

 

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Fahim’s absence will most keenly be felt in the election’s aftermath. A recurring theme of the eulogies commemorating
Fahim’s role in the post-Taliban Afghan state was his ability to ensure (or strongarm) national unity. As one Afghan
parliamentary deputy chairman declared: Without any doubt, Marshal Fahim could have been a source of assurance for recognition of election results by all of the political movements. Marshal Qasim Fahim was a person who could prevent disputes or political disturbances after the elections as well as… gain the trust of the influential people in case of disputes arising after the elections.13

Here we get to the crux of Fahim’s importance to the upcoming election — his ability to have leveraged his burnished mujahideen credentials, his ethnic leadership, and his firm grip over the country’s security apparatus to help legitimate the
eventual winner. Which candidate Fahim would have thrown his support to at the eleventh hour is unclear, but it would almost certainly have been the team that could convincingly assure his own interests. This brokering role would have been far more influential to the eventual outcome of the presidential transition — albeit one that would have cemented his own authority in the bargain — than any stated preference for a particular candidate. According to diplomatic sources, Mr. Fahim had “privately assured Mr. Karzai that if Mr. Abdullah lost, he would use his influence to keep Tajiks from rejecting the winner and provoking another postelection political crisis at a dangerous time.”14 One commentator noted during the 2009 election: “Even if the incumbent president does not technically win re-election, Fahim provides Karzai with the armed musclehe would need to challenge the published results.”15

Fahim’s recent comments to the President echo the sentiments of another northern conciliator, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Rabbani was Jamiat-i Islami’s patriarch, a man who used his influence in the 2004 and 2009 elections to facilitate successive Karzai victories and was assassinated by Taliban insurgents in 2011.16 Both Fahim and Rabbani were mercurial men and, above all, political survivors. They were capable of flirting with the opposition when it suited them but generally favored continuity in national politics as the best means of securing their interests. Fahim might have reinvented for himself a post-election status similar to the one that Rabbani assumed after the fall of the Taliban: an “elder statesman,” capable of allying with the new order while ensuring his own political survival in the process.17 The likelihood of a run-off before voting even commences now increases the odds that any internecine struggle among the leading candidates could drag out for some time.

 

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The Future of a Fractured Northern Alliance

The death of the powerful leader of Afghanistan’s Tajik ethnic minority raises the salient question of how it will impact the nature of northern Afghan politics going forward. Will his demise pave the way for a more pluralistic politics of the north, less dominated by regional warlords and strongmen, or will he simply be replaced?

There is no Tajik northerner at present that can rival Fahim’s clout or his grip on the nation’s security apparatus. Having served as Ahmad Shah Masoud’s head of intelligence, as leader of Masoud’s Shura-e Nazar or Supervisory Council of the North, and as defense minister during the Afghan Transitional Administration from 2002-2004, Fahim’s military clout placed him primus inter pares — so much so that President Karzai bestowed on him the honorific “Field Marshal,” the only such title-holder in the country. Fahim’s hand-picked successor, General Daud Daud Khan, formerly police commander of the northern zone and a confidante of Ahmad Shah Masoud’s, was assassinated by Taliban insurgents in a high-profile attack in May 2011.18 Bismillah Khan, Fahim’s loyal lieutenant, a former Chief of the Army Staff and the current Minister of Defense, is widely believed to lack the political instincts required to step into Fahim’s role. Other Jamiat-i Islami politicians that were once close to Ahmad Shah Masoud, including his two younger brothers Ahmad Zia and Ahmad Wali, and Yunus Qanooni, a former Speaker of Parliament, predominantly played political and financial, rather than military, roles during Masoud’s resistance against the Soviets.

Atta Noor, the powerful governor of Balkh, might come closest to matching Fahim’s martial bona fides. The warlord-turned governor from Afghanistan’s strategically located northern province has long presided as Jamiat’s regional leader in the north, having once served as a military commander for the Northern Alliance. A year ago he elicited rumblings that he might consider a presidential bid and he successfully vied to become the Executive Director of Jamiat-i Islami’s leadership board.19 However, Atta’s network is largely circumscribed to his native province of Balkh. He decided against a presidential run in 2014. Whether he decides to leave his home province for a role in the national government will be an important indicator of his future intentions.

In the meantime, whichever northerner wins the Afghan election — either as a presidential or vice presidential candidate— could be in a strong position to lay claim to Fahim’s legacy.20 The likely contenders are Tajik candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ahmad Zia Masoud and Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum. If Zalmai Rasoul proves victorious his vice presidential candidate Zia Masoud might use his official position in a manner similar to that of Fahim while in office. While serving as Vice President from 2004-2009 he did not appear inclined in this direction, and he eventually broke with Karzai to form his own opposition National Front party.21 This might change with Fahim no longer a rival player and Karzai no longer head of state.

