Unending violence

Blood keeps spilling in the conflict-battered Afghanistan with troubling regularity. The trauma and agony suffered by the hapless Afghan people since 9/11 is nowhere near its end. Even as the Americans, finding themselves in a quagmire of monumental depth, make a push for peace with insurgents to wriggle themselves out of the mess of their own making, there has been no let-up in violence nonetheless.

In fact, Taliban militants have intensified attacks following a pause in peace talks between the armed group and the United States delegation in Qatar’s capital Doha, as the militants have killed nearly two dozen security personnel in the eastern province of Ghazni in the latest offensive.

A Taliban spokesperson has claimed responsibility for the attack and said that the insurgents in an overnight operation had killed 32 soldiers and overrun a military base in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province. The marathon talks initiated between the US and the Taliban outfit in October 2018 in Doha to find a negotiated settlement for Afghanistan’s lingering crisis broke down in early September this year following a Taliban-linked car bomb that killed 10 people including a US soldier in Kabul.

The talks resumed on Dec 7 but were again suspended in the wake of a deadly truck bomb that targeted the main US military base in Bagram, 50 km north of Kabul on Wednesday, which left eight dead including six attackers and injured over 70 others.

More than 60 people including 10 civilians, over two dozen security personnel and at least 30 militants have been killed elsewhere in the war-torn country since Friday. Experts forewarn of more trouble in store as they speculate the militants would step up attacks to demonstrate their power so as to secure an upper hand at any possible talks with the Afghan government in the future.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2019.

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