Carnage in Kabul

The elected government in Afghanistan clings on by its fingernails

It is all too easy to become desensitised to the horrors of war; and with a war as protracted and ferocious as that which rages in Afghanistan regular atrocities can go almost unremarked. Some transcend even the bloody scale of what passes for normality, and the bombing in Kabul on 31^st May is one such. At the time of writing there are at least 80 dead and 350 wounded. Both numbers are probably underestimates. The bomb was in either a car or a truck and may have had the diplomatic quarter as its primary target. It detonated at rush hour and many women and children are casualties, living or dead. Several Pakistani diplomats were injured.

With a third of the country under the control of one or other of the iterations of the Taliban franchise, defections and desertions from the army rampant and casualties on the rise by the month Afghanistan is a sorry sight to behold. The elected government is still in place, but clinging on by its fingernails. Whatever interventions have been made over the last decade by foreign powers have largely failed be they military or in the cause of nation building.

The spokesman for the Afghan Taliban Zabiullah Mujahid denied responsibility for the attack saying that the movement’s fighters were not involved in any attack that ‘caused civilian casualties’. Observers are already bracketing the attack with the Taliban spring offensive whatever the Taliban may be saying, and their statement is disingenuous to say the least, but the attack is just another nail in the coffin of a government that is increasingly powerless and irrelevant to the majority of Afghans wherever their sympathies and affiliations may lie. The grim reality is that the Taliban on current form could take Kabul, perhaps by the end of the year. Elephants in the room do not come much larger than this.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2017.

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