Endless barbarism

At least 48 Kabul teenagers studying for college admission died when a suicide bomber detonated in their classroom

Even by barbaric standards, yesterday’s attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, was an attack that went beyond the gory norms. At least 48 teenagers studying for college admission died when a suicide bomber detonated in their classroom. Another 67 were injured and the number of dead is likely to rise. The victims were both boys and girls and at the time of writing there has been no claim of responsibility. All the victims were of the Shia minority.

Afghanistan is spiralling downwards, seemingly inexorably. The Taliban hold much of the east of the country running parallel administrations and that which they don’t hold they influence. They are able to mount large-scale sustained attacks as in the last week on the city of Ghazni which the Afghan forces in the end only held with the support of Nato ‘advisers’ and the US air force. An Afghan army post has been overrun with the loss of perhaps 40 dead and an unknown number taken prisoner or hostage. All their equipment which includes armoured vehicles is now in Taliban hands. The Afghan army itself is leaking like a sieve and is poorly trained and even more badly led.

The Taliban insurgency is sustainable, has widespread public support in many places and is militarily robust. It is as much ideological as it is political and about establishing the paramountcy of a particular sect, with little or no hindrance when it comes to eradicating those that have a different sectarian adherence. This has always been at the heart of the Taliban movement from its earliest days in the early-to-mid 1990s and remains so today. The children butchered in their classroom will be just another number within 24 hours, the faux-outrage will fade away and the stage set for the next atrocity. And the next. And the next…

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2018.

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