Nic Robertson: Afghan leader laid to rest

CNN's Nic Robertson

(CNN) -- A day after his assassination in Afghanistan's capital, Haji Abdul Qadir was buried Sunday in his hometown of Jalalabad.

Qadir -- one of three vice presidents in the country's transitional government -- and his driver were gunned down Saturday afternoon as they were driving away from the gates of a government ministry building in Kabul. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has set up a five-member delegation to investigate the assassination.

CNN's Nic Robertson talked Sunday with CNN anchor Kyra Phillips about the funeral and what the assassination means for Afghanistan's government.

ROBERTSON: Haji Abdul Qadir has been laid to rest in his hometown of Jalalabad in the east of Afghanistan. [His body] was flown there by a government helicopter. Those helicopters were given an escort by ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force here in Afghanistan. They are the peacekeeping force. They flew with those helicopters all the way to Jalalabad.

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Thousands of people turned out in Jalalabad to witness the funeral. And hours earlier in the capital, Kabul, at the main mosque, thousands more well-wishers turned out to hear funeral prayers. Among those well-wishers, the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, [and] we're told also many other government ministers.

Some Afghans there in the capital have expressed concern. They say if a government minister can be shot down in broad daylight in the middle of the day, then what does that mean for the security of normal Afghans in the city? So [there are] some concerns here as well as the political implications for Karzai, the Afghan leader.

Qadir represented the Pashtun ethnic group, of whom many had felt the ethnic Tajik group from northern Afghanistan had too much power in the new government here, and that was one of the reasons why he came to be a vice president in Kabul.

In Jalalabad, he had been a very, very strong and powerful figure and will no doubt be missed there.

PHILLIPS: What's next for Hamid Karzai? Undoubtedly he's under a lot of pressure right now, especially his relationship with the United States. Is he going to move to replace this position? I know they are not easy shoes to fill.

ROBERTSON: It would seem very likely that he would need to bring in another senior Pashtun figure with power and influence. It is not clear who that person might be at this stage, but certainly there would be a lot of pressure on him from the Pashtun element to do that, to see the power balance redressed in the new government here.

He is also under pressure because there are developments elsewhere in Afghanistan in the eastern Afghan town of Khost in the last couple of days. Two smaller warlords have started fighting to such a degree that the coalition forces who have a small Special Forces base in the town of Khost have had to suspend their operations [hunting] for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

So at this time Hamid Karzai faces problems on many fronts, not least of which, as you mentioned, his close association or the way that many people view him here being closely associated with the United States in the same week that there was bombing following a coalition forces operation that killed several Afghans in the south of Afghanistan.