Afghan Biographies

Achakzai, Abdul Raziq Lt Gen killed


Name Achakzai, Abdul Raziq Lt Gen killed
Ethnic backgr. Pashtun
Date of birth 1979
Function/Grade Ex Police Commander
History and Biodata

2. Previous Functions of Lt Gen Abdul Raziq Gen Abdul Razik:
Border Police Commander Spin Boldak District, Kandahar Province (2008-20110528). He kept his function as the Border police Commander Spin Boldak District Kandahar Province, after being appointed
Provincial Police Commander Kandahar (20110529- )

3. Biodata:
raziq_abdulLt Gen Abdul Raziq Achakzai· Abdur Rezaq Razziq Abdul Razzaq Achakzai was born 1979 and raised in Spin Boldak District. He is the border police commander for southern Spin Boldak District, Province Kandahar (20091122). He is a brutal Border Police Commander and is engaged in the drug trade and big scale smuggling. He emerged as an undisputed Achakzai tribal leader and commands a private militia as well.

Although a crook for now Razziq is the Americans' man in Spin Boldak, where US forces expect him to help them dramatically increase their own shipments of supplies for their growing military presence. Razziq, a leader of one of the two main tribes in the border area of Kandahar province, commands a few thousand local policemen in blue-grey uniforms at the frontier, one of only two legal highway crossing points between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Brig Gen·Razik has built his own militia around his Adozai, a prominent branch of the Achakzai, a raziq_abdul2Pashtun tribe. Historically, the Achakzai, along with a rival tribe, the Noorzai, have controlled the smuggling routes around the Khojak Pass, one of the two major mountain passes that connect the Middle East with the Indian subcontinent, the other being the more famous Khyber. Just how much profit Razziq makes from his total control of the border is impossible to gauge. About 700 trucks cross the frontier each day, linking Pakistan with southern Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia beyond.

The head of Afghan customs, Bismullah Kammawie, told the American officers that corruption at Razziq's border post was "total". The Afghan government collects about $55.93 million ($US40 million) in customs revenue in Kandahar Province per year, about a fifth of what it should collect. Razziq is controlling an empire worth millions in annual kickbacks. It is estimated that Razik pulls in between $5 million and $6 million per month in revenues, money he has invested in properties in Kabul and Kandahar and also abroad, in Dubai and Tajikistan. He runs a network of private prisons for those who cross him and is conducting extrajudical executions. Razik’s men also had imported shipping containers full of acetic anhydride, a chemical used in heroin manufacturing, from China.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah said the border security commander in the Spin Boldak district of southern Kandahar province, Brig Gen· Abdul Raziq, used his house as a polling station in the Presidential Elections 2009 to stuff Poll Boxes in favour of President Karzai. The count from Spin Boldak’s polling stations: Karzai, 8,341 - his main challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.·Abdul Raziq, is accused by business rivals and a government official, who asked not to be named for security reasons, of having won a disproportionate number of construction contracts with NATO at Kandahar airfield by monopolizing the market and disenfranchising rivals in less powerful tribes (20100413).

Raziq would also continue to work as Provincial Police Commander of Kandahar Province and as a border police commander responsible for Arghistan, Maroof and Shorabak districts.(20110607)

Since 20110712 the U.S. military has banned the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities in Kandahar while it investigates reports that forces loyal to Brig Gen Razziq have abused prisoners. The decision hadn't been made public until now. As a way to settle the dispute over alleged detainee abuse, some Western officials now are quietly pushing for Gen. Razziq to be removed from his police post. (20110819)

Though Raziq has risen in large part through his own skills and ambition, he is also, to a considerable degree, a creation of the American military intervention in Afghanistan. (Prior to 2001, he had worked in a shop in Pakistan.) As part of a countrywide initiative, his men have been trained by two controversial private military firms, DynCorp and Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, at a U.S.-funded center in Spin Boldak, where they are also provided with weapons, vehicles, and communications equipment. Their salaries are subsequently paid through the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, a UN-administered international fund, to which the U.S. is the largest contributor. Raziq himself has enjoyed visits in Spin Boldak from such senior U.S. officials as Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.(20110927)
 

Since his arrival as the Kandahar Provincial Police Chief,, Raziq has launched a wave of arrests across the city in coordination with the government intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). One human-rights official who has conducted prison visits in Kandahar said that the number of prisoners is up more than 50 percent since Raziq’s arrival. In July 2011, even the U.S. military seemed to have realized that the situation was out of hand, when American and NATO forces quietly halted the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities in southern Afghanistan, because of credible allegations that prisoners had been severely abused while in police and NDS custody.
 