The outcome of the presidential election also does not rule out the possibility of Fahim’s brothers eventually transitioning from their role as stewards of the Fahim family’s extensive business interests into the political sphere. His eldest son and heir, Adib Fahim, addressed a special memorial ceremony during his father’s state burial, in which the latter’s body was laid to rest with military honors and a 21-cannon salute.22 Adib, in his late twenties, has expressed interest in participating in Afghan politics. In a June 2013 interview with Renee Montagne of National Public Radio (NPR), he expressed the view:

I cannot foresee the future. However, today, the terms
have changed and the younger people, like myself, who
are hopeful of becoming players in the future of the
country, we do not have to be playing in the same way
that the previous generation did.23

There is hope in the West that the offspring of these Afghan warlords represent a generational gulf from their fathers, reared to participate in politics but educated at liberal, Western institutions abroad. Their experience of the bloody Soviet occupation and civil wars has typically been marginal.24 However, the patronage networks that their fathers built and upon which their authority depends will make radical reform of the way the political game is played difficult. Sons of powerful Afghan patriarchs who cannot command the same loyalties as their fathers can be sidelined or overruled by more influential factions. The politically anodyne figure of Salahuddin Rabbani, Burhanuddin’s son, is an example. Rabbani isn’t believed to wield much power within Jamiat-i Islami circles despite his symbolic appointment by President Karzai as head of his High Peace Council — a position his father once occupied.25

Whether Adib is willing or capable enough to fill his father’s shoes does not obscure an important point about the gradually shifting political landscape in Afghanistan. An entire generation of northern leaders who staked their political futures on their role in the mujahideen resistance movements of the 1980s and 1990s are aging and, in some cases, beginning to die out.

Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf and Abdul Rashid Dostum are in their sixties. Even the so-called “Young Turks” — the next generation of northern leaders below them — are in their fifties. Until now, President Karzai has been able to successfully co-opt powerful elements of the former Northern Alliance in order to secure enough northern support for his administration in Afghanistan’s multi-ethnic state. Any further fracturing of that Alliance might mean that future presidents face a more complex and potentially more inhospitable political terrain in their attempts at co-opting different constituencies. If so, the future of Afghan politics could more closely resemble Marshal Fahim’s favorite pastime of buzkashi — a violent and popular Afghan sport in which horse riders compete over a headless goat and only the most masterful players ever get close to the carcass.26

Mara Tchalakov is an Afghanistan Analyst at ISW. Saša Hezir is an Afghanistan Research Assistant at ISW.

Notes

1. “Fahim’s Death Has Created A Vacuum,” BBC Monitoring South Asia, 11 March 2014; Ahmad Wali Masoud, “Afghanistan: Fahim’s Death Leaves Void,” Al Jazeera, 10 March 2014.

2. “Fahim’s Death Has Created A Vacuum.”

3. Sayed Sharif Amiry, “Marshal Fahim Vows Support For Abdullah Presidency,” Tolo News Channel, 28 September 2013.

4. “Marshal Fahim’s Death Could Affect Afghanistan’s Political, Security Landscape,” Xinhua News Agency, 11 March 2014.

5. Parwiz Shamal, “New Survey Reveals Frontrunner for Presidential Bid,” Tolo News Channel, 22 December 2013.

6. Nathan Hodge and Margherita Stancati, “Taliban Threaten Attacks in Afghan Vote,” The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2014.

7. “Senior Opposition Figure To Back Karzai in Poll,” Reuters, 21 April 2009.

8. Carl Forsberg, “The Karzai-Fahim Alliance,” (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, 2012).

9. Jeremy Kelly, “We’ll Kill You If You Vote, Say Taleban,” The Times, 11 March 2014.

10. Kevin Sieff and Sayed Salahuddin, “Mohammad Fahim Dies at 57,” The Washington Post, 09 March 2014.

11. Masoud, “Afghanistan: Fahim’s Death Leaves Void.”

12. Ghanizada, “Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Supports Qotbuddin Hilal in Presidential Election,” Khaama Press, 15 February 2014.

13. “Afghan TV reports Marshal Fahim Could Have Averted Possible Disputes After Polls,” Arzu TV, 10 March 2014.

14. Matthew Rosenberg, “Afghan Politician’s Death Leaves Power Vacuum,” The New York Times, 11 March 2014.

15. Hillary Mann Leverett, “The Real Winner of Afghanistan’s Election,” Foreign Policy 31 August 2009.

16. Kate Clark, “The Death of Rabbani,” Afghan Analysts Network (2011), The Death of Rabbani | Afghanistan Analysts Network

17. Tanya Goudsouzian, “Death of a Statesman: Burhanuddin Rabbani,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 24 September 2011.

18. Martin Van Biljert, “The Killing Continues: The Taloqan Attack,” (2011), The Killing Continues - the Taloqan attack (Updated) | Afghanistan Analysts Network

19. Ahmad Quraishi, “Jamiat Party Appoints Interim Board,” Pajhwok, 01 July 2013.

20. “Afghanistan Loses Unifying Voice With President’s Death,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, 11 March 2014.

21. Gran Hewad, “The New National Front: A Dark Horse Returns - With Three Riders,” Afghan Analysts Network (2011).

22. “Marshal Fahim Buried in Kabul With Military Honor,” Tolo News, 11 March 2014.

23. Renee Montagne, “Growing Up An Afghan Warlord’s Son,” National Public Radio, 04 June 2013.

24. Mujib Mashal, “Afghan Princelings: Are the Children of the Mujahedin Ready to Rule?,” Time August 13 2012.

25. Gran Hewad, “A Second Rabbani Takes the Helm at the High Peace Council,” Afghan Analysts Network (2012).

26. Yaroslav Trofimov, “Afghan Vice President’s Death Shakes Up Political Field,” The Wall Street Journal, 09 March 2014; Emal Haidary, “Afghan VP and Ex-Warlord Fahim Dies of Natural Causes,” Agence France-Presse, 09 March 2014.