After calling Taliban “political opponents” and signing Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the security situation seems to be aggravated across the country. To the Afghans’ unmitigated chagrin, the graph of civilian casualties raises further with each passing day. As a result, an explosion left heavy casualties behind in Paktika province and ten terrorist acts were carried out by the Taliban insurgents within the last two weeks in Kabul – right under the nose of presidential palace.
Taliban fighters are reported to have staged an attack Thursday evening in an upscale district in the Afghan capital Kabul. Multiple explosions and bursts of gunfire were witnessed in the Wazir Akbar Khan district – which contains numerous foreign embassies and compounds housing international agencies and companies – as well as the homes of some senior Afghan government officials.
The attack came hours after a suicide car-bomber struck a British embassy vehicle, killing five people, including a British citizen, and wounding 33 others.
About ten blasts have hit Kabul over the last 10 days. There have been attacks on foreign compounds as well as a prominent female member of parliament, who was injured in a suicide bombing that targeted her car.
Afghanistan suffered its worst attack this year on Sunday when a suicide bomber struck at a volleyball match in the eastern province of Paktika, killing around 57 people – which is said to be carried out by Haqqani terrorist network. The reports say that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives during a volleyball match in Yahya Khel district which was attended by hundreds of spectators leading to the death and injury of more than a hundred people.
Paktika province has an active Afghan Taliban insurgent presence and lies along the porous border with Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, used as a base by both the Haqqani militant network and the Pakistani branch of the Taliban.
A suicide bomber detonated his explosive in a mosque in Khugiani district of Nangarhar province which killed the prayer-leader and injured at least 25 worshippers. It is not the first time that Taliban desecrate the Holy places of Muslim. As a result, the governor of Logar province Arsala Jamal was killed two years ago in a mosque while worshipping – the explosive was planted inside the Holy Qur’an, the Sacred Book of Muslim. Moreover, a member of Taliban insurgents was arrested last year, in Ghor province, after placing explosive devices inside Holy Qur’an.
When the female MP Shokria Barikzai was targeted by a suicide bomber more than a week ago, it was not a matter of surprise for Afghan people to see Qudsia, a 21-year-old university student, lying in a pool of blood with the burnt pages of Holy Qur’an. Nothing and nowhere seem to be sacred for Taliban insurgents who carry out their militancy and inhuman acts under the aegis of religion. They do not only leave deep scars on the heart of victims’ families but also great blemish on the face of religion. Taliban militants never hesitate to kill mullahs – Muslims’ religious leaders – and ruin mosques or burn the Holy Book. In short, their radicalism has overshadowed their rationality and logic. Therefore, they have changed to a blood-thirsty animals that the more they kill the more the thirstier they get.
In recent weeks, suicide bombers have launched attacks on military convoys and on compounds housing Foreign Service companies and their international employees.
Thursday’s suicide bomb attack is the first on a diplomatic target in Kabul for some time, as most embassies are secured behind high concrete blast walls with razor wire and guards with automatic weapons. The U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Herat was attacked last year and the Indian consulate in the same city was attacked in May this year.
In September 2011, insurgents launched a complex attack involving suicide bombers and gunmen on the diplomatic area of Kabul – close to the U.S. Embassy and NATO’s headquarters – that lasted around 20 hours and left seven people dead, none of them U.S. citizens.
The Taliban and other jihadist militants have unleashed waves of suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year as foreign forces pull out after 13 years of war.
This year has been one of the bloodiest for Afghan civilians, according to the United Nations, which recorded nearly 5,000 deaths and injuries of civilians in the first half of the year.
Signing security pact, on Tuesday, aroused Taliban’s anger. As a result, they denounced the security pact as a “sinister” plot by the United States, and used it to launch its first propaganda assault on the new Ghani administration. Moreover, Ghani’s serious tune against Taliban such as terming them “political opponents” rather than “discontented brother”, fill the militants with fury.
The security agreement, will allow 9,800 American and at least 2,000 NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan after the international combat mission formally ends on Dec. 31. Most of them will help train and assist the struggling Afghan security forces, although some American Special Operations forces will remain to conduct counterterrorism missions.
In his inauguration speech on Monday, Mr. Ghani called on the Taliban to join peace talks. But he also warned that the invitation should not be taken as a sign of weakness, and that his government would respond forcefully to any attacks on civilians.
Afghan people believe in stabilizing role of the security pact and seriousness of the new government. Hope, foreign troops join force with Afghan police to conduct counterterrorism mission in the best possible way and respond to the terrorist attacks forcefully.