Taliban's Kabul Attack Kills 21, Heightens Security Concerns
by Ayaz Gul January 18, 2014
The death toll from a Taliban attack on a restaurant in Afghanistan's capital has risen to 21. A suicide bomber who blew himself up and Taliban gunmen who rushed in behind him to shoot the survivors killed 13 foreigners, including U.N. employees, Americans and other Westerners.
The attack is seen as a critical blow to Afghan peace and reconciliation efforts, and it has raised serious concerns ahead of the security transition that is due to begin in Afghanistan in April.
Authorities in Kabul say that investigations are under way to determine circumstances that led to what is being condemned as the deadliest assault on foreign civilians in Afghanistan since the start of U.S.-led military campaign in 2001.
According to Afghan police and eyewitnesses, a Taliban suicide bomber and two gunmen stormed a Lebanese restaurant popular with foreigners in the Wazir Akbar Khan district Friday evening.
Addressing a gathering of provincial police chiefs in Kabul on Saturday, Interior Minister Mohammad Omar Daudzai said the district police chief and some officers have been suspended for failing to prevent the attack.
'The aim of attacks against civilian locations like the restaurant is to isolate Afghanistan by discouraging foreigners from visiting and living in the country and forcing educated Afghan youth to flee abroad,' he said, describing an enemy that wants to push Afghanistan back to a previous century.
"Afghanistan has completely changed and the youth this time is not ready to flee,' he said.
Claiming responsibility for the attack, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA that penetration of its fighters into such a heavily-guarded part of Kabul demonstrates the group is capable of regaining control of the country after the withdrawal of foreign troops.
If the Taliban "can have access and transport fighters to what [Afghan authorities] dub a Red Line area where senior officials of invading countries reside, it shows the Taliban has the capability to retake our country," he said.
Friday's attack targeted a place "where invaders used to dine with booze and liquor in the plenty," he said, adding that it was planned to avenge an Afghan military operation earlier in the week against insurgents in the eastern Parwan province that killed "many Afghan civilians."
Afghan authorities say the offensive that reportedly involved U.S. air support killed a number of Taliban fighters, including a senior insurgent leader.
Interior Minister Daudzai says the Taliban attack on the Lebanese restaurant that killed local and foreign civilians shows insurgents are not willing to come to the negotiating table and are determined to continue their violent campaign.
Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, says only peace talks can end to the Afghan conflict, telling VOA that civilians are dying not only in Taliban attacks but in military operations undertaken by Afghan and foreign troops.
"These kinds of incidents may happen again and again, but it tells us that we have to go for a political settlement and we have to prevent all the military operations in Afghanistan,' he said. 'We have to create trust and confidence among different segments, different elements of the crisis."
The High Peace Council, formed in 2010 by President Hamid Karzai and comprising influential Afghans, was devised in a bid to engage Taliban members in peace and political reconciliation efforts, though is has made no headway.
The latest Taliban violence has increased security fears ahead of the historic presidential election in April, because insurgents have rejected the polls as a "U.S.-staged drama" to legitimize its 'occupation of Afghanistan.'
Moreover, NATO-led international forces are due to end their combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of this year and the United States wants to retain a much smaller military presence in the country past 2014. The residual American force is meant to help nascent Afghan security forces prevent the Taliban from staging a comeback.
However, President Karzai has refused to sign a bilateral security agreement with the Obama administration to allow for the proposed American force to stay in Afghanistan.
The United States has warned it will be forced to completely withdraw forces from the country if the security pact is not in place soon. The standoff between Kabul and Washington has fueled uncertainty about future stability and security in Afghanistan.
The U.S. State Department condemned Friday's attack as an act of senseless violence that demonstrates the terrorists' blatant disregard for life and the future Afghans are working hard to achieve. The message also said the U.S. remains committed to peace and reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan.
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, said the Taliban target people who 'have hope in and work for' Afghanistan's success, and that insurgents 'only destroy, they cannot build.'
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