Abdul Razzaq, escaped without any injuries when a suicide bomber made his way into the fortified police headquarters and apparently detonated his explosive prematurely. The attacker made his way into the police building by posing as a citizen with a complaint. The bomber, is said to be a teenager, was kept in a waiting room and his bomb exploded there.(20120111)
 

General Abdul Raziq had been in a convoy late on 20120827 when a vehicle born improvised explosive device (IED), exploded, killing four civilians and wounding 24. Raziq it is said was slightly wounded on his hand and face and was taken to hospital briefly. It is rumored he was critically wounded. Raziq also received some head trauma, but tests and x-rays show no permanent damage. An insurgent suicide bomber wearing a police uniform killed Raziq's predecessor, Khan Mohammad Mojayed, in April 2011.(20120828)
 

A would-be suicide bomber was detained on 20121003 before he could attack the Kandahar police chief, Gen. Abdul Razzaq who sustained serous injuries in a suicide assault last month (sept 2012), returned from treatment abroad, to Kandahar four days (20120931) ago. Raziq, was nearly killed by a suicide bomber in late August 2012, and has not yet fully recovered from his wounds.(20121108)


Gen. Raziq has escaped a number of coordinated attacks planned by Taliban to assassinate him. He was slightly injured following a suicide attack around almost two years ago, while Taliban militants launched coordinated attack on his family home in Spin Boldak district back in July. (20130426)

Kandahar police chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq, has ordered to execute Taliban detainees who are arrested during the military operations.(20140807) Reports rumored Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq was resigning from position.  Gen. Raziq was in Kabul and is was rumored he was expected to present his resignation in the near future. The main motive behind the resignation of Gen. Raziq as Kandahar police chief is not clear so far. However, it is believed that Gen. Raziq is "resigning" after he came under pressure due to his remarks against the Taliban militants where he instructed his forces to execute the Taliban detainees.(20140815)

Speculation followed that the central government would remove him from his job or perhaps he would resign, but nothing happened. Instead, the chief of police in the northern province of Baghlan announced that he would follow Raziq's example to execute Taliban detainees and also stop taking insurgents prisoner.(20140909)

Afghan intelligence operatives foiled a plot by the anti-government armed militants to assassinate the Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq.(20150126)

A Human Right Watch (HRW) report, released March 3, 2015 profiles of "strongmen" linked to police, intelligence, and militia forces responsible for serious abuses in recent years. Among them is General Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar provincial police commander. (20150304)

The Ministry of Interior confirmed Kandahar police chief General Abdul Raziq had arrived in Tirin Kot in Uruzgan province where he will lead the troops, including his own, in clearing the besieged city of Taliban. Raziq has sent in reinforcements from Kandahar and that NATO air support had also been deployed. Meanwhile, Uruzgan MP Raihana Azad said Raziq's men had battled for hours to drive back the Taliban from the Tirin Kot airport and from other parts of the city.(20160908)

Four people, including Faizullah Adozai a member of the Afghan parliament, were killed and five others suffered injuries in a bomb blast in the parking area of a hotel in Vesh Mandi in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, late on Tuesday May 9, 2017 night. Adozai was the brother of Abdul Razzaq, police chief of Kandahar. (20170510)
 

Afghan and international officials say the police chief of the southern province of Kandahar has been killed in an attack by one of Governor Zalmay Wesa's bodyguards who allegedly opened fire on high-ranking officials after a meeting at the governor’s compound. The attack was claimed by the Taliban. The attack occurred after a meeting between senior U.S. and Afghan security officials at the governor’s office in Kandahar city on October 18, 2018. Sources also say the attack was initiated by at least one of the governor's bodyguards. However, no official comment has yet been made by government. Early reports indicate there are more casualties. The Kandahar's deputy provincial governor Agha Lala Dastageri said powerful provincial police chief Abdul Razik and the province's intelligence chief Abdul Mohmin died immediately in the attack and provincial governor Zalmay Wesa died of his injuries at a hospital. The incident happened when officials were leaving the governor’s office and while on their way to a helipad. (20181018)

Taliban sources said  the attacker on General  Razik waited for his target for 6 years, his name was Raza Muhammad belong to Ghilan District of Ghazni Province. (20181022)

 


 

