KABUL, Afghanistan — The mullah sleeps in a different relative's house every night. But sleep has been far from the outspoken cleric's mind since local Taliban leaders warned him to stop saying that they're fighting an un-Islamic war.
"The Taliban have approached members of my family and warned them to tell me that they are watching me and want me to stop publicly criticizing them," said the cleric, who didn't want his name used because he feared for his life. "I know they can kill me in a minute. I am nothing to them."
The cleric, a community leader in Kandahar province, a former stronghold of the ousted Taliban government, can be considered lucky to have received a warning. Another religious scholar, Qazi Niamatullah, who served as a district judge in Kandahar, was gunned down last week by suspected Taliban militants on his way home from the local mosque.
"Compared to the others, Niamatullah was a progressive cleric, and his beliefs crossed over in his court rulings," said Ajmal Mohamadzai, a resident of Kandahar. "I am not sure why he wasn't scared of the Taliban rebels." He was the fifth senior Muslim cleric to be killed by guerrillas in the troubled south of the country since late May.
Mawlavi Saleh Mohammed, a cleric in Afghanistan's southwestern province of Helmand, was shot to death by a Taliban fighter on a motorcycle about 10 days before Niamatullah's slaying.
Mohammed was the head of the provincial cleric's council and considered a progressive religious leader who supported President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government.
"This is an old militant strategy, to go after the religious leaders, and this strategy has emerged again in Afghanistan," said Haji Asadullah Khalid, the Kandahar governor. "By killing one mullah, they will quiet down hundreds of them."
In Afghanistan, mullahs often serve as teachers, local government advisors and judges. They wield influence over village elders and decision-makers, and some use their Friday sermons to express political opinions.
The Karzai government has worked to bring mullahs under its guidance and has encouraged them to preach to their constituents about the importance of the democratic process and the upcoming parliamentary elections and against the Taliban guerrillas.
Not all clerics, however, are wholeheartedly supportive of the Karzai administration.
