{"id":3465,"date":"2014-03-10T07:51:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T07:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp3\/?p=3465"},"modified":"2014-03-10T07:51:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T07:51:18","slug":"afghanistan-s-powerful-vice-president-fahim-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunnionline.us\/english\/2014\/03\/10\/3465\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan&#8217;s powerful vice president Fahim dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/stories\/news3\/fahim-afgan-vice-pres.jpg\" border=\"0\" style=\"float: right; margin: 5px;\" \/>The powerful Afghan vice president died of natural causes on Sunday, a government spokesman said, only weeks before Afghanistan goes to the polls to elect a new president.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>  <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, vice president since 2009, had been a top commander in the Northern Alliance, a group of anti-Taliban militia leaders, during the civil war.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;Marshal M.Q. Fahim has passed away. May his soul rest in peace,&#8221; presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi wrote in a tweet.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The office of President Hamid Karzai said he died from a heart disease and called his death \u201ca huge loss for Afghanistan.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Faizi said the government had called for a three-day mourning period and flags would be lowered to half-mast.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Fahim, a former defence minister, was a staunch backer of President Hamid Karzai and commanded great loyalty from former fighters of the Northern Alliance, which he headed after the death of famous rebel leader Ahmad Shah Masoud in 2001.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">His loyalties in the presidential election had swung between different candidates, said Davood Moradian, the head of the Kabul-based Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Fahim had links with the both president&#8217;s brother, who stepped down this week in favour of Zalmay Rassoul, another candidate close to the president, and Abdullah Abdullah, a former aide to Masoud, he said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Fahim spoke little to the media, said Kate Clarke of the Kabul based thinktank Afghanistan Analysts Network, but wielded great influence in closed door meetings.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">&#8220;Karzai, Fahim and the Americans have been the three key powers in Afghanistan since 2001,&#8221; she said. &#8220;He was one of the key people to win over because he carries a lot of influence within &#8230; one of the big political- military parties.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The polls are due to take place April 5. If they proceed normally, they will mark the first time in Afghanistan&#8217;s history that power has been handed from one democratically elected government to another.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hamid Karzai is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term. He has not offered his backing to any of the candidates. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Source:<em><strong> World Bulletin<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The powerful Afghan vice president died of natural causes on Sunday, a government spokesman said, only weeks before Afghanistan goes to the polls to elect a new president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Afghanistan&#039;s powerful vice president Fahim dies - 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