More Background on Raziq :
Born in Spin Boldak around the time Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan, Razik grew up during a period of unprecedented social disruption. His family’s fortunes soared when Esmat Muslim, a warlord from the same Adozai branch of the Achakzai, came to prominence in the region. A former military officer who had been trained by the Russians, Esmat became a mujahideen commander during the early 1980s and organized a force drawn mainly from his tribe, Razik’s uncle Mansour became one of his principal lieutenants. Notorious for his treachery and cruelty, Esmat shattered the delicate peace that had existed between the Achakzai and Noorzai smuggling clans, and he eventually sided with the Communist government in return for control over the border trade. In the end, Esmat was driven out of Spin Boldak in 1988 by a combined mujahideen offensive, and later died of cancer in Moscow. With the collapse of the central government in the early 1990s, Kandahar descended into anarchy. Local warlords divided up and pillaged the province. Even the city of Kandahar itself was split among several commanders, and throughout the province roads were strangled by hundreds of checkpoints at which theft, rape, and murder were common. It was in reaction to such depredations by the warlords that the Taliban emerged, in 1994, from the districts around Kandahar city. Their first major victory was the capture of Spin Boldak on October 12, 1994, an event encouraged by the Pakistani trucking mafia, who saw the group as a means of clearing the roads north to Central Asia. Consequently, the balance between the Achakzai, who were linked to the traditional aristocracy, and the Noorzai, who were more congenial to a radical Islamist movement, swung again. Noorzai tribal figures such as Mullah Akhtar Jan Noorzai, a former commander in Spin Boldak, and Hajji Bashir Noorzai, one of the region’s largest drug smugglers, became influential supporters of the Taliban. (Bashir Noorzai was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison on drug–trafficking charges, after having been lured to New York City by federal agents.) Razik’s uncle Mansour, who had survived Esmat’s departure by rejoining the mujahideen, was hanged from the gun of a tank north of Spin Boldak by the Taliban. Razik’s father also was killed, and his family, along with many Achakzai tribal leaders, fled into exile in Pakistan—until the U.S.-led invasion arrived like a thunderbolt. In November of 2001, the CIA paid Gul Agha Shirzai, who had been the ostensible governor of Kandahar during the chaos before the Taliban, to assemble an anti-Taliban militia in Quetta with the goal of capturing the province. Razziq put together a force that drew mainly on Achakzai tribesmen. “The Americans said, ‘We will help you take your country back from the terrorists,’” recalled Fayda Mohammad, the commander of this Achakzai contingent.

Abdul Razik also had been part of the unit, but few remember him from that time. He was then about twenty-two years old and completely obscure. “No one knew who he was,” said Abdul Wali, a Mohammadzai tribesman who had been a fighter with the group and later joined the Afghan National Army. Soon after he assumed power at the border, Razik began to feud with elements of the Noorzai tribe, particularly the Sultanzai, a rival smuggling clan spread between Spin Boldak and Chaman. One notorious incident took place during the summer of 2006 in Panjwaii District, a volatile area just west of Kandahar city. A predominantly Noorzai district, Panjwaii is a lush river valley crisscrossed by thick orchards and mud-walled compounds, and it provides an excellent springboard for attacks on Kandahar city. During the course of the summer, Taliban fighters had infiltrated the valley, and eventually the district governor, an Achakzai, called in Abdul Razik’s border force.

What followed was a debacle. The Noorzais, fearing their tribal enemies, rose up and joined forces with the Taliban. Razik and his men responded to the unexpected resistance with brutality. “They were killing women and children,” said Ustaz Abdul Halim, a Noorzai and former mujahideen commander who lives in Kandahar city. “After that, everyone was with the Taliban.” Capitalizing on the tribal dynamics, the Taliban installed a Noorzai, Mullah Rauf Lang, as their commander in Panjwaii District. Later that fall, newly arrived Canadian troops in the area would launch Operation Medusa, a large-scale assault that killed hundreds of fighters and scores of civilians in weeks of close combat and withering bombardments. Today, the area remains one of the most violent in Kandahar Province—the Canadians suffered many of their casualties there and had  abandoned two untenable forward operating bases in the area—and anti-government sentiments still run high.

 

Kandahar Police Chief Abdul Raziq survived a massive bombing. At least four civilians died in the blast, apparently set off by a suicide bomber in a minivan, and 20 people were hurt, including Raziq, whose injuries were described as minor. The bomb exploded about 10 p.m. as Raziq's convoy was driving past on a main road on the city's outskirts.Raziq, who was installed as police chief after his predecessor was assassinated, is credited with many in Kandahar with helping contain the Taliban presence in the city. Previously the head of the provincial border police, he is a favorite of the American military, which helped boost his power and prestige. (20120827)
 

Brig. Gen. Abdul Raziq was attacked with a remotely-controlled bomb on his way from Maiwand district to Kandahar City. He had gone to Maiwand to investigate a bus-fuel tanker collision that left 45 people dead and 10 others wounded.(20130426)

 

Last Modified 2022-03-16
Established 2009-11-22