Afghan President Hamid Karzai's political campaign against NATO night raids took a deeply personal turn after one of his relatives was mistakenly killed during a botched operation in his home village.
Haji Yar Mohammad Khan, a 60-year-old cousin of Mr. Karzai's father, was apparently holding an AK-47 assault rifle when he was shot dead on the roof of his home during a night raid by American Special Operations and Afghan forces in Karz, a village of crooked mud huts where the Afghan president spent his childhood and many of his clan members still live.
During the operation, the dead man's son was detained as a suspected Taliban commander, as well as several of the family's security guards.
The village, near the southern city of Kandahar, has never been considered a Taliban stronghold. Rather, Karz has often been held up as an island of stability in the volatile region surrounding it where Taliban fighters are readying themselves for spring fighting season.
Now, the deadly night raid has placed the village at the centre of a smaller, but significant battle that pits the Afghan President against his NATO-led allies over the issue of the accidental killing of civilians.
Mr. Karzai has long argued that NATO night raids are too risky, resulting in too many innocent deaths.
In principal, General David Petraeus, commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, agrees that accidental killings hurt the coalition's efforts by turning regular Afghans against them. However, under his command, night raids have increased in certain districts.
Still, figures released by the United Nations earlier this week showed that 75 per cent of civilian deaths last year were caused by insurgents.
The report's findings were especially significant given the simmering rage in Afghanistan over accidental civilian deaths at the hand of foreign troops, anger that seemed to boil over earlier this month after nine Afghan boys were killed in a helicopter air strike when they were mistaken as insurgents.
Wednesday night's killing of a member of the high-profile Karzai clan unleashed fresh rage, and led NATO officials to climb down from an initial claim that the man killed during the operation was the father of a Taliban leader.
The original statement, issued by the International Security Assistance Force, said the operation targeted a Taliban leader who was distributing bomb-making materials.
It stated that soldiers had approached a compound and called for the people inside to come out.
Deadly force was used only after a man was seen holding a weapon, the initial statement read: "A member observed an armed individual with an AK-47 in an adjacent building within the same compound. The security force assessed the male as an immediate threat to the security force, and engaged him. The individual killed was the father of the targeted individual. The leader and suspected insurgents were detained as a result of the initial questioning at the scene."
A subsequent statement said the coalition was "now aware of conflicting reports about the identities of those involved," and an inquiry had been launched.
Mr. Karzai declined to make a statement in the wake of his relative's killing, but his spokesperson said the President knew the dead man personally as a relative.
"The President is sad to hear about another civilian casualty case and has ordered an investigation ... He calls on ISAF to protect civilians rather than killing them."
In Kandahar, politicians seemed divided on the significance of the accidental killing of a member of the Karzai clan.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of Kandahar province's council and the President's half brother, called the killing a mistake.
"He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what happened," Mr. Karzai told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview from his compound in Kandahar City.
The villagers of Karz were stunned at Wednesday night's turn of events.
"Karzai is the President of Afghanistan and the Americans come and kill his own people. What for? Why?" demanded Lal Mohammad, a 35-year-old truck driver who cowered in his home with his family when they heard shots fired the previous night.
"He was not a Talib. He only had a weapon because he uses it to settle conflicts. He is a village elder. He was protecting his village," he said.
Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar province, sought to play down the special significance attributed to Wednesday night's botched raid to argue that accidental killing of Afghan civilians is "commonplace."
"[Mr. Khan] is no different from the others. NATO hit the wrong target. These are the consequences. They are killing innocent people," he told The Globe in a telephone interview.
"It doesn't mean anything special that it happened to Karzai's family. A death is a death," he said.