If anyone was in doubt about the barbarity of the Afghan Taliban, the Tuesday’s attack should put an end to that wishful assumption. On the morning of April 19, 2016, a suicide bomber belonging to the Afghan Taliban detonated a vehicle filled with explosives in a private parking lot outside the offices of an elite security force that provides protection to senior government officials. At least 30 people died while more than 300 were wounded in the attack, most of them civilians, including women and children. The Afghan Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack that came a week after the Taliban declared the start of a spring offensive. Reportedly, a record number of civilians died or wounded in hostilities in Afghanistan last year. More than 3,500 civilians died and nearly 7,500 were wounded in 2015. Another 5,500 Afghan security force members died in 2015, according to an estimate by the US authorities. Although, security forces in Kabul have been on high alert since the Taliban announced their annual spring offensive last week, they failed to stop the killing of innocent civilians at the hands of terrorists.
For the last few months, the struggling coalition government in Kabul tried to get the Taliban to participate in peace talks, in the hope of avoiding another blood-spattered year. In this struggle, Pakistan military leadership was playing a crucial role by pursuing the Afghan Taliban to shun violence by using their influence as it is believed that, certain powerful elements in Pakistan are aiding the Taliban and providing its leadership with sanctuaries on its soil. The outreach, which also involved the United States and China, created early optimism. A date for face-to-face talks was set for early March, with Pakistan promising to deliver Taliban leaders to the table. Yet all these efforts proved futile when the Taliban rejected the talks and announced the launch of the spring offensive by intensifying attacks across the country.
But here is a question worth posing: In the 15th year of the US war in Afghanistan, what could the Taliban’s commanders hope to gain from such an act of mass murder, in which many, if not most, of the victims were civilians? Apparently, they do not have any foreign support, and their ideology comprising their own set of interpretation of Islam is disliked by the local Afghans. One answer could be that the Taliban wish to show the ordinary Afghans how weak their government is, that it cannot protect them, and that the Taliban should be in power in Kabul. It seems that the chances for a negotiated peace with the Taliban, which the US and the Afghan government have been pursuing, are remote in the near future. This scenario also gives a wake-up call to the military and civilian leadership in Pakistan that they have to disconnect all types of alleged links with the Afghan Taliban. As is commonly believed, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban are the two sides of the same coin. Their only aim is to spread violence and nothing else. It is to be understood that both the local Taliban and the Afghan Taliban share the same mentality and mindset: of creating mayhem through violence for their hegemonic purposes. Taliban apologists must stop their propaganda that the Taliban are fighting only the Americans. They are also fighting against the state of Pakistan and killing the people of Pakistan. Pakistan needs to unite with the Afghan and American authorities to eliminate the stronghold of the Taliban if this sorry tale of bloodshed is to come to an end in Afghanistan, and in the region.http://dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/21-Apr-16/the-latest-massacre-in-kabul
Comments are closed.