General Abdul Raziq once boasted he had survived “countless” Taliban attempts to kill him. The controversial Kandahar police chief, described by Human Rights Watch last year as the southern province’s “torturer in chief”, had risen through the ranks to become one of the most powerful security heads in Afghanistan. Widely seen as a bulwark against the Taliban insurgency, Raziq’s death has left a dangerous security vacuum that one observer said could lead to a “meltdown” in the south, the Taliban movement’s birthplace.
